exchemist

I see that Associated Press has now been refused access to White House press briefings and travel on Air Farce 1, because they have reiterated, in their style guide, that the Gulf of Mexico is to remain described as the Gulf of Mexico, because that is how it is known to its worldwide audience.

It's not quantum theory but radiometric dating that is used to estimate the age of the Earth. This gives a value of approx 4.5bn years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Earth

I've found that the odd electron does indeed go into a relatively high energy orbital: a π* antibonding orbital which is shared across all 3 atoms. The information was buried in this interesting but very long review of polysulphide anions by Tristram Chivers and someone else: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/cs/c8cs00826d. What I have yet to find out is what it gets promoted to in the transition responsible for the colour. There is a comment that neutral sulphur molecules have a +ve electron affinity, such that addition of one extra electron is both exothermic and exergonic (ΔG<0), so the radical anion is stable with respect to the neutral atom. Adding a second electron, to make a 2- anion, is energetically favourable in polarisable solvents but not in the gas phase, so is more marginal. Lapis Lazuli has a quite open zeolite-type aluminosilicate structure, with cages big enough to sequester this big anion and prevent it from reacting further, in spite of the reactivity implied by the odd electron. It would be interesting to know how this unusual mineral is formed in the Earth's crust. The Chivers paper says it has been found that S₃•⁻ has been found to form in sulphurous hydrothermal fluids, at temperatures >200C and pressures > 1kbar. So perhaps lapis lazuli is formed by some kind of metamorphic alteration of a pre-existing aluminosilicate mineral, involving sulphur-containing hydrothermal fluids.

Head of the Office of Goverment Ethics was fired this week: This guy Schiff is rather good value, I must say. (As he should be: Stanford and Harvard Law School). As he says in closing: "So much for draining the swamp".

Perhaps Google should be renamed Grovel, while they are about it.

Well, you jest, but…… 😁

Bye. What a plonker.

Pickwick Papers and Dava Sobel’s biog of Marie Curie.

Why? What does this video tell us? All I know about this Frederico Faggin guy is he is 83 and after a distinguished career in electronics he has had the silly idea that because a quantum state contains information about itself that we cannot access by observation, then it must be conscious. This apparently on the basis that consciousness involves perception of "qualia" which are not objectively observable from outside. This is nuts. But as he's 83, he is most likely contemplating his death and trying to construct some science to suggest his mind can survive that.

Yes but once they are confident they can safely ignore the courts, it will be a whole new game.

Indeed. Vance and Vought have questioned whether the Executive needs to comply with the courts. The marshals who enforce court orders are part of the DoJ, now led by Pam Bondi who promotes the myth about the 2020 election being stolen. So she can just tell them not to do their job. Furthermore SCOTUS has ruled that the president is above the law in respect of his official duties. Whether those executing his orders can claim the same immunity vicariously remains to be tested. So it looks to me as if both legislative and judicial pillars of the constitution are already being neutralised. It seems to me that all now depends on whether Trump and co decide to call the courts' bluff, given that they have the means to do so. My guess, drawing on the lessons of history, is they will do this by stealth, progressively, rather than risking a high-profile showdown that could attract unfavourable media attention. So some compliance but not 100%, to push the edge of the envelope and make it seem as if the courts are nit-picking pedantically over the non-compliances. This will then open the way to arguing the courts are being unreasonably obstructive - followed by more brazen ignoring of their rulings. And then we will have the full-on banana republic, in terms of governance. Next stop, manipulation of electoral processes to ensure the ruling party can stay in power indefinitely.

Why the exclamation, rather than a question? Or is English not your first language?

Hmm, I can’t help noticing that you seem to keep trying to draw attention away from the thread topic, by swerving into generalities, false equivalence and whataboutery. This thread is about what is happening right now, in one specific country, and the dangers of where it can lead if it is not stopped.

Your last paragraph comfortably assumes that free and fair elections will continue, so that the will of the people can still express itself via secret ballot. I do not think this is at all a safe assumption. The lesson of the authoritarian takeovers of the c.20th history, of which we have plenty of examples, as discussed above, is that they get to work dismantling the institutions and structures that are required to support a functioning democracy. We can see this process taking place with frightening speed, week by week in Trump's USA. The next logical step will be for the Executive to start disregarding the numerous restraining orders from the courts. This is already starting (Rhode Island judge John J McConnell vs. DOGE). The marshals who are responsible for enforcing compliance with court rulings are controlled by............... the Dept of Justice, now headed by Pam Bondi, a Trump appointee and vocal promoter of the "election steal" fiction in 2020. Will Bondi allow the marshals to do their job? Vance is on record as suggesting the courts are actually powerless to enforce their own rulings. If and when this defiance of the courts occurs, they will have achieved "authoritarian breakthrough". After that the electoral system itself will be up for grabs.

