If you could be a top flight professional, in what would it be?

[Mr Larrington]

On reflection, I might have to change my vote to side with Ron Nasty of The Rutles:

I wanna command a squadron of tanks!

[Morat]

On reflection, I might have to change my vote to side with Ron Nasty of The Rutles:

I wanna command a squadron of tanks!

Tanks are massively impressive during the 0.00001% of the time when they are actually moving and looking warry instead of languishing in a shed being fixed, polished, fixed again.

I'd probably want to be a top linguist. The sort of person who is genuinely fluent in multiple languages. Or maybe just has the gift of tongues. I could travel everywhere and talk to everyone.

[Wowbagger]

i could be infinitely prolonged and spend eternity travelling through space and time, insulting the whole of creation in alphabetical order.

[Ashaman42]

I still want to be an astronaut. I have (mostly) accepted that this will never be. Glasses and asthma not ideal.

However, I'm eighteen months into a new job and provided I clear the medical I should be getting to go on a plane that simulates micro-gravity next May. Which is closer than I ever thought I'd get to space.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee, so excited.

[Soaplady]

Watchmaking

I want to be Roger Smith (www.rwsmithwatches.com)

And if I couldn't be him, I'd like to be the next watchmaker down the list of the best. I would love to be able to make a watch from scratch.

[runsoncake]

Glassblower specificly a Scientific Glassblower. I've always regarded lab. glassware as decorative as well as functional. Its something I've always wanted to try but never had the oppertunity.

[T42]

On reflection, I might have to change my vote to side with Ron Nasty of The Rutles:

I wanna command a squadron of tanks!

Try Grangemouth Petrochemical. They have lots.

[Jakob]

Astronaut.  Seriously, what's wrong with you people, with your grown-up answers?

[essexian]

The Jackal.

There are several hundred people in power who the world could do without. Thus, I would be happy to offer my services for a reasonable fee to remove these people from the gene pool.... but only if I agreed that their removal would be good for humanity.

[yanner]

Chess.  Super GM.

Mr 0.0001% Magnus Carlsen is reportedly nett worth of "only" a couple of mil but he's young, plays a game for a living and likely to be able to do so for many years yet.

[caerau]

Glassblower specificly a Scientific Glassblower. I've always regarded lab. glassware as decorative as well as functional. Its something I've always wanted to try but never had the oppertunity.

Speaking as someone who works in academic chemistry labs, I've rarely met a glassblower who isn't miserable as sin.


They are all into the decorative thing but have their lives and aspirations destroyed by us lot who only ever ask them to 'please unstick this joint'  - please repair this Liebig Condenser.... please repair this thing that I've left covered in something that is going to flash fire in your face (or explode) when you get your oxyacetylene torch on it.
Back in the day, I am informed by the very senior people left over from ye olden days, if you wanted a flask you had to blow it yourself.  I guess that led to more appreciation of the potential dangers...

[Cudzoziemiec]

Glassblower specificly a Scientific Glassblower. I've always regarded lab. glassware as decorative as well as functional. Its something I've always wanted to try but never had the oppertunity.

Speaking as someone who works in academic chemistry labs, I've rarely met a glassblower who isn't miserable as sin.


They are all into the decorative thing but have their lives and aspirations destroyed by us lot who only ever ask them to 'please unstick this joint'  - please repair this Liebig Condenser.... please repair this thing that I've left covered in something that is going to flash fire in your face (or explode) when you get your oxyacetylene torch on it.
Back in the day, I am informed by the very senior people left over from ye olden days, if you wanted a flask you had to blow it yourself.  I guess that led to more appreciation of the potential dangers...

I find that amazing. I'd have assumed all lab glassware was moulded by machines and that when it breaks, you just sweep up the pieces and order a new one from "laboratoryhardware-dot-com-all your lab needs at the lowest prices, next day delivery guaranteed".

[caerau]

Well if the 'all your lab needs met at the lowest prices' bit was true we would.


Sadly Sigma-Aldrich sell a box of pencils for about 20 quid last time I checked which gives you a ball-park figure for how expensive lab-stuff is.  It's not like we're a mass market.


Having said that, you kind of can, but it depends on what it is.  If it's a round bottomed flask, yeah don't worry.  A double Schlenk-line will cost several thousands of $$ for a new one so that's when el glassblower comes in (though that would be a task met with some enthusiasm).


Even run of the mill glassware with universal (Quick-fit) ground glass joints is kind of pricey though - something like a tenner a piece.

