68 My inbox has become filled with people requesting that I link to their site or something so I figured I would give them a chance to reply here, taking their comment out of the spam folder this one time. Also people can come and post links to their favorite chemistry blogs, online services, sites and other chemistry related stuff.
So, use this opportunity to post in the comments whatever you want and with a link to some cool chemistry blog. I need to update my blogroll anyway and would like input on what sites are ass kickin.’ So feel free to include your blog there too. I read only a few other blogs ’cause I don’t have too much time, but there are shittons of good blogs out there that need “exposure.”
Some suggestions:
- How’s that resynthesis of Hexacyclinol comin’ J.J.?
- Sending respects for the passing of Little George Whitesides Jr. (the goldfish)
- TLC plates – glass backing, plastic backing or aluminum backing?
- If someone publishes a paper with just complete and total shit for an experimental section, does “cruel and unusual punishments” still concern us? (I’m following this procedure and I swear to God, these idiots just guessed at the NMR shifts and wrote down a random two digit number for a yield.)
- Is it alright to punch someone if they insist on talking to you while you have your iPod “go the fuck away” earbuds in?
- Is it alright to kick them while they are on the ground?
- Then step on their throat?
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It’s nice to see that your Democrat friends don’t give a damn about science either:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01.....r=homepage
Screwing America’s future is a bipartisan effort, you know.
Aside from the budget increases we were going to get from a Republican congress, sure.
It wasn’t going to be enough. There are far more things to think about than funding anyway.
Like changing the tax code to screw me further and do their best to drive up gas prices again.
Just as long as they keep their hands out of the pharmaceutical industry, I guess I’ll be (somewhat) happy.
Oh cry me a river. Unless you own a member of the pharmaceutical industry, you’re not going to see any more of a spanking than you would have under the former administration. And I’m sure starting a war in the middle of our oil fields is far worse than anything we can do domestically to jack up gas prices.
The term is “Democratic.” The use of democrat as an adjective is a slur. Please refrain. =)
I know.
Forget iPod – much worse are those people that always come to talk to you while you weighing a moisture-sensitive compound or doing filtration on something that likes to catch on fire. Eventually I found out that yelling on to of my voice “Go away. Go fucking away!” three or four times usualy gets rid of them (unfortunately they always come back).
Try fire to get rid of relapses once and for all.
When I was a postdoc, I got my first ipod, a nice 20gb gen 4 model. I used to wear it at the bench in the hopes that people would let run my columns in peace. They did not. Apparently the ear buds were too small. So, I went to the local Walmart and bought a set of headphones that were so huge, they obscured my head from the side. Not only did they have the desired effect of keeping people from talking to me, they kept my head warm in winter. I find that working with thiols also keeps people away. If you have no real need for a thiol group, just spread a little thiophenol round the lip of your hood.
I would honored if you would add me to the blog roll, sir.
Aluminum backing all the way, man. It’s easier to tape them to your lab book.
You realize that taping your dirty TLC plates into your lab notebook is disgusting, don’t you?
Were you not held enough as an infant or something?
Aluminium plates are a bitch to cut without bending. Plastic all the way.
Do the plastic backings get screwed up in chloroform?
i personally like glass and hate plastic TLC plates. You can’t stain plastic plates.
also, wanna add us to your blog roll? You’re my favorite blog in the whole wide world wide web. /brown-nosing
Yeah, I’m also a compulsive reader. Wasn’t going to ask for a link, but since Excimer already did, we’re at http://coronene.blogspot.com
Also a fan of glass TLC plates, although our glass cutters are a bit on the ghetto side and don’t always work so well.
I vote for carbon-based curiosities to be added to the blogroll, too (not just because I added them to mine…and then fixed the link I subsequently gaffed).
I also vote for the glass-backed TLC plates. Here in industry, we get them precut. It’s very sweet.
Thanks to the inspiration of Tenderbutton, The ChemBlog and In The Pipeline (among many others), I have started my own blog. Mostly for myself and my friends (based on the total of zero comments so far, I apparently have no friends).
I brew my own beer and am a chemist. So, what the hell, why not post all of my thoughts about the science of brewing on the internet (I can imagine uttering the words “it seemed like a good idea at the time” sometime in the future). Keep in mind, this is an infant blog right now and very vulnerable.
http://homebrewandchemistry.blogspot.com/
Thanks Kyle for the chance to do some shameless self promotion.
Finally, I love glass TLC plates. For some reason, I find great enjoyment in cutting glass TLC plates.
I don’t know about Kyle, but you’ve captured my heart, you homebrewing chemist. You’ve made it to my list of morning reads!
Ok, can’t resist the siren song of the open thread.
