Dan Michaels lurifakserier og andre skriverier

Cycling on the lawn

Dan Michael — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:37:28 +0000

The next big thing..? Very eco-friendly:

The creator is unknown..

First week in Cape Town

Dan Michael — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:26:01 +0000

We arrived Cape Town one week ago after 18 hours in the air / on airports (yeah, I did pay the carbon tax). We started by a short two-day “holiday” on Cape Standard, a very charming hotel in Green Point. A five-minute walk lead us the fantastic coast of Cape Town with large waves pounding the clips, and we didn’t care that it rained cats and dogs. Some more minutes walk lead us to Waterfront – a harbor area with restaurants, shopping centers and a cinema. By luck, we reached the last days of the documentary festival Encounters.

Thursday we moved into our home for this semester, a charming (but poorly isolated..) house in Observatory near the Devil’s Peak mountain. We share it with three Americans attending courses at the University of Cape Town, which is located quite near. It turned out that getting to the University of the Western Cape at first was a little more difficult. The first day I used almost 2 hours to get there, but now I’ve found a bus route that runs at about 1 hour including some minutes walk and a short minibus ride. Saturday we went to DMC Dj Championships at Fiction, a cool bar at Long Street. The DJs were so talented that it was real fun! Monday the classes started at my university, which by the way has a really fascinating history as the “black” university fighting towards democracy under apartheid. I like Cape Town very good so far and I’m looking forward to what this semester will bring.

Cough medicine or chocolate?

Dan Michael — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:50:22 +0000

I got sick on Thursday and the cough is making it difficult both to sleep and attending lectures. And my voice sounds like it belongs to a 80 year old man. Conventional cough medicine is probably not more effective than placebo. But there is a much better solution… theobromine, found in chocolate – according to a peer-reviewed article by Usmani et al. Good news for all chocolate lovers!

The Obiora-case

Dan Michael — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:47:48 +0000

I’ve been thinking about writing about this case for a long time. Obiora died in 2006 when the Norwegian police tried to arrest him. Obiora was unarmed, and the involved police officers have been criticized for using unnecessary violence. As a side note, they have had in total 14 violence-related complaints filed against them. The case was investigated by the Special Unit for Police Affairs, but was abandoned on May 4, 2007 concluding that in the case of three officers there was insufficient evidence to pursue an indictment.

Now there exists plans to take the case to the European Court on Human Rights. Lawyer Abid Raja has found that the case bears similarities with the French Saoud-case (No. 9375/02), where a young man suffered death after have being held face down to the ground by French police officers for over thirty minutes. The Strasbourg court held unanimiusly that there had been a violation of Article 2 (right to life) and 6 (right to a fair hearing) of the Convention.

The Supporting Group for Obiora arranges a fundraising for the up-coming trial. They have already collected more than 100.000 NOK, but need at least twice. Their bank account no. is 7878.06.19510, according to Klassekampen 27th June.

Photocromic reactions

Dan Michael — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:05:55 +0000

Photochemistry, the interaction between molecules and light (or electromagnetic radiation), can be quite spectacular. One example is luminescent compounds. Another is so-called photocromic reactions, which can be described as a reversible change of colour upon exposure to light. A neat example of such a reaction was just published in Org. Lett. and a video in the supporting information has been published on YouTube:

via The Chem Blog

It’s all chemistry

Dan Michael — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:06:30 +0000

I normally prefer organic products, not because I’m so worried about food additives or ionizing radiation, but because of the potentially environmentally harmful synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides used in conventional agriculture.

But sometimes the marketing depts go too far. Like when they promote 100 % chemical free compost. Unfortunately, many people appear to be afraid of chemicals in general, but everything around us is chemicals: you, me, compost… Another funny example is the carbon-free t-shirt, given that humans consist of ~ 18 % carbon by mass. By the way, we consist of 65-90 % dihydrogen monoxide :)

Writing about organic, I just learned that Cuba is in the lead when it comes to organic farming — because of the US trade embargo! The country is beeing looked at as a model for other nations. Indeed, necessity is the mother of invention.

Привет Санкт-Петербург!

Dan Michael — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:11:12 +0000

It was Maria who suggested going on an easter-trip to St. Peterburg. As I have been longing for visiting Russia and for using my very limited Russian language knowledge, I found that a great idea. To travel to Russia you still need a VISA and to get this you actually need an invitation! You can get this from hotels if you want, but because of the limited time left, we decided to buy one. In less than an hour we received an invitation, and today we visited the Russian embassy to deliever our passports. The waiting room in the embassy was way too small and full of people in a whirling queue. There were only two windows and you had to talk through a microphone. Very bureaucratic - and Russian? Hopefully we can collect our VISAs in two days.

Answer that phone

Dan Michael — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:36:00 +0000

When I see ads like this I’m glad I live in Norway after all:

There is also a hilarious parody around. But wait, is the White House the only place the phone is calling at night..? It’s also calling at the lab…

City noise

Dan Michael — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:27:17 +0000

by:Larm (directly translated as city noise) was arranged in Oslo last weekend. With around 190 concerts in 3 days the biggest challenge was of course to choose where to go. Some quite different highlights were Bladed, Haddy N’jie, Alog, Wild Birds and Peace Drums, Susanna, Binärpilot, Casiokids and Sunjammer, who’ve produced this sweet music video:

The monkey ring

Dan Michael — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:54:57 +0000

I found this wonderful interpretation of a benzene ring from Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments on Carbon-based Curiosities:

The monkeys are carbon and the bananas hydrogen. The monkeys who hold both feet of another monkey represents double bonds.