I'm in Kuala Lumpur today on business. This is the first time I've been back in Asia in some time, and the first time in Malaysia in about ten years. I arrived late at night, but right from the beginning I felt discombobulated. It is strange to be back in a place that is at once so familiar - at least, close enough to Singapore that it certainly feels familiar - and at the same time so foreign. In some small ways I am beginning to remember some of what it was like to be an expatriate.
The first and strangest experience is the one of suddenly feeling out of place. I do not speak Malay, and despite the outward similarity to my familiar years in Singapore, upon arriving in Kuala Lumpur I was suddenly disoriented by the lack of English speakers. Exhausted and confused, it was an hour or so before I could orient myself enough to figure out how to get a cab ticket.
When I got to the hotel, other things began to make me feel out of place. I have never been comfortable with the obsequious way in which foreigners are treated, and it was no different arriving there. I was given prompt and attentive porter service, and the person holding my bag accompanied me directly to my room. In the elevator with us, on the other hand, was a Malay family - with kids - obviously also just checking in. They were carrying their own bags, and while the porter greeted them amicably he didn't offer any service. It felt very wrong.
Since my arrival, I realized that where I am staying happens to be located directly adjacent to an upmarket mall. This also felt strange, mostly because it was also so familiar. The ethnic makeup of the people visiting the mall changed radically to be mostly ethnic Chinese and a smattering of obvious foreigners. The language of the mall is not Malay but English or Chinese. While Kuala Lumpur is about 45% Malay, this mall could not have been more than 10%. It was a stark reminder of how ethnicity is tied to wealth in this country.
Finally, it was some time before I figured out why everybody insisted on speaking to me in English and treating me like an obvious foreigner. I would order my food in mandarin and have people serve me meals with a fork and spoon (the ethnic Chinese would get chopsticks). It was confused for a while, but suddenly remembered: in Singapore, and in Asia in general, I am always singled out as a Westerner, despite the exact opposite being true in the United States.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Arguments that annoy me, mandarin edition
I've started studying mandarin again. As part of this, I've been encouraged to write my normal type of writing and translate it into mandarin. The original English post is reproduced first, followed by the translation. To aid my studying, I've bolded words that are new to me. I originally wrote this post in February of this year, link here.
I love debate. Once upon a time, I liked competitive debate, too, and thought that I liked pounding other people's arguments into the dust. However, as time went on I realized that what I enjoyed was not winning per se, but having conversations with intelligent people. People with poor argumentation and poor logic not only made for poor debate, but simply annoyed me.
To this day, there are few things that annoy me more. So I'm going to blog about them. Hah.
1. "It is better to be consistent than correct"
Hypocrisy is an irrelevant ad hominem, but I see this all the time. Essentially, someone argues that because person/country/organization A has done something before, but subsequently advocates against it, the argument is invalid. A is hypocritical! Common examples:
When presented in simple terms as above, it's easy to spot how fallacious an accusation of hypocrisy is. I more frequently see it presented in forms more difficult to recognize. For example, if I were to hypothetically accuse the Republican party of being obstinate in their use of the filibuster in the Senate of the US, I might receive the following reply:
Top places I see that argument:
我从高中以后爱讨论。从前，我也爱讨论比赛，因为我觉得把别人的论据击开很乐趣。但是，参加几个讨论比赛后，我发现我不是喜欢赢了讨论比赛，我喜欢的是跟聪明的人谈话。参加着用低质量的低质量的论据和推理不过把讨论变成真没意思，也简单地打扰我。
到现在，几乎没什么比较打扰我。所以我先要在网上对这事发泄一下。哈。
1. "一致比正确好“
伪善大是人身攻击，但是我还常常看人用伪善似乎是效力的论据。伪善的用法就是这样：A反对别人的行为，但是有时候A跟别人有一样的行为。A很伪善！比如说：
我最常看这样的论据是对按照几个样子：
I love debate. Once upon a time, I liked competitive debate, too, and thought that I liked pounding other people's arguments into the dust. However, as time went on I realized that what I enjoyed was not winning per se, but having conversations with intelligent people. People with poor argumentation and poor logic not only made for poor debate, but simply annoyed me.