[Kim]

I have vague childhood memories of SCIENTISTS molishing pipettes from stock glass tubing with a bunsen burner when needed.  Not sure whether the traditional rubber tube in the mouth was used instead of a bulb.  That always struck me as a Mk 1 bad idea when dealing with infectious organisms.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I presume those must be very special pencils or you'd just get them from Rymans. Anyway, I googled "sigma aldrich pencils" and didn't find anyway, so I reckon you're making that bit up.  (Or more likely, my google-fu is lacking in the area of lab pencils.)

[De Sisti]

Top flight criminal barrister (making sure any wealthy punters pay heavily for my services).

[DuncanM]

I think avoiding having people with less talent but more power complaining at me would be a significant aim. So sportsperson is probably rules out, along with politician, businessman etc.
Research scientist might be interesting.
Doctor would be altruistic.
I dunno, it's too hard to choose!

[caerau]

I presume those must be very special pencils or you'd just get them from Rymans. Anyway, I googled "sigma aldrich pencils" and didn't find anyway, so I reckon you're making that bit up.  (Or more likely, my google-fu is lacking in the area of lab pencils.)

I once looked them up in the Sigma-Aldrich catalogue for a laugh and it turned out to be even more hilarious than I had imagined - trust me I'm not making it up.  To be fair I think they are there so Pharms company sections can buy them at the end of April to spend their surplus budgets* - I don't think anyone would ever actually buy them otherwise.
I think you need to be signed up to them to see their prices.




*If you don't spend your budget then it gets cut next year type thing.

[caerau]

And yes we do really just buy them from stock suppliers.


I just had a look and sadly it appears they have removed pencils from their catalogue since last I looked - which was a decade or so ago.


An Erlenmeyer ACE style round three necked bottomed flask... 129 quid thobut.

[mattc]

If you can't find the price on google ... you probably can't afford it.

[barakta]

An Erlenmeyer ACE style round three necked bottomed flask... 129 quid thobut.

Yeah, I needed one of those for my A level project and there was only one left and no budget to replace the 2 broken ones by the time my group did lab projects. It was a constant scrounge to get access to it when it wasn't in use by others so I didn't get as much data as would have been handy and I spent half my life scrubbing someone else's insoluble organic shite out of it.

I would have been less hacked off if the tutor hadn't assigned the best projects to potential medics and given me and some others really duff and boring ones with annoying kit.

[Tim Hall]

I have vague childhood memories of SCIENTISTS molishing pipettes from stock glass tubing with a bunsen burner when needed.  Not sure whether the traditional rubber tube in the mouth was used instead of a bulb.  That always struck me as a Mk 1 bad idea when dealing with infectious organisms.

About a gazillion years ago when I was in my first year of Microbiology, we were given lab rules, top of which was "No Mouth Pipetting Ever."  The last (added by hand) was Inoculate is spelled "Inoculate".(Dr. Smith got all twitchy if variants on this were used)

[caerau]

As an undergrad I once mouth pipetted some 0.1 M H₂SO₄ and got it wrong.*


I learned my lesson. 








*Was interesting that it tasted juuuust like vinegar.  That's about as interesting as it got.

[Wowbagger]

Glassblower specificly a Scientific Glassblower. I've always regarded lab. glassware as decorative as well as functional. Its something I've always wanted to try but never had the oppertunity.

Speaking as someone who works in academic chemistry labs, I've rarely met a glassblower who isn't miserable as sin.


They are all into the decorative thing but have their lives and aspirations destroyed by us lot who only ever ask them to 'please unstick this joint'  - please repair this Liebig Condenser.... please repair this thing that I've left covered in something that is going to flash fire in your face (or explode) when you get your oxyacetylene torch on it.
Back in the day, I am informed by the very senior people left over from ye olden days, if you wanted a flask you had to blow it yourself.  I guess that led to more appreciation of the potential dangers...

I did some rudimentary glass blowing when I was quite young. I  had a chemistry set one Christmas, probably when I was about 11. In one experiment, you had to sacrifice a test tube by heating up one upper portion and then blowing into it to create a hole in the glass. The experiment was then to half-fill this test tube with coal, heat the coal with a bunsen burner and then set fire to the gas that came out of the hole you had previously blown in the side of the test tube. Other byproducts from the coking process went up the tube plugged into the top of the tube.

Also there was the simple bending of glass tubes so that one could make fermentation locks for wine making. This was not long after Reginald Maudlin had decriminalised beer making in a 1960s budget but before home brewing and wine making had taken off commercially. I was in my mid-teens (I think) when I did this sort of thing.

[Kim]

IRTA "decimalised beer making"