Funranium Labs

Bits, Bobs, and Links

I think it’s high time to for me to talk about something other than geology and damaged nuclear reactors, if for no reason than to get me off the depressing state of science literacy in world, particularly America.

In the land of coffee, I can only assume everyone has spent all their tax refunds because I have enough breathing room to experiment with some new BBotE again. Part of it will be the never ending exploration of regions I know and love best (i.e. East Africa highlands). Another part will be a more thorough examination of the Americas; my Panamanian of choice is the only successful light roast I’ve had so far and the Guatemalan Finca Yara from Caffe Vita made the most delicious BBotE I’ve ever made. Lastly, with Crom as my witness, I will make the Malabar work in a duplicable manner. Experiment two was good, but experiments three, seven, and eight were not. It’s just too tasty to not tinker with…when it works.

Steinwielder and Test Subject John continually impresses me with the satchel he uses to transport his drinking vessel and caffeinated delights. After minimal poking on my part, he told me where he got it: Saddleback Leather. As much as people tell me they love my laboratory chic of the Steins of Science, I have to admit that I am a sucker for beautiful well loved leather.

Speaking of Steins of Science, the current count is on #198. We are perilously close to someone claiming the Stein #200 Surprise. Stein #191, the experimental 665ml Shiny Brass, suffered a kitty related injury mid-photo shoot. Much to my delight, it survived it’s glass lip first fall, although the base was dented. I bent it back out as best as possible and it sits level again, but still…damn cats. The price has been reduced accordingly.

Lastly, the kids at St. George Spirits have released a new batch of the Hangar One chipotle vodka. In addition to being a happy consumer of their wares, I also do my best to keep the place humming with Black Blood of the Earth. The benefit to this is that the distillery crew are inveterate, compulsive bartenders and have a hard time not tinkering with any ingredients lying around. Now that the chipotle vodka is back, the world may once more drink “Andie’s Breakfast”:

Get a pint glass, filled half full with ice
1.5oz St. George absinthe (allow time for the absinthe to louche)

2oz BBotE, preferably Kona

A dash of chipotle vodka

Fill the remainder of the pint glass with chocolate soy milk

Stir or shake, THEN CONSUME

Personally, I find this quite tasty without the chocolate soy milk but then I’m a diabetic that is getting steadily more accustomed to reduced sugar flavors in my diet. It looks as ugly as a three day old bruise with a milky green-brown color but the tasty is fantastic, wandering from chocolate to mint to licorice with a creamy mouth feel and a that little hint of chipotle burn.

There you go. I now return you to your regularly scheduled 24hr news cycle of certain, seemingly welcomed, doom.

Post-Tsunami Japanese Reactor Problems

While I like to keep my discussions here coffee, beer, and historical science related some things just can’t be ignored especially when people keep poking me for answers. So, I have some thoughts that are quite lacking in insobriety.

First, I am not a nuclear engineer, contrary to how more than a few people have referred to me; I am a health physicist. It is the purpose of my field to keep radiation doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA, as the acronym goes) for radiation workers and the public. More often than not, this means protecting the radiation sources from people as humans are rather dangerous when we ignorantly play with fire. So, I cannot definitively speak to the quality of the reactor’s construction or it’s current post-earthquake condition, though I’m pretty sure no one builds reactors with a M9.0 quake in mind (certainly not the outbuildings that held the cooling & filtration systems that have been damaged, never mind the rest of the city infrastructure). The job of a health physicist is now to protect the public from an accident that has gone beyond the confines of the reactor. For that, I can say things:

If you do not live in northern Honshu, you do not have cause for panic. The radiation release from the reactor has been localized to the immediate vicinity. A downwind plume exposure pathway emergency planning zone (~10mi radius) as already been evacuated. A wider 50 mile radius will be drawn for confiscation of foodstuffs to minimize any potential ingestion of radioactive iodine & cesium.
Please be understanding of the fact that thousands are dead from a tsunami and earthquake with associated services badly disrupted. Terrifying as a nuclear reactor having trouble may seem to you via television/internet report, there are much more lethal and immediate problems than the reactor to the people who are still in the middle of this. Just getting there to help is a logistical nightmare. Contamination can be cleaned up, but people can’t be unkilled. Life saving takes precedence over property & environment.
Normal operations of a nuclear reactor involves the operation of air and water monitoring stations in the facility itself and area environmental monitors for many miles around. A tsunami is likely to have broken more than few of those, but many more mobile units were rushed to the scene. This is how we are keeping track of what has been/is being released to the surrounding area from the reactor.
Radioactive materials are being released to the air in the form of radioactive steam and water. Dissolved metals in the water and small particulates are particularly prone to becoming activated and thus radioactive, especially without a functional cooling and filtration loop to clean the water up. The radioactivity is very short lived, in general on the order of minutes to about a week, but rather nasty while it is present.
Reports have indicated the presence of small quantities radioiodine and radiocesium in monitoring. This indicates that some of the nuclear fuel cladding has been damaged due to overheating.
Unless ordered by a medical professional, DO NOT self-administer prophylactic iodine or Prussian blue treatments to protect against radioiodine & radiocesium uptake. These treatments carry some significant metabolic risks at the body saturating doses necessary to offer protection.
Please don’t mob the health professionals. They are badly outnumbered and doing their best. People with burns and crush injuries take precedence over potential radioactive materials uptake every time. Your latency for cancer is 40 years; their latency for a crushed arm may only be minutes. Do not be upset when they press-gang you for assistance at the triage station rather than treat you like victim, because you are still ambulatory and capable.
The symptoms of acute radiation sickness (ARS) begin with vomiting. There’s an awful lot of things that may cause vomiting in a disaster situation like this, not the least of which is stress and psychosomatic response. At this point we will segregate you and watch for further advancement of symptoms. At present, only one person who has presented with symptoms that has had an actual radioactive materials uptake; his dose was less the 1/10th the what is normally associated with associated with ARS.

If you want to help with all of this, please, instead of buying a Stein of Science or Black Blood of the Earth go donate to the Red Cross. You will do far more good than staring at the TV with growing panic. Several colleagues I rather respect are already on their way to Japan to help with the reactor problems and I wish them the best. As endless a supply of caffeine as I can make is going with them.

I also recommend watching for announcements to come through the International Atomic Energy Agency, American Nuclear Society, and World Nuclear News.

An Important “Shiny Brass” Style Stein Field Modification

I’ll start this off by saying you all owe Steinwielder Brad a great debt of thanks for finding this and tinkering. Before sharing the discovery however, you must first endure my rambling.

The exposed glass style of Stein of Science are my least favorite to build. They are the ones that pose the most personal danger to me in the course of construction. While the warning label states that the dewar can shatter unexpectedly, the only time it is likely to in it’s life as a vessel for human beverages rather than a piece of grad student tortured labware is when I am turning it into stein (good news: hasn’t happened yet). The same warning label advises you to wear safety glasses, long sleeves, and apron; not needed while drinking beer, but you better believe I’m wearing them when I’m building shiny style steins.

However, the shiny steins are quite beautiful. Beneath that full metal jacket is the elegant curve of of silvered glass. They are consistently the ones people tell me they admire the most but are frightened of because of the lack of protective shield. Honestly, if you can take care of a pint glass, you can take care of the shiny style. Heck, it even has a handle; you don’t get that with a pint glass.

But there is something even better to recommend the shiny stein now: at long last and much searching, there is a travel mug lid for it that actually fits. By far, one of the most common questions I get asked is “Why don’t you have a travel mug lid for this?” You better believe I’ve been looking for well over a year. On Tuesday, Steinwielder Brad sent me these photos for the DCI I Am Not A Plastic Lid on his 350ml shiny brass:

Now, the lid in action:

Steinwielder Brad's 350ml Shiny Brass w/ Silicon Lid & "Devil's Coffee" in the Background

This morning, I stole my EH&S Director’s ceramic coffee mug and verified that the silicone lid fit my day-to-day drinking stein (a 665ml shiny brass). It was a thing of non-spilled fluid beauty that will fit a 350, 665 of 1000ml bare glass style stein, but not an FMJ because of the fold-over gap of the aluminum shield. I admit, it is not the locking top travel mug lid that I hoped for nor quite as insulating as the foam lid I normally provide, but this makes it finally possible to use the steins (at least one specific variety) as goddamn travel mug.

Go forth, check it out on Amazon and get one, shiny brass Steinwielders!

Some Comic Love

Courtesy of the giggleworthy Inappropriate Games who regularly shares the finer points of Portland, piracy, and science education:

On a positive note, it is not to say the Science can’t determine the caffeine levels but rather that one set of scientists in particular haven’t had the time or lab managers willing to sacrifice their equipment on the altar of coffee. However, there is progress on this front. More news as it develops.