To this day, there are few things that annoy me more. So I'm going to blog about them. Hah.
1. "It is better to be consistent than correct"
Hypocrisy is an irrelevant ad hominem, but I see this all the time. Essentially, someone argues that because person/country/organization A has done something before, but subsequently advocates against it, the argument is invalid. A is hypocritical! Common examples:
- The US has violated someone's sovereignty before, therefore its advocacy against a violation of other people's sovereignty is invalid.
- <insert political party here> did something in the past, therefore its current stand against the practice is invalid.
- You once believed this, but now you've flip-flopped and your argument is weaker because of it.
When presented in simple terms as above, it's easy to spot how fallacious an accusation of hypocrisy is. I more frequently see it presented in forms more difficult to recognize. For example, if I were to hypothetically accuse the Republican party of being obstinate in their use of the filibuster in the Senate of the US, I might receive the following reply:
"But when the Democrats were in the minority during the Bush years, they also heavily used the filibuster and justified it by claiming that they were doing the job of the minority in protecting their interests, and you didn't complain then!"Sound familiar? Doesn't address the issue at hand, doesn't address anything but the parties to the argument (the Democrats and the proposer), allegation of hypocrisy. While pointing out how hypocritical a group or person is might cast aspersions on their character, it has zero to do with the argument. Instead, it's a statement that amounts to "it is better to be consistent than correct," or, alternatively, "consistency is a prerequisite for having a valid argument."
Top places I see that argument:
- Anti-colonial related rants
- Chinese uberpatriots
- American political debate
我从高中以后爱讨论。从前，我也爱讨论比赛，因为我觉得把别人的论据击开很乐趣。但是，参加几个讨论比赛后，我发现我不是喜欢赢了讨论比赛，我喜欢的是跟聪明的人谈话。参加着用低质量的低质量的论据和推理不过把讨论变成真没意思，也简单地打扰我。
到现在，几乎没什么比较打扰我。所以我先要在网上对这事发泄一下。哈。
1. "一致比正确好“
伪善大是人身攻击，但是我还常常看人用伪善似乎是效力的论据。伪善的用法就是这样：A反对别人的行为，但是有时候A跟别人有一样的行为。A很伪善！比如说：
- 美国侵犯过外国的主权，所以美国的论据反对别的国家的侵犯主权行为就无效了。
- 什么政党以前的行为象他门现在的反对，所以他们的反对就无效了。
- 你以前相信这个论据，但是你推翻了你的决定，所以你现在的论据更无效。
在Bush总统的年代民主党也是少数，他们也跟今天的共和党一样阻挠议案通过，解说也是为了防守少数人的利益，但是那时候你一点都没有抱怨！这样的看法熟悉吗？没有对别人的看发有什么解决，没有说有什么不同意，只对对方的人指责伪善。这样的论据就是说“一致比正确好”，或者说“有一致才有好的论据”。废话。
我最常看这样的论据是对按照几个样子：
- 反殖民注意咆哮
- 中国五毛咆哮
- 美国政治了解
Friday, October 11, 2013
A small incident (Translation)
I've started studying mandarin again. As part of that, I am systematically reading through a book of short stories by one of China's grandmasters of literature, Lu Xun (鲁迅), who lived during early revolutionary China. To aid my study, each story I go through I'm going to post here and then try to translate it as best I can. The original text is below, the translation is presented first.
"A small incident" - Lu Xun, July 1920
The six years from when I moved from my home town to the capital have passed in the blink of an eye. Over this time, I've heard that our so-called country has had not a few milestones; but in my heart, none of them have left any impression, and if I try to search for what I have of these events, it only increases my discontent - truthfully, it makes me to look down on people more and more each day.
But there was one small incident that for me has significance, dragging me out of my discontent, that until now I have been unable to forget.
