Congratulations to the international trio winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry- Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz, and Ada E. Yonath. The three chemists won the prize for their fundamental work in characterizing the structure and detailed function of the ribosome.
I sat in on a talk at the Organic Symposium this summer where the speaker showed a bit of the work of Yonath. The ribosome work is simply stunning in its detail and experimental prowess. Hackers like myself can only watch from a distance and admire the work.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Thanks for the info. It is really interesting and at the same time important innovation the trio have achieved. With this knowledge about the ribosomes, hope may new “antibiotic dugs” in the days to come..
Ridiculous. It should have been given to CHEMISTS!. Shows you the eccentricity of chemistry is beyond even the Nobel committee.
Enjoy your Blog very much, even though I feel like the apes in “2001” trying to understand bone as tool/weapon. Thought you might enjoy the following joke..Cheers!
Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic? A True Story…
A thermodynamics professor had written a take-home exam for his graduate students. It had one question: “Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof.” Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we postulate that if souls exist, they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell, and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions, and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant.
1: So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.
2: Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given me by Suzie Smith during freshman year, and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then #2 cannot be true, and hell is exothermic.
There are various versions of this floating around. Not sure I’v heard about Suzie Smith.
So, have you started your own blog yet??
That the whole planet is going to crap in fifth gear is obvious. Now Sweden informs us that some git is jumping on the pile to force it down the hole. Horrible Chemistry Nobel. What did Obama do and when did he do it?
After eight years of frank retard Bush the Lesser, a President who can open his mouth without moths escaping is a bright treat. Obama has been an empirical disaster on every front: national, international, financial, social, and technological. He’s a lawyer. His world is a tightly circumscribed agglomeration of arbitrary minutia with no empirical basis of origination.
One can generate a disturbingly realistic 3-D ray traced simualcrum of an armored soldier free falling 200 feet, landing on his feet, and soldiering on. The real world works differently after the feet part.
“His world is a tightly circumscribed agglomeration of arbitrary minutia with no empirical basis of origination.”
Even though I love the sentence you composed, I can’t share your pessimism. The complete collapse of civilization would be bad for commerce and therefore would be unlikely to occur. Look for continued mediocrity to occur instead.