News-script Private Sector Questioned
DISPATCHER FOR IONS This handsome unit is the Control Panel for an automatic ionXchange system which purifies make-up water going to the high-pressure boilers of a large Midwestern public utility power plant. Inside, this Controller is just as beautiful and symmetrical as it is on the outside, the better to serve its several purposes. It (1) takes one De-Ionizer off stream and puts a regenerated unit on at appropriate intervals, (2) governs the flow circuit and duration of each part of the regeneration cycle, (3) indicates, with lights, what is going on at any given time, (4) records required data, (5) has provisions for adjustments and alterations if needed, and (6) keeps itself warm and dry inside. This is a custom-designed unit, built to meet a particular user's needs. We also build many standardized automatic ionXchangers, with a wide variety of optional features, which have been proved by years of successful operation. If you are so bold as to inquire further about such matters, please address Mr. Wallace S. Morrison, Illinois Water Treatment Co., 840 Cedar St., Rockford, Illinois 61101.
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Owing possibly to some kind of Freudian slip, a recent issue of a wellknown magazine said that a particular man had been promoted at "the U.S. Navel Propellant Plant/' Whereupon, the editor of C&EN received (by air mail, what's more) a strong though reasoned note from Dr. Walter J. Lehmann of the University of California ( Riverside ). "I think," Dr. Lehmann wrote, "that the U.S. Government ought to get out of this business and leave it to the private sector." News-scripts hates to point out fatal flaws in the reasoning of paid-up subscribers, but one has one's duty. No one can refute Dr. Lehmann's implied contention that there is, or soon will be, a pressing need for high-speed navels. But there's no profit in them. Left to the private sector, they would soon wither away for lack of attention, and the U.S. would fall still further behind in the race to win men's minds.
Polyethylene Drums Now Legal for Whiskey The Internal Revenue Service has ruled (Rev. Rul. 64-297) that you can pack and ship distilled spirits and denatured spirits in certain kinds of polyethylene drums. The authorized containers : • A polyethylene drum overpacked in an ICC J-6 removable-head steel drum. • A 55-gallon polyethylene overpacked in a steel drum. • A 15-gallon polyethylene overpacked in a fiber drum.
drum drum
There are a few qualifying regula-
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tions, and the drums must meet certain specifications, but that's the sense of Rev. Rul. 64-297. The new ruling, incidentally, incorporates the sense of Rev. Rul. 54-438, which is, therefore, superseded. One difficulty with the new ruling is that when you label distilled spirits, you can't claim any age for the time the spirits spent in a polyethylene drum. Nor can you claim any age acquired earlier in wooden containers unless the records clearly support the claim. Elsewhere on the alcoholic front, a winemaker can now add volatile fruitflavor concentrate to natural grape or berry wine he makes himself without having his product classified as an "imitation wine" under the Federal Alcohol Administration Act. The new deal was created by Public Law 88653, which amends the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 in this and several other respects. The volatile fruitflavor concentrate normally is lost during the fermentation and production of wine. Under the new law, the winemaker must produce it from the same kind and variety of grape or berry he used to make the wine.
Department of Obscure Information • 16,863 psychiatrists are practicing actively in the U.S., 2 2 % of them in New York State. • T h e r e are about 112 varieties of hair spray on the British market. • Per capita consumption of paper and paperboard came to 466 pounds in 1963 in the U.S. • 20 times more men than women suffer from defective color vision.
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Population Outracing Food Supply The present political problems of nations will pale as the enormity of the world food problem becomes more clearly evident in about 1975. Some projections predict famine of historic proportions. A C&EN Feature
