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The Texas "Islamist Terror Enclave" That Wasn't

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EPR-radar4/27/2014 3:20:47 pm PDT

re: #140 klys

It is a gold mine. Another sample:

When we last checked in with the Klaptke lab at Munich, it was to highlight their accomplishments in the field of nitrotetrazole oxides. Never forget, the biggest accomplishment in such work is not blowing out the lab windows. We’re talking high-nitrogen compounds here (a specialty of Klaptke’s group), and the question is not whether such things are going to be explosive hazards. (That’s been settled by their empirical formulas, which generally look like typographical errors). The question is whether you’re going to be able to get a long enough look at the material before it realizes its dream of turning into an expanding cloud of hot nitrogen gas.

It’s time for another dispatch from the land of spiderweb-cracked blast shields and “Oh well, I never liked that fume hood, anyway”. Today we have a fine compound from this line of work, part of a series derived from N-amino azidotetrazole. The reasonable response to that statement is “Now hold it right there”, because most chemists will take one look at that name and start making get-it-away-from-me gestures. I’m one of them. To me, that structure is a flashing red warning sign on a dead-end road, but then, I suffer from a lack of vision in these matters.