A roundup of the pleasant and the very un at the ACS, with an emphasis on facial hair.

Click below to get the skinny.

The Good:

-enthusiastic students (overheard at the undergraduate poster fair: “Yeah, proteins are cool.”)

-the food at the Division of Chemistry & the Law reception.

-No cell phones have gone off in any of the sessions I have been in.

-No one has been unable to load their PowerPoint.

-The variety and fierceness of the beards and moustaches on display, from the ZZ Top to the Wyatt Earp to the scruffy hipster look. Go unshaven chemists!

The Bad:

-a few small crowds in very large halls. Always makes the speaker look like he or she failed to draw an expected crowd.

-The escalators in the convention center are only one person wide. Therefore, there is none of the “stand on the right, walk on the left” stuff I am used to, and I am forced to just stand there on escalators as they creep up and down at sloth speeds. Actually, the fact that I have found this so deeply irritating has made me wonder if three years of living on the East Coast is starting to get to me.

-Despite CNN being across the street, I have not casually run into Wolf Blitzer—the on-air correspondent who perhaps did more than any other media figure to bring back the beard.

-No peaches are in evidence anywhere, even in the press room fruit plate. C’mon Georgia!