In 1972 Bruce Lee defeated Chuck Norris (here) and team Far East has been winning ever since. China is on a monumental roll. If we fast-forward to present day and for example summarize the table of contents for one recent issue of Synlett, […]

I’m for philanthropy, I’m for the blogosphere and I love the B.R.S.M. blog. It’s one of my favorite chemistry pages, all categories. The page has lately suffered from a lot of downtime. That, I don’t like. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s down as you read this. The web hosting behind the […]

Oxidations are always exciting, especially on scale. Typically, you choose between toxic metal oxides (chromium, osmium and other nasties), potential high-explosives (IBX, Dess-Martin, organic peroxides and so on) or something based on DMSO (such as Swern), the latter resulting in a “disagreeable odor” – euphemism of the century – as it expels dimethyl sulfide. All […]

These fine gentlemen want to reshape science.

Science 2011, 331, 721-725. (DOI: 10.1126/science.1201765)

“We argue that as metaknowledge grows in breadth and quality, it will enable researchers to reshape science—to identify areas in need of reexamination, reweight former certainties, and point out new paths that cut across revealed assumptions, heuristics, and disciplinary boundaries.”

[…]

On the topic of self-inflicted and irreversible brain damage caused by IV injections of crude reaction mixtures containing manganese that I talked about a couple of days ago, these are the latest news.

I contacted the corresponding authors by email in which I asked, among several things, if this phenomenon […]

Keywords: synthesis, drugs, irreversible brain damage, next-level idiocy, prejudice

Since I haven’t seen this particular story in other media or even in English before, here goes a quick-and-dirty translation of an excerpt of: Läkartidningen 2009, 106, 1358-1361. (Journal of the Swedish Medical Association; full version in Swedish)

[…] Simultaneously, a much […]

It has been a miserable decade without your assistance, Clippit. How could they disable you in 2001? Maybe if I post a couple of pictures of you, people will remember your face, one thing will lead to the other, angry mobs will roam the streets and demand your resurrection, and everything […]

At work today:

— How much do you love quasicrystals?
— Which one was that again, the Ig?
— No, the Nobel. Just announced.
— Ah.

Classic set-up. Sore throat, joint pain, miserable overall feeling… first alert on Saturday evening (curiously just as I turned chipleader on the final table of a small poker tournament – very first live experience for me – fun!), yesterday truly awful all through, and a solid 38.0 °C in the left ear as I write […]