This was in the country's sixth year's [1917] winter, with the North wind blowing hard, when for work I had no choice but to commute in the mornings. When I started my commute there were almost no people to be seen, so it was easy to find a rickshaw, telling the driver to go to the S Gate [one of Beijing's gates]. It didn't take long for the North wind to die down and the dust on the road to clear, leaving a spotless white path, letting the rickshaw puller go faster. Just before the S Gate, suddenly on the rickshaw's axle there was a person, who slowly fell down.
The fallen person was a woman, with grizzled hair, and very ragged clothes. She had abruptly turned from the street and cut in front of us; despite the rickshaw puller giving her right of way, the woman's jacket hadn't been buttoned, and a gust of wind had caused it to open and finally wrap around the rickshaw axle. Luckily, the rickshaw puller had slowed down, or else the woman would have been caught and overturned, her head struck and bleeding.
She lay on the ground; the rickshaw puller put down the handles. I judged that this old woman wasn't hurt, and no one saw it, so I thought the stop was strange, and that he was asking for trouble and delaying my trip.
He said to her:
"Are you alright?"
"Something's broken."
I thought, I saw you fall slowly to the ground, how is it that she could have broken something, she's malingering, how reprehensible. The he's meddlesome and asking for trouble, getting his own ideas about walking around.
The rickshaw puller, upon hearing the old woman's words, did not hesitate for a moment, suddenly supporting the woman by her arm and walking forward step by step. I was a little astonished, forgetting to look forward to see a police station in front of us, upwind, with no one outside. The rickshaw puller was supporting the old woman as they made their way towards the big door.
In that moment I suddenly felt an unusual feeling, like the impression in the dust from the rickshaw puller became taller, or perhaps grew ever larger, so that I had to crane my neck to see it. Or maybe he gradually became more powerful, even as I felt my petty concerns being squeezed from underneath my leather jacket.
My life's urgent pace slowed down, sitting there without moving, without thinking, until I got off when a police patrolman approached the rickshaw.
The policeman said, "You should book another rickshaw, he won't be pulling you."
Without thinking, I pulled a roll of coins from my jacket, giving it to the policeman, saying "Please give this to him..."
The wind died down, the street was still very clean. I walked, lost in thought, almost scared of my introspection. With everything else in my life temporarily set aside, I asked myself, what was the meaning of that roll of coins? To reward him? Could I still judge the rickshaw driver? I couldn't bear to reply to myself.
To this day that incident is one I frequently remember. I therefore always remember to put aside my pain, to strive to think about myself. These past few years' cultural forces, like the classical aphorisms I memorized at a young age, have so faded from my memory that I can't even half recite them. Only this small incident, which hovers just in front of my eyes, sometimes even more clearly, has taught me to be ashamed, urged me to reform, and renewed my courage and hope.
Professional Translation linked here
Original:
一件小事 - 鲁迅 July 1920
我从乡下跑到京城里，一转眼已经六年了。其间耳闻目睹的所谓国家大事，算起来也很不少；但在我心里，都不留什么痕迹，倘要我寻出这些事的影响来说，便只是增长了我的坏脾气，——老实说，便是教我一天比一天的看不起人。
但有一件小事，却于我有意义，将我从坏脾气里拖开，使我至今忘记不得。
这是民国六年的冬天，大北风刮得正猛，我因为生计关系，不得不一早在路上走。一路几乎遇不见人，好容易才雇定了一辆人力车，教他拉到S门去。不一会，北风小了，路上浮尘早已刮净，剩下一条洁白的大道来，车夫也跑得更快。刚近S门，忽而车把上带着一个人，慢慢地倒了。
