Funranium Labs

Advice to a Young Scientist/Engineer

HINT HINT HINT — When you are insane with genius, time management skills are the first thing to go. (Dr. Dinosaur courtesy of Scott Wegener & Brian Clevinger)

I am starting to build a backlog of incomplete posts, for which I apologize. For the TL;DR version: I went to the Nevada Test Site and it was awesome, the BBotE order slots for the window ending May 30th are now up, and a new label for the bottles is coming that I’m very excited about.

But today, I wish to grant the wish of a someone that made an order and asked “I’m a 23 year old engineer aspiring to make a difference in the world. Can you enlighten me with your wisdom through the telling of a story?” So, here you go, man. I do indeed have some advice to share.

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You are a wizard. No, really. You have Wisdom of Things and can tell the future of how they will work, or won’t as the case may be. Somewhere, somewhen, in Middle Ages the line between philosophy (natural philosophy being the old term for what we’d call the sciences) & magic got a bit blurred and it’s been hard to disentangle them ever since. Clarke’s Third Law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic is just a reflection of that old confusion.

And that’s the trick as a scientist or engineer; it isn’t magic to you.

In the long, long ago, in the beforetime, I was a physics undergrad functioning as a TA for the Academic Excellence program at UC Santa Cruz, which had the dedicated mission of trying to help minority students in the sciences stay in them, with a grad student functioning as our supervisor. The grad student ditched out of the program very early on, leaving my fellow TA and I with a hard choice: do we fold up the physics program as we have no one in charge, or do we team teach it as best we can as undergrads? Neither of us had ever had a teaching gig of any kind before this one and no one taught us anything about pedagogy. We were second quarter sophomores for fuck’s sake; we’d just started taking upper division classes, having finished the dedicated physics major version of the lower division courses we were now teaching other students, who were usually older than us.

And they let us do it. They never made an effort to hire a new grad student for the next two and a half years. Our supervisors trusted that, hey, they’re physics majors, of course they can do it. We did and we did it well. Every single one of our students passed with B or better and the only one that had bailed on the program had to do it for health reasons, not because he wanted to.

But that trust is what I want to focus in on. Think of all the people in your life that have decided that math is frightening, that there is simply too much in the world to know. You have been equipped with the tools to tear apart the toaster of reality and take some good guesses how things actually work. When you can do that, I find people react in one of two ways: unwavering trust or fear. That trust put two undergrads in charge of 60 students that the system expected to fail. And they might have, if I hadn’t intentionally broken my students’ trust.

While giving a review lecture for mechanics about rotation and changing inertial reference frames, I made a sign error. Normally, this isn’t a big problem but when you’re bouncing between reference frames, things start getting weird fast. I decided to just roll with it and keep going, as no one had called me on it, just to see how far I could go with patently bizarre and wrong math on the board.

At the 40 minute mark, I capped my dry erase marker, put it down, and turned to the class. “I made a mistake over a half hour ago and none of you caught me. If you did, you didn’t say a word and let me keep going.” There were stunned and angry looks. Most of my students were pre-med, which means they were used to a steady stream of rote memorization from a year of biology and chemistry. With sad understanding in my voice I told them “Memorizing won’t work here. There are too many formulas and you can’t possibly hope to memorize the infinite permutations of them for every possible scenario. The Laws of Motion and energy conservation are conceptual tools that help you build the tool you actually need for any given problem. Let’s start again, but now I’ve taught you an even more important lesson: I make mistakes too. Being a physics major doesn’t make me infallible. NEVER accept what what the person at the board is doing as absolute truth, you have to keep thinking. This ain’t a church and I’m not the pope. Pay. Attention.”

They never let me get away with it again. Thinking harder about the world and getting more familiar with using the tools they’d been handed, rather than just memorizing their shapes for organization on the pegboard in the tool shop, started making them much better in their other classes too. To the point that after three quarters, when I put up three blackboards worth of scenarios asking “For each of the following, using what you have learned since the fall, please explain why Phil didn’t die.” that they were able to answer them all. They were a little concerned that each of those scenarios was a real story, but that’s another matter. I actually got one convert who decided that physics was the major she should really be doing. It’s been almost 20 years and that’s still a moment in my life I look back on with tremendous pride.

You aren’t going to be able to do much about the people that are afraid of you for what you know and seem to be capable of (see also: the fate of almost every wizard in folklore), but you can try to get the people who blindly trust to join us. No one’s ever going to master everything, but the point is to get people interested enough to try; case in point, I’m shitty at drafting and never will make a good engineer, but that doesn’t stop me from staring lustfully at the CNC machine.

I would like point you at the old World of Darkness game Mage the Ascension, specifically to the Technocracy’s updated Convention sourcebooks. This isn’t just because Brian Clevinger managed to sneak my name into the 2013 revision of my favorite of them, the Void Engineers. They were traditionally portrayed as the adversaries in that game, with the “heroes” trying to keep the ancient mysteries alive and reassert them as dominant paradigm in the world. I had a hard time with this as the Technocracy were clearly the heroes trying to advance and awaken humanity as a whole, not just pursuing a personal and hubris driven set of obsolete beliefs. The lone wizard in the tower, looking for the secrets of yore in ancient tomes is doing it wrong. The wizard teaching an army of apprentices to wield magic in their own right for the common weal, that is noble.

