Stang-Cage

Originally uploaded by bibliophile_us.

Super seminar speaker last week; Peter Stang from Utah. Highlights included his suggestion for helping one to see in 3-D, that was, besides using models, to ‘crack open a nice bottle of scotch… or a few glasses of wine would help as well.” And when describing ‘why’ he does the research he does (namely using organometallic compounds to assemble shapes and polyhedra), he said: “Because its fun….but people don’t pay me to have fun. So the university, well, I teach for them, I’m dean, they’re happy with what I’m doing, but how about the government? Well, I lie to them! I make up all sorts of fancy uses for these compounds so they’ll give me money.”

Props to that! Still, very interesting and artistic chemistry, pure and inspired by a simple fascination with molecules. To be remembered.

It seems a universal law of (my) life that time will be wasted. So why not waste it in some semi-productive fashion like keeping a blog? Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now urges me not “to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking” (15) and yet I will still insist that our ability to think it is one of the most special and powerful gifts we as human beans have. And so this blog will be an outlet for reflections and observations, on trivial matters or matters of consequence, in an effort to both help me to remember, as well as to never take anything for granted. Contrary to my chosen blog title, I am not in fact, a ’stander on the mountain,’ I am still very much climbing.