Steve Kass

While my part of the world was embroiled in a heat wave last week, brutal midwinter cold was gripping Vostok Station high atop the mountains and ice of central Antarctica. At times, it was more than two hundred degrees colder in Vostok than it was here in the U.S. Northeast.

A few days earlier, by coincidence, I’d installed the last of my three SodaStream carbonators and ordered two refills. On the 7^th, in the middle of the heat wave, the local distributor exchanged my empties, leaving me with four pounds of freshly compressed carbon dioxide and two questions.

1. Is four pounds of CO₂ a lot compared to the amount already inside my condo, not counting the basement?
2. When the temperature drops below -109.3 °F, the sublimation point of carbon dioxide, does it snow dry ice?

I’m happy to share with you the answers.

1. Yes, quite a lot. The volume of my condo, not counting the basement, is about 7,000 cubic feet, or about 200,000 liters, and while I have far too much junk, my place is still mostly full of air. And like air most places, the air in my condo is mostly nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, and about 400 parts per million of it (by volume) is carbon dioxide. My condo contains a fifth of a million liters of air, I figured, so I’ve got a fifth of 400 liters of CO₂, or about 80 liters.

At room temperature, CO₂ is effectively an ideal gas, so I don’t need Google to convert 80 liters to moles, which is going to help with the calculation. A mole of an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure¹ occupies 22.4 liters, so I’m living with about 4 moles of CO₂. (And maybe a few voles, too, but that’s not relevant here.) A mole of any chemical compound means 600 sextillion molecules of the stuff. Fortunately, we don’t have to do any sextillionary arithmetic. What makes a mole a mole is that it’s the number of Daltons (neutron or proton+electron masses, more or less) in a gram, so the mass of a mole of a chemical compound is simply its molecular weight in grams. The molecular weight of CO₂ is² 12+2×16, or 44, so a mole of CO₂ has a mass of about 44 grams or an ounce and a half.

Four moles of CO₂ in my condo — that’s about six ounces, or less than a tenth of what’s squeezed into my two new Sodastream carbonators.

2. No. The temperature -109.3 °F is the sublimation point of CO₂ at one atmosphere. That’s the temperature at which dry ice in your house or cooler chest (which is pure CO₂ solid under an atmosphere of air pressure) sublimates; it’s not the temperature at which CO₂ in plain air would precipitate into “snow.” Carbon dioxide won’t precipitate out of the air unless it’s cooled to the sublimation point for its partial pressure in air. That’s (see above) about 400 millionths of an atmosphere at sea level, and roughly two-thirds of that at Vostok Station, elevation 11,000 feet. Smart guy David R. Cook at Argonne National Laboratory has generously used some tax dollars to spread the word. He proposes that the temperature would have to be much colder than –110 — in fact about 220 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale (and no, that’s not “twice as cold” as -110) for CO₂ to precipitate at Vostok Station.

Typical partial pressures of CO₂ on earth are unfortunately off the scale of the phase diagrams I could find, so I can’t provide more details or confirm what David says. You can, however, see the trend in the phase diagram below. The boundary between the periwinkle and salmon regions is where CO₂ sublimates or “snows.” The lower the pressure, the lower the temperature.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The phase diagram also answers a question I didn’t think to ask.

• Are full SodaStream carbonators filled with liquid or gas? Liquid.

They’re about a liter big, which (using the calculations above) translates to an internal pressure of several hundred atmospheres, which is well within the green region. How cool is that? Liquid CO₂ right here in my house.

Call it chemistry or call it physics, this is all great fun.

Related links: How Much CO₂ is in a Bottle of Soda?, The Influence of CO₂ on the Chemistry of Soda, Soda’s Contribution to Global Warming

¹ Standard temperature and pressure is 20 °C and one (sea level) atmosphere of pressure. That’s close enough to the conditions in my condo. Around room temperature, gas expands at a rate of about 1% per 4 °C rise in temperature. It also expands as you climb above sea level, by about 1% for each 300 feet. The second derivatives are small, and the contributions from the partial derivative of volume with respect to temperature and altitude add, so yadda yadda yadda, we’re within a few percent. It was worth a quick thinking through, though.

