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One major concern of this year's presidential election
was the federal judiciary. With Republicans, heavily
supported by pro-life
voters, in charge of Congress
and the White House, there's talk of how a litmus
test
might be applied to judicial nominees.
It's been nearly 40 years since I took a chemistry class, so I had to do some reading to find the basis for this metaphor.
It starts with lichen, which we've all seen growing across rocks in the mountains. Lichen looks like a plant, perhaps a type of moss, but it's actually a symbiotic combination of two organisms. One is a fungus which creates a network of filaments; the other is an algae that grows in the filaments. They nourish each other, and it's a successful partnership. There are at least 15,000 varieties of lichen, and they flourish in the most hostile environments all over the world -- including our harsh zone above timberline.
Lichens have been harvested for food and medicine, and
some lichens produce chemicals that can be used as dyes.
Among them are two species found in the Netherlands. The
dyes extracted from those lichens aren't stable; they
change color depending on the chemical environment.
Litmus
apparently comes from an old Dutch word whose
meaning is unclear today.
We used litmus paper in high-school chemistry experiments, although in these more safety-conscious times, that might be forbidden. I have read that today's teenagers are denied the educational pleasure of dropping a piece sodium into a beaker of water. The sodium grabs hydrogen from the water, giving up heat in a gaudy frothing display, and the resulting liquid, a solution of sodium hydroxide, changes the color of the litmus paper.
Back when I had a day job, and thus had time for hobbies, I used litmus paper. The hobby was home-brewing, and I finally quite because it got too complicated.
You start simply, making beer from the hop-flavored malt extract they used to sell in grocery stores. Then you buy imported extracts and experiment with fresh hops for boiling and conditioning. There's always another step toward brewing perfection. I never malted my own barley, but I reached the point where I was cracking malt and running four-hour step-infusion mashes, each batch choreographed so I could krausen it at bottling time with sweet wort from the next batch -- no processed sugar in my beer, nosiree.
When you brew that way, you need to adjust the acidity of the brewing water -- six-row malts respond differently than two-row malts, and Salida tap water was a little too alkaline -- and that meant using litmus paper to be sure everything was aligned for the perfect brew.
But even if there were at least two Colorado brewers active in last week's election (Pete Coors and John Hickenlooper), we're getting a long way from litmus-test politics here. In politics, a litmus test presumably gives us a definitive result -- for or against abortion, or gun ownership, or gay marriage, just as a chemical compound is either acidic or alkaline.
That metaphor fits well in modern America, because the litmus dye turns blue for alkaline and red for acidic -- just as we have a Blue America and a Red America, thanks to the contrasting colors the TV networks use for their electoral maps.
In litmus-test terms, we could discuss Alkali America and Acid America, and I, for one, would enjoy reading about how Acid America goes to church more often, while Alkali America protests whenever a right-thinker tries to call it Base America.
Remember playing with acidic vinegar and alkaline baking soda? When you mix them, you get a violent reaction.
After the election, the winner and the loser, and a host of other important people, urged us to unite and get along. But as long as we have a political climate that disdains compromise, then litmus chemistry might be an apt metaphor -- a violent reaction, rather than a productive mixture.
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