Probably not a Nobel, but if you’re doing it for prizes, you’re in the wrong field. I’m not telling you to get out there and become a science teacher at your local school, but take every opportunity you can to explain what you’re doing and why to anyone who will listen.

An April Fools Cautionary Tale

TL;DR moral of the story: do not prank emergency responders. We will play it straight and you won’t like it.

Once upon a time, several years ago, a grad student decided to call the spill response line and call in a spill in a non-radiological control area. Because my name is first in alphabetical order on the receptionist’s list, the call got routed to me rather than the co-worker of mine he was hoping to prank. When I showed up to the lab, heavy spill kit and normal work bag in tow, and was directed to the break room where the there was a spilled mug of coffee, student declared, laughing, “APRIL FOOLS!”

I didn’t laugh. I remained stonefaced. I asked, “Is that the radioactive spill?”

Fainter laughing from student, “It was just my coffee, man.”

With continued stoneface, but a trace of concern in my voice, “So you drank it then?”

Student, now with concern in his voice, “Look, it’s just coffee.”

I opened the spill response kit and started to take things out. “Do you know it wasn’t contaminated?”

Student, stammering, “C’mon man.”

I handed him a bioassay kit. “When you’re finished here, I’ll need you to give a urine sample to verify there’s been no uptake.”

Student, “What?”

I gestured to the kitchen and desk areas of the lab “Once you’ve made a documented survey and decon’d this entire area, because I see several other mugs of suspicious fluid and evidence that the spill has been tracked through here, THEN I will need you to do a urine bioassay to verify that you have not ingested any radioactive materials.”

Student, getting angry now, “THIS IS BULLSHIT! I’m not doing this.”

I did not smile. “If you don’t, then I have to. This is a spill response. And if I have to respond to a spurious spill, you will then get to explain that charge to your PI when it makes it’s way though the accounting in about a month. We always give the lab a chance to clean first during spills before we get involved. Your choice.”

About this time, while it was now dawning on student #1 that once you trigger the safety response script it has to play out, another student walked into the office area to come get something from her desk. I firmly told her “Stop right where you are. You have just entered a contamination area.”

She just rolled her eyes and said “Yeah, right.”

I blocked her way, handed her a pair of tyvek booties, and hit her with full force of Command Voice I can summon. “Stop. Remove your shoes, place them in this bag and put these booties on. This is not a request. When he verifies they’re clean, you can have them back. Meanwhile, you!” I gestured to Student #1, “Get the rad tape up. You don’t want anyone else entering the contamination area.”

Eventually all nine grad students of this lab were participating in an item by item survey of the kitchen and office area, and a complete on-your-knees survey of the floor of the entire lab space. Luckily, I had brought extra meters in the spill kit so it was easy for everyone to take part. Four hours of verifying zeroes later, I congratulated them at the end for running an exceptionally good decon drill and that I trusted that they would be well equipped for any future response.

That lab’s students skittered away from me from then on when ever they saw me in the halls.

Atomic Robo Shameless Promotion

This is a tale of contracts ending and product evolution.

Two months or so ago, some of my favorite people decided to take a chance with their creation, Atomic Robo. They are bringing the entirety of their work for the last 9 volumes online as a free webcomic and launched a Patreon to support the comic going forward, in addition to the Atomic Robo supply depot. Brian Clevinger got his start in webcomics with 8-Bit Theater, so this is somewhat a return to ye olde tymes in a swanky format to him but for Scott Wegener this is a a bold, new, different, and thus somewhat scary frontier. To be be honest, not many careers seem to be as cruel yet rewarding as comics artist, so my read on the scary level is “Can’t be much worse than normal, but I do like food now and then.” I could be wrong, but I think Scott is fighting Bob Cratchit for the last lump of coal in the scuttle right now in the midst of New England spring which hasn’t quite gotten the memo about winter being over.

Because I have the pleasure of being their Weirdness Consultant (I got a promotion from mere science nerd recently), I knew this was coming and I wanted to do my best to help them make the most of it. Because people are more than a little excited about the prospect of FREE ROBOT SCIENCE PUNCHING COMIC, the traffic that came bearing down on them was similar to the catastrophic Leo Laporte/TWiT Army load testing of my own website (despite my best efforts to Warren Ellis-proof it). You guys brought them crashing down but thanks to Hiveworks they’re up and better than ever. I’d been haranguing them for what seems like years, because it totally was years, to get themselves some sort of merch up and running as they kept making wonderful images and words that needed to be available as consumer products.

I cannot adequately express how not excited they were. They make art and words, and try really hard not to think about sales of things that are not comics because that is distracting. I point blank told both of them that if the poster in the background of NASA Director Bolden’s office “SPACE: IT’S OUT THERE!” did not become a purchasable item, that they clearly hated money. This is very similar to how I tell researchers I have no interest in accounting when discussing their work with radioactive materials; if something is going wrong, I want you to talk to me, not worry how much things may cost down the road. Luckily, they got themselves George Rohac who actually likes the business and logistics side of the house and fired up the store like it had never existed before. Just for the record, for those of us that like fine paper products, it’s their intention that trade paperbacks will continue to be available.