² There are a some simplifications here, but again, they don’t affect the overall calculation by more than a percent or two. The value 44 assumes that every molecule of CO₂ is made up of the predominant isotopes of carbon and oxygen, carbon 12 and oxygen 16, and that single atoms of these isotopes weigh exactly 12 and 16 Daltons, respectively. The “official” atomic weights as periodically reviewed by IUPAC would be more accurate, and they give a molecular weight of 44.01. The discrepancy reflects the distribution of isotopes on earth as well as other details that probably involve higher physics and chemistry well beyond my understanding. In addition, it would seem to me that this measurement ought to be called the molecular mass, but when measuring any property of such tiny things, you’re going to run up against quantum mechanics and other complications, so I suppose whoever understands all of this can call it what they want.

In a segment of Pro Se, today’s installment of This American Life, radio host Ira Glass spoke with Francisco Calderon, a New York district attorney, about a case he lost¹ to a defendant who represented himself in court. I’m not a regular listener, and based on today’s episode, I won’t become one. The show’s web site describes the segment, Disorder in the Court, this way:

Earlier this year, admitted drug user Jorge Cruz decided to act as his own lawyer in an Albany, New York criminal court. Impossibly, he won. Ira talks to Francisco Calderon, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, about what it feels like to lose to an amateur.

Perhaps I have too much faith in the American legal system. I believe that judges and juries base their decisions on the evidence and on the law. Absent information to the contrary, I assume the jury didn’t find the prosecution’s evidence sufficient to convict Cruz. Glass didn’t mention this possibility, but the facts and rhetoric in Glass’s interview with Calderon suggest it.

The rhetoric (which offended me) matched the website’s subjective description of the segment. “… admitted drug user … Impossibly, he won.” Because Cruz was an admitted drug user, Glass seems to imply, he must have been guilty.

Glass never touched on the question of whether Cruz was guilty, nor on the legal standard of reasonable doubt. Calderon said he never “connected” with the jury, who he thought sympathized with the picture of Cruz as a poor drug addict who couldn’t have afforded the $5,000 worth of drugs he was accused of possessing. The felony-weight cocaine was seized from under a mattress in a hotel room registered to Cruz’s brother. Cruz admitted to using drugs in the room, but he claimed not to know there was a stash in the bed. Cruz’s brother and a third person in the room pleaded guilty to felony drug charges and were sentenced without a trial.

Calderon worried that the more he objected to Cruz in the courtroom (and no doubt he had valid objections to Cruz, who had no legal training to know what sort of questioning was allowed), the more he’d come across as a bully. Glass analogized that juries expected something like a boxing match between well-matched fighters.

A trial isn’t a fistfight between lawyers where the jury decides who landed the best uppercut. Sure, a lawyer who can’t “land a punch” might prevent the jury from understanding the facts, but (television notwithstanding) the defendant is the one on trial, not the lawyers.

If life were as simple as “he’s a drug user, he must be guilty,” we wouldn’t need much of a legal system, nor would we have the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Jorge Cruz availed himself of his constitutional right, and he chose to represent himself. He was acquitted by the jury on the most serious charge, but I’m not convinced his choice to serve as his own attorney was an important factor in the outcome.

Disorder in the Court fits the American narrative that champions the underdog and devalues experience, education, process, and authority. (The irony² isn’t lost on me that this same narrative helps boost the blogger ego.) Yet at the same time, it whispers a contrasting message that authority is always right, and that when it fails, something else is to blame. Taken only a bit further, these are the narratives that give rise to and sustain Joe the Plumber, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin – narratives that are as resolutely American “as apple pie,” but that verge on the truly distasteful and dangerous.

Other segments of Pro Se were also disappointing. In Swak Down, a former student teacher tells how he addressed a violent incident by deciding to “forgo all the rules, and administer frontier justice on the fly,” believing (still) that no other approach would have worked. In Underling Gets an Underling, a former production assistant tells the story of how she handled her frustration about how she was being treated: she placed a phony Craigslist ad for her own production assistant, hired an unwitting fellow, and then treated him as unfairly and dishonestly as she felt her boss was treating her.

