BULLYING - NOT A NEW PHENOMENON

Bullying is nothing new in our schools or even in our neighborhoods.  I personally observed it many times and was even the victim of some forms of bullying, or what came to be known as bullying, when I attended public schools in my home town of Easton.  But the bullying victims among us then didn't' resort to killing ourselves to get away from it.

In order to understand the process of bullying it becomes necessary to understand why someone becomes a bully, and why people become the victims of bullying.  I am not proposing we blame the victim.  If I dislike someone enough to harass them, the problem isn't with them but with me. If we can understand why the bully does what he does, it will be much easier to head him off before he creates a problem for someone else. 

Of course the first thing we have to do is to take allegations of bullying seriously, whether we are the parents of a bully, of a victim, or school personnel.  The victim has to know that he or she can tell the adults in authority in their lives and be assured of a sympathetic hearing. Of course we also have to investigate allegations of bullying completely and objectively so as to weed out false accusations if they are made. Zero tolerance for bullying has to include zero tolerance for false accusations too.

The bully's parents have to be enlisted in the effort to prevent bullying.  Parents who do nothing about it, or have the attitude that kids-will-be-kids, should be cited for something akin to aiding and abetting juvenile delinquency.

ALWAYS ESTABLISH A BARGAINING POSITION

Charles Steinmetz, the electrical wizard of the early days of the General Electric Corporation, was also on the faculty of Union College, and in that capacity was also the faculty adviser for one of the fraternities on campus.  This fraternity was in the market to build a new fraternity house and had selected the plot of ground on campus where they wanted to place it.  Knowing the college likely would not approve their choice, they went to Steinmetz one night after supper and asked him his advice.

He agreed the college would likely not approve their choice and then told them to ask to build the fraternity house on a vacant piece of land that was next to the college president's residence.   The frat boys told Steinmetz that would never be allowed.  To which he replied "Of course.  Then you will settle for what you really wanted in the first place." 

JUST DOING HER JOB

I have had at least one cat in my house for the past 13+years, sometimes as many as 6, 5 currently.  One day my son called up the steps to me, telling me one of my cats that has since died, Daphne, was chasing a mouse around the kitchen floor.  I replied "Let her alone.  She is doing her job."

I went downstairs and we had progressed to tag team mousing.  Socks, a cat I have had since she had kittens in my garage, was watching behind the stove and Daphne was watching behind the dryer.  Any mouse brave enough to stick his head out didn't' stand a chance.

That is the one great thing, among many, of having at least one cat.  Mice can smell them and know they are not welcome here.

For all of you spay and neuter people out there, my five female felines are all spayed and the only reason Sassy is declawed is because she was declawed when I got her.  I don't believe in declawing my cats and my kitchen window sill proves it.

MORTGAGE MODIFICATION

Quite honestly, I think this mortgage modification program sucks monkey turds in the way banks are applying it.  In my case the modification offer came up with a payment that was $16 higher than the payment required by the original mortgage. Then they had the balls, when I wrote them and told them the proposed payment was too high, to write back and to acknowledge that I had 'rejected' modification. I did not reject modification, only the amount of the payment they came up with.

To be honest, my original mortgage did not require an escrow for taxes and insurance and the modification did, but why would they propose a payment to me that is higher than the one I couldn't' keep up?  If I were financially able to pay the modification amount, I would have been able to keep the original payments going.  As I just read online, the banks are not interested in adjusting the amount of principal owed but only in modifying the interest rate. 

Come on Mr. Obama.  How ab out giving us a modification program that really modifies our situation.

THE NATIVITY

Lu 2:1 ¶ And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
 2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
 3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
 5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
 6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
 8 ¶ And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
 10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
 12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
 14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
 15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
 16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
 17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
 18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
 19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

LIMITATIONS OF CHEMICAL TESTING

Because of the limitations imposed by minimum detection level of a chemical analyte, it is impossible to ever determine with any degree of certainty if there are zero atoms of any analyte in a sample.  When you see in a test report of  some analyte, such as lead, listed as < A

Where A is a very low number, A is the MDL of lead, and a result listed thusly, can only reliably mean that the actual concentration of lead is less than A, not that it is A.  There indeed may be no lead in the sample at all, but the required test cannot accurately determine that. 

How difficult is it to determine what the concentration of an analyte is?  Imagine having 20 decks of cards, all with the same pattern on the back, but slightly different colors. Pick groups of cards that are approximately the same amount as  a full deck and sort them out by the colors of the backs.  At the end when they have all been sorted go back and determine how many of the selected packs have wrong cards in them.

Or imagine you have a huge pack of 1000000 hearts and one diamond.  If you had the patience to sit down and try to find the diamond in this pack of hearts multiple times, you would probably miss it at least once.  Assume that you ran an MDL study as outlined in the previous blog, and you determined that the MDL for finding the diamond was 2.   That means the result for testing one million hearts for diamonds would get reported as <2, whether the actual number was 2,1, or none. 

I hope after these two blog entries my readers, all two of you, have a better understanding of the limitations of chemical testing.

MINIMUM DETECTION LEVEL

If I am going to write a blog entitled The Thinking Chemist, I should at least write on topics relating to chemistry once in a while, so here goes.

The minimum detection level, or MDL, of an analyte, is statistically defined as the lowest concentration of that analyte that can be detected reliably 95% of the time under a given set of conditions, equipment, and analyst.  This is determined empirically and cannot be determined in advance by any sort of calculation, and must be determined by actually running tests on a standard concentration of a known analyte. It can change if major changes are made in the test equipment, testing done by a different technician, or even being done in  different room in the same building.

No test, no matter how well and how accurately performed will give you exactly the same number in 100% of the repetitive samples run.  There will always be a slight deviation that should be around a very low number, which will obviously be different for each analyte.

After one runs the repetitive samples  their standard deviation is determined and then multiplied by the Student #, which is different for different numbers of samples.  The resultant number is the MDL for that analyte under those conditions.