Another Stein Of Science Field Modification

Steinwielder Pulliam’s very first priority when asking about his potential 1000ml FMJ was, “Will it fit in my truck’s cupholder?” Honestly, cupholder compatibility was not what I was worried about as I was constructing the first of the steins but he laid out the plight of the soda/beer drinking man in Texas (a sentiment echoed by others in Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida). That even the finest of air conditioned cars must be turned off from time to time when you make the quick sprint from vehicle to buildings. It doesn’t take long for a soda left behind to turn into a watered down, flat, warm cup of nastiness to be poured out the window after one very disappointed sip.

If you are drinking beer out of your stein while driving…I can only assume you are in Lousiana or Wyoming*. Why doesn’t California have drive-thru liquor stores? I swear…

*: I have been smacked upside the head by my Lovely Assistant to remind me that drinking and driving is Bad. Also, drinking while driving. A stein full of beer in your cupholder while driving is most definitely an open container violation. Plus, it might spill if you break too hard.**

**: I have been smacked upside the head again.

Anyway, Steinwielder Pulliam did verify that his stein fits in his cupholder nicely but has resisted filling it with ice and soda for a day of errands for fear of spillage…until now. He has made a minor modification to the lid of his stein adding a straw. While this does add a bit of a thermal short circuit from the ambient air temperature to the beverage, this will be far better than transfer through a normal cup. No, I don’t feel like doing the heat transport calculations to verify this so we’ll just have to go with intuition and his empirical testing. Check out his work:

Texas Travel Mug 1 — Steinwielder Pulliam's Texas Travel Mug

And a close up of his work on the lid using what just might be the finest of AM/PM travel mug straws:

Texas Travel Mug 2 — Steinwielder Pulliam's Texas Travel Mug Lid Close Up

It isn’t watertight mind you, so he’s still going to have to mind those bumps and probably need to rinse the foam lid afterward but I approve of the effort. Failing that, I have replacement foam lids.

It is also a poking reminder of a question I get quite often, “I know you made the HDPE lid for the Playa Grade, but do you have a travel mug style lid, because that would be awesome?” The answer is no, but it’s not for lack of continual searching. The dewars are slightly irregular in size and no off the shelf travel mug lid really fits. But I keep searching and testing in hopes of finding one. Someday, I may just breakdown and commission one if I can find someone willing to make them in batches as small as I need.

Also, must look in to making those stein specific Pelican transport cases again…

Goiania

Today, we’re going to take a little excursion away from the realm of coffee and cold beer. I’m going to share one of the accidents I’ll be discussing with my students tonight. This is partially a matter of my marshaling my thoughts together for them. Ignoring Chernoybl & Fukushima, this remains the worst accident with radioactive materials in history.

NB: Yes, I am well aware that we killed plenty of people with Fat Man & Little Boy and that we have contaminated vast tracts of land with nuclear weapons testing. But one must remember, those were done intentionally. To a first approximation, we knew what we were doing and had taken appropriate precautions. Or, as one notable former Nevada Test Site employee said, “We never made the same mistake twice. Can’t think of many other institutions that can claim that.”

This story all began when a private cancer clinic with a nuclear medicine center shut down in Goiania, Brazil. By 1987, much of the clinic was demolished but as derelict buildings in increasingly bad parts of town tend to go, it got a bad case of squatters. Squatters are poor folk looking for any way to scrape by; one of those more popular ways is scavenging. And what do most people scavenge: Metal. Just ask your local homeless person with bags full of cans if you doubt me. Why everything wasn’t gone when they shut down is a good question, but easy to answer: it wasn’t worth the effort. What could easily be removed and/or be sold had been, what couldn’t they left, like the radiotherapy unit. Add in a side order of legal dispute about who was responsible for the unit and minimal regulatory oversight authority, and there you go.

Two hearty scavenging lads found this thing with lots of steel and aluminum in the clinic and thought they’d hit the jackpot. The thought was doubly confirmed as they started tearing it apart and found this heavy metal bar with a goldish black window. It felt much heavier that steel, and judging by the window, wow, that must mean gold. So, they broke the window. Within was a bluish glowing powder. It wasn’t gold but they figured they could still get a couple bucks at the junkyard and that they did.

The owner of the junkyard thought it was beautiful and strange. He thought it would make a great ring for his wife, Maria, so he set his workmen to task cracking the bar open and getting the pretty blue stuff out. It was no easy task. The found that inside the steel sheath was lead shielding containing an ampule filled with this metallic powder.

One yard worker died, the other lost an arm. Despite taking what would otherwise be considered a very lethal dose, the owner lived.

After the workers got it free, they brought it back to their boss who then took it home. His six year old daughter thought it was pretty and asked to play with it. Being a doting father, how could he deny her?

