Cornies 2007: Badass Crystal Structure!
January 8th, 2008 by Ψ*ΨI wanted to present this a week ago! But I was sick.[1] So…to continue with Excimer’s coverage of the 2007 Cornies…
This award has to go to Wolfgang Beck, Thomas Klapötke, and the students who ended up with this crazy project. I mean, it’s not easy to get a crystal structure in the first place. With patience and luck, you might grow something that will diffract well. I don’t know how patient or calm I could be if I were trying to grow crystals of a primary explosive, though. I definitely wouldn’t want to be the one trying to mount them for diffraction! That must have taken some serious ninja talent.
Mercury fulminate just sounds scary. I mean, mercury: uber-toxic heavy metal. Fulminate: “to explode.” You can’t possibly get any closer to the spirit of badass. But there you go: A simple structure, with linear C-Hg-C linkage. Congratulations to everyone who worked on this. I hope all your fingers are still attached.
Honorable mention must be awarded to Roger Kornberg. His structure of a gold nanoparticle is, likewise, badass, and redeems him for stealing the Chemistry Nobel for crystallizing some stupid biocrap. But it’s a different kind of badass, and it won’t detonate dynamite.
[1] (A rant! We usually don’t rant on CBC, but…we can make an exception, right?) Sick and without insurance. I seem to recall a few posts on the need for improved healthcare floating around on the chemical blagosphere (conveniently, I can’t find them now). The experience of being sick and without money SUCKS! Most clinics fall into the “prohibitively expensive” range, which means that going to one of them would prohibit me from paying rent. Anyone who thinks COBRA is affordable is welcome to buy it for me (I’ll even put a Paypal link in the sidebar? It’s more of a necessity than an iPod). Taking a broader look at things, if you like to insinuate that most people without insurance are lazy, you’re welcome to do one of my jobs for me, since I have two.[2] This is more common than you’d think, especially for people in low-wage positions–benefits just aren’t offered, and there isn’t enough in the paycheck to get individual coverage. Take that situation, add one serious illness or injury, and you have someone missing work and owing money to a hospital. Fortunately, the flu didn’t land me in the hospital, and my coverage starts somewhat soon. Until then, I’ll just try to avoid getting sick.
[2] Empty sarcasm: I like both of them, so you can’t have either.
You guys might want to try to monetize through google adsense on your site or an other program, although I like Google’s the most. It isn’t completely unherad of in the blogosphere: http://www.thechemblog.com/?p=657 , http://pipeline.corante.com/ . If you do end up using Google’s adsense to monetize, let me know and I’ll throw a referral link you can use so I can get a cool perk too.
Mitch
We’ve talked about it…we’ve never had ads up, and we’re not really inclined to start. Thanks for the tip, though.
If we did anything motivated by money, we wouldn’t be grad students.
That’s fine. But, complaining about money when you have a rather good investment vehicle… Anyways, the amount of revenue CF generates is roughly $1.10 per thousand page impressions; it still, probably, won’t be enough to pay for health insurance.
Mitch
And that would get us…about $10 per month. Not enough to put up with ads.
Only 333 pageviews a day? That seems kind of low. I would of thought that was the number of visitors to the site not pageviews.
Mitch
Nope! We’re not CF, you know, so we don’t get insane traffic from students who need homework help.
On just that page alone I earn $10 a month. Sick fruitcakes that google my site looking for hot syphilis action were draining my bandwidth by loading that page almost 200 times a day. I like to think I’m generous by not plastering ads on my site but if you’re not using Firefox with adblocker installed then you’re a fucking moron and deserve to stare at Google ads.
Since my ipod touch has Safari installed, I get the benifit of seeing all the ads that load up. I’m appalled at some of the pages I go to. They’re more ads than content. I’ll tell you what, I’m itching for Mozilla to come out with a browser for that thing. Safari makes me want to blow brains out.
I think I have a comment in moderation, ill… Delete this one if you feel like it.
Uh-huh-huh-huh. Huh-huh. Check it out.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nn700294m
I don’t know how patient or calm I could be if I were trying to grow crystals of a primary explosive
Nothing’s gonna hurt anybody. We’re gonna be like three little Fonzies here. And what’s Fonzie like? Come on, Ψ*Ψ, what’s Fonzie like?
James Tour on a blog comment without nanoputians? Ridiculous.
yeah, believe it or not, he does science every now and then
The answer was cool. Cool.
