Watching Too Much TV

At the worksite, I have a television in my room. Normally, television gets ditched in favour of the Internet, but I do watch sometimes, especially when, you know, procrastinating. And what I see makes me twitch. *Twitch, twitch* (see?)

Firstly, there's CSI. Now, many biologists have noticed the magically dreamy PCR that works in 1 minute. As a chemistry student, however, what makes me sad is the way the characters handle micropipettes.

Please, please, please don't plunge half the pipette tip into the solution. Please don't depress the plunger while cocking the pipette at a π/4 radian angle. A nice micropipette like that does not deserve to be abused like that. At least I haven't seen the characters let the plunger snap back into the upright position, I guess.

The oddest part about watching CSI is that I actually like the show: I have been trying to catch every episode ever since I started watching it last week. But those details do make me cringe.

Secondly, there's Mythbusters. More specifically, the one involving the "confederate rocket", requiring the synthesis of guncotton. Leaving aside the vague description, um...why are they mixing concentrated sulfuric and nitric acids together with tongs? In the great outdoors, apparently, outside a fume hood? (I mean, the respirator helps, but do bystanders get to inhale the delightful scent of nitric oxide?) Where is the ice bath? Am I imagining things or are they performing a nitration on a wooden table? And they are doing all this for one single lousy cotton ball?

I am also amused by a remark in the biodiesel episode of the show "Dirty Jobs". The host made a remark about how innovative the hotplate/stirrer combo was, and how one can cook in it. Well...I wonder how many students have done that in their undergraduate career? Cook with a hotplate/stirrer combo, that is.

Enough random ranting from me. Back to working on my distance-education writing assignments. *Sigh*.