Atomic Robo has always run on the slightly weird schedule of roughly nine months of comics per year and then three of downtime for business retooling (see also: Scott’s excellent new Wacom tablet), story development, and remembering that loved ones exist. Unlike Brian & Scott’s normal incredibly busy breather, this one has been marked by the actual transition to the online comics. Issue by issue, the old volumes of Atomic Robo, including the Free Comic Book Day specials, have been appearing on the website at the rate of three per week, Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Eventually, they’ll catch up to Volume 10 and the new releases will begin in early May.

You may recognize this as my user icon from many services. Picture title: "PHIL YELLS AT THE METAL DINGUS" — You may recognize this as my user icon from many different services. Picture title: “PHIL YELLS AT THE METAL DINGUS”

I bring all this up because they just hit Volume 6, Issue 1 “The Ghost of Station X”. Issue 2, which starts next Monday, is where my alter ego, Dr. Phil Broughton, Action Scientist, first appears on the pages of Atomic Robo. This is my reward for having helped over the, umm, more than decade that all this has been rattling in Brian & Scott’s heads. I take it back; the real reward has been getting to help bullshit with them endlessly and help make Atomic Robo as wonderful as it is.

They also made these two wonderful Tesladyne and Atomic Robo labels for my BBotE bottles and let me use them when I really needed to help my mom after my father passed. In turn, I now toss back profits from those back in the pot for their Patreon in thanks.

If you’ve never read Atomic Robo before, now is a great time to start for the low, low cost of free right here at Volume 1, Issue 1. If you’ve been reading all along and were confused about the transition online, now you have the straight dope on how to proceed.

In short, REMAIN CALM. TRUST IN SCIENCE.

End of Year Update

As we wind down into the final days of 2014, I have done some assessment of the state of production to let you know the lay of the land for 2015. Resupply cases are headed to Wish in New York City and Natara in Los Angeles, though I’m pretty sure Natara’s is completely slated for a tasting party for New Year’s.

After the production window ending January 3rd closes, I will be winding the coffee engines down for a week because I jump on a plane shortly there after to head to CES 2015 (reprising the 2011 CES journey). For that reason, the next window will go until January 24th since I’ll be out of town. I will be spending most of my time in Vegas for CES at Caesar’s if for some reason you wanted me to bring a stein with me for you. I also happily accept cocktails if you can find me.

Anyway, status reports in no particular order:

1) Changes to the Flavor Line Up – For the foreseeable future, Jamaica Blue Mountain is off the table. As I mentioned a while back that last time it disappeared, the crops coming out of Jamaica for the past several years have been painfully small, while demand has only gone up. This means that my roasters of choice are hard pressed to get any when it comes up on auction. If, and this looks increasingly unlikely, they are able to get any beans, the prices are likely to jump up by at least 25%. Considering how painfully expensive the Jamaica Blue Mountain BBotE is, that probably takes it out of even “Extravagant Gift” price range for folks. If you really, really want some, ask and I’ll see what I can do.

Otherwise, the availability of the rest of the varieties appears to be stable. There’s a chance that Ipsento Panama will run out and that Congo will come back.

2) BBotE Ambassadorships – At this time, I have no intention to expand the number of BBotE Ambassadors out there. The addition of of Melbourne (Australia), Toronto (Canada), Albuquerque, NM and Prescott, AZ at the end of last year was a bit of a push and I’d like to make sure they get established and I can handle their demand before adding anyone else. Sadly, after this case Wish is hanging up her hat in New York City. I’m afraid secure buildings have made easy hand off to folks tricky.

3) Price Changes in Australia – My retail prices of BBotE have stayed stable for the past several years despite generally rising prices in coffee and supplies. I like my price points and want to keep them there as long as I can. However, in one place, they’re going to have to change: BBotE Ambassador hand off in Australia. As a kindness, I’ve been letting people just pay in AUD as it was more or less 1:1 for the exchange rate. Was is the operative term. I’m afraid those prices are now something closer to AUD90. Sorry, everyone down there. Melbourne & Perth rates are now a titch higher starting January 1st.

So far, this isn’t coming to Toronto or London yet, but I’m watching those rates.

4) THE DEADLY RADIATIONS!!! – As I have often said, the price of writing about interesting things is that it takes time away from doing interesting things. I have high hopes of actually getting a few more tales up here in the coming year. The TL;DR version of 2014 has been “Goddammit, you still aren’t dying from Fukushima, stop calling me.” Also, if you are need of something to donate to for tax reasons and like tales of radiation, may I recommend the Atomic Heritage Foundation to you?

5) Travel – Other than the trip to Las Vegas in the first week of January I mentioned above, nothing specific is on the docket. There’s been mutterings about a mission behind the Orange Curtain and possibly Boston, but nothing concrete. Nothing that shuts down production for a month like the Great Cross-Country Journey of 2014.