When the Fat man prototype was built for the first test explosion, they had to make the explosive lenses by casting a molten TNT+RDX sludge and then precisely machine them into complicated shapes. They had to produce two sets of lenses: the second one was for a non-nuclear replica, to test the regularity of the spherical compression. That meant melt-casting and machining tons of a quite sensitive explosive. Then they found out by X-raying that the casting produced bubbles inside, something completely undesirable. And they were already delayed because of problems with casts, rather than re-manufacturing the faulty lensesthey decided to hand-repair them. This was done with a dentist drill (the idea was to drill up to the bubble, then fill the hole with a new melt).
They asked the guy who was drilling the lenses with a dentist drill if he was worried. His reply was: “I am not. With fifty pounds of high explosive on my lap I wouldn’t feel a thing”
The nitrogen to carbon ratio for that molecule is rather low, they would/will be fine.
Mitch
There are several clinics/hospitals in Illinois that give away free or cheaper healthcare if you make less than a certain amount. Never looked into them, since I have health insurance through the school (although, considering several other schools get free healthcare, ours is a fucking ripoff and the idiots who are in charge of the grad students’ union here couldn’t even get a decent health care package for us, and if I had thirty hours to blow on other people’s needs I would be the bane of the Board of Regents here I swear to god rant parenthesis OFF) but there must be some options.
Hey if this blog puts ads on, I’m getting a cut. Gurl needs gas money.
I did look into those–some are actually free, but they’re only open maybe two days a week. (What would happen if I, say, broke my arm on a Friday? Would I have to leave it dangling until the next Tuesday?) The sad thing is–I’m probably above their cutoff, but not by much, and it all went to tuition anyway.
My school stopped paying our health insurance, instead giving us the money for it so that: (1) our stipend looks larger and (2) we have to pay taxes on the additional “pay.”
Deductions still don’t remove the extra tax, so I just subtract the “pay” out of a fellowship (which isn’t reported on my w2 for some weird reason). Not sure if this is kosher.
Oh, and your pay goes up nowhere near as fast as inflation, let alone health care inflation, so you lose even worse than it appears. If you can’t get in on bulk deals, your health insurance costs would increase anyway, so for what they give (probably less than their benefits cost them and far less than you can get benefits elsewhere) you get…screwed.
One of Oregon’s senators had/has a health care plan which essentially goes like that: mandate initial taxable pay increases to cover health insurance but forbid employers from giving health insurance, force insurers to cover all comers (they couldn’t ban subscribers for health reasons, etc.), and everyone has to have health insurance (some of the money from taxes would go to health coverage for the poor). It seems OK, but the lack of bulk-negotiated care and the taxability of the income makes it a substantial net loss for middle and lower-end rich (it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, but makes it politically unpalatable, particularly in an election year and with the potential change of mortagage deductions to mortgage credits (deductions lower your tax bracket while credits don’t) and the deletion of local tax deductions to pay for the removal of the alternative minimum tax).
PP*: Can your parents cover you temporarily? (my dad’s insurance covered me until 23, but that was more than ten years ago).
Nope. It would have covered me until I was 24 or so, but…I graduated young…and was promptly kicked off. COBRA is an option, but not one I can afford…
I don’t think Donald Trump could afford COBRA .
(sick) + (without money) = (indigent medical care)
You are issued an ID card then everything is free without limit of service. Insurance typically repays 80% and the healthcare provider sweats blood to get it. Indigent medical care is streets paved with $6.35 aspirins. No questions asked and the country or state check arrives soonest. 1/3 the US population is on a fat free ride. You are paying for it and them?
There is nothing more expensive than what government provides for free. Don’t be a chump whose income is compassionately redistributed to more deserving appetites. When the boat sinks only slaves chained to the oars are guaranteed to drown. MBA, then government service to make “friends,” then industry and an office with two windows, then triple-dipping retirement – executive pension, Federal pension, Social Security (ha ha ha on #3 – already twice proactively redistributed to those who contributed nothing.).
I say we switch to single-payer. I’m sure you agree, right Uncle Al?
Free – and mandatory – juvenile vaccination. Everything beyond that is personal responsibility with price tightly coupled to cost.. Pharma management Official woes are bullshit. Pharma R&D does *not* cost $billions. The FDA costs $billions, to achieve nothing. What does pharma cost in Canukistan or El Barrio Mexico? You would have the funds to live a good life if government didn’t provide everything for free.
Government hegemony means criminals and cops are armed, scumbags are fed, honest citizens are disarmed and impoverished by law. “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” Ayn Rand.