Of all the people exposed in this incident, the daughter took the highest dose as she tended to eat her sandwiches on the same floor where she’d been playing with the source. When she finally died a month later, she had to be buried in a lead lined concrete coffin.

Being social people, friends and family came over for a good extended family dinner. The owner showed the blue powder to his brother who thought it was a miracle. He asked for some, which his brother gave to him. The brother went home and painted himself with the powder in the shape of cross, much like at Carnival, and then went out to work with the animals.

Everyone at the dinner party trailed contamination home with them and then to their families. This is how the count of exposed people needing treatment rose to the hundreds. Needless to say, the brother lost his arm…and all the contaminated livestock were slaughtered. Luckily, none had gone to market before discovery of the incident.

When people started getting sick all at the same time, at first Maria started to think that she’d served some bad meat or juice. She asked a local doctor if that made sense. He said maybe. Then she realized people who hadn’t been at the party were getting sick. It occurred to her that it might be the blue stuff. After the doctor sent her back home, she got progressively sicker. Her mother moved in to care for her.

Both Maria and her mother died.

By the time Maria had brought the remains of the radiotherapy source to doctor, contaminating the bus she rode on in the process, 90% of the powdered metal had already been lost, spreading contamination through out the community. According to Brookhaven National Laboratory, who originally made the Cs-137 cesium chloride source in 1971, it had an activity of approximately 1400 curies. Just for reference, the americium-241 source in your smoke detector contains less than 1 microcurie. This radiotherapy source was, professionally speaking, motherfucking screaming hot.

This is not to say that comparing Cs-137 to Am-241 is apples to apples when discussing activity. At that point it becomes a matter of chemical characteristics and biological/environmental fate to determine exactly how dangerous a given isotope is for a given activity. However, I’ll have you know that this is a brown trousers time so hard your pants shoot across the room quantity of activity of Cs-137 from the safety point of view when there’s a loss of control. From a medical point of view, it was weak enough they probably couldn’t sell it off as a proper radiotherapy source anymore so they abandoned it.

Authorities learned of the loose source about a month after the scavengers first bust it open. It took several more days for them to follow the trail back to community in Goiania and start getting people medical treatment; a couple more weeks to discover the full horrible extent of the contamination. Only four people died, 54 people had exposures serious enough to merit hospitalization out of the 249 people found to be contaminated. This is of the 112,000 people that mobbed the public health officials & hospitals fearing they were going to have a horrible Hiroshima worthy death. It was wisely decided to move triage evaluation to the Olympic Stadium so that they could accommodate everyone, but it was still a nightmare processing everyone that was afraid. Several buildings were demolished and the top several feet of soil were removed as a part of the clean up, with an estimated 3500cu.yd. of contaminated material getting buried in a hole somewhere in Brazil.

As yet another a deeply tarnished silver lining, a lot of good health physics lessons were learned at Chernobyl (once international aid was invited to help with containment and cleanup) which, depending on your point of view, were fortunately/unfortunately put to excellent use at here.

I took a different lesson home when I first learned about this accident in detail several years ago: You Cannot Take ANY Knowledge For Granted. The radioactive source from the radiotherapy machine was prominently marked with the radiation trefoil but in this instance (and many, many others) it didn’t register with the victims in question that this denoted a hazard. This caused the IAEA to create a new ionizing radiation hazard symbol, a mishmash of somewhat familiar international symbols in hopes of scaring people off (skull & crossbones for “poison” and running guy with an arrow for “leave”) that has been called cluttered and confusing. My willfully obtuse reading of the new symbol to my old department chair was “Propeller wind causes pirates, go starboard”.

I think the root cause can be laid at a general lack of awareness/education about ionizing radiation. In First World countries, education has been lax though awareness is quite high, not necessarily in a good way as it is rather paranoid and poorly informed. Hell, I have a hard time getting nuclear engineering students to handle their rather benign sealed check sources. When items made in the First World end up lost downstream in the Third, a heavy price gets paid by the most vulnerable and least knowledgeable when control is weak or non-existent. There are dozens of reports of lost radiography sources at mines in the hinterlands all over the world being picked up because they were shiny and looked like silver (and thus valuable), taken home, and injuring the discoverer and/or their families. There are also far too many incidents of scrap yards like this one in Goiania receiving radioactive materials as metal salvage, reselling them and then tossing them into a smelter for recycling.

If I have any good news to share, it’s that the rate of incidents like this has decreased dramatically despite the increased use of materials worldwide. We’re getting better at playing with this particularly special kind of fire.

