So this happened. Given the colour and the fact they were working with nitric acid, I'm feeling somewhat doubtful this was (relatively benign) nitrous oxide.
It sure LOOKS like a cloud of NO2 -- at sufficiently high temperature, it has that red/orange color. No fun to breathe, as it makes nitric acid from water in lung tissue.
A fertilizer plant would plausibly be working with ammonia, which can produce NO2 by the Ostwald process (used for making nitric acid, and this apparently was a plant that did that):
4 NH3 + 7 O2 -> 4 NO2 + 6 H2O
Or a fertilizer plant might also have nitric acid around, and some knucklehead didn't understand to keep it away from copper fittings:
4 HNO3 + Cu -> Cu(NO3)2 + 2 NO2 + 2 H2O
Those are the ones that come to mind as bulk reactions likely to be in a fertilizer plant. There are others, but then you have to figure out why a fertilizer plant might be doing that.
But the spokesperson who said it was "nitrous oxide" (which is transparent) or the reporter who mis-heard it need to have a word with some industrial chemists.
English self-taught mathematician and physicist Oliver Heaviside was born #OTD in 1850.
He invented a new technique for solving differential equations, independently developed vector calculus, and rewrote Maxwell's equations in the form commonly used today. He significantly shaped the way Maxwell's equations are understood and applied in the decades following Maxwell's death. His practical experience in telegraphy provided a foundation for his later theoretical work.
He was an unusual man, who had some unfortunate mental health problems in later life: signing his name with the "title" suffix "W.O.R.M.", painting his nails pink (more unusual then than it would be now), replacing his furniture with granite blocks, and so on. (See Wikipedia, below.)
On the other hand, I sorta like the idea that there's a lot more room for weirdness in the world than we normally allow for.
I didn't realize ACM makes available the full-ish archive of the LISP Pointers journal SIGPLAN published from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. It contains most of the papers of most of the issues, an historical treasure of practical value.
@TruthSandwich got me interested in the vibrational modes of bells. They're not harmonics with frequencies 1, 2, 3, 4, ... times the lowest frequency: they're much more complicated! That's why bells sound clangy. This chart shows how they sometimes work.
The lowest frequency vibrations are called:
• the 'hum' (the lowest frequency)
• the 'prime' (with frequency roughly 2 times that of the hum)
• the 'tierce' (roughly 2.4 times the hum, so a minor third above the prime)
• the 'quint' (roughly 3 times the hum, so a major fifth above the prime)
• the 'nominal' (roughly 4 times the hum, so an octave above the prime)
and so on. If you think these names are illogical, join the club! One reason it's tricky is that the loudest vibration is not the lowest one: it's the 'prime'.
The numbers I just gave you should be taken with a big grain of salt. They really depend on the shape of the bell, and you'd have to be great at designing bells to make them come out as shown here. It's not like a violin string or flute, where the math is on your side.
This quote helps explain the chart:
"Modern theory separates the modes of vibration into those produced by the "soundbow" and those produced by the remaining bell "shell". The bell vibrates both radially and axially and the principal vibrational modes are shown in the diagram together with their classification using the scheme proposed by Perrin et al. This scheme consists of the mode of vibration (RIR - Ring Inextensional Radial, RA - Ring Axial, R=n - Shell driven), the number of meridians (where “m” is half the number of meridians) and the number of nodal circles (n)."
Starting to sound like orbitals in quantum mechanics!
Today's writing: what if Doctor Phibes murdered and impersonated Max, owner of the KitKatKlub, in order to run an elaborate sting against Doctor Mabuse—film recap, starring Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Charlotte Rampling, and Peter Cushing.
Probably I have a parochial American viewpoint, but it continually surprises me how much fascism revenant and its variations are a world-wide phenomenon.
Agreed the roots are deep, and the resurgence fills a need felt by authoritarian followers (e.g., consider Bob Altemeyer's absolutely masterful poli sci book, The Authoritarians).
After all, Genghis Khan, Amir Timur (Tamburlaine the Great), arguably Julius Caesar and some of the Tokugawa shoguns... they all came from somewhere.
It bewilders me why it keeps coming BACK. Some decades ago, stories from a Chilean friend who grew up under Pinochet were deeply confusing. Now I find my neighbors confusing, for similar reasons.
You may be onto something with the antagonism of democracy and the combination of imperialism and unregulated capitalism. Concentrated money wants concentrated power.
What math should you know before studying the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem? That's what this video answers.
It's pretty funny. I don't want to completely give it away, but I know a fair amount of math, and a sinking feeling spread over me as the video went on... so I'm curious when that feeling will hit you.
Eventually the guy suggests that you should really learn French... so you can read Grothendieck's 12-volume Séminaire de Géométrie Algébrique, which is thousands of pages long. But for me, even that's not the worst part!
The good news is that this guy, Anthony Vasutaro, admits it's fine to plunge in and learn stuff as needed. Even better, he is really serious about this stuff. He has a huge series of videos explaining the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in detail.
Personally I'm more interested in the 'big ideas' than the actual proof. And for the big ideas, I'm finding Nigel Boston's paper quite nice:
Beware: this is only for mathematicians! There are lots of other introductions at varying levels of intensity. No matter how little math you know, there's one that you'll enjoy.
US folks, maybe consider bookmarking this to send this to your families/friends and also talk about it and about free test to treat. People don’t know.
[Edited to add: Believe me, I know who this columnist is. But the information is fairly crucial and this is an accessible presentation for sharing with wider circles.]
Last January, my spouse got COVID-19 on a long plane trip. Getting paxlovid was HARD!
Upon testing positive on a weekend morning, we tried to get paxlovid. Our doc's answering service took a couple hours get an on-call doc to respond, who prescribed paxlovid. So far, so good.
CVS said 500 bucks, pay up. (!)
Our Medicare Part D insurance swore up and down that paxlovid was a low-priority drug they only covered partially, and nobody else was any better.
Our Medicare supplement insurance said to call back on weekdays, 9-5 Eastern time.
I actually managed to get a human at Medicare itself, who didn't know what paxlovid was, and wanted me to provide evidence that it was not an antibody therapy!
I knew there were sometimes pharma access assistance programs, so I checked with Pfizer. That's when I found paxlovid.iassist.com. (Currently seems broken in Chrome and Firefox, works in Safari?!) Typed in the info, got a voucher to print out a minute later.
CVS then said, utterly straight-faced, sure here's your stuff, no charge.
Elapsed time about 6 hours of run-around after run-around and unbelievably high stress.
The ignorance, superstition, and outright obstacles around paxlovid are simultaneously nauseating and amazing.
(NB: We have excellent insurance, good computers, a printer, and good educations. We live in an area with good medical access. With all that privilege, our story is probably a BEST-CASE scenario.)