I once drove myself into ER room of a poor community hospital, in Tucson AZ (it was the closest one).
I was pretty sick – but the waiting room was crowded with folks that were just as miserable, battered and/or bleeding from various wounds. The tired ER staff was a bit blase – the “Now let me have look at those entry wounds” kind of attitude. I later realised it was so hopelesly crowded because the ER was taking poor patients without coverage, many of them undocumented or native-american.
Most of the hospitals in Tucson are pretty bad.
this one was St Mary I think
A fair society couples cost to price. If you cannot purchase what you cannot afford, then everything has negative feedback and self-control. Insurance specifcally decouples cost and price – everybody pays but few (dregs and crooks) benefit. Insurance should cover scarce catastrophic failure large costs with broad small contributions. Insurance is in reality deep pockets for feeding scumbags and fueling massive mangerial fraud at all levels.
Tens of millions of scumbags and illegals gloriously feed off ERs specifically and social services overall. 90% of 70 million old Baby Boomers will suck up $5-10,000/day in hospital costs. Tragedy of the Commons writ large. The only guarantees cancerously metastasizing centralized healthcare offers the young (that’s you, sucker) are
1) The productive will be astoundingly financially screwed before the fact,
2) The productive will be ruled ineligible for services they pre-purchased, and
3) The productive will pay full fare, again, plus inflated prices for what they have already pre-purchased to fund safety nets for swine who gorge at the trough.
Where is your compassion? Elect Hitlery Ramrod Clinton President and every child in America will enjoy unlimited free Federally administered healthcare – except for your one child (if you can afford having one). Look how well Hitlery Ramrod spent $120 million redefining healthcare during the Clinton adminstration. Tell Uncle Al how the Official American HEALTHCARE CRISIS was otherwise averted. Hitlery Ramrod invented the surge. She’s gonna surge your wallet like a high hot helluva-lot colonic enema.
If you complain you will be prosecuted and massively fined, you racist hate language-spewing bigot. Government cannot award people what it first has not stolen from them. What one man receives without effort is confiscated from another who labors.
So did you company cover your extended stay in the burn ward?
About $120K total costs (double that in current dollars), less than $300 out of pocket. A fine moment was a whopping Handicapped parking ticket at UC/Irvine despite the State-issued plackard being displayed. Uncle Al hauled his disgusting Jobst garment-clad remains to UCI Parking Enforcement, entered the building, and beheld complaint lines stretching to the glowing rim of Hell. Lines? Ha! Uncle Al began screaming Brooklyn obscenities at the top of his lungs, daring the retarded fuckwad in charge to show his face.
Whatcha gonna do with a guy who looks disinterred saliromaniacally screaming about a bogus Handicapped citation with 50 laughing people? They won’t laugh forever – that’s soon a mob, and newsworthy. The guy in charge ate a dumpster of shit that morning, in public view in front of his employees. Uncle Al was never bothered again.
Support evolution: shoot back. Gorge at the trough between shots. Not bad for a melted, charred face, eh? The meds billing showed rampant fraud (e.g., two doses of ptocin at remarkable price)… but you paid for it. No problem on my end.
So how did your face get melted in the first place?
Hah. I knew that wasn’t your real skin.
Being sick really stinks even if you do have insurance. This summer I spent 6 hours in the hospital and it cost a little more than $10,000. My grad student insurance helped me out quite a bit, but still left be with about $3000 to pay on my own. That is about 15% of my yearly income! About 5 years ago, I went for an entire year without any health insurance (without knowing it–my parents thought I was still covered on their plan) and never got sick once. Talk about lucky. Stay healthy.
I actually paid health insurance out of pocket for a while. It was pricey, but the chances of me getting Canzor would undoubtedly be higher if I were uninsured, just because God hates me like that.
Wal Mart has some nice clinics that charge about $50 per visit, at least in my location. They’re staffed by nurse practitioners who are generally nicer than doctors anyway. I forked over my $50 and took home my script of antibiotics (which won’t do you any good.)
Influenza is best treated at home. You’re more likely to get a secondary infection at a hospital, since they’re not going to give you antibiotics and the only thing you might end up with is 100mg of Tylenol as an antipyretic for a dollar mg and a hotel room with a roomie named Mr. MRSA. Drink lots of water, take a combo of NSAIDs and tylenol (don’t do this a lot) keep a bucket handy. You’ll live longer if you can avoid the hospital.