This American Life may or may not be representative of American life, but it left a bad taste in my mouth today. It needs a big dash of opprobrium at least.

¹ A contemporary account of the case in the Albany Times Union notes that while Cruz was acquitted of felony cocaine possession, the jury did find him guilty of misdemeanor heroin possession, and he was sentenced to time already served in the Albany County jail.

² I know, I know.

Millions of Americans were up in arms over the holiday weekend after McDonald’s¹, the fast-food giant, began to use “oyster” packaging, the vacuum-formed, heat-sealed, hard plastic clear containers more commonly associated with batteries and computer peripherals than with restaurant food, for drive-up and take-out orders at all its restaurants in the United States and its territories on Friday.

  Some rights reserved by bunchofpants

Hundreds, if not thousands, of complaints have appeared on Twitter and from loyal customers who prefer the old paper wrappers.

• WTF IM SUPPOSE TO CARRY A CHAINSAW IN MY GLOVE COMPARMENT MACDONALDS YOU FAIL
• what are u thinking with this crap mcdonald #burgerfail #wendys

On Facebook, dozens of groups have been created in opposition to the change, such as “Admit you’re wrong, McDonalds” and “A Million People in Support of Burgers in Paper,” where users can lodge longer complaints, like this one:

• “I’ve eaten two Big Macs and a large fries every day since you switched from styrofoam 20 years ago, but McD doesn’t care about its customers any more. I went to Burger King today, and you know what? It tastes better, too. Good riddance, McDonalds.”

Scores of complaints were also lodged on the official McDonald’s website.

According to its June 30 press release, the change addresses two of McDonald’s’s customers’ most pressing concerns. “For years, customers have wanted to be able to check their order without unwrapping everything. The new packages are transparent. Also, customers want their food to be safe from insects and germs, and according to our research, welded packaging provides that impression better than any other option.”

When asked about the public outrage, a spokesman for McDonald’s had this to say: “While it can take time to adjust to change, we’ve tested our latest packaging design thoroughly. We’ll keep monitoring customer feedback so we can continue improving our product.”

McDonald’s aficionados in Detroit, Buffalo, and a few other locations quickly found out they had another option. Canadian locations won’t adopt the new packaging for a few months.

What do you think?

¹ This article is not really about McDonald’s, and McDonald’s did not switch to clamshell packaging. This article is about Google News, and they did switch to something that makes about as much sense as clamshell packaging for takeout food.

The Wayback Machine at archive.org has archived much of the web since 1996. Today I found a couple of posts that had fallen out of the van in 2007 when I moved from Yahoo! Small Business to Bluehost. They’re now back where they belong. Thanks, Wayback Machine!

• Math is fun, and that’s ok.
• Windows Live Writer
• Tax returns aren’t due quite yet

Kudos to Brian Klug and Anand Lal Shimpi for measuring and graphing the (very nonlinear) relationship [article;graph] between iPhone 4 bars and signal strength, which helps explain what’s going on with the iPhone death grip.

Also, here’s a suggestion to AT&T, who might want to replace the slogan “More Bars in More Places.”

  iPhone image © Patrick Hoesly (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

I did a double take when I read today’s email from Affinia Hotels to find this image. Actually, two double takes — one because the page layout made me think I’d hit the landing page of a parked domain, the other because of the image. I puzzled for quite a while wondering what city skyline had those matching buildings. (I’m still not sure. Bostostoston, maybe?)

Wait, make that three double takes. Naturally, I zoomed in to look at the photoshopping more closely, and by golly there it was right there. The creepy Mars face, peeking out from behind the model’s forearm. Look for yourself at the Affinia face and the Mars face, side-by-side, in unretouched (by me, except for the circle) crops, and I think you’ll agree.

After getting over seeing the Mars face, I took the opportunity to see if Affinia was still playing fast and loose with its promo codes. Not like before, I’m pleased to report. They seem serious and honest about their “Our Best Rate Promise.”

Nonetheless, it still bugs me that their “Best Available Rate,” described here as being the Best Available Rate, is not the best available rate. The best available rate is the “Our Promise Rate.” You have to scroll to find the Our Promise Rate, but it always shows up, whether or not you entered a promo code and whether or not you logged into the site.