跌倒的是一个女人，花白头发，衣服都很破烂。伊从马路上突然向车前横截过来；车夫已经让开道，但伊的破棉背心没有上扣，微风吹着，向外展开，所以终于兜着车把。幸而车夫早有点停步，否则伊定要栽一个大斤斗，跌到头破血出了。
伊伏在地上；车夫便也立住脚。我料定这老女人并没有伤，又没有别人看见，便很怪他多事，要自己惹出是非，也误了我的路。
我便对他说，“没有什么的。走你的罢！”
车夫毫不理会，——或者并没有听到，——却放下车子，扶那老女人慢慢起来，搀着臂膊立定，问伊说：
“你怎么啦？”
“我摔坏了。”
我想，我眼见你慢慢倒地，怎么会摔坏呢，装腔作势罢了，这真可憎恶。车夫多事，也正是自讨苦吃，现在你自己想法去。
车夫听了这老女人的话，却毫不踌躇，仍然搀着伊的臂膊，便一步一步的向前走。我有些诧异，忙看前面，是一所巡警分驻所，大风之后，外面也不见人。这车夫扶着那老女人，便正是向那大门走去。
我这时突然感到一种异样的感觉，觉得他满身灰尘的后影，刹时高大了，而且愈走愈大，须仰视才见。而且他对于我，渐渐的又几乎变成一种威压，甚而至于要榨出皮袍下面藏着的“小”来。
我的活力这时大约有些凝滞了，坐着没有动，也没有想，直到看见分驻所里走出一个巡警，才下了车。
巡警走近我说，“你自己雇车罢，他不能拉你了。”
我没有思索的从外套袋里抓出一大把铜元，交给巡警，说，“请你给他……”
风全住了，路上还很静。我走着，一面想，几乎怕敢想到自己。以前的事姑且搁起，这一大把铜元又是什么意思？奖他么？我还能裁判车夫么？我不能回答自己。
这事到了现在，还是时时记起。我因此也时时煞了苦痛，努力的要想到我自己。几年来的文治武力，在我早如幼小时候所读过的“子曰诗云”一般，背不上半句了。独有这一件小事，却总是浮在我眼前，有时反更分明，教我惭愧，催我自新，并且增长我的勇气和希望。
"A small incident" - Lu Xun, July 1920
The six years from when I moved from my home town to the capital have passed in the blink of an eye. Over this time, I've heard that our so-called country has had not a few milestones; but in my heart, none of them have left any impression, and if I try to search for what I have of these events, it only increases my discontent - truthfully, it makes me to look down on people more and more each day.
But there was one small incident that for me has significance, dragging me out of my discontent, that until now I have been unable to forget.
This was in the country's sixth year's [1917] winter, with the North wind blowing hard, when for work I had no choice but to commute in the mornings. When I started my commute there were almost no people to be seen, so it was easy to find a rickshaw, telling the driver to go to the S Gate [one of Beijing's gates]. It didn't take long for the North wind to die down and the dust on the road to clear, leaving a spotless white path, letting the rickshaw puller go faster. Just before the S Gate, suddenly on the rickshaw's axle there was a person, who slowly fell down.
The fallen person was a woman, with grizzled hair, and very ragged clothes. She had abruptly turned from the street and cut in front of us; despite the rickshaw puller giving her right of way, the woman's jacket hadn't been buttoned, and a gust of wind had caused it to open and finally wrap around the rickshaw axle. Luckily, the rickshaw puller had slowed down, or else the woman would have been caught and overturned, her head struck and bleeding.
She lay on the ground; the rickshaw puller put down the handles. I judged that this old woman wasn't hurt, and no one saw it, so I thought the stop was strange, and that he was asking for trouble and delaying my trip.
He said to her:
"Are you alright?"
"Something's broken."
I thought, I saw you fall slowly to the ground, how is it that she could have broken something, she's malingering, how reprehensible. The he's meddlesome and asking for trouble, getting his own ideas about walking around.
The rickshaw puller, upon hearing the old woman's words, did not hesitate for a moment, suddenly supporting the woman by her arm and walking forward step by step. I was a little astonished, forgetting to look forward to see a police station in front of us, upwind, with no one outside. The rickshaw puller was supporting the old woman as they made their way towards the big door.
In that moment I suddenly felt an unusual feeling, like the impression in the dust from the rickshaw puller became taller, or perhaps grew ever larger, so that I had to crane my neck to see it. Or maybe he gradually became more powerful, even as I felt my petty concerns being squeezed from underneath my leather jacket.
My life's urgent pace slowed down, sitting there without moving, without thinking, until I got off when a police patrolman approached the rickshaw.
