Tacking on an Arctic drilling provision into the military spending bill is perhaps one of the most devious and disgusting things that I have ever seen. You f**king motherf**king jerks, do you have any idea what the hell this would do to the environment, to the wildlife, to our air, to our....my god people do you even listen to scientists???? I can't believe this, I just...I just...and then...and then...to tack it onto a bill that just may send a few extra flak jackets to the men and women who are dying in war...is just DISGUSTING. I can see the ads now with republicans attacking all the democrats who vote against this bill, "(Insert name here) doesn't want our soilders to be safe, he/she voted against the military spending bill....(close up on little girl) (Voice-over) "Were sorry your father died, but it's ________ fault for not voting for the military spending bill"...ARGH....I...I...dont' know what to do....

No joy in bean town

With my faith now completely shattered in the american pastime I don't know what kind of entertainment to seek these days. My whole idea of right and wrong destroyed. I don't know if I can watch these guys play anymore. Alas, the last bastion of hope is the printed word.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"There's no way I can go play for the Yankees, but I know they're going to come after me hard," he told MLB.com then. "It's definitely not the most important thing to go out there for the top dollar, which the Yankees are going to offer me. It's not what I need."
-Johnny "money good, image bad" Damon ( quoted from an article in the New York Times which appeared today 12/21/05, written by Tyler Kepner)

Everyone wish me luck on my Orgo final!

Cheers!

Epoxides, Ethers and alcohols

And so begins the last mad dash for comprehension of the themes and underlying intricacies of organic chemistry 1. These last couple of days I will be reminded of how much I know and don't know about this subject...so let's see what my class notes have to say:

Synthesis of alcohols can be performed in a number of ways

Taking CH3CH2CH2CH3 and adding Br2 (exposed to light or heat to form a bromine radical) and brominating the compound. Follow that up with some KOH in DMF and we will have an alcohol via an SN2 reaction with inversion of stereochemistry.

Acid Catalyzed hydration of alkenes will give us alcohols

Oxymercuration/demercuration will give us a secondary alcohol, with the oxymer/demer steps prohibiting hydride or methide shifts so a relative amount of control is had over the reaction.

Hydroboration and oxidation would be used to get a terminal alcohol formed with BH3 adding to the less substituted carbon...

ok yeah this is dull........

I'll come back to this later.....

In 12 minutes I will be off to the penultimate math class of my academic career and it could turn out to be the last class of the year if we can convince our psycho messed up professor to let us have a take home final....hope of all hopes this would diminish some of the immense pressure that I am under to acheive a decent GPA. My chem grade is nearly at the a- cusp and I must do very well on the final in order to get there.....basically I can miss 16 points on the final and that is it to have any possibility of getting an A in the class.....argh.... man this sucks...I'm freakin out....

ok bye!

So here I am once again. I have a very bad feeling about my grades this semester and firmly believe that I will not be at the level of achievement that I have grown accustomed to in days past. I am already going over in my head what I will say during my med school interview when I am asked about this particular semester and why the hell I even think that I should get into med school with grades that will no doubt boarder on the mediocre (no 4.0 for me this semester, I may have to live with a 3.4 if I am enormously lucky.) But I have doubts, even in certainty of mediocrity. Perhaps I will do very well on all of my finals and just maybe I will pull a miracle out of my hat (or ass). But it is now crunch time and officially there are only 4 days of regular classes left and then straight on into finals. I have a final on a Monday, a wedenesday and a friday. Thankfully both of the labs are pretty much done except for the two lab reports that are due this monday...can you take a guess as to what I will be doing for the rest of the weekend?

But then, it is all good for a little while...I have the month of January off and will begin my intensive studies in preparation for the MCAT....with my sundays still currently wrapped up in prep-course stuff.

The wife and I will be having a very texas christmas capped off with new years in atlanta for a wedding....

Ok so I have to go now and get crackin on these reports so have a good weekend all and I look foward to keeping you up to date on my academic melt down this semester....

cheers all!

Organic Chemistry is really freakin' cool!!!!....no...really!