Put To The Question

It seems about time for me to answer another collected lot of questions, in no particular order or importance:

Question 1: “Seriously, what is it with you and volcanoes?”

Answer 1: As a physics undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, I worked in an isotope geochemistry laboratory (it’s a long story how I ended up there). I was trying to prove that what went down came up with respect to subduction zones and their associated volcanic arcs. This involved dissolving a lot of rocks and becoming very well acquainted with the work of the GLOMAR Challenger (the sister ship to the GLOMAR Explorer so gloriously featured in Charles Stross’ ‘The Jennifer Morgue‘) and the Deep Sea Drilling Program. I made a resolution in the course of this work to try to visit at least one active volcano a year. I’ve done better some years than others in keeping it.

The shorter answer is that I like explosions and the only thing on explosion on Earth that puts a nuclear blast to shame is a volcanic eruption. Incidentally, this is more or less the same answer that lead a former astrophysics professor to become a world renowned expert on supernovae (and I quote, “No bigger explosion in the universe, Phil. Not since the Big Bang”).

Question 2: “It would’ve been nice if you warned me about hot coffee & tea with my Stein of Science before a scalded the shit out of my tongue 30min after I poured it in and put the top on.”

Answer 2: That’s not much of question, now is it? Questions usually have question marks at the end. This is more a statement of thanks for the stein working properly. You’re welcome.

To let it cool down somewhat faster, leave the lid off. The steins keep cold things cold far better than they do at keeping hot things hot due to the convective heat loss from rising steam. Putting the lid on traps the steam in. Even leaving the lid off, it does tend to stay warm for quite a while.

Question 3: “So, the Stein 200 Surprise…any way I can know which one you’re on now?”

Answer 3: I bet you min/max when playing RPGs too instead of focusing on character development. Dang twinkers always trying to game the system. As a matter of fact, I’ve been updating the “Steins on Hand RIGHT NOW” pretty regularly to declare what I have lying around as opposed to entering the up to three week production window. Since I am currently on #194 and there are a five already built and numbered steins at the moment, we are somewhere between six and eleven steins away from the magic #200, depending on whether people order one that has already been numbered and built or not.

And yes, I will tell you which number you are getting when you order it. Happy?

Question 4: “Are you ever going to do any new coffees again?”

Answer 4: Maybe. Eventually. Currently expending a fair amount of effort keeping up with the demand for the varieties I’ve already made for you all. There’s only so much room and glassware to play with. Apparatus slated for production detracts from experimentation.

That said, Caffe Vita if you’re reading this, I would like a 50lbs sack of the Guatemala Mundo Nuvo if you ever get it again. I might even share some of it with the rest of you before destroying myself with BBotE made from their delights.

Question 5: “Can you tell us some more stories about THE DEADLY RADIATIONS?”

Answer 5: As a matter of fact, I will be giving a lecture about the Goiania accident and SL-1 tomorrow. I’ll see if I can muster some coherent thoughts on Goiania together to share for you all. Punchline: when you see glowing things, you’re first reaction should not to be to tattoo yourself with it, even if you do it in the name Jesus. It’s going to cost you an arm.

That’ll do for the moment. Back to work.

The Resurrected “Origins of Funranium”

People ask pretty regularly, “What the hell does Funranium mean, anyway?” Well, here’s your explanation. I don’t promise that it makes good sense however. Need to go find that “Guarantee of Insobriety” statement I wrote again…

Once upon a time, I was driving along Interstate 580 with a friend from college and was talking to her about the recent fun prospecting and camping I’d had with my family at the Lost Dutchman Mining Association claim in Duisenberg (nearest town is Randsburg, CA). Duisenberg was a gold camp in the middle of the Mojave Desert mining the caliche deposits. Imagine, if you will, a thin limestone crust of false bedrock at varying depths throughout the Mojave with gold lying on top of it due to erosion of the nearby monazite quartz deposit.

Monazite is a mineral that rang a bell with me as both a frustrated geologist and a radiation safety professional. I recognized it for two reasons: 1) It’s why the pretty purple quartz that makes the beaches of Kerala, India so beautiful, and 2) It’s purple because it is a thorium/uranium rich earth that gives Kerala a natural background dose rate roughly two orders of magnitudes higher than average sea level USA. You see, gold, silver, platinum, thorium, and uranium are alike in that the preferentially taken up by water and deposited as veins in rock. In the igneous petrology game, they are known as chemical incompatibles when it comes to the magma; if there is an available solvent to take them, like water, the metals will go there rather than form minerals. It should come as no surprise that during the Uranium Rush of the late 1940s and early 1950s that the Mojave was home to several uranium strikes.