THE DECEMBERING™ 2014: It’s Over

With the shipments that just went out today, and the few remaining for tomorrow, the December 17th BBotE production window draws to a close. According to the nice ladies at the post office, everything should reach their respective destinations by next Monday at the latest. The next production slots, ending on January 3rd, 2015 are now up for most all items on the site. I will do everything in my power to crank out as much BBotE as possible out the door in hopes of getting out to folks before the holidays end but there’s no guarantees at this point.

So, if you wanted to get something for someone for Christmas or Hanukkah and the last minute has bitten you in the butt because I can’t possibly get something to you in time, I do have one final option for you: Gift Certificates. I deeply apologize that you can’t give someone a gift certificate in excess of $1000 on Funranium Labs, but such is life.

As for steins, supplies are, in a word, depleted. Those numbers will rebound sometime in mid-January.

It is now time for some good holiday cheer as only my favorite artist can provide:

THE DECEMBERING™ 2014: The Home Stretch

The last of the December 6th production window BBotE, along with several steins and resupply for the BBotE Ambassador of Melbourne, are now out the door. This means that the December 17th BBotE production window is now open. The last of the dewars I ordered in preparation for the 17th window are due to arrive on Tuesday, at which the “steins on hand” numbers will lock in for the rest of the year.

Thanks to the kind endorsement of io9 and The Wirecutter gift buying guides, it is fair to say that slots are disappearing at a fair clip this year. After the 17th, another set of slots will go up, however I won’t be able to guarantee anything making it before Christmas at that point. If you’re in the last minute crowd, drop me an email and we can see what we can make happen. (PROTIP: not being picky about what variety you get really helps with that)

And with that, it’s time to closely research this scene to learn the secrets of the classic LAPD holiday punch, courtesy of “L.A. Confidential”.

Stein 600 is GONE, so is Congo

The next milestone has been hit: Stein #600 and it’s companion #601, a 665ml FMJ for the low low price of free, are now on their way to New Jersey for a what I can only hope is a very enjoyable Thanksgiving feast.

In other news, Congo has departed the ranks of BBotE to be replaced by an excellent Tanzania from that same roaster. It’s very similar to to the Congo in flavor, which considering these to farms are on either side of Lake Tanganyika. It’s the same dry red wine & baking chocolate, but a bit sweeter. Kinda smoky on the end. I like it and am happy to put it up in the roster for you all to choose from. As always, the BBotE flavor profiles can be found here.

Resupply of all the BBotE Ambassadors is going as fast as possible. London’s just went out today, should arrive at the end of the week. Chicago asks that people come clean them out as soon as possible because there is a need for more refrigerator room to hold Thanksgiving leftovers. DC/Baltimore is headed out of the country for the holidays, so if you want BBotE around the capital, drop him a line before December 15th. If you’d like to grab something locally, drop them a line. Ambassadors are standing by.

And, as I will do in every post between now and the end of the year, a link to THE DECEMBERING(tm) 2014 information.

Another Rant: Art Safety

This is a rant I’ve been thinking about for a while. Let me open by saying this is hasn’t been brought on by any particular event, but enough things from all over have piled up that I want to try to put my thoughts together in hopes that it helps someone.

The rise of the maker, as social media is very happy to tell me about constantly since I theoretically am one, is nothing really new. To me it’s more a matter of people remembering that tinkering in the shop is fun, despite a world full of disposable things that are cheaper to replace than repair. Also, that it’s a good idea to have a separate building to store your highly flammable but non-potable liquids and tetanus inducing rusty tools that you don’t actually live in. Despite the abusive work practices of our grad students bringing cots and sofas to labs so they can sleep during long data runs, people rarely live in their lab spaces anymore than a machinist sleeps in the machine shop.

However, the live-work artist studio is a cultural staple. Just close your eyes, and you can imagine it. The high ceilings, the canvases stacked in the corner, drop cloths on the floor, the flowers growing from wine bottles in the windows, paint spattered coffee mug for coffee that looks identical to the paint spattered coffee mug for brush cleaning, a half finished sculpture over there on the table overflowing with magazines. Your imagined space may vary depending on your exposure to dancers and other more exotic visual artists.

But now I want you to imagine that space again with my eyes. That coffee mug for brush cleaning, is that water that they’re dipping the brushes into or is it turpentine? Either way, don’t want anyone drinking that because I’m looking at the paints now and it’s been a while since mercury-based vermillion was on the market, where did you even get that? Oh, you found it in a discount bin at Goodwill, of course. Is that Strip-Eaze? Holy shit, that’s the old methylene chloride based formulation. Why is your woodworking tool box bloody? Exactly how many gallons of lacquer do you have stored in the corner over there under the space heater? That sure is a lot of old fishing weights…oh, of course, you’ve been melting them on the stove and making new sculptures in cast lead using an pre-1066CE technique from Exeter. No, no thank you, I don’t want any food prepared here until we decon and gut this space.

Okay, back to reality. This is not because artists are ignorant of science & technology, goodness no. They usually have a deep and intimate knowledge of their tools and medium. Sometimes entirely new tools have been made to do a thing no one even thought of before, or existing things brought together in a novel manner to make something new. But that creation can come at the cost of wider vision, the ability to see consequences. When you are focused on making the performance come together at the theater, especially if you are dealing with students, you can forget little things like fall protection while working above the stage in the rafters of your 100+ year old theater.