So I have the last of my regular Organic Chemistry exams today. My mind is filled with such pleasantries as hydroboration, oxymercuration, dehydrohalogenation, alkyne and alkene formations and subsequent hydrogenations, Zaitzev and Hoffman rules, Markovnikov and anti-Markovnikov hydrogen addition, E2 elimination on chair conformations wherein only one diaxial hydrogen on a beta carbon is avaiable to be removed, but the ring is in an energetically unfavorable conformation and who could forget the simmons smith reagent as a tool for cyclopropanation.

So here are the more important things
for oxymercuration the second step of the mechanism uses NaBH4
for hydroboration the second step of the mechanism uses H2O2 and -OH
for dihydroxylation (OsO4) NaHSO3 is used with it.

HBr will be deprotonated and the created proton will add via markovnikov to an alkene or alkyne, and the bromide ion will add to the opposite side without control of stereochemistry. In the presence of peroxides however the H that is pulled off will add anti-markovinkov with the bromide adding to the other side.

Retro-synthetic analysis is your friend when you are given a puzzle.....

Hot concentrated KMnO4 in OH gives you cleavage of double bonds and if it is a terminal alkene you will get bubbles of CO2 gas, while cold KMnO4 will give you syn addition diol formation.

Ozonolysis of Alkynes will give us CO2 gas if it is a terminal alkyne, with alkenes we get some cleavages. We uses Ozone in the presence of CH2Cl2.

Yeah you guys are bored so I'll leave ya'll with the quote of the day.

Wish me luck....


QUOTE OF THE DAY
All of my neurons are functioning smoothly
yet still I'm a cyborg just like you
- Bad Religion

So a couple of doctors performed the first face transplant today in France...and the first thing that comes to my mind is that movie...you know which one I mean with the scientologist and the Coppola nephew. well anyway.

So some of you (1 maybe 2 people at most) might be asking what the hell have you been up to Mil...I mean jeez no posts since the beginning of November??? WTF!!!

Well loyal reader, the truth is that I have been so damn busy with school and work that the last thing I want to do is recount all that has happened in the day and boring you to tears with a bunch of useless crap..what I can say is that I had a good thanksgiving (I actually took most of that day off and did not touch a single text book) and studied the rest of the weekend. I've had exams and crap since last I wrote and have been doing alright although this semester has me very worried in terms of grades....might see a dip in my overall GPA....GASP...but yes I still think I can be a doctor....pretty silly eh?

Work is nuts.....it is that time of year where we buy a bunch of classy x-mas cards and cheap gifts to send out to people who don't give a rats ass about us and will probably never use us anyway...but, my boss seems to think it is important.....every time we get a holiday card, and yes we have already received holiday cards, he needs to add that person to the list of recipients of the fabulous x-mas card.....which of course we only have a certain amount of....in other news our touring show is going well and another show skedded for the beginning of the coming year has been indefinitely postponed, the author/director decided that his show was not meant for Broadway...and who can blame him with the outrageous prices that we charge folks like you. (you would have a much better understanding of why we charge what we charge if you took a look at how damn expensive it is to run a show on a weekly basis and not see any money for years if at all.....) and then there are the shows that have (a) big star(s) that becomes so successful on broadway that we start charging a "premium" price for tickets simply out of greed.....greed is so very good. Now the kicker is that we as an office, never get to see any of that money....sad....we have worked on a few very successful shows and we don't see a dime of profit...yes we get a weekly fee and a start up fee, but that is it....makes me a little pissed when I am writing checks for $500K to other people when we are doing all the work for them....could we just get a little slice...a sliver....anything....alas....this why I am leaving this business. Nobody gives a hoot about anybody....when you fail, millions of dollars are lost, when you succeed, you get greedy and think you know how the whole thing works....just like Mr. lane and Mr. Broderick....yes they are making tons of money, yes the odd couple was sold out for it's run, but guess what...the show sucks...it was a bad idea....and no one is untouchable.....

so this is a bit incomprehensible and for that I apologize...in a bit of a rush to get to my volunteer gig so I can atone for my greed....or for the greed of this business.....

Sorry more later...maybe....soon........have a great weekend all !