GREEN CHEMISTRY

catalyst of the week:

Pt
atomic number: 78
atomic mass: 195.078

platinum has no other duty to me than to remain a charming metal to look at and hold. however it's utility is many: it is used in jewelry, dentistry, chemical synthesis, medicine, and etc. it is a catalyst for many reactions such as to produce sulphuric acid, fuel cells for cars, and to convert alcohol into formaldehyde. it is corrosion resistant as well. alchemically this element is associated with determination and cycle completion. but it was a late comer on the alchemy scene as it was not introduced into europe until the 18th century. the incas used platinum, long before the europeans, as jewelry. thus it is more associated with the shamanic traditions than with European alchemy. not much is known about it's esoteric principles either because of secrecy or the incan ideas are not very well understood. from the esoteric view this metal is still quite a mystery and needs further investigation.

atom economy:

the idea behind atom economy is essential, and we can certainly be thankful to mr. trost. without such a concept injected into science i feel the business cycle would simply dominate chemistry. the website also noted that atom economy is not the only factor in the chemical equation -- pun intended. but if there is a "by-product" resulting from a reaction, the "by-product" could be off set by demand for it, thus making it a useful product.

however this still does not address another phenomena that has taken hold in the chemical world: the phenomena of profit over health. for example, sea salt is a healthy product for human consumption. it has numerous minerals that are missing from other foods that are essential for life. the research suggests that this form of salt does not raise blood pressure either. however normal table salt has none of these health properties and deserves the negative press it has received. this is because table salt is simply sodium and chlorine. it is sea salt or rock salt with all of the other constituents striped out and sold to industrial/chemical companies. the refiners of salt have discovered that they can make more money this way. true sea salt is rare and expensive, possibly $20 per pound. for more info refer to: "seasalts hidden powers" by jacques de langre.

MOLECULAR STRUCTURE AND BONDING

transitional metal:

Ag
atomic number: 47
atomic mass: 107.8682

silver, a partially though highly evolved metal from the alchemical point of view. silver is trying to become gold. perhaps it is for more than one reason referred to as a transition metal. silver is associated with lunar energy. the moon shines by reflected light thus receiving energy from the sun (gold). given eons and some favorable circumstances silver will one day transmute itself into it's more sought after brother. silver colloid can be used as a disinfectant and kills almost all germs known to man. the term "blue blood" comes from the nobility eating off of silverware, which after years would turn their skin gray/blue. silver is associated with intelligent emotions and beauty. i just wonder why witches are afraid of it?

what do you make of "neptune's medicine chest".

the article is interesting. the marine world possibly holds undiscovered secrets and untapped knowledge. at the same time the article, perhaps unintentionally, reveals a huge flaw in conventional medical thought. the article describes the search for new cures for diseases like cancer and infection. bill fenical is pressed to find grant money and the institutions are interested in patents. this to me seems to be good business, but bad medicine. there will be no magic medicine that will ever cure cancer -- cancer is not a thing, not a microbe, not a virus, not an inherited legacy, not a parasite, not an emotion or a thought, and not an inevitability. surely it may involve most of those mentioned but it is not the thing in itself -- sorry to get existential. even if geneticists one day rid all of humanity of every cancer gene, another degenerative maladaption will take it's place -- sorry to sound pessimistic. cancer is the bodies response to living out of harmony with nature, ingesting toxins, unbalanced diet, improper breathing, negative thinking, etc. there are no known cases of wild animals getting cancer -- except for ones that accidentally ingest contaminated food, water, etc. if the conventional medical community were really interested ridding the world of cancer and other degenerative diseases they would focus their attention on reintegrating a healthy relationship with nature and look to natural products not patents to save the world.



water concepts


the website discusses some interesting properties of the water molecule. i was surprised to find symmetry as the molecule was rotated. it is clear that water despite its ubiquity is a peculiar substance. from the hermetic point of view it is a universal force and the embodiment of magnetism -- opposite of fire which is electric. water appears to be trying to constantly contract within itself thus living up to its magnetic nature. it is interesting that the alchemical philosophers of egypt understood this, but had no scientific instruments to directly observe the chemistry.