The more concerning artistic idea that sends a shiver up my spine are people that create things with a willful disregard for consequence, that want to “challenge people’s vision and see how the world changes once I set my art free”. That is a quote from a student at Cal. That’s fine if your creation is a painting; it is less fine if your creation is a giant kinetic sculpture made of rotating parts, with crush injuries just waiting to happen, and it never occurred to you that this might look a bit like a jungle gym to kids.

Then there is a cultural matter that I feel comes into play that I wish would stop: suffering for your art. If you feel bad that your project isn’t coming along and that drive toward self-loathing helps you wrench a chunk of your soul out and present it to the world, well, that sounds horrible but thank you. NOTE: the trope is “suffering for your art”. It is not “heavy metals poisoning for your art”, “accidental amputation for your art”, “electrocution and arc blast injuries for your art”, “laser burns & blinding for your art”, or “plummeting to your death for your art”. While I understand and sympathize with the terrible toll on mental health artistic pursuit may lead to, it’s my job to try to minimize the physical toll.

The thing is, I don’t want artists to stop doing dangerous art. I would just like them to be willing to listen to the people that are trying to keep them alive, rather than rejecting this advice as authoritarian bullshit (another student quote). At the very least, I would be happy if they’d be merely as resistant as the average chemistry researcher.

The Decembering 2014 and Stein 600

I feel this is a good visual metaphor for sending this message in October. (image courtesy of the DOE/NNSA Nevada Site Office Historical Archive)

As the city’s contractors start putting lights up in the trees before all the leaves have even fallen yet, it is time for me to grimly face the holiday season and say the words that must be said.

The last pre-Xmas BBotE production window will close on December 17th. All things being equal, domestic or international, everything shipped by the 17th should end up at their destination by Christmas Eve. I can’t control weather doom snarling the global postal system utterly, but a week is usually quite sufficient even taking weather into account. I will put another pre-order window up after the 17th, but I make absolutely no guarantees about shipments in that window arriving before Xmas. I’ll do what I can, but that’s all I can do.

As far as steins go, I have a rather large shipment of dewars slated to show up right just a bit before Thanksgiving. The “steins on hand” should dramatically increase, so keep an eye out on that page for the fluctuating numbers.

Speaking of Steins of Science, we’re approaching another milestone again. Just as I did for Stein #200 and #400, whoever orders Stein #600 is also getting #601, a 665ml FMJ, FOR FREE. The current count is in the high 500s, so it won’t be long.

To reiterate shopping advice from the previous year, here’s a few things you should probably think about if you decide to place an order for a holiday gift from Funranium Labs:

BBotE Is Perishable: When refrigerated, it has a shelf-life of about three months (possibly longer, but I’m only going to quote three). If you’re going to wrap it up and put it under the tree, this a present to put out on Christmas Eve and the promptly put back in the fridge after unwrapping. Alternatively, embrace the idea of the holiday season and decide that give it to the recipient immediately, for all days are special.
Let People Know BBotE Is Coming: I know part of the joy in presents is the surprise of what you get. However, joy is not the emotion most people feel when a bottle of mysterious black liquid shows up on their doorstep, especially if it’s been sitting there for a week outside because they were out of town. Give them a heads up, that something’s coming they’ll want to stick in the fridge. I will also tuck handling instructions in the box for a gift and a note stating who sent it if you ask me to.
The pre-order slot dates date are “Ship No Later Than”, not “Ships After”. I get your orders out as soon as I can, but even in the furthest flung corner of the US with the slowest mail carrier, this means you should have your order in hand by December 21st for that last set of late order slots. If you want to order something NOW to ship later, in effect reserving a spot in a later order queue, you can do so but please leave a note with your order telling me when you want it to ship by.
Yes, I will probably add a extra more slots as I get a handle on how much I can make at the last minute but shipping gets dicey in those last days before Christmas.
International Shipments Of BBotE Go Out Express Mail: Because I don’t want BBotE to get stuck in postal facilities or customs, express is the only way to ship to minimize their time in bureaucratic hell. Expect it to take 3-5 business days to get to you, so time your orders accordingly to make sure things get to you in time.
APO/FPO: If you wish to send something out to someone with an Armed Forces address, there’s good news and bad news. Good news – it’s no more expensive than priority mail. Bad news – I can’t guarantee any date as to when things will arrive. Outside of active war zones, things move somewhat normally; inside war zones and ships at sea, things get iffy. Also, depending on routing, some nations (I’m looking at you, Turkey) have bounced BBotE on the basis that it is, and I quote, “Morally Questionable Material” because, obviously, any liquid from the West must be alcoholic in nature. In short, I’ll do my best but you’ve been warned.
Local Pick Up: Resupply shipments will go out to all the BBotE Ambassadors as fast as I can crank them out, so be sure to drop them a line if grabbing a bottle that way is convenient for you. I’m sure they’d like clean and empty refrigerators as their Christmas present.
Turkey, Italy & Brazil: It breaks my heart to say this, I can’t ship to these countries. Italy, I absolutely do not trust your postal system. The level of theft shipping things anywhere south of Rome is, frankly, appalling. If you ask me to ship to Naples, I make absolutely zero guarantee of it arriving. Brazil, your customs causes shipment to languish for so long that the BBotE goes off before it arrives, even if shipped express; steins seem to be fine though. Turkey, well, I discussed those problems in #6.
Steins of Science Have Lead Time Too: The steins are built to order and it sometimes takes a while to get parts in. Generally, things move much faster and ship within a week but you have now been warned of the possibility of delays. For some insight into which stein is the best fit for you, I rambled on that a while back. Dewars that are on hand for me to build steins with RIGHT NOW can be found here.
BBotE Production Is First Come, First Served: My maximum daily production output is 12L per day. Thus, people who request 12pk cases will lock up production for an entire day.
There’s No Kosher Or Halal Certification: While Robert Anton Wilson did confer the papacy upon me, and all the other people in the Porter College Dining Hall, this does not permit me to sanctify food. Sorry.
REALLY, the 4300mL Stein of Science Is Ridiculously Large: Seriously, BIG. It will should take an entire pre-game, Super Bowl, and wrap up to go through this much beer. Or one cricket match. You may think you are a super drankin’ badass, but consider that you may want to drink more often than once a year, so think about a smaller size. Far be it from me to dissuade you from giving me money, but I’m just sayin’…

