Visitors

Last week one of my former postdoc supervisors came to MediumSizedU where I am currently employed to give a talk. Not all of the faculty attend seminars, but most of them try to make it, and one faculty member with whom I often sit had brought along a paper to work on. (something that I knew was actually due two months ago as it is a chapter in a book.) I leaned over and said, "This is going to be a pretty synthetic talk, I see you've brought work. Good idea." She's not a synthetic chemist at all.

I used to bring work along to talks, but now I almost never do that, as I'd rather not attend if it's just something that I'm going to ignore anyway. It's not like staff have to attend seminars, because we don't at all, but we go to the talks that interest us. This particular seminar was all synthesis, catalysis, and characterization of intermediates by X-ray crystallography, as the active compounds are paramagnetic and not characterizable by NMR spectroscopy. (My blogger dictionary doesn't think that characterizable is a word.) While my interests aren't in early metal chemistry any more, the speaker was engaging, energetic, and funny; my colleague didn't get around to editing her book chapter as she was also taken up with our presenter's style and wit.

I really like my former pdoc supervisor as a human. He's a warm and funny man, driven to succeed. As a boss, he's an utter tyrant, micro-managing the lab and everyone in it down to the tiniest daily minutiae. I worked for him quite a while ago, and I do know that he's mellowed somewhat (heart attack will do that) because another of his (much more recent) former postdocs is currently p'doc'ing for someone on faculty at MedSizedU. He hasn't changed that much though.

Thing is, even though he is a tyrant, he's still likable.

*********
On another note, I'm writing my final paper for my little course, and I've chosen to write about the paradigm shift in thought with the advent of female-centred birth control (the pill). I've been sifting through the CBC archives to get a feeling for the social milieu of the time, and firstly, I should say that the CBC has done a great job of maintaining these old files and making them public. There are 12 television clips and a couple of radio clips in this archive, and if you have time, take a look and a listen. Interesting that the audience "twitters" over the word ovulation in one This Hour has Seven Days interview. I'd love to bring one of those audience members forward in time to one of our dinnertime conversations!