Yeah, I stopped being interested in my family tree when I found out that 1) part of the family would have been million or billionaires now if they had back American in the Revolutionary War, 2) some of them sold everything they had to get away from being coalminers in Wales and got here in tie for the coal boom, guess what the only work they could get was? And 3) some of them got thrown out of Scotland for cannibalism.
In 1886, Viktor Meyer published a paper describing a synthesis that produced good yields. He reacted 2-chloroethanol with aqueous potassium sulfide and treated the resulting thiodiglycol with phosphorus trichloride. The purity of this compound was much higher and the adverse health effects on exposure, as a consequence, much more severe. These symptoms presented themselves in an assistant, and, in order to rule out that the assistant was suffering from a mental illness (faking the symptoms), Meyer had the compound tested on rabbits, which then died.
Oooh, that's pretty cold, both for the rabbits and for the assistant! Then again, my assistants often fake mental illness so it is a reasonable thing to check for, when being thorough.
Hahaha! This reminds me of a story one of my uncles told me about his two grandfathers... amazing how many "surprisingly bad" things one's family can have floating around in their history.
My great-grandfather ran an "ice cream store" during the prohibition. His son (my grandfather) has about five midle names, one for each of his dad's drinking buddies.
^ That's probably (aside from the obvious reasons) because the first panel looks like he's air-quoting "my grandfather was a dirt farmer". Which is really confusing for the second it takes to read down to the next speech bubble.
Also, a morbid part of my brain is wondering whether the advances in gas production facilitated by the Meyer Method helped them with their... later advances in that particular field. Ahem. Told you it was morbid.
The would be Dr. Fritz Habber who not only developed Zyklon-B nerve agent to help farmers but also a method of synthetic nitrogen fixing of the soil which was a boon and now a bust. He was a Jew and Hitler wanted to get rid of him with his own nerve agent. (I can't recall his fate, but he won a Nobel Prize.) Because of Habber's genius he gave us an average 2 billion more starving people on the planet and growing dead areas in the ocean from the nitrogen runoff. You do something good then it turns out bad later in the long run.
I had a distant relative that was a cannibal. He was stationed on some little island during WWII and was supposed to teach the locals how to fight Japanese; he went a bit native.
I thought the title of this one was "How to Find Your Robots", and consequently got very excited. You see I've been looking for these two 'droids for the longest time...
Raise your hand if you googled "meyer method." Keep your hand up if you understood none of what you found and are still unsure of what to believe. (FTW, Scott, as always!)
As Meyer is an occupational name, about as common as Schmidt (Smith) sharing it with the mustard gas process inventor is a very low evidence of relationship.
However, as Barry Mackenzie sang:
Oh yes he is: A ratbag (yes he is) A raving ratbag (yes he is) He's a screwball, he's a nut case there's no doubt; And if you think you're ratbag free, Then just shake your family tree, Hear the great big raving ratbags fallin' out.
If anybody's interested in their own roots, there are companies out there that will do it for you. I hear that they charge a couple of hundred quid to research your family tree and then a couple of thousand quid to keep quiet about it.
May 12, 2011
Reader Comments (29)
Ah, so granpa Meyer sold his moonshine "process" to the germans? That makes sense.
They really did use the Meyer Method. You might very well qualify for the International Black Sheep Society of Genealogists.
And I thought my family was special for having an axe murderer...
Southern moonshiners r the best
Heh, I read this after watching episodes of Wolverine and the X-men.
Heh heh, dirt.
Yeah, I stopped being interested in my family tree when I found out that 1) part of the family would have been million or billionaires now if they had back American in the Revolutionary War, 2) some of them sold everything they had to get away from being coalminers in Wales and got here in tie for the coal boom, guess what the only work they could get was? And 3) some of them got thrown out of Scotland for cannibalism.
This "Meyer Method" intrigues me, and I wish to learn more.
From Wikipedia:
In 1886, Viktor Meyer published a paper describing a synthesis that produced good yields. He reacted 2-chloroethanol with aqueous potassium sulfide and treated the resulting thiodiglycol with phosphorus trichloride. The purity of this compound was much higher and the adverse health effects on exposure, as a consequence, much more severe. These symptoms presented themselves in an assistant, and, in order to rule out that the assistant was suffering from a mental illness (faking the symptoms), Meyer had the compound tested on rabbits, which then died.
Oooh, that's pretty cold, both for the rabbits and for the assistant! Then again, my assistants often fake mental illness so it is a reasonable thing to check for, when being thorough.
So now I've Googled "The Meyer Method"... How about a BI on explaining my search history to my wife?
And all I could think of in the first panel was George Carlin's rant about people who make "quotation marks in the air"...
Hahaha! This reminds me of a story one of my uncles told me about his two grandfathers... amazing how many "surprisingly bad" things one's family can have floating around in their history.
dirt farmer sounds like a euphanism...
My great-grandfather ran an "ice cream store" during the prohibition. His son (my grandfather) has about five midle names, one for each of his dad's drinking buddies.
^ That's probably (aside from the obvious reasons) because the first panel looks like he's air-quoting "my grandfather was a dirt farmer". Which is really confusing for the second it takes to read down to the next speech bubble.
Also, a morbid part of my brain is wondering whether the advances in gas production facilitated by the Meyer Method helped them with their... later advances in that particular field. Ahem. Told you it was morbid.
euphanism sounds like a euphemism...
Wait -- which gramps had the kids & free child labor? I think panel 2 and 3 are out of order...?
How does a dirt farmer find the dirt after he has planted it?
Dirt farmer:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dirt+farmer
And I thought rock farming was bad.
The would be Dr. Fritz Habber who not only developed Zyklon-B nerve agent to help farmers but also a method of synthetic nitrogen fixing of the soil which was a boon and now a bust. He was a Jew and Hitler wanted to get rid of him with his own nerve agent. (I can't recall his fate, but he won a Nobel Prize.) Because of Habber's genius he gave us an average 2 billion more starving people on the planet and growing dead areas in the ocean from the nitrogen runoff. You do something good then it turns out bad later in the long run.
I had a distant relative that was a cannibal. He was stationed on some little island during WWII and was supposed to teach the locals how to fight Japanese; he went a bit native.
I thought the title of this one was "How to Find Your Robots", and consequently got very excited. You see I've been looking for these two 'droids for the longest time...
Raise your hand if you googled "meyer method." Keep your hand up if you understood none of what you found and are still unsure of what to believe. (FTW, Scott, as always!)
Dear god, that caricature looks EXACTLY like me.
As Meyer is an occupational name, about as common as Schmidt (Smith) sharing it with the mustard gas process inventor is a very low evidence of relationship.
However, as Barry Mackenzie sang:
Oh yes he is:
A ratbag (yes he is)
A raving ratbag (yes he is)
He's a screwball, he's a nut case there's no doubt;
And if you think you're ratbag free,
Then just shake your family tree,
Hear the great big raving ratbags fallin' out.
Maybe you're just related to George Meyer, comedy godfather to the Simpsons.
If anybody's interested in their own roots, there are companies out there that will do it for you.
I hear that they charge a couple of hundred quid to research your family tree and then a couple of thousand quid to keep quiet about it.
"In the Meyer method, thiodiglycol is produced from chloroethanol and potassium sulfide and chlorinated with phosphorus trichloride:
3 (HO-CH2CH2)2S + 2 PCl3 → 3 (Cl-CH2CH2)2S + 2 P(OH)3"
this doesn't make much sense to me, but Google have all the answers hehehe