Black No More

A decade and a half after the appearance of Black No More, Laura Z. Hobson s Gentleman s Agreement (1947) offered yet another meditation on whiteness and difference. Like Black No More, this novel evokes a... 

The flask is fitted with a Claisen head, and excess thionyl chloride is distilled at reduced pressure (water pump) and collected in a receiver cooled in a mixture of dry ice and acetone (Note 5). The flask is heated with a water bath that is slowly raised from room temperature to about 90°, then held at that temperature until no more distillation occurs and a black residue remains. 

It s a good late-sixteenth-century hand, not the court hand of clerks, my paleographic colleagues would say, but the italic style of an educated man or woman, accustomed to writing a good deal. The black strokes jog across the page with no more force or flourish than necessary, as if the writer was old and could spare little time for more than was needed to tell the tale. 

This fore-run turns black on standing, but if stored no more than a few days it may be assumed to be an equimolar mixture of furfural and acetic anhydride and may be used as starting material for subsequent runs. If no additional runs are to be made, the yield may be increased by 5-10% by redistilling the fore-run. 

What makes our approach rather different from the mainstream international cleaner production (CP) movement is the desire to abolish the dominating "black-box" techniques. Instead of regarding a production facility as no more than a given set of benign inputs and polluting outputs, we insist that one should seek the best ways to affect a prospective cleaner object within the "black box". 

A study of over 3000 carbon black workers employed primarily in Western Europe determined that smoking was the principal factor affecting lung function in the workers and exposure to carbon black had no more effect than that expected from a nuisance dust. There was no evidence of any increased incidence of radiological abnormality in the workers surveyed. A follow-up on much of this same... 

Unfortunately, there are so many different ways to create universes by compactify-ing the six dimensions that string theory is difficult to relate to the real universe. In 1993, researchers suggested that if string theory takes into account the quantum effects of charged mini black holes, the thousands of 4-D solutions may collapse to only one. Tiny black holes, with no more mass than an elementary particle, and strings may be two descriptions of the same object. Thanks to the theory of mini black holes, physicists now hope to mathematically follow the evolution of the universe and select one particular Calabi-Yau compactification—a first step to a testable theory of everything. ... 

If 100 parts of this carbonate, dissolved in nitric acid and separated by the alkaline carbonates, gives us 100 parts of artificial carbonate, and if the base of these two combinations is the black oxide, we must recognize that invisible hand which holds the balance for us in the formulation of compounds and fashions properties according to its will. We must conclude that nature operates not otherwise in the depths of the world than at its surface or in the hands of man. These ever-invariable proportions, these constant attributes, which characterize true compounds of art or of nature, in a word, this pondus naturae so well seen by Stahl all this, I say, is no more at the power of the chemist than the law of election which presides at all combinations. From these considerations is it not right to believe that the native carbonate of copper... 

Black oil should be a pure petroleum product free from fatty oils, fatty acids, resins, soaps, or other nonhydrocarbons. Sediment and sludge, insoluble in paraffin naphtha, should not exceed 12% when determined by the methods of the American Association of State Highway Officials. The product should be a distilled or fractionated oil, and should contain no oil-well water or residue therefrom. The product should be free of or contain no more than traces of naphthenic acids, naphthenes, mercaptans, soluble sulfide, and volatile sulfur derivatives. The oil should flow freely from the tank car at temperatures above 32 F. 

Initially, at room temperature, the chlorine reacted rapidly with the humus. This reaction was evident by the change in color of the solution from a thick black to a transparent brown immediately after the addition of the chlorine. A drastic drop of pH was observed after 17 h (e.g., a drop from 7.0 to 2.6 while being chlorinated at neutral pH). Any storage after 90 h was at 4 °C for no more than 48 additional hours. The chlorinated samples were lyophilized to dryness and stored in a refrigerator. The acetone-soluble fraction of each sample was subjected to the following analyses. 

The tube is set in a circular oven and a steady current of dry ammonia (dried with lime) from a generator or cylinder is led in over toe chloride. The oveu temperature is raised slowly to 450-500° C and held there until no more fumes of ammonium chloride escape. After cooling, the product is powdered in a mortar and re-ignited in ammonia as described. Yield nearly theoretical. To remove traces of unreacted chromium (III) chloride, the black product is treated with 50ml of 3N hydrochloric acid and one-half gram of granulated tin in the cold for about 15 minutes. The excess tin is removed, the product washed well with water, suction-filtered, and dried at 105 12O. The nitride is hydrolyzed slowly by hot aqueous alkali. 

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