We make science t-shirts and we specialize in chemistry:
http://yellowibis.spreadshirt.com
Your shirts kick ass, by the way. I might buy one if I weren’t a starving college student.
Why dont you make and sell drugs to finance yourself?
Ew, natural products? Actually, there are so many drugs coming through where I am that most things tend to be dirt cheap…I wouldn’t profit much.
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/homesec.jpg
Plastic TLC plates are more convenient for not going all to Hell if dinged. Aluminum instantly deforms but plastic rebounds. OTOH it’s a hot air gun not a hotplate for developing plastic plates. One wonders what exothermic surprises aluminum could hold in halogenated solvents – especially in a mixed ether eluent.
Plastic backing on neutral alumina TLC IS HORRIBLE. Don’t get it.
Aluminum backing on neutral alumina TLC plates all the way. Accept no substitutions.
I go with Aluminum backed, when available. I guess with enough practice I got good enough at cutting them that they didn’t give me any problems. I use the plastic back now, because that is what the storeroom sells. I don’t see the point of using glass. They are harder to cut evenly, cost more, and contribute to global warming. OK, maybe not that last part.
http://ochemgrad.blogspot.com/
Everything contributes to global warming.
Glass TLCs are cheaper. That said, I buy aluminum backed. As for the inability of earphones to ward off pesky “aural rapists,” my advice is to forgo them. Just blare your music to ward off the masses. Through careful experimentation, my conclusion is that “quirk rock” works quite well. Try something like Dog Fashion Disco.
Get glass Merck 20×20 cm plates and a good diamond cutter. (Al-backed plates do not handle sulfuric acid-containing stains like CAM all too great.)
We pay about $80 for a box of 20 Merck plates (20×20 cm) over here in Florida.
I’ve gotta go with the glass backed TLC plates. The plastic ones are too flexible, and when they flex, the silica flakes off. They also can’t be used with all the stains I like. I’ve never really used the aluminum backed ones, but the advantage of being able to paste them in my notebook doesn’t appeal to me. Eventually that stuff is going to flake off/change color. Why not just draw them into your notebook like I do and label colors and such. A former labmate used to scan them with a flatbed scanner and paste the color printouts into his notebook.
Glass plates aren’t that difficult to cut if you have a good glass cutter and some sort of straight edge.
For TLC uses I have a marble tile – it costs only few bucks at Home Depot, it has a perfectly level surface and a reasonably sharp edge. I use it as a clean surface, to store my pre-cut TLC strips (face down). It is also not too hard – so if the cutter slips and carves into the marble the diamond tip will not get damaged.
Todd, I have found that Slayer repels all but the most pesky of labmates. Works with undergrads and PIs as well.
South of Heaven is a particularly effective album.
EEEEE!!!!! But Cradle of Filth seems to work better.
I have succesfully used one realy crappy Marilyn Manson CD as a countermeasure against my labmate’s gangsta rap. (This muslim boy loves gangstas, especialy their joyfull thumping sounds that can make glassware jump on the bench. But he is supersticious and actualy believes in demons. Once I figured that out, Manson-negotiated ceasefire followed.)
I have you all beat.
Barbra Streisand’s Greatest Hits.
Clears the room every time.
No, you didn’t. Do you realize Barbra songs are used in Guantanamo? Did you know that she can make a grown Taliban men to love Sesame Street?
did you know that most (straight male american) guys wouldn’t be caught dead listening to barbra? just cause them taliban men like it doesn’t mean it’s not effective here in Hucksville.
I have my ways with them.
I think I can beat that. I had an unfortunate labmate who used to play The Carpenters constantly.
A while ago you asked when a chemistry sitcom would come about. I’ve been writing one which can be found here http://chemistryshow.pbwiki.com The show is called Starting Material and its a comedy. Plus its wikipedia style so you can edit it if you want to write an episode.
Hah, that’s pretty cool.
I used to play Leonard Cowen’s greatest hits to clear the room… the first song is actually pretty catchy. Unfortunately in my current lab I’m not allowed to wear ipod headphones since it prevents me from hearing my neighbors screaming for help and whatnot..
** i mean cohen, not cowen
Hmm… I might try my hand at writing a few episodes once I see what format is used in the first one. I always wanted to be a famous writer.
Isn’t the best way to get rid of people to sing your own music?
“Just got home to Brandenburg, lock the front door, oh boy
Got to sit down, take a rest above the Yoga Studio.
Imagination sets in, pretty soon I’m singin
Doo doo doo lokin out at my lab
Bionic Brothers doing cartwheels, improbable insertions
Look at all the psilocybin dancing in my lab.
An Udo Graefe fungus, sweet talkin editors
Doo doo doo lookin out at my lab.
Brazilians and US Army are in the bionic band
Won’t you take a ride on a CIA jet plane?
