26 I just got back from Mexico and my poo is still black from all the Pepto Bismol I drank there. It also means I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom thinking about shit ranging from life and how awesome my new iPod touch is to what a slut Britney Spear’s sister is (pregos at 16?!) and WHERE is Paris Hilton? (omgwtf.) Then, I came back home to the US where I find snow has turned the marginally incompetent drivers around here into the mentally handicapped of the driving world. I have sent an email to my state Senators1 that the signage seen here be required if they insist on handing out drivers licenses to these retards.
On a personal note, this year was a good one. I found my way into C&EN twice in a single year (two different names, sadly, but I have both of the instances ripped out and sitting next to me, reminding me constantly how goddamn awesome I am [I <3 Beth]) and I look forward to a rejuvenated research schedule in the next 12 months. But enough about me, let’s talk about other people.
For this year’s inaugural fluff post I’m going to declare people and objects the best and/or worst of things. I shall call them “awards” and the people that get them will feel good about themselves and will put them on their CV’s and tell their friends and colleagues about them. I shall call these awards the MOST AWESOME FUCKING AWARD YOU’LL EVER GET. It includes a free lunch with me2, where I tell you how awesome you are. Just email me and we can arrange a meet up, k? k. Let’s begin.
MOST AWESOME UP AND COMING CHEMISTS:
M. Christina White and Phil S. Baran
Holy shit White’s awesome. She has not one but TWO monogrammed belt buckles. And just look at those publications! (Fortunately, Dr. White seems to know her awesomeness and on her publications page, you get lots-a-links to the press of her research.)
As for Baran… in short, I fear Phil S. Baran’s brain. The man went from high school graduate to a finished post doc in the same time as some people take to do their whole Ph.D. (excluding the college degree he got while in high school, of course). I fear if it ever escaped from his skull case it may try to eat me, detecting me as prey. Alternately, it wouldn’t do so well outside his skull case and just sit there all pitiful and gross, like the rest of our brains would. That would be gay.
MOST OVERBLOWN SYNTHESIS:
(+)- Ambiguine H (doi: doi:10.1038/nature05569) It’s impressive, but please. Shut up about it. It changes nothing.
MOST AWESOME CHEMIST
He inspired my new “metric” unit of time – the Wender. One Wender is approximately 100 minutes, or the amount of time it takes Paul Wender to do a 1 hour lecture. Most lectures should be less than half a Wender kthxbai.
MOST AWESOME BLOGS:
Everyday Scientist and Carbon Based Curiosities
Sam is just as hilarious and poignant as Dylan Stiles was yet he hardly gets any comments. It’s fucking tragic. Not only is he a better blogger than me, but he’s clearly got large hands. Two things I envy. I also want to take this time to congratulate CBC for growing up and getting a real blog with Wordpress. Hooray! Yet again, good blogging but at least they’re getting lots of comments, which is the only form of “payment” bloggers ever really get.
MOST SAD MAJOR DEPARTMENTS
OMG. Not even an appearance of a recovery attempt from last year’s mass exoduses. IU still has an ass kicking analytical department but organic? Dave Williams + Zero = hardly a department. And hard times have fallen on Yale, which simply hasn’t recovered. But it’s Yale and, if they wanted to, they could just buy talent. Apparently they don’t seem to want to.
MOST UNSUNG DEPARTMENTS
I’m still a bit stunned I didn’t think to apply there for either undergrad or graduate school but they have a generally sweet setup. Very physical – but that’s to be expected, since it’s U Chicago. Don’t get me wrong, I love where I’m at right now (like I say, more instrumentation than God) and I picked it on the basis of a number of factors, but if I had my druthers (and knowing what I know now) I may well have gone there.
Anyway, I promise to give awards to “Most controversial blogger” and “Female chemist who wasn’t born that way”3 etc. and totally not do it. So that’s it for now. In the mean time, I’ve got to fire up the email engine and see about getting the great rotaxane debate part II finished up here soon. Also, I’m going to be busy busy busy with actual “bench” research, but I’ll be writing a rather cumbersome document for a chapter in a book with my boss, which means I’ll have lit posts coming out of my ass.
P.S. Gone is the era of rolls. We now have complicated memory cards that we can unload and load to our digital camera. Even the studios now have memory card readers they use to develop pictures.
1Seriously, retarded people driving in snow is the most dangerous thing ever.
2The lunch would be free for me, btw, because you would have to pay for it. Just so there’s no confusion.
3You get no bonus awards for knowing the answer to that.
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I must agree with you on U of Chicago. My unsung neighbor to the south is doing some beautiful science.
And who can’t but love chemistry faculty like Laurie Butlerthe who fielded a question from the student newspaper about filtering vodka for better taste (Brita + Skol = Grey Goose):
“students can filter their vodka however they’d like.”
