Friday, September 11, 2009

Friday Thoughts on 11.09.09

"If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view." - C. S. Lewis


"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
- Victor Stenger



I don't know. I do not have the wisdom to make it all fit. But I think we all know evil when we see it and we have seen it's face. Life is too short for us to think that making other peoples lives shorter and harder because of what they believe can in any way be what God was thinking when he walked with us in the cool of the evening.

The 3000 lost was a tragedy but objective and analytical Science would have us remember that more than that number die preventably each day in childbirth, of malnutrition and war.

We can do better. We were told to do better. We will be asked why we didn't do better. I can do better. I will do better.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Fifty Million and Counting

The American Chemical Society (I am a member) maintains the Chemical Abstract Service which logs in each new chemical and compound as they are discovered. The milestone fifty millionth compound was logged in September 7. This actually says a lot and not so much. It says that we continue as a discipline to catalogue the complexity of what we see but also the huge number of compounds that we have yet to figure out.

That cannot take anything away from G. Attardo, S. Tripathy, and M. Gagnon who reported in their patent Preparation of arylmethylidene heterocycles as novel analgesics. the synthesis of (5Z)-5-[(5-Fluoro-2-hydroxyphenyl)methylene]-2-(4-methyl-1-piperazinyl)-4(5H)-thiazolone.


LINK TO STORY

I wonder if they will have t-shirts made up. On the other hand the organic chemistry students should recognize this compound as closely related to the much loved oxathiazolones.

Honeydew Rising

New semester, new students and new construction. Excellent time to revive the old Honeydew blog.

These are the videos that I played in the lecture yesterday:

And this is the LINK to the second video.