Doo doo doo.
Bother me tomorrow, today I’ll but no sorrows
Doo doo doo, lookin out at my lab.
Forward trouble Brandenburg, lock the front door, oh boy!
Look at all the psilocybin dancing in my lab!
Bother me tomorrow, today I’ll by no Xenobes.
Doo doo doo lookin out at my lab.”
Yeah, that gets rid of them all the time.
Hey, what do you think of this one:
Copyright 2006 by uncle sam (with some help from Creedence)
Some folks are born to publish JACS
Ooh, they’re in Columbia and better than you
And when its time to downsize or shift blame
The finger points at you, lord.
It aint me, it aint me, I aint no professors son, son
It aint me, it aint me, I’m not the brown-nosin one, no.
Yeah!
Some folks are given famous advisor in hand
Lord, don’t they all help themselves to JACS, oh.
But when the retractions come to the door,
Lord it was all the fault of just one, yeah.
Some folks inherit dreams of bein famous
Ooh they make you work 80h. lord.
And when you ask them, how much should we give?
Ooh they only answer more! more! more! yoh.
It aint me, it aint me, I aint no professors son, son
It aint me, it aint me, I’m not the brown-nosin one, no
It aint me, it aint me, I aint no professors son, son no no no.
It aint me, it aint me, I’m not the brown-nosin one, no no no.
You should take that one on the road. I wonder if they would set something up at the Chicago ACS so you and your band could play a set. They can do it during the poster section or something so we can get drunk with our free drink tickets. I hear Steven Lippard is wicked in a mosh pit.
The last time Creedence and mosh pit mixed together for me, it took me a whole day to come off of the consequences and I missed all of my classes that day. I’m not as young anymore, so I probably shouldn’t try it again.
I’m not going to both the Spring and Fall ACS conferences though. I’ll see you in Boston!
Getting drunk with the free drink tickets – this is something I used to do back in college – but that seems so long ago …
Since Kyle’s graciously provided this open thread, I was wondering if you all could help me with a little experiment in science journalism: reporting via the comments section of a blog.
So, I’m writing an opinion piece on chemistry blogs, and I’d like to know two things from all you bloggers:
1) Why do you blog?
2a) For all of you who write a blog under your own name, why did you opt to do so rather than use a pseudonym? And does your adviser/boss/employer know about it?
2b) For all of you who write a blog under a pseudonym, why did you opt to do so rather than use your real name? And does your adviser/boss/employer know about it?
Commenters without blogs should feel free to chime in, although if you’re commenting anonymously, it would be helpful if you did so under a name other than Anonymous.
If you prefer, you can contact me personally at b_halford (at) acs (dot) org
Thanks, Bethany Halford (Associate Editor, C&EN)
I think this comic summarizes the attitude better than anything I could say:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comic.....10806s.gif
How funny that you bring up Ph.D. Comics. I wondered if anyone would answer #1 with procrastination:
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/84/8422sci2.html
Nah, I find that reading blogs takes away from my video game playing time. Now, I’ve got to cut down on the latter if I want to stop procrastinating.
See, it’s sort of like methadone. After I get bored of blogs, I’ll slowly go back to working the full 80 hour week schedule like I did at that time when I was told I was worthless and had no results. Then I started getting into the video games due to my low self-worth and depression and now I can’t stop it man! I can’t! Blogging makes me forget about Civilization 4 for just a little while…
It’s baby steps right now though.
ok, the answer for that survey:
I always liked producing graphics of molecules. It is more fun if I can show them to people who are interested in it. So I post them on my blog
I write under my real name because I did not want to think up a pseudonym. I did mention my blog when applying for a summer internship.
Good luck with internships!
Dang, Felix, your blog would have been really helpful when I was in grad school and slogging through HOMO-LUMO interfaces for physical organic chem. That’s really a nice-looking site you’ve got.
I don’t think my oppinions and ruminations are radical enough to do me any harm by backfireing. So there’s no use for a pseudonym.
I guess I read blogs for the sense of the chemical community that is lacking at my university at the graduate student level. It’s nice to know that there are a lot of other students out there who are enthusiastic and care about chemistry in general.
I didn’t think that that would be missing in my university when I came here, but I guess all the sign were there. Maybe you need to be at a top ten place for students to talk about chemistry when they go out drinking, or to have weekly literature meetings just because they enjoy them. The moment the weekend comes, most people tell me to shut up if I mention anything to do with chemistry (even if it’s really funny), and if they have to work on the weekend they are bitchy as hell about it.
I guess in the real world we won’t have to work weekends and long hours, but to treat chemistry as just another job means you’re going to hate what you do for a living. So I come here for the jokes mostly. Nobody would make chemistry jokes back at my department. Except maybe the professors.