New BBotE Ambassadors!

[Professor Farnsworth Voice] GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE! with one small bit of bad news

First off, many of you appear to have noticed that the BBotE ordering window that closes on October 11th is up, so order away to get your spot in line.

Second, as of my trip to the post office yesterday, I am pleased to inaugurate not one, not two, but THREE new BBotE Ambassadors for local pick up. They are:

Melbourne, Australia – Kavi, kaviblackblood [at] gmail [dot] com. An acolyte of the Ambassador of Perth, Kavi has decided that in addition, to being an anesthesiologist, that “the coffee nut capital of Australia” deserved representation. He is stocked with 1L bottles for $75 a piece. He’s actually on resupply now, as his first case went away before I could even announce him.
Prescott, AZ – Dan, bbote [at] deusexcaffeina [dot] com. As someone who got his first taste of BBotE at DEFCON thanks to the very alliterative Coffee Consul of Chicago, he wanted a more regular supply to Arizona. Now he has it and so do you. I’m also to understand that he makes regular trips to Flagstaff. He is stocked with 750ml bottles for $45 each.
Toronto, Canada – Justin, BBotEToronto [at] gmail [dot] com. Justin is another ~~victim~~ happy customer of the Caffeine Consul of Chicago, except he was making the trip from the Great White North to get it. It was an altogether more reasonable thing to just turn him into Canada’s first BBotE Ambassador to take care of our caffeinated brethren & sistren across the border. He’s currently stocked with 1L bottles for $75 each.

They’re fun people, so drop ’em a line!

Now for the bad news. The Guatemala Nueva Vinas crop is done for the season and the Jamaica Blue Mountain is gone for at least a month. In general, the coffee crops of the New World have taken a double hit from weather (read: drought and/or floods) and a blight called coffee rust. Depending on the country and crop, coffee production is down by 10-30% but that’s an aggregate measure. Some individual farms have been utterly wiped out, or seen such a dramatic decline they hardly have enough to sell to gain the premium price of “single origin”, instead getting bulked at a much lower cost.

I am hoping the Nueva Vinas isn’t gone for good, but it’s run has come to an early end this year. Do not mourn it but rather hope for it’s return.

PLEASE Don’t Open That – A Rant on Generally Licensed Materials

Let’s start this out right by terrifying people. If your home hasn’t had any major renovation since 2001, I can almost guarantee you have radioactive materials in it. I’m not talking natural occurring radioactive materials like the uranium & thorium in your granite countertops, the potassium-40 of your concrete, or the radon in your basement if you live on nice old cracked igneous rock. I’m talking transuranic materials here, ol’ Americium-241 (Am-241), originally a byproduct of the nuclear weapons program that we’ve put to good use. How can I make this guarantee? Because you’d be violating the building & fire codes if you didn’t have at least one smoke detector. You may have heard about this before due to several precocious Boy Scouts cracking them open over the decades to try to get the old Atomic Energy merit badge.

Now, some of our less enlightened citizens at this point normally reply along the lines of “OH MY GOD THE DEADLY RADIATIONS ARE IN MY HOME. MY BABY AND DOG ARE GOING TO GET CANCER. WHY IS THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY DISPOSING OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE IN MY HOME!?!?!?!” Aaaaand this is why I don’t go to Berkeley City Council meetings anymore. Once was enough.

But seriously, why would you bring radioactive materials into your home? To answer that question, you first need to know the radiation safety philosophy for ionizing radiation dose minimization called ALARA, which stands for As Low As Reasonably Achievable. Note, this is not “As Low As Possible” or “As Low As Achievable“, both of which have been been used as one point or another. The problem with these words is that Reasonably, Possible, and Acheivable are very subjective concepts. Many legal, regulatory, and scientific careers have been built arguing them since the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 was signed. What is a bankrupting expense for very little reduction in dose for a small company may be normal business operations for a national laboratory.

