Day 5: Fleeting Moments In Atlanta

Another ACS meeting is coming to a close today. As I reflected before the meeting started, I expected a week of great chemistry. And as usual, I wasn’t disappointed. I have plenty of work to do in the coming weeks to put together a few articles.

I was going to say something smart here about how the convention center looked like a ghost town this morning, as a lot of people bail out on the final day. I remember attending a talk on Thursday afternoon at the ACS meeting in Washington last fall with three people in the audience. But heck, I’m not even at the convention center today. I spent four full days there, and I decided to give myself a few hours off before I head to the airport and home. By the way, another sign of ACS leaving town is that at the Atlanta Hilton, where I am staying, a new group of conventioneers is moving in: It’s a group of collectors of Hot Wheels toy cars. Go figure.

Some of my memorable ACS meeting moments? At one point I remember being glad I don’t drink coffee when I saw a wrap-around line at one of the convention center’s Starbucks. Another moment was my thinking how normal a person Nobel Laureate Richard Schrock of MIT is when I saw him walking down one of the concourses humming to himself and keeping a beat by tapping on a handrail. Finally, seeing that Texas A&M chemistry professor F. Albert Cotton may be the last soul still giving technical talks using transparencies instead of PowerPoint. (All the meeting rooms had overhead projectors, but I didn’t see anyone else use one.) But you know, at age 75 Cotton’s still doing great chemistry.

So for my last morning here in Atlanta, I got up early and went for a run around downtown. It’s a great way to see a city, and I didn’t get to see much of Atlanta this week. As I ran up one street and down another, I ended up running by the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. I’m sure this was fate at work. It was still early and the buildings were closed, but I stopped at his gravesite. I stood there alone in the plaza with King’s tomb, his wife Coretta Scott King’s gravesite nearby. It was a powerful moment to consider how one person can make a difference in the world, and it has left me with more to think about as I head on home.—Steve Ritter, filed at 10:15 AM EST

Day 5: MetaBlog

You probably Yahoo or Google about chemistry, but do you blog too? Have you podcasted? Know what RSS does? Written it all off as something for those whippersnappers? Perhaps you’ll reconsider.

Kermit Murray, a professor in the chemistry department at Louisiana State University, defined the basics of blogging and other Web communication tools yesterday during a compact but informative talk in the Division of Analytical Chemistry. (And yes, this is a blog entry about blogs.)

Murray is a blogger himself. His topic? Mass spectrometry, including RSS feeds from other sites. Check him out at msblog.kermitmurray.com. In his talk, he also mentioned other science-oriented blogs, including specialized analytical topics such as nuclear magnetic resonance.

Then Murray posed a question: “Are journals threatened by blogs?” He said blogs and journal articles have similar elements, such as titles, names, and dates of posting. “I would argue that journals are peer-reviewed blogs, in a manner of thinking” and that journals could benefit from additional, associated blogs, Murray said. “It’s another path for information to travel,” he added.

And it’s a path that lots of people are traveling. The number of blogs on the Web doubles just about every five months, Murray said, citing statistics from Technorati. He acknowledges that not all blogs are worth visiting, but he advised the 20 or so attendees to pay attention to open-source knowledge. At least be aware of how it can enhance the chemistry community, he said. He closed with a quick primer on podcasts, RSS feeds, and Wiki entries.

Looking for examples of podcasts and RSS feeds? Click on the links above or visit the C&EN homepage. Of course our online team’s got those options covered!—Rachel Petkewich, filed at 8:55 AM EST