"He was doin' 72 in a 70!"
and,
"I stop a lot of people, you know, and very few are guilty of anything." Good work there Barney.
This cop believes going on a fishing expedition using the slimmest possible excuse is a good thing to do. He thinks he is doing his job. He thinks he is keeping you safe.
Or maybe... Does he really believe this? Or is he just another State employed Thug Opportunist?
By the way, "anhydrous" isn't a noun, it is an adjective. It means, without water or dessicated. It doesn't describe anything illegal. It is analogous to saying, "We find dihydrogen monoxide all the time on these stops."
1 comment:
Hi,
I am a synthetic chemist, and I just wanted to touch on the 'anhydrous' thing. You are right that it is an adjective. Mostly, we use it to describe solvents, or liquid reagents: e.g. In the former instance, we talk of anhydrous ether or anhydrous THF, in which those solvents, typically water miscible, have been dried in such a way that they contain no water. There is water in the atmosphere, enough that when you open a bottle of diethyl ether or THF or any water miscible organic solvent, a small portion of the atmospheric water will enter the bottle. If you use a syringe to remove the solvent, then the air from the atmosphere will replace the lost volume. In order to remove solvent without introducing water, what we do is, use the nitrogen gas lines at our fume hoods. We affix a hose to the nitrogen outlet, affix a needle to the hose, then place that needle into the bottle of solvent. Then we use a larger gauge needle to draw the solvent out, add it to our reaction, itself kept under scrupulously water free conditions. Sometimes, since we use a set of Schlenk lines to provide water free conditions, these reactions are said to be conducted under Schlenk conditions. The reason is that water is a nucleophile, quite apt ti attack reactive electrophilic species, causing kinetic byproducts which we do not want. Water might also solvate a catalyst, or react with reaction intermediates. In some instances, such as a Grignard reaction, the water can be dangerous, and reactively quenches the reaction itself.
I have, however, heard the use of 'anhydrous' as a moun, but rarely. I think it was on TV, and it was in reference to anhydrous ammonia. It might even have been a law enforcement officer using it then.
But as a lab chemist, I have never heard the term used in legal drug discovery and medicinal chemistry circles, either at Universities, government labs, or industry labs.
BTW if you are interested in chemistry, it is not all white lab coats and reactions. I am working on a cheminformatics project right now, using software tools. Some chemists run businesses, others analyse food, drink or materials. I know lots of polymer chemists, biochemists and even bionics researchers. If you are keen for a career change, I can reccomend chemistry highly, it is a challenging but very rewarding field. I am not in the US, but I know many Americans from conferences, and you guys do some of the most exciting chemistry in the world right now. But your blog is also stimulating reading, though I must be honest and admit, politics is not a topic that I know much about. I should probably read more news, but I mainly stick to trade journals.
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