The policeman said, "You should book another rickshaw, he won't be pulling you."
Without thinking, I pulled a roll of coins from my jacket, giving it to the policeman, saying "Please give this to him..."
The wind died down, the street was still very clean. I walked, lost in thought, almost scared of my introspection. With everything else in my life temporarily set aside, I asked myself, what was the meaning of that roll of coins? To reward him? Could I still judge the rickshaw driver? I couldn't bear to reply to myself.
To this day that incident is one I frequently remember. I therefore always remember to put aside my pain, to strive to think about myself. These past few years' cultural forces, like the classical aphorisms I memorized at a young age, have so faded from my memory that I can't even half recite them. Only this small incident, which hovers just in front of my eyes, sometimes even more clearly, has taught me to be ashamed, urged me to reform, and renewed my courage and hope.
Professional Translation linked here
Original:
一件小事 - 鲁迅 July 1920
我从乡下跑到京城里，一转眼已经六年了。其间耳闻目睹的所谓国家大事，算起来也很不少；但在我心里，都不留什么痕迹，倘要我寻出这些事的影响来说，便只是增长了我的坏脾气，——老实说，便是教我一天比一天的看不起人。
但有一件小事，却于我有意义，将我从坏脾气里拖开，使我至今忘记不得。
这是民国六年的冬天，大北风刮得正猛，我因为生计关系，不得不一早在路上走。一路几乎遇不见人，好容易才雇定了一辆人力车，教他拉到S门去。不一会，北风小了，路上浮尘早已刮净，剩下一条洁白的大道来，车夫也跑得更快。刚近S门，忽而车把上带着一个人，慢慢地倒了。
跌倒的是一个女人，花白头发，衣服都很破烂。伊从马路上突然向车前横截过来；车夫已经让开道，但伊的破棉背心没有上扣，微风吹着，向外展开，所以终于兜着车把。幸而车夫早有点停步，否则伊定要栽一个大斤斗，跌到头破血出了。
伊伏在地上；车夫便也立住脚。我料定这老女人并没有伤，又没有别人看见，便很怪他多事，要自己惹出是非，也误了我的路。
我便对他说，“没有什么的。走你的罢！”
车夫毫不理会，——或者并没有听到，——却放下车子，扶那老女人慢慢起来，搀着臂膊立定，问伊说：
“你怎么啦？”
“我摔坏了。”
我想，我眼见你慢慢倒地，怎么会摔坏呢，装腔作势罢了，这真可憎恶。车夫多事，也正是自讨苦吃，现在你自己想法去。
车夫听了这老女人的话，却毫不踌躇，仍然搀着伊的臂膊，便一步一步的向前走。我有些诧异，忙看前面，是一所巡警分驻所，大风之后，外面也不见人。这车夫扶着那老女人，便正是向那大门走去。
我这时突然感到一种异样的感觉，觉得他满身灰尘的后影，刹时高大了，而且愈走愈大，须仰视才见。而且他对于我，渐渐的又几乎变成一种威压，甚而至于要榨出皮袍下面藏着的“小”来。
我的活力这时大约有些凝滞了，坐着没有动，也没有想，直到看见分驻所里走出一个巡警，才下了车。
巡警走近我说，“你自己雇车罢，他不能拉你了。”
我没有思索的从外套袋里抓出一大把铜元，交给巡警，说，“请你给他……”
风全住了，路上还很静。我走着，一面想，几乎怕敢想到自己。以前的事姑且搁起，这一大把铜元又是什么意思？奖他么？我还能裁判车夫么？我不能回答自己。
这事到了现在，还是时时记起。我因此也时时煞了苦痛，努力的要想到我自己。几年来的文治武力，在我早如幼小时候所读过的“子曰诗云”一般，背不上半句了。独有这一件小事，却总是浮在我眼前，有时反更分明，教我惭愧，催我自新，并且增长我的勇气和希望。
Monday, October 7, 2013
On the concurrent majority and the Westminster system
With the recent US government shutdown, there has been a lot of talk on the nature of majority rule and the way our system works in comparison to others. I want to go over some of the things I've been hearing and my thoughts on them.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Bad NYT cooking section! Bad!
