Chemistry Nobel Winners Are True Heroes

To round out my Nobel Prize commentary, I highlight the story of this years winners for Chemistry: Richard Heck, Ei-Ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki "for developing a key synthetic technique to make complex organic molecules used in medicine and electronics."

I can't explain what got into the water in Sweden this year, but handing out the prize for "develop[ing] a key synthetic technique for making complex organic molecules used in medicine, agriculture and electronics" was another stroke of right on.

Similar to the Physics Nobel, the researchers earned the award for investigating carbon bonds. As the LA Times story describes it

Among [Heck's] first feats was joining a short carbon chain to a ring of carbon atoms to produce styrene, the raw material of the now widely used plastic polystyrene.

A similar process is also used in the production of the anti-inflammatory drug naproxen, the asthma drug montelukast and the herbicide prosulfuron.

...

One of the most spectacular feats was the 1994 synthesis of a naturally occurring chemical called palytoxin, which was first isolated from a coral in Hawaii in 1971. Palytoxin contains 129 carbon atoms linked in a precise three-dimensional structure that chemists were able to reproduce using the Suzuki reaction.

What's most interesting about this type of research is how even relatively mundane things like this are still part of leading edge science. We've come a long way, but there is still much to be learned, highlighting the importance of the freedom required to let it continue.

And for anyone who gives all this a big, fat yawn, I'll try to demonstrate its value with a personal anecdote from just this morning.

I made steak last night on my stove top grill. This morning, I sprayed the cast-iron surface with fume-free Easy Off and let it sit, where it didn't stink up the kitchen one bit. Less than an hour later, I rinsed it off, wiped it a couple of times with a sponge (no scouring), and I was done. Safe, effortless, and quick.

Multiply that savings of time and effort by a billion people for fifty years worth of days and you have some idea of just how important even ordinary chemistry truly is.

Now consider this: how many politicians names do you know versus how many chemists'? Yeah, me neither.

Llosa Awarded Literature Nobel

If Mario Vargas Llosa is everything that's being said about him, it's a complete mystery how he won the Noble Prize for Literature. In the past 76 years, that has invariably gone to writers who are, when they aren't explicitly left wing, at least postmodern Anti(s).

On principle, I'm opposed to giving that prize in the first place, since the Academy employs nothing close to objective criteria for choosing the winner. But, at least it was one of the five listed in Nobel's will, unlike the bogus Economics Prize. (It's also not to his credit that he left out specifying a mathematics prize, but the Fields Medal more than makes up for that.)

Still, if the following quote is any indication, Llosa certainly deserves some kind of a prize:

The liberal I aspire to be considers freedom a core value. Thanks to this freedom, humanity has been able to journey from the primitive cave to the stars and the information revolution, to progress from forms of collectivist and despotic association to representative democracy.

The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights.

According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal. Because freedom has not been understood as such in Latin America, the region has had many failed attempts at democratic rule.

Either because the democracies that began emerging after the dictatorships respected political freedom but rejected economic liberty, which inevitably produced more poverty, inefficiency and corruption, or because they installed authoritarian governments convinced that only a firm hand and a repressive regime could guarantee the functioning of the free market.

Whether or not that has anything to do with writing great literature is, of course, a different matter. Nevertheless, I'd much rather see it go to Llosa than any previous winner I can think of (except Kipling).

2010 Physics Nobel Well Deserved

The Nobel Prize in Physics is sometimes given for stuff that strikes me as pretty pointless. The Committee too frequently hands them out for things that advance neither theory nor technology.

They're also often influenced heavily by 'science politics' (i.e. popularity and jostling for attention, not the sort of politics in environmental science). But this year the Swedish Academy has really done themselves proud, granting the prize to two University of Manchester researchers (Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov) who did pioneering work on graphene.

Among the many amazing properties of this stuff is:

“[it's] stronger and stiffer than diamond, yet can be stretched by a quarter of its length, like rubber. Its surface area is the largest known for its weight.”
...
[and formed the world's first] "one-nanometer graphene transistor, only one atom thick and ten atoms across."
...
[Not to mention} using carbon nanotubes to create wearable electronics — clothes that can power and charge electrical devices — are beginning to switch to graphene, which is thinner and potentially less expensive to produce.
...
[Also,] strong, flexible, light-sensitive graphene could improve the efficiency of solar cells and LEDs, as well as aiding in the production of next-generation devices like flexible touch screens, photodetectors and ultrafast lasers. In particular, graphene could replace rare and expensive metals like platinum and iridium, performing the same tasks with greater efficiency at a fraction of the cost.