Grad students who don’t work weekends? WTF? I work most weekends…
That’s absolutely horrible. Further, you don’t have to be at a “top 10″ university to enjoy the benefits of chemistry nerds.
Who measures the top 10 departments anyway? How is that even quantifiable? By number of NMR spectrometers?
I am a regular for the same reason of Uncle Sam.
I thought there were rankings out there. It’s pretty obvious that Harvard, MIT and Illinois are in the top ten. Berkley, Stanford, etc… Maybe all the chemistry nerds apply there and all the practical types to the other places?
I didn’t want to apply to the top places because I thought they made soulless automatons out of their students and had advisors who don’t care since they have 20 students each. I wanted to have a life and enjoy chemistry and I tried to avoid any plice that was like MIT. MIT was the anti-standard for me since most people I knew from there are jerks and I assumed it was because of the environment. Now I know I was wrong.
Buy your water here.
That had better be a joke…
Hey, since this is an open thread, I wanted to ask question to the people who check the side bar for the latest comments I guess.
I applied to a Gordon Research Conference that also has a graduate seminar right before. During the application to the graduate seminar, they said that they would like people to also apply for the main conference since they want all the graduate students and postdocs to stay for the main thing. So I did and got in.
However, my boss was not too thrilled and he said that in the past, only very few graduate students have been to this particular conference and that it was mostly for professionals. He also said that the grant situation is not that good and he’s not going to pay the ~$800 Conference Fee. He said that I can cancel at any time and that last year there were a few graduate students there, but they clearly looked out of place.
This is fine and I’d still go (he always says crazy stuff that I just ignore; he’s been wrong before on the social interaction front). I’m a senior grad student with some first author publications in the best chemistry journals, so I could put together a good poster and can probably carry on an intelligent conversation. However, he did bring up quite a good point that there might only be a few graduate students there and no one else will even want to talk to or look at me. That would make me feel pretty discouraged actually and I’d rather not go and save the money that I don’t have if this is the case.
So my question is, what kind of experience can I expect as a graduate student at the GRC? Particularly the Organometallic one. I heard that it’s a great experience at some of them, but the Organometallic one sounds really, really horrible at this point. Even for a talkative person like me. If it’s not worth it, I would like to save the $1200 dollars (travel too) even if this is a once in a lifetime experience for me.
Thank in advance! I’d appreciate a detailed answer, but any will do really.
Your boss sounds like a cock. They don’t have ‘kids tables’ at GRCs and you’re not confined to just talking to the few grad students that are there.
You need to look out for yourself. It’s time to start schmoozing for post-docs anyway and GRCs are a great place for that.
Actually, he’s really nice and he’s one of the best profs to work for around here. He really knows the chemistry too, unlike some other people. There’s a reason why I published so much in good journals.
Sometimes, he says stuff that is way out there. Probably because he hasn’t been in this country for that long and the conventions for conferences here are different, so that’s why I was really confused after he told me that. That’s why he avoids me at ACS meetings that we go to I guess. I talked to big name people anyways because I have no fear of embarrassing myself.
I often ignore him when he gives me advice on life and stuff like that. I’m leaning towards ignoring him on this one as well. Thanks for the vote of confidence! I do need a postdoc…
Hey, what do you guys think of JACS beta?
http://pubs.acs.org/JACSbeta/index.html
I personally think that so far, it’s all pretty much miss and no hits. But, if it was done correctly it could be a great thing. I found the powerpoint slides of the figures and schemes kind of useless. It really depends on the paper whether they are useful and perhaps the authors should vet which figures go there.
The audio reading of the articles were also useless and even though the reader tried not to be monotone, it’s hard to read that complicated crap to get it across to a person not in the field. Perhaps a summary offered by the author (and hopefully read by the author) would be great. Then I can listen to a whole issue in an hour. Listening to a whole article, most of which is highly condensed specialist language, is a recipe for disaster. I’d rather have the paper in front of me so that I could go back and/or look at the figures. I did laugh a bit when the reader pronounced those Italian names since he did it correctly (but that is the way I pronounce Italian words in the supermarket to make fun of Italian when buying my pasta and tortellini and ravioli — yes, I’m very petty minded, but I blame grad school for forcing on me this closed off environment which leads to xenophobic twisting of Italian).
The William Rousch virtual article highlighting synthesis made me use the scroll button after I got finished with the first paragraph. It appeared boring and short (strangely enough) and I bet the guy behind ‘Totally Synthetic’ would do a much better job. No pictures and not a very good communicative language to convey ideas to the layscientist not in the field. It looked like a science summary written by a scientist in the field and I don’t think that that is what the virtual article should be about. Rousch used some good metaphors, but personally, I want it to be more ‘blog-like’.
Your thoughts?