The New York Times online spread a deadly mindvirus in the form of bad chemistry in its cooking section back in 2010.
Oh, also you can make food grade lye by baking baking soda. Who knew?
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, which already includes one proton and so has a limited ability to take up more. But if you heat baking soda, its molecules react with one another to give off water and carbon dioxide and form solid sodium carbonate, which is proton-free.
Actually, the reaction he's talking about is relatively simple. It's the lime kiln effect, done all the time to make lime from calcium carbonate:
CaCO3 --> CaO + CO2
Similarly, using baking soda,
NaHCO3 --> NaOH + CO2
I'm afraid Harold McGee doesn't understand what he's talking about - claiming that it goes to sodium carbonate (aka washing soda) rather than to sodium hydroxide means that he gives a bunch of cockamamie advice from his bad information.
Actually, it IS lye, just probably a mixture of lye and baking soda. Some of the weight might come off of it in the form of water due to hydrated crystals, but most of it will be carbon dioxide. I'd wager if you put your baking soda through an oven self-cleaning cycle, on the other hand, you'd end up with a much higher proportion of NaOH versus baking soda, possibly over 90%. So don't handle it as if it's slightly stronger than lye, handle it for what it is: lye.Just spread a layer of soda on a foil-covered baking sheet and bake it at 250 to 300 degrees for an hour. You’ll lose about a third of the soda’s weight in water and carbon dioxide, but you gain a stronger alkali. Keep baked soda in a tightly sealed jar to prevent it from absorbing moisture from the air. And avoid touching or spilling it. It’s not lye, but it’s strong enough to irritate.
Oh, also you can make food grade lye by baking baking soda. Who knew?
Monday, August 12, 2013
Corporate lobbying writ large
Over a year ago I sank my teeth into Tim Worstall's horrifically uninformed rant about Celanese's TCX technology and the Renewable Fuels Standard. At the time, I didn't know where he got his position from - now I do. That website is, simply put, a vehicle for corporate lobbying. Lobbying for what, you might ask? For this: a law that would allow Celanese to make synthetic ethanol and sell it on the US fuel market under the ethanol standards set by the erstwhile Renewable Fuels Standard. Meanwhile, Celanese has already been hard at work implementing its technology in Nanjing, China and is in the process of doing so with PERTAMINA in Indonesia.
I don't want to re-hash arguments over the RFS - suffice to say, it is a deeply flawed law. However, I think that it's worth highlighting exactly what this Domestic Alternative Fuels Act is in context of the RFS. Far from being a way of opening up the US to a "free market" in alternative fuels, it is in fact a huge corporate giveaway to one corporation in particular (Celanese), and transparently so.
Besides the fact that the so-called Domestic Alternative Fuels Act as proposed will amend the RFS and make a mockery of the "renewable" part of that statement, it also falls well short of being a domestic alternative fuels bill. If it were, it would include provisions for natural gas vehicles, or fischer-tropsch diesel, or LPG vehicles, methanol for fuel, and the like - there are a whole slew of technologies that would be capable of counting as a domestic fuel if we wanted to refashion the RFS into simply a bill focused on energy security. But no, this bill (which I will uncharitably refer to as "the giveaway") only focuses on ethanol.
So why is focusing on ethanol so bad? First, it's a protected market with a protected production quota. Celanese and Pete Olson both know this, and are pushing forward their giveaway anyhow. Never mind that encouraging true domestic fuels security might involve other products. Never mind that ethanol was a bad fuel to blend from the beginning and encouraging other fueling methods, especially for fleet vehicles or trucking, might be much more beneficial to domestic energy security. No, we have to use ethanol, because that's where Celanese's product can go.
