Wootz in a name ? or should that be: Watts in a patent?
A little Hart-felt [sic] science-based e-humor, for your TGIF - it
is hoped.
And some improbable cross-connections, for another... From India
to the Middle east to the nanotech lab, with a pull-out from the
DC beltway: that is the course of this "monkey-business"
quasi-Burksian Connections trail.
And BTW, have you noticed that in politics - there is deeply
ingrained in the bottom-line this kind of "tit-for-tat" poetic
justice and uncanny reciprocity, which 'returns favors' with
amazing regularity?
One decade, one party gets-the-others goat in a huge name-shame,
and then fast forward a 'score' to even the score, so to speak,
and you have deja-vu all over again. Hope this word-play doesn't
get un Berra-able
Not that anybody remembers Gary Hart anymore. And speaking of
sad-primates who will be quickly forgotten, a former Virginia
Sinator [sic] knows a thing or two about aping simian names - and
perhaps realizes now that arcane racial slurs are arguably one of
the more powerful of weapons-which-can-backfire ... such is the
politics of bigotry.
...but hey ... little sympathy is due there, because for one
thing, the pol in question won his way into Congress on the
strength of name recognition: his dad being a legendary NFL coach
inducted into the Football Hall of Fame. Dad's name recognition
didn't hurt the present Beltway lame duck either, but that's
another story (and/or the next round of tit-for-tat retribution in
a few months- "the revenge of Monica," so to speak).
For those who don't remember the broken-Harted politician who was
almost a US president, save for monkeying around with another
brand of Rice ... check out the photo about halfway down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Hart
Even to the dedicated word-phreak, the latest payback and the
particular "insult" now being labeled liberally as a slur
(macaca) - was kinda lame, don't ya think? as it is not that
widely known outside the Raj - nor was it even an obvious racial
slur to 99% of Va. voters. But that is the power of names: nomen
est numen, as Nero might harp. Sure "caca" is bad ju-ju, and the
"ma" kind of personalizes that stink . but let's put a fork into
that monkey and get back to science-connections, starting
pre-Raj... fergetabout close calls and name-phreaking. Watt [sic]
goes around, comes around ... as they say, and this was little
more than the revenge of Gary.
Back in 1755 another notorious up-and-comer named Watt had been
granted a patent by Parliament which prevented anybody else from
making his steam-engine. And the good engineer, James Watt charged
his customers a premium - based on a rather horsey formula. Watt
calculated that a draft horse could exert a continuous pull of 180
lb, and then described every engine he made in relation to such an
ideal horse (actually no horse can pull this off for more than a
few hours w/o oat-refueling. If a customer bought a 10 HP engine,
Watt calculate dhow much "hay" was saved by using his machine and
the buyer then had to fork over 1/3 of that every year for the
next 25. When James Watt died in 1819, he was indeed a very
wealthy Scot - but that was a much due to the availability of
cheap iron and steel, as to any other factor. Two hundred year
earlier, the iron cost 10 times more than in Watts day.
Wootz is a real name for the prototypical strong metal: a steel
alloy first developed in India. It is perhaps the strongest of all
steel before the superalloys of the jet-engine era, having a
distinctive pattern or carbon banding within a tempered martensite
matrix. Developed in India about the time the Romans were taking
over the Med, the steel is better known to us in the USA as
Damascus steel. The word "wootz" is related to the word for steel
in several Asian languages, also found in the word: Wok.
The small-batch techniques needed for making Damascus steel died
out around the start of the industrial Age, as did the slaves
needed to temper it (often with their own blood, it is said). The
principal sources of special iron ores needed for its production
were depleted, and cheaper steels of Europe made finding
alternatives a failing chore. The needed "impurities" in the ore
source contained are tungsten and vanadium but all they do, as we
now know is to force the carbon - which is the strength of this
steel, to form itself into what we know call carbon nanotubes.
All of that gets us connected-up to the story in today's science
news. If you want the play-by-play ironed out in every detail,
instead of the executive summary, tune into Slashdot:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/16/2348254
the verbosity in those 230+ comments will make this piece look
tame <g>.
And speaking of uppity names, now in vogue to supplant more
recognizable copywritten tradenames: "Tylenol" has the generic
name of Acetaminophen, as most of us know. Aleve is really
Naproxen - etc but with that suggestive connotation, which is
worth millions. Nowa-daze, the always dazed FDA has been looking
for a generic name for "Viagra," the wealthiest of all trademarks,
but soon to be as generic as your average woody.
After careful consideration by a team of government experts, The
FDA recently announced it has settled on the generic name of
Ibepokin. Also considered were Dixafix, and of course
Nocoxafloppin.
But hey, Watts in a name?
Signed,
Harry S. Tuttle racoonteur and name-phreak
BTW do you know what the "S" stands for?
