Hi Doug - the following response was supplied to me in response to your 
response of the FEQAB response (yea, its getting a little thick):

(1) FEQAB requested you  provide the analytical technique that was used to 
identify catnium as an element.  While it is true that many elements have 
ionic states, the FEQAB has not generally accepted such answers.  A fellow 
Techneter's response was disqualified a few weeks ago for providing a 
technically correct answer, but for the isotope of an element.  

(2) Further, you missed the implied intention of the FEQAB request that 
you authenticate your half fractional with some technique that has 
actually isolated the element.  FEQAB was looking for a technique that 
identified the element with some degree of certainty.  The fact that 
catnium has a co-elution issue with ammonium means that it can not be 
separated and thus identified with any degree of certainty with only that 
technique.  Those two ions share the exact same retention time and is the 
reason why other techniques are required. Sadly, the better column 
argument is still being perpetrated by column salesman to sell more 
expensive columns to the less suspecting IC users.  
 
(3) You claimed Ludwig is an idiot and accused him of analyzing cations 
using the wrong chromatographic set-up.  Those that know that story and 
Ludwig understand that the situation was a cruel prank played by doctorate 
students from Chromatography Polytechnic University, who were highly 
jealous of Ludwig's quick mastery of the technique.  One of those graduate 
students was Doug's great, great uncle.  It seems that Doug's great, great 
uncle thought he had discovered catnium and had based his entire doctoral 
thesis on defining it.  He had hopes of being a great scientist.  Ludwig, 
by pure mistake, analyzed a sample supposedly containing catnium as it had 
gotten mixed up in some of his calibration samples.  Ludwig found that 
ammonium had the same exact retention time as the other ion. Smelling a 
rat, Ludwig presented his findings to Dr. Di Onex, the founder of 
university, who immediately removed Doug's great, great uncle from the 
program.  Dr. Di Onex agreed with Ludwig's assessment and encouraged him 
to draft the "No Cat-P here" paper as a rebuttal to the work of Doug's 
great, great uncle, who came to be known as Amund "the Lame".  Being 
incensed to immense proportions, Amund the Lame and some cohorts, who had 
helped Amund, played a nasty prank that made Ludwig look incompetent.  
They switched his IC system and claimed he ran Amund's samples on the 
wrong set-up and that was why he didn't find anything.  However, there was 
no fooling Dr. Di Onex as he was the father of IC.  Years later Doug's 
great, great uncle admitted to playing the prank on Ludwig, along with 
some others.  Doug's family still perpetrates the catnium half fractional 
today, but has not yet authenticated the element.  Their only evidence are 
the IC results given by Amund the Lame, which were called into question by 
Ludwig.


Wow! I never imagined that a simple Friday Element Quiz would reveal a 
skeleton in Doug's closet!

Dave



From:   Douglas Pauls <[log in to unmask]>
To:     <[log in to unmask]>
Date:   12/06/2013 01:28 PM
Subject:        Re: [TN] NTC Friday Element Quiz Answer
Sent by:        TechNet <[log in to unmask]>



I must vigorously protest the horrid lack of reasoning at the 
disqualification.

(1) a number of animals such as small dogs, hamsters and pigeons go "poof" 


on a tin roof at 150C so that observation was not considered a defining 
characteristic unique to catnium; 

I did not claim that it was unique to catnium.  All of the creatures that 
you list are often the prey of cats and may have trace amounts of catnium. 

 You don't see bears or wolves on hot tin roofs going Poof. 

(2) Dave Hillman has never had to degauss a cat from Joan's refrigerator. 
He has been quoted to say "I love cats, I just can't eat a whole one" 
which  has gotten him in serious issues with Joan; 

I sense a cover-up here.  I know there is that third cat in the house that 

no one ever sees. It obviously runs in terror from you. I am pretty sure 
Joan said it was from one of Dave's experiments gone horribly wrong.

(3) Discussions with a number of Ion Chromatography experts (who shall 
remain nameless) provided this information " Technically Doug is analyzing 


for an ion using IC and not the element so that detail may be grounds for 
disqualification. More importantly, numerous IC experts maintain that 
catnium co-elutes with ammonium since they have very similar chemical 
properties and that separating the two requires additional techniques 
beyond IC.  Ludwig von Thermopolis Fischer wrote a paper entitled, "No 
CAT-P here", where he tried doing as Doug suggested.  He could not 
distinguish between ammonium and catnium, which is why most 
chromatographers don't even list catnium as a valid ion.  You might say 
that in the chromatography world ammonium has more stank on it.". 

I wanna know who the traitors are.  The Death Star has not been used for a 

while.  Dave you should know better than to argue chemistry with a 
chemist.   Ludwig was an idiot.  For years he claimed he could not detect 
catnium ions and it could not be separated out.  He kept injecting cation 
samples into his system that was setup for analyzing anions.  Yup, no 
cations here.  And that was back in 1982.  The columns today are much 
better and I have eluent structures that will do the separation.  Here, I 
will prove it.  I have attached my last calibration run. Catnium is 
clearly separable from ammonium. 

As to the argument that an ion is not the element, you have to be drunk. 
If I analyze a solution and see sodium ions, where do you think it came 
from?  Americium?  Sodium ions come from sodium, magnesium ions come from 
magnesium, cations come from cats, etc. 

I reject your rejection and am asking the court of public opinion to 
overturn the disqualification.  And you owe me a new Lame-O-Meter as your 
response broke the one I have.





Doug Pauls


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