I have been silent for a while and the reason is that I was in the south of France, attending the 15th Meeting of the French-American Chemical Society in Avignon (it’s a hard life we live in academia…). This was a splendid conference, but it was tough to get good access to the internet, which is why I did not post anything. The line-up was excellent, you can view it at the following link: http://facsxv.unistra.fr/speakers.html. I am going to post some thought-provoking highlights in the next few days.