There is a flip side to the coin of ALARA: we take no ionizing radiation dose without commensurate benefit. At a purely mercenary level, this is why the annual radiation dose limit for public exposure is 100mrem, versus the occupational radiation worker dose limit of 5000mrem. In addition to being better trained and cognizant of the hazards, I’m receiving a paycheck in return for my willingness to take additional dose. What benefit is there to bringing Am-241 into your home? It’s what makes your smoke detector actually work (tiny amounts of smoke blocks the alpha particle emissions of the Am-241, which causes the alarm to go off when the alpha detector stops seeing them). We’ve judged that the hazards to life and property from fire are much more immediate than potential problems with small amount of americium sealed up in a plastic box, on your ceiling, not being messed with.

NOTE: newer smoke detectors are laser based rather than americium. No radioactive materials, but you end up changing the batteries much more often.

But did you actually know that there was radioactive material in the smoke detector in your home? Did the contractor that demolished that building over there know? Did all the people the contractor hired know/were they trained/did they listen or understand? How many smoke detectors got to the landfill in the loads of rubble? How many times has this happened over decades? Whoops, we’re back to panic at the city council meeting again.

When you buy a new smoke detector, there are messages all over instructing you to return the old one to the manufacturer, with a self-addressed, pre-paid postage box. They have to accept the old one. It’s part of their general license for use of radioactive materials under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The NRC is quite picky about what they let people put radioactive materials into and then let be sold to the public without controls. That item has been sold and licensed for that very specific use. It is certified as safe under normal operation and certain easily anticipated failure modes in consumer use, e.g a fire.

What is NOT covered by the general license is cracking them open, yanking the source out and starting to build new apparatus with them. The general license, in short, says “This specific use with that specific source is fine. Anything else and all bets are off.” I say this keeping in mind that I built an x-ray fluorescence unit as a physics undergrad using one of the many small Am-241 sources the lab manager had collected for class purposes. If I had a time machine, on my list is to go throttle that lab manager for his many, many transgressions. Screwing with a general licensed item is, technically speaking, a federal offense under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 punishable by up to a $10000 fine or 10 years in prison. The moment you pop the case open, the general license for this source vanishes like Robocop’s Directive 4, which means you now need an actual license to possess this radioactive material and work with it.

And that is not something you can buy for a dollar.

A Reactor Accident Cocktail

Once upon a time, there was a nuclear reactor in England that was air cooled like a 60’s Volkswagen Beetle, called Windscale. It worked about as well as the average 60’s Beetle too. One day, oops, the fuel and graphite moderator caught on fire. Who’d’ve thunk it, that dry graphite being pure carbon would burn readily…amazing! After this happened, this region of England was told not to drink milk for a good long while, about a month, but the terror stuck depressing dairy for years.

In order to get vital calcium and vitamins to children in the Cumbria area, a fortified version of the beverage called Ribena was created for use in the schools. If you are not British, you can be forgiven for having never heard of this demon nectar because your government didn’t have to find a way to prevent scurvy for an entire nation during WWII. I find it less palatable than Manischewitz as, to me, black currants ≠ food. About seven years ago, they finally demolished the Windscale reactors, which had long since renamed Sellafield to help with the public relations problems.

But, I came up with a drink and consumed it so that YOU DON’T HAVE TO, just like the my friend Ben “Benchilada” Stone eats the collective culinary errors of Asia. Much like Jesus died for your sins, I created two variants of a cocktail I call “The Windscale” and drank them for you. I don’t recommend consuming either of them.

Windscale Reactor One:
    Equal parts Ribena and gin (for a double dose of British fluids)
    Stir, chill, and serve.

VERDICT: Revolting

Windscale Reactor Two:
    Two parts Ribena
    One part green chartreuse (for that concerning “plutonium in solution” look)
    Shake in a tumbler with ice and serve.

VERDICT: Stomping on a week old corpse probably makes liquids this color…possibly this flavor.

I was not willing to waste precious absinthe to create a Windscale Reactor Three after the results of the previous two. The remaining Ribena was safely disposed of down the drain. If magic worked, I would inscribe a Ward vs. Ribena on the door to prevent it from entering my house again.

And Back Again – A Phil’s Journey.

Approximately 3300 miles, many people visited, things seen, and cocktails drank later, we’re back and the coffee engines are running again. Fresh order slots are up for the production window closing 7/12, the Ambassador of NYC is active again and an old friend, Guatemala Nueva Vinas, is available again as one of your flavor options.

CROSS-COUNTRY TRIP 2014 VITAL STATISTICS

Death Toll:

Untold thousands of insects. Seriously, in Louisiana near sunset it sounded like rain so many were splattering on the windshield.
One small incautious bird in Arizona.
Two Hertz rental vehicles for the exact same maintenance/mechanical failure.

Relating to one of my favorite posts to dredge up over and over again, good job Hertz, you’re now on my customer service education list. I was treated extremely well by the counter staff at both Jackson, MS and Albuquerque, NM airports where I did my best to swap failing cars. Every phone call with Hertz HQ was misery with a side order of policies that hamstrung the counter staff’s ability to help.

