What are you reading?

[rock hound]

A book about, Mistresses, Courtesans and such of the English Royal families since Henry the VIII.  Talk about a tangled web of sex, deceit, treachery, pimping (Husbands,Uncles and Fathers steering daughters, nieces, wives in the Kings direction to satisfy his lusts and boredom and for their own profit.  Little known fact, condoms (of con-dums) are an invention of the 1500's.     And when I spoke to Carla about it, she told me that the catholic church ban on any type of birth control came in 1960.  LOL  It's an interesting read albeit like trying to figure out the Gordion knot.  Who slept with who and who navigated the intrigues of the royal court better and who......well, tangled web does not even begin to describe life back then.   

[odeon]

Mezzofanti's Gift. Sort of good, so far.

[rock hound]

John Fogerty of CCR biography, his book "Fortunate Son"

[sg1008]

Well dang. I finished Mists of Avalon (annoyed by all the sex scenes, not because I dislike sex or dislike scenes of intimacy- just that I dont feel like thinking about sex when I dont want to think about it).

BUT-- i finished the book and went and read about the author-- and apparently she had molested and raped her children, and turned a blind eye to her husbands child molestation.

I can't help but wonder if all the sex scenes were related in some way to a preoccupation she had with sex, particularly incest.

*shudders

[rock hound]

The Bio of Greg Lake of "King Crimson" and "Emerson, Lake and Palmer", fame.  The title is "Lucky Man".  Just finished reading Paul Simon's "A life".   

[Queen Victoria]

Essays on Medieval Visions

(Philosophy and society)

[Lestat]

Quite a lot of things.

A journal article on virotoxins (related to the deadly amatoxins found in death cap mushrooms in the genus Amanita, such as A.phalloides, the deathcap, as well as related to the phallotoxins, again found in A.phalloides), the virotoxins being produced not by deathcaps, but by Amanita virosa, and  possibly the very, very rare A.verna, the destroying angel, and the spring or fool's mushroom respectively.

Also reading abook on carbonate esters, and synthesis ofsame by  various different routes which are designed to avoid having anything at all to do with phosgene gas. Because its just about one of the nastiest, most heinous chemicals that I want fuck all to do with; it is just that awfully noxious.



A book on functional derivatives of carboxylic acids: http://colapret.cm.utexas.edu/courses/Chapter%2018.pdf


A particularly interesting journal article I haven't finished yet, because I'm busy getting my hands (well gloves) dirty doing some hands on actual chemistry. But interesting, its about two novel allotropes of tin and lead; anyone here heard of buckyballs? C60? basically spherical molecules composed of carbon atoms in interlocking ring structures. A novel allotrope, although by now familiar to science, of carbon.

Well here, are the tin and lead allotropes analogous to buckminsterfullerene; introducing, stannaspherene  and  plumbaspherene, apparently they can be made to encapsulate other atoms within the interior of the spheres, especially of plumbaspherene, which has the larger of the two cavities in the center. Can stick transition metals in there, or apparently at least palladium. I just wonder what use that might be for a catalyst for reductions using hydrogen gas under pressure...

Shit, I never realized lead even HAD an allotropic form until I read about plumbaspherene. I knew tin does, when it gets cold, tin undergoes  an allotropic phase transition to become what is known as tin-pest, that turns tin from a metal with properties expected of a metallic element to becoming whitish grey, crumbly and powdery, perhaps closer to the white allotrope of arsenic  than a metal. Once tin pest has set in on an object made of tin, the result is inevitable, it creeps and crawls slowly through the metal, turning it from grey, silvery metallic beta-tin to the soft, greyish crumbly alpha allotrope. Once it gets started, it renders the rest of the tin susceptible to further attack, so it takes a hold, and the phase change creeps over and through the rest, turning it all to nonmetallic alpha tin, aka tin pest, just like a disease, an infection.

http://casey.brown.edu/chemistry/research/LSWang/publications/273.


And this, the ebook publication on carbonate esters  (CO2 esters formally although one cant just bubble carbon dioxide through an alcohol with a few  drops of concentrated sulfuric acid, due to CO2 being such a weak acid; so more roundabout ways are needed, especially if one wishes  to avoid phosgene.)


http://sci-hub.tw/10.1002/14356007.a05_197

[Lestat]

Someone on one of the chem forums I'm on was good enough to upload a copy of Vogels' Practical Organic Chemistry 5th edition, as an ebook. A very thorough book by a most competent chemist, about lab techniques. I feel like I've improved my inert gas techniques already, even before I've had an opportunity to use it in practice. Just the reading, now more au fait with using argon and nitrogen atmospheres for conducting reactions, looking forward to putting it to practice soon, when I next have occasion to perform a Bouveault-Blanc reduction, which needs an inert atmosphere plus preparation of thoroughly anhydrous solvents, distillation of solvents directly from flask to flask, accomodating pressure changes, in previously flame-dried glass, as it makes use of sodium metal, added to anhydrous alcohol, to effect a reduction, often used for esters to primary alcohols, although in this case, it'll be for ketoximes to primary amines.

I just need to buy myself some more pure ethanol, well almost, just 5% H2O in it that will need carefully removing after I buy it. already got my ketoximes of choice, and a big brick of sodium metal. Which itself, given the size of it, will need rather careful handling, I'll scale the reaction to do multiple batches so the entire block can be used immediately after a test reduction on a smaller scale, so the rest of the sodium can be used up. Soft enough a metal to be cut with a knife, like stiff candle wax almost, but needs storage under oil, or something like hexane, petrol etc. to prevent it bursting into flames and going 'boom', which I imagine the large block of sodium I have to be pretty good at, size taken into account. Still, nothing I can't handle easily enough, but reading Vogels' has helped me improve my inert gas techniques already