Haha yes, I remember rather resenting that, having recently married a French woman. When it all started going wrong in Iraq I used to tease American colleagues by asking them if they would like to rename them clusterf*** fries. 😆

Today I visited the minerals gallery at the London Natural History Museum. I was struck by the intense blue colour of the specimens of lapis lazuli, which was very valuable, both as a pigment and for decorative objects, in the Ancient and Medieval worlds. I recall the Arabic word for the colour blue is azraq (m) or zarqa (f.), from which we get "azure", so presumably lazuli comes from the same root. (Lapis is just Latin for stone, obvs.) I had assumed the colour would be due to copper and was a bit shocked to find the formula is: Na₇Ca(Al₆Si₆O₂₄)(SO₄)(S₃).H₂O , i.e no Cu in sight! Turns out the clue is in the S₃. This is present in the form of the trisulphide radical anion, S₃⁻•, a curious species that breaks the school-level rules for stability and bonding - and so is automatically interesting to me. This radical anion apparently has an absorption band in the orange region of the visible spectrum, and thus reflects mainly blue light. I haven't managed to find a molecular orbital diagram for it on the internet but presume the odd electron may be in a relatively high energy orbital, from which it can be promoted to another one that is only slightly higher, i.e. with relatively little energy and this will be why it absorbs in the visible rather than the UV. S₃ itself is regarded as having a similar bonding scheme to ozone, i.e. the centre atom sp2 hybridised with one lone pair, but I presume the extra odd electron must go into either an sp2 hybrid antibonding orbital or else something involving participation by d orbitals, which obviously is possible in sulphur, unlike oxygen. I suppose one should expect this ion to be paramagnetic. From what I have found on the internet this radical anion has some applications in synthesis of organosulphur compounds. There seems to be a guy called Tristram Chivers at Calgary (now retired and emeritus) who has done a lot of work on it. If anyone knows more about this anion I'd be interested to learn more about it, especially the bonding and electronic structure.

What a farce. And how extraordinarily childish.

You continue to introduce more medical terminology. To be honest I do not think this sheds any light on what is going on in the USA just now. We could certainly have a thread on the appeal of autocracies in general and what makes people turn to them - or how they come to be otherwise imposed . That would involve revisiting the histories of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Spain and Portugal, discussion of incitement to hatred of "out" groups, the turbocharging and exploitation of perceived grievances nowadays by the internet, etc. (I think we could have that discussion without medical terminology, as it happens.) But I do not think that is what this thread is about, which is concerned with the outrageous actions of Trump's administration, day by day.

Behaviour of whom? That is what I am unclear about, from your posts so far. Are you talking about Trump as an individual? Or Musk, or others in Trump's administration? Or US society as a whole? Or some other group?

Thanks for the clarification. However I don't see why you interpret something being wrong with the administration as meaning psychopathology - unless you are referring to Trump himself as the thing that is wrong. Is that what you mean? There does seem to be a body of opinion that Trump may indeed be a psychopath. I gather he seems to have the classic attributes of one. But Project 2025 and the people behind that do not seem to be mentally ill - far from it. Trump is their front man - their useful idiot - but not the ideological guiding spirit. His mind does not appear able to focus on anything other than himself. In spite of that, or perhaps harnessing it, it does look as if Project 2025 is being executed, with speed, as I indicated in my earlier post. I'm sure you touch on something important when you observe that "something in society is moving people to follow their autocrat of choice." I am actually not sure if that is a correct inference. As an external observer from across the Atlantic, I am not clear at all whether or not US citizens have actively embraced autocracy (or the risk of it), by electing Trump a second time, in spite of awareness that he tried to overturn an election result. On the face of it, It looks as if they have, but that may be being too rational. From our own recent election choices (and the referendum on EC membership) it seems a fair portion of the electorate simply does not join the dots in a rational way. They seem motivated by single issues of concern to them, or by emotional "feel" about the candidates. Perhaps you would be right to suggest there may be a collective psychopathy at work in society, in which hatred has been stoked to the point that people voted for Trump, emotionally, in order to "own the libs", heedless of where it could take the country. For instance there is a MAGA man on another forum who is beside himself with glee at how the "libs" will now be crushed. It's pure hatred, not any product of reasoning.

I may be being a bit slow but why are you introducing "psychopathology" and all this stuff about psychiatrists? @CharonY was describing a progressive weakening of institutional structures, due to churn in the middle ranks of the professionals working in them, and loss of attractiveness of the jobs. And I have been talking about a loss of public trust in institutions, which is another way in which they can become weakened. Where does psychopathology come into this?

Very risky. The problem is the damage to trust in formerly independent institutions, including the judiciary, the Dept of Justice and the FBI. One that's gone it takes years to get people to trust them again, especially as one of the things that has to be done is getting rid of the Trumpy loyalists that were parachuted in. Doing that can so easily be presented as politicisation by the other side. As with presidential pardons. These have now, partly due to Biden's weird use of them, become discredited as a partisan way to avoid accountability for favoured individuals. Trump has already damaged trust in SCOTUS by appointing two manifestly underqualified people last time. There is also the danger that what seems outrageous today will, within 2 years, barely elicit a shrug from punchdrunk voters who have got used to it. No, I think this stuff has to be called out now, in as public a manner as possible, by heavyweight speakers that can communicate. (I thought it interesting that Trump had a go at Pete Buttigieg over the plane crash. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to find a way to blame Buttigieg for it. I feel sure he sees Buttigieg as dangerous to him, because he is the kind of sharp and articulate guy that can highlight what Trump is doing in ways that cut through to people.)

That is interesting. Not from the blacks, then?

OK, but PiS is also authoritarian and nationalist. So maybe "far-right" was a bit simplistic of me but they have most of the attributes, apart from economic laissez-faire.

😀