But wait, Josh, can't we produce non-fermentation ethanol from a method that Celanese doesn't use? Why yes, there is. It's called direct hydration of ethylene, and it hasn't been commercial since the mid-'90s, even though many college design textbooks (including my own) continue to use it as a process design example. The US has run for close to 2 decades without a single ethylene direct hydration plant, not because of the abundance of corn ethanol, but mainly because ethylene is an incredibly valuable product. Once corn ethanol became sufficiently advanced to drop the price of industrial alcohol below a certain point, any chemical company running a cracker could make more money by switching to polyethylene, or ethylene glycol, or a whole host of other products - and by and large that's what they did, years before the RFS.
At the moment, ethane (the main feedstock for ethylene production in this country) is at the cheapest it's been in a decade and up until a few weeks ago ethanol was at an all-time high because of last year's drought (recent projections of a bumper crop of corn this year and revisions to the RFS have since changed that). Presumably, these conditions are ideal for a revival of this venerable, time-tested technology. I set out to find out if that was true.
Some hacking at economic models later*, and I came to the conclusion that yes, direct ethylene hydration could make money if you sold ethanol into the fuel market - if whoever was running it wanted to throw away, at minimum, 20% of the value of their ethylene, not even counting the opportunity cost of adding value to it in, say, ethylene glycol.
So truthfully, Celanese is the only party that can possibly benefit from this bill because they are the only ones with an economical fossil ethanol technology. And they even set up a misleading lobbying website to do it, filled with loaded language about how only corn ethanol is legal in the United States.
And if you needed more proof, the instigator of this giveaway, one Pete Olson (R-Sugar Land), represents the Texas 22nd Congressional District. Guess where Celanese is located? Good little lapdog.
One final note that I'd like to make on this issue is why Celanese specifically has focused on ethanol. The truth is that Celanese has found itself in the unusual situation of being more competitive than ever, not in ethanol (though that would, in the absence of a carbon tax, which I continue to advocate, also be competitive) but for its main product: acetic acid. Celanese is one of the world's largest producer of acetic acid and related acetals, and due to the shale gas boom felt confident enough to even brave contract cancellation fees and litigation by cutting off its supply agreement with Methanex, the Trinidad-based methanol producer, because natural gas is cheap enough that restarting methanol production in the US is favorable for them again. I've since taken a good look at their patents (see, e.g., US8471075) and confirmed my suspicions: the only reason Celanese is targeting ethanol is because it's a bolt-on, single step transformation from their existing acetic acid process... and the company is obviously trying to unload as much of it, as a chemical or as a fuel, as possible to make as much money as possible.
In short, they're trying to bootstrap, via lobbying, into a higher value, protected market. Even if it means rank hypocrisy when they try to promote "free markets." And to anyone with a second-year undergrad technical background in process engineering, it's as plain as the nose on your face.
* Although I would like to show the evidence, I used some of my company's proprietary models in order to get the result, and am not interested in revealing commercially useful information or anything else that could lose me my job. I'm thus forced to speak about the uncompetitiveness of ethylene hydration as a process in vague generalities, which might also reveal something commercially useful but, on the other hand, is just a repeat of everything everyone in the industry has already known since around the time I was in grade school.
I don't want to re-hash arguments over the RFS - suffice to say, it is a deeply flawed law. However, I think that it's worth highlighting exactly what this Domestic Alternative Fuels Act is in context of the RFS. Far from being a way of opening up the US to a "free market" in alternative fuels, it is in fact a huge corporate giveaway to one corporation in particular (Celanese), and transparently so.
Besides the fact that the so-called Domestic Alternative Fuels Act as proposed will amend the RFS and make a mockery of the "renewable" part of that statement, it also falls well short of being a domestic alternative fuels bill. If it were, it would include provisions for natural gas vehicles, or fischer-tropsch diesel, or LPG vehicles, methanol for fuel, and the like - there are a whole slew of technologies that would be capable of counting as a domestic fuel if we wanted to refashion the RFS into simply a bill focused on energy security. But no, this bill (which I will uncharitably refer to as "the giveaway") only focuses on ethanol.
