Back in 2019, then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a bill to keep sanctions in place on Russia’s largest aluminum producer. In January, as the Senate debated whether to permit the Trump administration to lift sanctions on Russia’s largest aluminum producer, two men with millions of dollars riding on the outcome met for dinner …
Tag: Aluminum
Aug 16 2019
The Russian Connection: Kentucky’s Catch 22
The Senate Majority Leader, Moscow Mitch, has put his home state, Kentucky, behind the proverbial 8 ball with his Catch 22 legislative maneuvering to secure a deal with a still sanctioned Russian aluminum oligarch, Oleg Derepaska. His economic treason has left his state’s legislature and the US Congress no room to reign in Russian interference …
Aug 15 2019
The Russian Connection: Moscow Mitch Pas de Deux With Putin
Last month, on the heels of Robert Mueller’s report and testimony before two House committees, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, formerly known as “The Human Hybrid Turtle,” blocked consideration of two bills that were aimed at protecting the US voting process and combating Russian interference. It earned him the new nickname “Moscow Mitch” that prompted …
May 17 2019
The Russian Connection: McConnell and Deripaska, A Love Story
While everyone has been fixated on the Trump’s current temper tantrum and fight for abortion rights, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Putin’s “favorite industrialist”, Oleg Derispaska are having an affair in Kentucky. Kentucky might be going into business with the Russian mafia. Not the rough-and-tumble “Godfather” crowd with the bent noses and such …
Jan 09 2012
Pique the Geek 20120108: Aluminum Part II of II
Last week we discussed the production and uses of aluminum, and that piece got a lot of comment traffic and made the Kos Recommended List, which I value greatly. Some of the comments asked questions and made me decide to write a follow up piece, because some of the questions were excellent in their own right, and some of them also caused me to think a bit further about our use of this material.
Tonight we shall concentrate on a few more uses of aluminum, why it is so unique, and less environmentally damaging ways to produce it. It turns out that there is an experimental process to refine aluminum that does not produce nearly as much carbon dioxide as the Hall-Héroult process, and might be more energy efficient as well.
There is no time like the present, so let us get started! That is unless you have an objection.
Jan 02 2012
Pique the Geek 20120101: Aluminum
Aluminum (or aluminium to our UK friends) is one of the most useful metals that are commonly available. Unlike other metals such as iron, copper, and the like, aluminum has been used in large quantities only fairly recently. Actually, alumimium is the better name, because it is in keeping with the naming of most metallic elements with the “ium” ending. However, we shall use the US term. Interestingly, the brilliant British chemist Sir Humphrey Davy called it aluminum, but he never produced the actual metal. In addition, his first name for it was alumium, and folks from My Little Town who were older used that name! That really should be the systematic name for it.
Aluminum compounds have been known for centuries, but the free metal only since around 1825 and even then in an impure form. It was not until very late in the 19th century that aluminum was produced on a large scale, using a process that is essentially identical with the process being used even now.
Recent Comments