PERIODIC TABLES

element of the week:

Au
atomic number: 79
atomic mass: 196.96655
gold, that noble substance that alchemists coveted was considered the highest evolved metal. from the alchemical point of view all metals are in a constant evolutionary state (just as organisms are). gold is the final development in the mineral kingdom. from there 'spirit' evolves to the plant kingdom, and then to the animal kingdom for further evolution. gold corresponds to the sun and is divine. it is the mineral equivalent of an adept. one can gain an intuitive understanding of this presence if he holds a gold coin when the sun is high and meditates upon its virtues.

discussion of ozone with family and friends:

i was not surprised to find out that most of the people i spoke to did not regard it as an issue anymore. the news has not been talking much about the issue for a number of years. people remember the issue but are not concerned about it. there is much more discussion about the war, global warming, and gas prices. i believe this illustrates the power of the press and the dangers of media conglomeration. once i told them that global warming could have a hand in ozone layer depletion then they had a bit more interest in the subject.

elements, compounds and mixtures

i liked the microscopic views that were presented. the explanations were concise and easily understandable. i would have found it more interesting had there been a bit more expansion of the characteristics of each. i find it interesting when emotional or psychological phenomena are explained by analogy through chemical terminology and wish this would have been somewhere included.

here is an artical that i think brings up important questions regarding global warming or any politicized science. this exemplifies the reason for my distrust or at least my confusion regarding true science.

Why Politicized Science is Dangerous(Excerpted from State of Fear)

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago. Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.

These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort. All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected. Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people.

The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful --- and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing --- that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well know to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated. The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones --- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded." Francis Galton, a respected British scientist, first speculated about this area, but his ideas were taken far beyond anything he intended. They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century --- "dangerous human pests" who represented "the rising tide of imbeciles" and who were polluting the best of the human race. The eugenicists and the immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded --- Jews were agreed to be largely feeble-minded, but so were many foreigners, as well as blacks --- and stop them from breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization. As Margaret Sanger said, "Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty … there is not greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste."

Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." Luther Burbank" "Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind. There was overt racism in this movement, exemplified by texts such as "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" by American author Lothrop Stoddard. But, at the time, racism was considered an unremarkable aspect of the effort to attain a marvelous goal --- the improvement of humankind in the future. It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing sterilization, but it proved the most-forward-looking and enthusiastic --- more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America.

Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The latter was so enthusiastic that even after the center of the eugenics effort moved to Germany, and involved the gassing of individuals from mental institutions, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance German researchers at a very high level. (The foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II.) Since the 1920s, American eugenicists had been jealous because the Germans had taken leadership of the movement away from them. The Germans were admirably progressive. They set up ordinary-looking houses where "mental defectives" were brought and interviewed one at a time, before being led into a back room, which was, in fact, a gas chamber. There, they were gassed with carbon monoxide, and their bodies disposed of in a crematorium located on the property.

Eventually, this program was expanded into a vast network of concentration camps located near railroad lines, enabling the efficient transport and of killing ten million undesirables. After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all. Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised form. But in retrospect, three points stand out. First, despite the construction of Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, despite the efforts of universities and the pleadings of lawyers, there was no scientific basis for eugenics. In fact, nobody at that time knew what a gene really was. The movement was able to proceed because it employed vague terms never rigorously defined. "Feeble-mindedness" could mean anything from poverty to illiteracy to epilepsy. Similarly, there was no clear definition of "degenerate" or "unfit."

Second, the eugenics movement was really a social program masquerading as a scientific one. What drove it was concern about immigration and racism and undesirable people moving into one's neighborhood or country. Once again, vague terminology helped conceal what was really going on. Third, and most distressing, the scientific establishment in both the United States and Germany did not mount any sustained protest. Quite the contrary. In Germany scientists quickly fell into line with the program. Modern German researchers have gone back to review Nazi documents from the 1930s. They expected to find directives telling scientists what research should be done. But none were necessary. In the words of Ute Deichman, "Scientists, including those who were not members of the [Nazi] party, helped to get funding for their work through their modified behavior and direct cooperation with the state." Deichman speaks of the "active role of scientists themselves in regard to Nazi race policy … where [research] was aimed at confirming the racial doctrine … no external pressure can be documented." German scientists adjusted their research interests to the new policies. And those few who did not adjust disappeared.