Arrests: Nearly one. Los Alamos National Laboratory really needs to redesign their entry portal.

Whataburgers Consumed: None. I was able to demonstrate that this was the establishment that Beavis & Butthead worked in, disguised for legal reasons as Burger World, thus showing this was Mike Judge’s first foray into documentary film. The Lovely Assistant was unwilling to set foot inside. Making the connection to Beavis & Butthead probably didn’t help.

National Parks/Monuments Visited: Carlsbad Caverns, Petrified Forest (passed through), Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains (technically we were in the boundaries). Honorable mention goes to Barringer Crater even though the US government doesn’t own it.

Best Rest Stops:

Pyote, TX – This rest stop succeeded in a goal no other rest stop has ever achieved: it made me want to stop, deviate from my planned trip, and explore the local history the rest stop highlighted. I actually want to go back to West Texas, visit, and learn more about Rattlesnake Bomber Base.
Mississippi I-20 Eastern Welcome Center – It was wonderful to not be in the sultry Gulf air of Magnolia State and be inside instead. As the Lovely Assistant said in a whining voice, “I can taste Mississippi.” Mississippi reminds me a lot of Hilo, HI minus the tropical flower smells.
Pooping +1?

Every Goddamn Rest Stop In New Mexico – When you visit rest stops in the State of New Mexico they have these handy buttons to press and vote whether you approve of this rest area. I am pretty sure New Mexico might have the grounds to sue the shit out of Reddit, Facebook, and Google for stealing their ranking system.

Best Named Store: A marijuana dispensary and head shop in Roswell, NM called “Area 420”. I can only assume they have amazing reverse engineered ALIEN BONG TECHNOLOGY. While I am not even remotely their target audience, I kinda regret not stopping and going in.

Most Irritating Thing: No-see-ums in South Carolina. It seems I react to those far worse than I do mosquito bites. I swear I’m going to have scars from them. In fact, the only thing comparable were the sand fly bites while hiking in New Zealand. Little bastards.

How I Destroyed History: While hiding in George Mason Memorial Park to escape school groups that had been at the Jefferson Memorial and in the wake of listening to all the fine southern accents, my brain decided that Thomas Jefferson sounded like Matthew McConaughey’s character in “Dazed & Confused”. I then rewrote the Declaration of Independence to begin “ALRIGHTALRIGHTALRIGHT! I keep getting older, but these rights are always inalienable.” I can no longer read the founding documents of my country without hearing his voice in my head.

VACATION TIME

Alright, that’s it folks. All the orders for the production window ending 5/17 have now shipped, including a restock case for the BBotE Ambassador of Chicago. I opened the next production window for people that want to make absolutely sure they’re at the head of the line for when I get back from the grand road trip, but as you may notice, that window closes on June 28th and production doesn’t even resume until the 12th. That goes for Steins of Science as well as BBotE, can’t very well take the drill press with me. Rest assured, I won’t be silent while I’m out there, though you’ll like have to be paying attention to my poop jokes and puns on Twitter.

That said, if you drop me a line and your needs just happen to line up with what I’m making for myself, it’s possible I can get a bottle or stein out the door before I hit the road on Thursday. You can always ask and the worst that can happen is that I’ll say “Nope. Time is too tight.”

And with that…

Speaking of Jamaica Blue Mountain

Because I couldn’t resist making a little extra for my own consumption and let other people have a taste, I have made a few 375ml bottles of Jamaica Blue Mountain (JBM) available on the site. Yes, I know, they are painfully expensive bottles but so are the beans. Here’s a JBM testimonial from Test Subject Hansen on an entirely new (to me) use of BBotE:

On weekends I frequent a cigar lounge in Maryland. (I live in extreme north Virginia; Maryland’s just a hop away.) Maryland recently enacted a law banning alcohol from cigar lounges, so I was struggling to find a good replacement for my usual Glenmorangie Nectar d’Or. I discovered that Jamaican Blue BBotE can create a really complex flavor profile if you pair it with the right smoke — you need something that’s full-bodied enough to have a strong flavor profile, but not something so strong that it’ll overwhelm your taste buds and make it difficult to enjoy the Black Blood of the Earth. Good cigars: Four Kicks, Guillermo Toro, Tatuaje, Macanudo Real Reserve.

As an added bonus, the remaining BBotE Sampler Pack II orders for this pre-order window ending on April 26th will get vials of JBM in there.

In other news, New York City has it’s old BBotE Ambassador back. Wish expressed a desire to resume her role, and the attendant caffeine privileges that comes with, and I happily welcomed her back. She’s putting together requests for a case now, so if you’re out there and want to pick something up from her, now is the time to drop her a line. As always, the BBotE Ambassadors and their contact info can be found here.

Last, but not least, I must again harp on the fact that the next pre-order window (ending May 17th) is going to be a long one with as much production in it as I possibly can do. After that, I head out on a month long road trip, and there will be no BBotE production at all until mid-June. Don’t worry, this message warning you to order early in the pre-order window will repeat. And, as a reminder, the dates on the pre-order windows mean “Ships No Later Than”, not “Ships On” or “Ships After”. You will likely get your BBotE much earlier than that date.