Before you get too psyched about the free Flip camera, though, you should realize that the “Flippin’ Summer Getaway” promo is probably not a deal. It’s not dishonest, but it’s not a deal. The details of the non-deal are: if you pay Affinia a high enough rate, then you get the same room you could have gotten for less (maybe a lot less), plus you get a Flip camera, a $10 MetroCard, and a tote bag. Supposed retail value, $180. Cost to you (for various vacation dates at New York’s Affinia 50, the only hotel I priced), at least $130 plus tax (for a two-day stay, the shortest for which the offer is valid), and as much as several hundred.

[Added: It occurs to me that if you’re on an expense account, maybe it is a deal. Your company pays for the room, and you get the camera. Someone with more expense account experience can clue me in.]

I believe this is called marketing, and Affinia is doing it honestly. Some promo codes are non-deals, some are deals. (There are some good ones at RetailMeNot.) I’ve stayed at the Affinia 50 twice, and it was just great both times. Their other properties are probably fine, too, and maybe the Flip promo really is a deal at their other locations. One thing I can guarantee is that you won’t get the panoranoramic view pictured, but you might pack a mirror so you can pretend.

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, “Affinia promo code” has long been the #1 search term sending visitors to my web site, and I’m happy to be posting something new and relevant. But even if that’s what brought you here, do stay and visit for a while.

Thanks to Edward Tufte, millions of people have seen Charles Minard’s remarkable chart of the French Army’s losses during its Russian campaign in the winter of 1812-13. Minard’s chart is a joy to behold. It’s the acme of data presentation — magnificent, spectacular, inspiring. So it kills me that Gene Zelazny, who wrote the you-know-from-the-title-it’s-bad book “Say it with Charts” FUCKING SHAT ALL OVER MINARD’S LEGACY.

I learned about Zelazny’s desecration here, though Andrew Abela, who reported it, failed to call it that. “Zelazny notes that the graphic is difficult to read, and proposes that there might be better ways to convey the same information.”

Sure, there might be, just like there might be better ways to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but what Zelazny offers is an epic numerical fail, because IT NOT ONLY DEPICTS DIFFERENT (AS IN WRONG) INFORMATION, IT ALSO DEPICTS THE WRONG INFORMATION BADLY (as in we can’t even tell what wrong numbers he wants us to find and what they are supposed to quantify).

Zelazny might as well propose that “there might be better ways to clean up the Gulf of Mexico,” trot out a broken doorknob and a bent bicycle tire, and ask us to wonder with him. Ugh, ugh, ugh. And ugh.

Here are a few of the gory details (of which there can be but few, given how little actual stuff there is in Zelazny’s chart).

Ok, so the spirit levels in the cutesy clipart thermometers don’t match the numbers, only their absolute values (sort of).  But the numbers are wrong, too. Five of Zelazny’s six data points are wrong — misread from Minard’s original. Five out of six. That’s almost all wrong, for those of you who aren’t counting. Badly, differently, and horrifyingly wrong.

Minard reports that there was rain on October 24, and that the temperature was about zero*. Zelazny misread the day of the month (24) as a temperature, then used the only other written figure at that spot on Minard’s chart (8^bre, for octobre) for both the month and the day. No explanation short of “Who gives a fuck?” works for this slop.

*Minard’s figures give the Réaumur scale temperature, which detail Minard, lest future readers misconstrue his chart, tells us. Minard cared deeply about communicating. (Zelazny’s figures are wrong in every known temperature scale. He cares less. Much less, like not at all.)

Remarkably or not, almost nothing is correct in Zelazny’s “presentation.” The border between Poland and Russia is misplaced, and all the graphical scales are wrong. I’m no PowerPoint guru, but I assume you have to work very hard to incorporate numbers into a slide this wrongly (as was famously done here, and better).

Even Zelazny’s title is wrong.

Things got bad on the retreat from Moscow. And it’s not clear how many died. Minard charted the number of troops, not deaths. Some who didn’t return were captured. Others may have deserted. And the overall message isn’t “the colder … the more.” The biggest declines were early in the campaign, when the temperatures aren’t given. So the title is all wrong, but hell, IT FIT ON TWO LINES. Shit like this matters. It’s our planet’s fucking history.