A second example of politicized science is quite different in character, but it exemplifies the hazard of government ideology controlling the work of science, and of uncritical media promoting false concepts. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a self-promoting peasant who, it was said, "solved the problem of fertilizing the fields without fertilizers and minerals." In 1928 he claimed to have invented a procedure called vernalization, by which seeds were moistened and chilled to enhance the later growth of crops. Lysenko's methods never faced a rigorous test, but his claim that his treated seeds passed on their characteristics to the next generation represented a revival of Lamarckian ideas at a time when the rest of the world was embracing Mendelian genetics. Josef Stalin was drawn to Lamarckian ideas, which implied a future unbounded by hereditary constraints; he also wanted improved agricultural production. Lysenko promised both, and became the darling of a Soviet media that was on the lookout for stories about clever peasants who had developed revolutionary procedures. Lysenko was portrayed as a genius, and he milked his celebrity for all it was worth. He was especially skillful at denouncing this opponents. He used questionnaires from farmers to prove that vernalization increased crop yields, and thus avoided any direct tests. Carried on a wave of state-sponsored enthusiasm, his rise was rapid. By 1937, he was a member of the Supreme Soviet.

By then, Lysenko and his theories dominated Russian biology. The result was famines that killed millions, and purges that sent hundreds of dissenting Soviet scientists to the gulags or the firing squads. Lysenko was aggressive in attacking genetics, which was finally banned as "bourgeois pseudoscience" in 1948. There was never any basis for Lysenko's ideas, yet he controlled Soviet research for thirty years. Lysenkoism ended in the 1960s, but Russian biology still has not entirely recovered from that era.

Now we are engaged in a great new theory that once again has drawn the support of politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the world. Once again, the theory is promoted by major foundations. Once again, the research is carried out at prestigious universities. Once again, legislation is passed and social programs are urged in its name. Once again, critics are few and harshly dealt with. Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability and generational justice --- terms that have no agreed definition --- are employed in the service of a new crisis.

I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions of the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression. One proof of this suppression is the fact that so many of the outspoken critics of global warming are retired professors. These individuals are not longer seeking grants, and no longer have to face colleagues whose grant applications and career advancement may be jeopardized by their criticisms. In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.

The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world" of our past. That hope is science. But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.

WEEK ONE: THE CULTURAL INFLUENCE OF CHEMISTRY

BIO

I began to study herbs about 15 years ago. This was a fascinating subject to me, as I soon discovered most herbalists had quite a different approach to illness than western doctors. Studying this subject opened up a whole new world to me. I began treating my colds and infections quite effectively with herbs alone. I enjoyed helping friends and family with minor problems. The realization was slowly taking form that I would one day find myself within the medical industry.
After studying various modalities of healing I decided that TCM was the right choice for further learning. I am continually strengthened in this decision as I move further into the curriculum. There is much to learn and I am happy to be a part of ACCHS.

THOUGHTS ON TUESDAYS CLASS:

i was happy to learn that chemistry promises to be as interesting and relevant as physics.

the concept map was an interesting exercise. it seemed to integrate both hemispheres of the brain. this "balancing" of hemispheres is helpful in the type of left brain world we live in. i would like to further experiment with this in the future.

the subject matter was relevant but a bit frightening as well. we have a lot to think about: climate change, pollution, peak oil, soil depletion, war, depleted uranium, holes in the ozone layer, poverty, inflation, deflation, i could go on. the list is a daunting, but one only needs to delve a bit closer to see a a pattern that could help us firstly identify the common denominator in all of the above mentioned problems: business conglomeration. multinational corporations have created or helped create every problem on the list, not to mention a host of others. if one wants to seriously address these issues it would require nothing less than changing the business environment to be a positive force for the environment and humanity.

chemistry quiz:

1

burning wood -- chemical

crushing a rock -- physical

sugar in water -- chemical -- oops

rusting of iron -- chemical

2

milk -- mixture

table salt -- mixture

sugar -- mixture -- oops

steel -- mixture

3

answer b -- guessed

4

answer d -- guessed -- intuition can serve me if i can just get out of the way.