Right on!
Laurie Butler is also awesome for having a crush on pre-neo Keanu.
However, her explanation of Dirac “bra-ket” notation was lacking. There was no mention of dual vector spaces or why the hermitian operator winds up in the center, no mention of inner vs. outer product, no reason why we always use kets (but not bras) although I suspect it’s endemic to most QMech teaching.
After pestering physicists relentlessly and getting shrug and “that’s just how you do it” — unacceptable — I finally deciphered the code when my ex girlfriend who is a math grad student started taking quantum physics classes and gave me a 30 minute lecture over the phone (she had freshly deciphered the cryptic notation).
I still don’t understand why a bras (or row vectors if you will) are a complete representation of the linear functionals over the (column) vector space (true definition of a dual). If anyone can help me with that, it would be much appreciated.
Turns out wikipedia has a reasonable description (although without the explanation of dual spaces). Man, college, especially college math, would have been way easier with wikipedia.
University of Plutonium professor Benedict Sauce stole data from postdoctoral researcher at Yak institute; publication in PNAS 2007 is STOLEN.
I might have to blacklist the work “Yak.”
Carbon Based Curiosities is always a reliable good read.
Mitch
aww. thankya
(even when we just post kittens?)
Nice to see Baran acknowledged. Two years ago he was still good but I almost never saw him mentioned on blogs among “young upcming chemists”.
Thanks for the kudos, but I like your blog the most. I don’t read many blogs but Sam’s is amazing, I agree. His has content and shit.
I don’t promise more chemistry at CBC int he upcoming year, but there will definitely be more kittens. And less lolnanos. Maybe. Maybe not.
My award goes to Kyle for using the words ’shit’ and ‘fuck’ a multitude of times in one post while managing, in the same post, to refer to his actual shit as ‘poo’.
That would be crude, Tela.
wow. i’m really honored to get an award from kyle! and to be compared to dylan! and to win tie with CBC is awesome! this is the greatest day of my life!!!!1!!1!!
dude. your blog is awesome! i wish more people read it.
1) The handicapped spot in front of the store where my wife works is often occupied by lazy or overweight people who can’t read – I would like to put a sign there that says that the handicapped spot is for the physically handicapped, not the mentally handicapped (or maybe morally handicapped would be a better term, since if a person with Down’s could drive there, he could have the spot).
2) There are always a lot of (willfully) stupid drivers in Columbus – in bad weather, they simply have less margin for error and so cause more accidents than usual. I don’t figure that its much different anywhere else in the US (although the level of head-in-assedness here is really annoying).
its = it’s in 2). Ackthppt.
So, Kyle, we get the honor of buying you lunch? Hmmmm.
Correct. Congratulations.
Welcome back! After I come back from the old country, you should come over and buy me lunch since I just voted you my most favorite chemistry blogger.
P.S. Being in the old country for a long time sucks. Right away the shoes fell apart and I was forced to shell out 60 bucks for a pair of waterproof shoes. There was one day that it didn’t rain though. I bet it didn’t rain everyday in Mexico… God, what a depressing ‘vacation’.
OMG! Your blog rocks!
M. Christina is hated by all at UIUC- she is, well I have nothing nice to say about her. Over rated and hyped beyond belief- her head is so far up her own ass, I am surprised she can see to walk.
It’s pretty well known that White is hated. I don’t know why she’s hated so, but she seems to be.
now, now- I am not teh suck as you claim everyone at UIUC is. Let’s not drag me into this.
I’m sure her group likes her. And so does the chair and all the tenured members of the department after they look at her publications list… Oh, and Martin Burke likes her too.
So, using deductive logic, you are wroooong.
P.S. I remember first hearing about her when I read her paper a year and a half ago. I read the rest of the stuff, it was only three papers total at that point, and thought the chemistry was interesting and important. It was very simple allylic CH transformation chemistry, but pretty. I thought she had pretty good ideas back then, but she’s more famous now and maybe overhyped, but I’m happy my hunch was validated.
The Science paper came out of left field though. I really don’t know what to expect from the White group, but looking forward to it (as long as it’s not scooping me, which might be an issue now that I’m getting an XBOX360 and there will be less time for lab).
I thought the allylic CH amination paper in 2007 was the bomb. Maybe others don’t like her because she’s a famous young woman “who’s her head is so far up her own ass”. Usually you have to be old and established to display “head up ass” behavior without repercussions like some illustrious senior male members of the UIUC chemistry department (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no names say no names). That’s another reason why I like her. She’ll make it possible for the young generation to be asses and to say sarcastic things to fools without worrying about political correctness. Fingers crossed here…