happychemist

I spent all afternoon reading a very interesting paper. The paper was well-organized, the experiments clear, the data thought-provoking. To boot, the writing itself was clear and logical. I was actually quite pleased.

I nearly killed "Good Paper Buzz" by picking up the very antithesis! This second paper was not at all organized, the experiments inconclusive (not to mention irreproducible, even by the writers of the paper!), and while thought-provoking, certainly not thoughts of a good kind. It made me really wonder why the hell a prestigious scientific journal would ever accept such a communication.

A key lesson in this is that, like books, not all scientific papers are created equal. And like when you're reading books, maybe, after you read a really good paper, you should sit and be happy and bask in the post-reading high before embarking on the next paper, expecting it to be just as good ;)

Another observation that always surprises me: scientists can be terrible writers, but they can have prolific publication records. I know that *can* be true of general writing, but seriously? I'd argue the body of published poorly written scientific work is muuuuch larger than the body of published poorly written literature at large.

Whining over.

Things to be happier about:

• Andrea Lee's Interesting Women


• Wine tasting tomorrow night!


• White Chocolate Mochas!


• Minipreps! (Don't they sound like the cutest experiments ever?!)


• They serve cookies and coffee at every seminar here!


• Dr. J!


• Wearing hats and scarves again! I have so many!

Punch line first:

( MATLAB GAVE ME THIS )

My dearest Cannula,

I am so sorry that I killed you today. I did not mean to!

I had doubted you, when I should not have. I am sorry that I subjected you to the Aqua Regia. It was a moment of stupidity and profound pain for me; after all, have you not served me well these past three years? And how it pains me to think that I reward your enduring, unending service by stripping your insides with harsh corrosives!

I will avenge you, dearest. Your death was needless, but it will not be in vain! The laser shall pay for making me distrust you!

Good night, sweet cannula, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Love,
Me

It was only a matter of time...

http://www.chmoogle.com/

Some may wonder: "how is this more useful than beilstein or scifinder?"

That's when you remember that some times you're at home and you want to look something up but you're not connected to the internet through campus.

EDIT: In other news, Phase III of Great Bench Cleaning went well, with only one casualty; Maureen, one of my Shlenck cuvette systems, managed to get herself broken. She is currently in care of Rick the glassblower and is due to come back, good as new within a week or so.

Well, chemming today has been...disappointing.

On last Friday, I found a positive result and got excited. After getting worked up over it later in the afternoon and fearing that it was actually a false positive (which has happened to me more times than I can count), I managed to stay calm. I took the weekend off (no other reason than being incredibly lazy and too into baseball). Today I checked; I did make what I wanted to make. Yay, right? WRONG!

My problem: I made too little of it, and if I continue to try to make it this way, I'll be 50 years old before I get all the material I need to do my studies. For my laser experiments, I'll need 5 milligrams of stuff. My reaction turned out...er...5 picograms? Not evern sure if I got THAT much out of it.

Either way, another change in strategy is needed and has been duly outlined. The sad thing is, it'll be a week before I can even tell if it worked. And I'm afraid of what could happen if it didn't.

All I would like to do now is to go and hide somewhere.

High note of the day: listening to heidimo's awesomely cool podcast. She's got really fun eclectic tastes, so if you're in the mood for something neat and new, give it a shot!

Ok, other high note of the day: sansceo and the_marchioness were on line when I got to work! (Yay for some people getting holidays!)

eeeee! Scanned from my very first chemistry article!!!!



Bounce bounce bounce...

In Michigan for the International Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry...and to pester my parents at the same time. Life is just too wonderful some times :)