Sure, Minard’s correct title (Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’ Armée Française…, and penned more beautifully than any web typography can be rendered) won’t work projected at WXGA resolution or on your favorite eReader or phone.

THIS IS WHY WE PRINT STUFF ON PAPER. If you don’t have a copy of Minard’s chart, buy yourself one. Fuck, if you’re one of the first five people to ask me, I’ll buy you one.

Now turn off your computer and pick up a beautiful book. Or go to the library. Or write. On paper. Thanks for listening.

Early Wednesday, a new monument slowly rose over St. Petersburg in northern Russia, and tourists and residents alike have flocked to see it. The Moscow Times provided this poetic description of the new attraction:

Measuring 65 meters long and 27 meters across, the light-colored phallus rises and glistens against the imperial-era capital’s elegant skyline when the bridge is drawn up to let ships pass in the twilit northern summer nights.

More at english.pravda.ru: Giant Penis Erects Literally in St. Petersburg Center. Additional photos at Xaxor.com.

Note: This is not the first time a giant penis has aroused attention in one or another St. Petersburg. In 2008, police in St. Petersburg, Florida, responded to a “complaint about a giant penis statue.” The incident ended in the arrest of an art gallery owner for violating a city ordinance that prohibits places that serve alcohol from allowing the public display of genitals. (The genitals of a person found by investigating officers, not the aforementioned statue, prompted the arrest.) According to its owner, the Florida giant penis statue stood “eight” feet tall.

Thanks to Lucinda for passing this on from Sue Katz.

aka Grocery Shopping in 2012

 
Background image by Ben McLeod, shared under a Creative Commons license.

Dear friend,

It’s disconcerting to see your face in the newspaper and think you were struck by lightning in Ohio and/or that your severed head was found at the airport.

As delighted as I continue to be with all the weird and wonderful things you share with me, I only want to see them on Facebook. Until there’s a way to opt out of Facebook’s Social Plugin (which is not Facebook Instant Personalization, out of which I have already opted), I’ll try to remember to log out of Facebook before I start reading the paper.

Sorry if I’m a little less in touch with what’s important to you, but please keep sharing.

In case you don’t happen to log out of Facebook when you read today’s paper, please be assured that I didn’t change my name to Maureen Forrester and die yesterday.

Your friend,

Steve

When a sudden urge for Thai food strikes, I never have all the ingredients on hand. Today I had enough for a try, and the result was pretty good, if not pretty-pretty.

Soup (serves 1 glutton or 4 polite folk)

• Put into a 5-cup or larger appliance that slow cooks:
    1 lb. chicken tenders, cut in 1" pieces,
    2 small cans sliced mushrooms, drained,
    2-3 fresh shallots, peeled and quartered,
    3 cups water,
    1/2 cup marble-sized potatoes, and
    2 tablespoons tom yum paste.
• Slow cook (185-190°F) for 60-90 minutes.
• Stir in:
    1/2 can of coconut milk
    2 frozen kaffir lime leaves, cut into very thin strips, and
    up to 1 tablespoon palm sugar (to taste).
• Simmer for another 30 minutes.
• Salt liberally to taste.

Notes:  
  If you have fresh cilantro, chop and add a small handful right before serving. 
  Use whole straw mushrooms instead of button mushrooms, if you have them.
  Boneless breast might do, but my Costco chicken tenders were very tender.
  I’ll leave out the potatoes next time. They didn’t help any.
  Regular or light brown sugar is fine.
  If you want it spicy-hotter, add Vietnamese or Thai chili paste or crushed red peppers. 
  There’s no good substitute for fresh shallots. Onion might do; avoid boxed shallots.
  Don’t use dried kaffir lime leaves, only fresh or frozen, or substitute half a lime’s juice.
  For a low-fat version, leave out the coconut milk and use broth for half the water.
  If you don’t have a slow-cooking appliance, use the stove, but avoid boiling the soup.

Maybe I got lucky with this tom yum paste.