While laying all this out to my friend, I had a revelation:

1) Camping is fun.
2) Properly prepared, the desert is fun.
3) People like booze.
4) People like gold.
5) Small scale prospecting for thorium and uranium should be substantially similar to that used for gold (i.e. panning and dry rocker)
6) Unlike gold, a handheld meter can easily determine if you’ve found something radioactive.

In mathematical form: desert camping + prospecting for thorium/uranium + booze = AWESOME

On reflection, I realized that the combination of hooch with rough camp prospecting is about as traditional a post-1849 California activity as you can get. All that’s missing from this equation is camp followers and guns. However, this is how I envision my brand of fun:

The group will set out for the camp in one or two vans (depending on group size) to accommodate people and supplies. On arrival at camp, tents will be set up and instructions on dry panning will be given with the intention to wash down concentrates accumulated in the field on a water recycling rocker at camp. The intrepid souls will be issued map, GPS, panning equipment, radio, a bottle of their favorite booze (my personal preference being the creations of St. George Spirits), and 4L of water. They will then set out looking to make their strike now that they know how to find that sweet spot on the caliche layer. They could, alternatively, have a nice hike and/or stagger around the claim with a bottle of whiskey in hand. At night delicious meats will be grilled while what concentrates have been accumulated by the prospectors are further concentrated by the rocker. Then, before bed, I will take my meter to the concentrate, assay the materials for activity and give everyone their very own vial of the day’s thorium/uranium to cuddle with through the cold desert night.

Folks, that is Funranium.

If you are interested in having me arrange a Funranium Expedition*, it is possible that I could be convinced to take the time off work. (UPDATE: AHAHAHAHA, no, as if I have that much free time ever) Obviously, I’ll have to make all intrepid souls sign a waiver or some such; anything as patently foolish as wandering in the desert with booze in hand is something insurance companies and lawyers want no part of. It’s quite obvious the rise and dominance of the insurance industry is a recent manifestation, because the Gold Rush and Westward Expansion wouldn’t have worked if liability coverage and deductible had been a part of it.

* You will have to provide your own camp followers and guns if you want a more authentic prospecting experience.

Testing Dispatches: College Station, TX

It is possible that in addition to the Pimp & Pimpstress of HAL Laboratories (AKA Champaign-Urbana, IL) you may soon have one down by Texas A&M as well. That is, assuming certain coffee-cultural hurdles can be passed. I share with you the tale of Test Subject Jason and his attempts to share BBotE:

I made a flyer at work so I did not have to explain each time what this “mixture in the fridge” was to the 8 or so co-workers each time. The inside large text motivates everyone to read, so I know that is working or, at the very least, saving me time explaining. I work in a small well educated town, everyone I work with has a college degree…but getting co-workers to try “pre made” coffee was a challenge in itself. Work feedback thus far:

Subject Nina: 40’s 110lbs female; 2 tables spoons of Kona in hot water, only able to drink half a cup before she said “her blood felt like it was trying to get out of her skin” I marked that as a Success :)

Subject Tim: 40’s 165lbs male: around 100ml Kona in hot water and stated he really could tell the subtle differences in this vs. regular coffee.

Subject X: 50’s 140lbs male: shows me his arm, wraps an imaginary rubber band around it, taps his veins, and says “I don’t want to get addicted”.

“New fangled” coffee appears not to be as exciting as I find it. Go figure.

If you are down in College Station and wish to prevail upon Jason’s kindness for a taste, he may be willing to share with you. Drop him a line at aggie[at]funraniumlabs[dot]com. I hear he is partial to bribery with beer as well.

Scientific Drinking Tour 2011, Further Updates

Travel dates are firming up. Currently, Las Vegas, NV and Fairbanks, AK are guaranteed to be graced by my presence. This is a chance to get a Stein of Science or Black Blood of the Earth in person (thus negating the shipping fees), learn the mysteries for the master, and consume beer & endless trivia with Herr Direktor Funranium & his Lovely Assistant. Without further ado, the itinerary as it stands:

April 1st-3rd: Las Vegas, NV CONFIRMED (it is a certain Lovely Assistant’s birthday)

Late April-Early May…ish: Las Vegas, NV (yes, Vegas again, a TBD bachelor party of SCIENCE!)

