brockrhodes

Just a reminder, Flock of Dodos premiers Thursday on Showtime. Make it an event. More information can be found at the film's website, Flock of Dodos or at my Defending Science blog.

SUCCESS! I have managed to archived much of the blog as wordpress has made my blog public again. I don't have admin access over it yet, however, so I've posted the archives at my new blog at glorifiedape.wordpress.com, and I'm abandoning brockwichita.wordpress.com. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for the support.

For those of you who were familiar with my "Defending Science" blog, found at http://silkworm.wordpress.com between February 2006 and May 2007, I regret to inform you that my blog was hijacked by spammers and, as a result, shut down by wordpress.com due to violation of the Terms of Service. Wordpress is not responding to any of my requests for access to my content, and appear to have a NO TOLERANCE policy when it comes to Terms of Service violations. For anyone out there who may have a hard disk copy of anything from my the "Defending Science" blog, please notify me immediately at my new blog at http://brockwichita.wordpress.com/, which is mirrored at http://brockwichita.blogspot.com/. Thank you for your help and support.

I see what you're saying, but it very much is a political situation as all progress from either side and all discussions up until this point with this particular issue in the public sphere have taken place entirely in a political arena with the sides opposing each other almost entirely on the lines of difference in education and culture. In the scientific arena, where culture doesn't matter and politics, philosophically, are marginalized the best they can be, there is no analagous discussion. The film payed a lot of attention to the fact that scientists don't have P.R. firms, and the filmmaker mentioned the horrific future of P.R. firms starting a propaganda campaign during any scenario where credible scientists need to be listened to but their goals or plans of action don't jive with the economic outlook of a particular party. That's policy controlled by marketing. It's all political. This film will most likely be a catalyst for a backlash by scientists against Richard Dawkins. I love Richard Dawkins myself, I agree with most of what he says and does so much that he's a piece of my heart. But instead of spreading public awareness and understanding of science, he's no most apparently on a crusade to promote atheism. Philosophical extrapolations that justify Dr. Dawkins lack of religion are his right, except that he's just fueling a fire and making much of the other side ignore and even fight against what he says that would be useful to them because of its factual accuracy just to spite him.

I had a chance to see a screening of Flock of Dodos last night at Wichita State. It covers the creation vs. evolution political situation very gently. A cast of characters were present in the film that I have met in person, but the film casted them in a more complete light that I think will help the public understand what is going on. The maker, Dr. Randy Olson, a marine biologist and filmmaker, was in attendance for the screening and stayed afterwards for a panel discussion with Philosophy of Science Dr. Niall Shanks, a pastor, and the Wichita State geologist that made the event possible. He is a very nice and intelligent man, and I think he's made what could amount to an important film. It will start showing on Showtime next week. I recommend, and I recommend telling everyone you can about it. Here is a schedule and minor information from Showtime: http://www.sho.com/site/schedules/product_page.do?episodeid=129643&seriesid=0

Yeah, 4n + 2 can not = 8. It certainly has 8 electrons in the pi system. I didn't even bother with Huckel because I was just drawing resonance structures in my head. I wrote them down on paper and I can't seem to avoid a 5 bonded carbon connected to the oxygen, including double bonds to each adjacent carbons. I also didn't look too hard because you said the answer given is D, so I figured it was aromatic and they just wanted the most extensive hyperconjugation, but now I don't even think it is aromatic. What do you call that? 2, 4, 6, cycloheptatrienone? It seems like that ring would be unstable, but maybe the 7th carbon keeps it together.

Do you mean in terms of why we dope to make n-type or p-type semiconductors, or trends in the materials themselves based on the type?

Good show, I'm a boob. Either that or I was smoking something when I first responded. Hahaha. You're right. It's not benzene. It does have 7 carbons. However, it still has the greatest amount of hyper conjugation. I think you're right about B as well, but not E. I don't see how the tautomerization would lead to an active ring with E.

4. Which one of the ketones below would be expected to have the greatest amount of aromatic character? To me, it looks like they all have aromatic character, except for E, but the answer is given as D. When they want to know the greatest amount of aromatic character they're asking for the most continuous hyper-conjugation. D makes sense because it is a benezene ring with a carbonyl. It appears that the additional carbonyl on C deactivates the ring. Neither B or E are aromatic. A is, but it's not as hyperconjugated as D. That's all I have time for right now.

The lanthanides and actinides. Now being called the lanthanoids and actinoids. I figured I could save picking a top 10 out of those just by naming the series.