Archive for September, 2007

Without further ado, here is Retread’s latest Rip Van Winkle installment, in which Rip feels much like Miles Monroe. My apologies for not posting it earlier; I’ve been occupied with other things. In fact, the apparent hectic state from which Retread was emerging when he wrote this post strikes me as similar to how I feel in coming back to this blog after not even checking it for so long: a little weird. — Paul

Sleeper is one of the great Woody Allen movies from the 70s. Woody plays Miles Monroe, the owner of (what else?) a health food store who through some medical mishap is frozen in nitrogen and is awakened 200 years later. He finds that scientific research has shown that cigarettes and fats are good for you. A McDonald’s restaurant is shown with a sign “Over 795 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 Served”.

Rip returned from the 100-year birthday blowout and band camp and began attacking a giant pile of accumulated unread journals. In the 9 August Nature (p. 630 - 631) he was amazed to read criticism of a 64-step, 22-year synthesis of an exquisitely complex molecule (azadirachtin) — a molecule for which it is easier to count the number of optically inactive carbons than the optically active ones. Back in the 60s, we were all impressed with how Woodward got the five asymmetric centers in one of the six-membered rings of reserpine (which was in use as an antihypertensive at the time, and whose fairly common side effect of depression was one of the clues leading to the amine theory of affect). Rip was surprised to find that the criticism was not that the synthesis was incorrect, but that the project shouldn’t have been done at all. Apparently, a significant body of organic chemists think this way.

Political correctness has left us with few groups that are safe to disparage. With apologies to one of them (Christians) I’ve got to ask, “What would Woodward do?”

Rip’s father went into the hospital shortly after his 100th, and is getting out 1 Sep, so it may be a while before he can respond to what this post brings forth.

Retread