May 12th-17th: Fairbanks, AK CONFIRMED

June 2nd-19th: Washington DC, New York City, and Upstate NY (still working on this, but by Crom I want some Smithsonian)

August 17th-21st: Reno, NV (CONFIRMED. Yes, that is Worldcon 2011)

There has been some muttering about shenanigans in Portland, OR and a wedding in Grand Junction, CO but that all remains TBD. You want a piece of my time while I’m in any of these places, drop me a line.

Approaching Stein #200

So, much as I celebrated Steins of Science #1 and #100, I must observe the amazing fact that there are nearly 200 people out there that know how much fun it is to drink out of one of these. Thus I make a declaration:

Whoever purchases Stein #200, whatever variety or size that be, shall also receive Stein #201, a 665ml FMJ, for free. That’s right…a complimentary stein.

The current construction number is sitting on #192 with a six already built with earlier numbers.

I return you to your regularly scheduled programming with the thought that “I could be the one…” gnawing at your mind.

Antarctic Lifestyle Challenge

The questions the first graders at Redwood Elementary School asked me had two major themes:

Tell us about how you can die horribly and not be rescued. Add situational complications to make it harder for me to rescue the poor Antarctican
Do you have/can you take *INSERT ITEM HERE* to Antarctica?

For the latter, I presented them with a challenge. It’s the same challenge every member of the United States Antarctic Program is presented with before they deploy: how can I reduce my life to 150lbs? Not 100 items, not 8cu.ft., but 150lbs. Yes, they do weigh you before you get on the the flight for Antarctica.

I suspect tonight there are 20 first graders that are going to be piling their possessions onto the bathroom scale much to their parents’ confusion. Go ahead and give it a try. Might encourage you to buy a Macbook Air if you really need a computer.

You get 150lbs of Important Things. It would be nice if it all fit in two suitcases and a carry on, but I’m not feeling too picky about that. Alright…GO!

Fare Thee Well, Greg Yuhas

Tomorrow, UC Berkeley’s Radiation Safety Officer embarks on his retirement from that fine institution. His tenure here has been marked by the a quantum leap improvement in the programs and compliance for work with radioactive materials & radiation producing machines. When he arrived, UC Berkeley was an object of derision in the academic community for the condition our program; as he leaves, we are held up as an example to others for what you can achieve when you really care, and are willing to roll up your shirtsleeves and get dirty. I have never seen Mr. Yuhas more happy than when he was picking through garbage in a dumpster, smiling with glee, and surveying away with his Geiger counter after someone tossed something they shouldn’t have.

He’s served with the US Navy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and somehow we were lucky enough at UC Berkeley to get some time with him steering us right. Working with him has been a pleasure and an education. Someday, I will share a tale from his career as a young regulator entitled “The Man from NRC and the Seagull” as it is pure comedy gold.

And so, I share his retirement gift from all of us that have worked with him because we will miss his Papa Smurf looks and evil cackle when something goes wrong. If the Retirement Diet is one of pure beer, or if it is less beer but enjoyed over a much longer, well-chilled period on the Sacramento Delta, he is now well set. Of course, I’ll be really surprised if he stays retired for any length of time. Via con cerveza, Greg Yuhas.

Drinking To Columbia – An Antarctic Tale

EDIT: Today is February 1st, 2013, which makes it the 10th anniversary of this event. Raise a glass, won’t you, to the High Frontier.

This tale is prompted by hearing a familiar voice on the radio speaking to some elementary school students. One I hadn’t heard in eight years since a rather grim alcohol soaked day at McMurdo Station, Ms. Cady Coleman, Astronaut. She is currently serving aboard the International Space Station.

As previously discussed, I spent a year in Antarctica at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. We winterovers were entitled to some R&R during the summer before the full “The Shining”-grade lockdown for 9 months set in at Pole. But did they send us to Tahiti to enjoy warmth, greenery, and mai tais? Noooooo…they used to send folks to New Zealand but there was a bad spate of people skipping on their contracts now that they’d already endured three months of The Ice. By the time my year hit, people at Pole got sent for a week in beautiful, comparatively tropical, McMurdo Base. I got stuck there an additional two weeks waiting for a supply ship to offload.

