Certainly, much to chat about. But I'll throw some core science at you.

Water is a semiconductor, just like silicon. The symmetry structures of 
both allow sharing of charged particle orbitals. The big difference is 
silicon shares electrons, water shares protons. The quantum mechanics of 
fundamental particles electrons and protons differs only by charge and 
mass. The heavier mass of protons means lower excitation frequency. 
Chemists call proton donors an acid, proton acceptors are bases. So we 
have an optical frequency handle to perform chemistry. It was impossible 
to join much quantum physics with biochemistry in my day. Taking it 
further, protein is a structured deposition of acids and bases, with 
remarkable embedded circuits due to peptide bonds. "Protein as 
dynamically reconfigurable liquid crystal microprocessor."

Nature has some huge molecular structures like DNA, proteins, and 
cellulose. They are very cohesive partly because of quantum mechanics 
vibration modes. Audio frequency musical instruments are often wood. We 
need to add a lot of energy to convert cellulose to small molecule 
fuels. Fortunately, we have a lot of suitable wavelength photons to add 
energy to cellulose and make fuels; sunlight.

The XFoms toolkit I've suggested is maintained by a German chemical 
physicist, not a computer programmer. Scientists using computers are out 
there, just none I can find around here, and I've looked hard. This is 
an international priority, not a hobby.

Iznogoud wrote:
> Let me take this opportunity to say "happy birthday Walter Mondale."
>
> In my industry, Linux has been dominating in terms of being behind anything
> that smells like high-performance computing. In my colleagues' industries, it
> is behind embedded systems for autonomous systems, remote sensing, etc. Most
> of our day-to-day uses in society are to provide convenience in information
> sharing (social media, news, uber-style apps, etc). We are still figuring out
> how to use them, and hence big conventions like the on-going one in Las Vegas
> where companies are displaying IoT stuff, are taking place. Ironically, all I
> see is technology being used to promote itself, coming full circle but with
> little substance. Too many tools to hack with, so little hacking!
>
> Perhaps we should go back to books that talk about the grand challenges of past
> times. People who inspire on the use of computers are people like Stephen
> Wolfram, where he basically tackles biology with a strange computational
> approach ("A new type of science" published in the 90s). We used to hack all
> day (and night) to come up with cool stuff to show our friends. But perhaps we
> need to stop consuming the information that is coming at us (from computers)
> and start thinking about what problems we want to see solved. Then, we start
> hitting keys on the keyboard to make it happen.
>
> I have too many hobbies to be the visionary, but I can be easily distracted
> when stimulated enough to help!
>
> _______________________________________________
> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
>