This list goes on for some length. What's most striking about all this is that all these possibilities come from a form of simple carbon, one of the most common elements on the planet. And here we are stupidly burning the stuff to make electricity (producing genuine pollution — like radioactive particles that wind up in your lungs — in the process).

Taxes to Rise, Unless...

The mighty Veronique de Rugy outlines several taxes that will go up unless the Bush tax cuts of 2001/2003 are extended before January 2011. Among them are:

• The estate tax will return to pre-2001 levels, socking estates worth more than $1 million with a 55 percent tax.
• The capital gains tax on most assets will jump from 15 percent to 20 percent.
• Dividends currently taxed at 15 percent will skyrocket to individual tax rates that go as high as 39.6 percent.
• The Making Work Pay tax break will cease to exist.
• The Alternative Minimum Tax will hit the middle class for 2010 tax returns.
• A slew of tax breaks that expired last year, including credits for research and development expenses and relief for college tuition, will not be available for 2010 tax returns.
• The Child Tax Credit will revert from $1,000 to $500.

When combined with inaction on the Bush tax cuts affecting marginal rates, taxpayers would be hit with a tax increase that easily tops $4 trillion over the decade if all the tax issues are untouched. Next year’s increase alone would amount to over $200 billion, according to Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee.

What Ms. de Rugy doesn't ask is: Why weren't these made permanent in the first place? To which the answer is sadly obvious: the Republicans who managed to get them passed didn't have enough guts to go all the way. Let's hope the new crop coming in this January will have more.

Pajamas Media Article: Why the 10:10 Video Is a Distraction

Please head to Pajamas Media and read my article on Why the 10:10 Video Is a Distraction.

In it, I argue that the real enemy is much more dangerous, because much more benign looking.

Here's how it begins...

A British group called 10:10.org recently released (then quickly pulled) a viro snuff film. In the video, teachers press a red button to explode schoolchildren reluctant to accept the Green dogma of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) and other environmentalist fairy tales.

There's no question that the film is revolting and its producers are vicious, no matter how much they try to claim it was intended as humor. Still, the pundits up in arms over it are making a tactical error.

Your comments are invited.

Read the rest here.

Thanks,

Jeff

The Case for Legalizing Capitalism

Someone I've never heard of, Kel Kelly, has written a book with the title of the post. (That's not intended as a slam; I'm sure he's never heard of me either.)

I haven't read it - and given the current length of my reading list it will be 10 years before I can even crack its cover - but I have to salute one of the best book titles I've ever seen.

From the review on Mises.org:

He considers every important topic: banking, education, taxation, labor, environment, trade, war and peace, safety, medicine, drugs, and far more. He presents the reader with a basic explanation of how capitalism is supposed to work and how society functions when commerce is free. He then turns to all the areas of life that are distorted and destroyed by the great "helping hand" of government.

Hmmm... maybe I'll bump this up on the list.

Commissar Sebelius Rankles at Free Speech

Here's an interesting little P.S. to my recent rant about Commissar Kathleen. Here, batting way out of her league (not a far stretch, I admit), she expresses her fear of unfettered and anonymous political advertising against things she favors.

The Secretary argued that for voters to determine which campaign advertisers are on their side “is difficult if not impossible right now and I think that is pretty dangerous.”

Well, that should surprise no one, I guess. Not satisfied with ignoring the 4th and 5th Amendments, she naturally now feels compelled to openly attack the 1st. As the old saying goes, "Those who believe absurdities will soon enough commit atrocities." (A variation on an aphorism of Voltaire's.)

Ah, the so-called liberal mind. Always worried about the big bad forces of evil pulling the wool over the eyes of an unsuspecting public. Why, it might even lead to something like the astroturf Tea Party movement! If only we were as smart as the Obamamites. Thank heavens we don't need to be with good Samaritans like Commissar Kathleen watching out for us.

It would be funny if it weren't for the fact that this woman is in the process of becoming Public Enemy #2 as the features of ObamaCare begin to take effect.