Too much happened in this total of three weeks and much of it was spent drunk or short of sleep for me to hope to get all in one go. For the time being, let us discuss Room 129 in Building 155. Eleven of us went on R&R at the same time in mid-January 2003. Six of us were in Room 105, where I was put, and the rest were in 129. Sadly, the occupants of my room were focused on sleeping and reading. The other room had a strict schedule that went something like this:

1100 – Wake up.
1101 – Pour yesterday’s burnt coffee into trash can, or other room occupant’s boots as the muse demands.
1102 – Turn on coffee pot. (coffee pots in rooms are against the McMurdo rules)
1107 – Pour coffee. Add Irish Creme and whiskey to greet the McMurdo morning properly. Repeat as necessary.
1130 – Stack previous night’s beer cans and liquor bottles onto the growing pyramid.
1200 – Lunch. Offend sensitive McMurdans.
1300 – Day Bar at Southern Exposure*.
1730 – Dinner. Offend sensitive McMurdans.
1830 – Night Bar at Southern Exposure*.
0030 – Midrats (“midnight rations”, McMurdo had a specific list of people allowed to eat at this time which we ignored). Assemble bar on the dining room table. Offend sensitive McMurdans
0130 – Room party or lounge shenannigans.
0400 to 0700 – Go to sleep, maybe.

You can take you guess as to which group I spent the most time with.

*: For reference, Southern Exposure is also known as The Smoking Bar. Once upon a time it had been the Chief’s Bar during the Navy days. There were two other outlets for booze, The Coffeehouse (formerly the Officer’s Club, a very old quansit hut), and Gallagher’s, AKA The Non-Smoking Bar (formerly the Erebus Club, the enlisted men’s club, renamed after the death of CPO Gallagher (ret.) who died on Ice in 1997).

I seem to be digressing. Let’s take the story to February 1st, 2003 standing in the main entryway to McMurdo’s primary building, Bldg 155, with NASA astronauts Eileen Collins and Cady Coleman. I’d gotten to help them move their remote campsite a few weeks earlier as they were doing meteorite collection on the ice sheet by the Pecora Hills. I have no problem whatsoever being menial labor on the endless frozen expanse when I get to hangout with astronauts. Hell, I moved their bucket toilet with glee and sat there for three hours in the cold waiting for a plane to take me back to safety.

Both Cady & Eileen had been on previous space shuttle flights. Eileen, in fact, had been the first female pilot the shuttle had ever had. There was some concern of damage to the shuttle for reentry. Thus, they were watching the Armed Forces Television monitors with rapt interest and sharing small tales of the awesome of going to space. Being the science nerd and child of Cape Canaveral I am, I was hanging on every word.

Then Columbia exploded.

There was a a sharp intake of breath from the dozen or so assembled. One of the construction folks screamed “NO!” at the top of her lungs.

I turned to Cady and said, “I have a bar worth of booze in my room if you’d like a drink RIGHT NOW.” She and Eileen slowly nodded, looking rather shellshocked. They’d just watched their co-workers die. No, more than that, these are the people you have been studying with, sweating in the gym with, and trapped in various spam cans with for years. Being an astronaut is somewhere between army platoon and tightly knit doctoral program group. These were more than co-workers or friends; they were fellow explorers on the frontier.

I would like to state for the record that it is rather hard to drink me under the table. I have survived evenings with naval personnel from several countries, a misadventure with a watch worth of Coasties, hard rock miners, gutter punks and emerged staggering tall (albeit holding The Plunger of Honor one time…long story, don’t ask). However, these two women had me holding on to the pool table for support as they kept clearing it with deadeye accuracy and taking more and more shots of gin. Commander Collins is 5’1″ and almost didn’t get to be an astronaut due to a space program worth of suits designed with the six footer John Glenn in mind. I doubt she said “Fuck you very much, NASA” but she did make sure that a suit was available to fit her by becoming part of the suit design project.

At the end of it all, Cady asked if I’d like to see the video she took on the shuttle. Her personal camera. That may have been the high point of my Antarctic experience.

To Cady, Eileen, and all the astro/cosmo/taikonauts, I wish you the very best as you keep humanity’s future in the stars going forward. To the names on the memorial at Kennedy Space Center, and all the others that have lost their lives as we try to escape the gravity well, I raise a glass.

Continued Domination Of Global Media

This morning, in the dark, dark hours of the pre-commute day the crew at KNTV 11 decided to play with one of the 665ml FMJ Steins of Science as part of their Super Bowl Gadgets. I know they showed filling it with bottles of orange juice, but the level of jocularity suggests that they might have taken it for a test drive with something of a more medicinal nature beforehand. Enjoy!

KNTV 11 Plays With A 665ml FMJ

“Don’t drink out of it”…BAH! Lies and poppycock. You are drinking responsibly and forewarned knowing that you are using scientific apparatus for purposes other than originally intended, purposes which it happens to do quite well.