So why is focusing on ethanol so bad? First, it's a protected market with a protected production quota. Celanese and Pete Olson both know this, and are pushing forward their giveaway anyhow. Never mind that encouraging true domestic fuels security might involve other products. Never mind that ethanol was a bad fuel to blend from the beginning and encouraging other fueling methods, especially for fleet vehicles or trucking, might be much more beneficial to domestic energy security. No, we have to use ethanol, because that's where Celanese's product can go.
But wait, Josh, can't we produce non-fermentation ethanol from a method that Celanese doesn't use? Why yes, there is. It's called direct hydration of ethylene, and it hasn't been commercial since the mid-'90s, even though many college design textbooks (including my own) continue to use it as a process design example. The US has run for close to 2 decades without a single ethylene direct hydration plant, not because of the abundance of corn ethanol, but mainly because ethylene is an incredibly valuable product. Once corn ethanol became sufficiently advanced to drop the price of industrial alcohol below a certain point, any chemical company running a cracker could make more money by switching to polyethylene, or ethylene glycol, or a whole host of other products - and by and large that's what they did, years before the RFS.
At the moment, ethane (the main feedstock for ethylene production in this country) is at the cheapest it's been in a decade and up until a few weeks ago ethanol was at an all-time high because of last year's drought (recent projections of a bumper crop of corn this year and revisions to the RFS have since changed that). Presumably, these conditions are ideal for a revival of this venerable, time-tested technology. I set out to find out if that was true.
Some hacking at economic models later*, and I came to the conclusion that yes, direct ethylene hydration could make money if you sold ethanol into the fuel market - if whoever was running it wanted to throw away, at minimum, 20% of the value of their ethylene, not even counting the opportunity cost of adding value to it in, say, ethylene glycol.
So truthfully, Celanese is the only party that can possibly benefit from this bill because they are the only ones with an economical fossil ethanol technology. And they even set up a misleading lobbying website to do it, filled with loaded language about how only corn ethanol is legal in the United States.
And if you needed more proof, the instigator of this giveaway, one Pete Olson (R-Sugar Land), represents the Texas 22nd Congressional District. Guess where Celanese is located? Good little lapdog.
One final note that I'd like to make on this issue is why Celanese specifically has focused on ethanol. The truth is that Celanese has found itself in the unusual situation of being more competitive than ever, not in ethanol (though that would, in the absence of a carbon tax, which I continue to advocate, also be competitive) but for its main product: acetic acid. Celanese is one of the world's largest producer of acetic acid and related acetals, and due to the shale gas boom felt confident enough to even brave contract cancellation fees and litigation by cutting off its supply agreement with Methanex, the Trinidad-based methanol producer, because natural gas is cheap enough that restarting methanol production in the US is favorable for them again. I've since taken a good look at their patents (see, e.g., US8471075) and confirmed my suspicions: the only reason Celanese is targeting ethanol is because it's a bolt-on, single step transformation from their existing acetic acid process... and the company is obviously trying to unload as much of it, as a chemical or as a fuel, as possible to make as much money as possible.
In short, they're trying to bootstrap, via lobbying, into a higher value, protected market. Even if it means rank hypocrisy when they try to promote "free markets." And to anyone with a second-year undergrad technical background in process engineering, it's as plain as the nose on your face.
* Although I would like to show the evidence, I used some of my company's proprietary models in order to get the result, and am not interested in revealing commercially useful information or anything else that could lose me my job. I'm thus forced to speak about the uncompetitiveness of ethylene hydration as a process in vague generalities, which might also reveal something commercially useful but, on the other hand, is just a repeat of everything everyone in the industry has already known since around the time I was in grade school.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Growing up with science books
This is a part 2 of a set of posts where I talk about how my attitude towards reading in science and technology has changed over the years. My first post was on periodicals, and this one will instead focus on books.
Unlike for magazines, my enthusiasm for different books and authors of science fiction or nonfiction has risen or fallen unpredictably. Instead of going through every instance, most of the changes in my tastes can be summed up by a few examples.
Unlike for magazines, my enthusiasm for different books and authors of science fiction or nonfiction has risen or fallen unpredictably. Instead of going through every instance, most of the changes in my tastes can be summed up by a few examples.
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