Older ones, yes. Newer ones use nitroguanidine and other less-toxic stuff according to the article you linked to.
That said, we owe a lot to the brave chemists who manage to figure out how to deal with all these scary chemicals. Even if some of them are probably insane:
A drawing of the molecule (ClN3): http://chemeo.com/cid/31-110-4
just looking at it, you think, ouch! Insane high level of bounds tension coupled with a Cl detonator.
Well, bond tension by itself is not the indicator of explosiveness, isn't it? The N2 molecule has 3 bonds connecting 2 atoms and it is one of the most stable known molecules.
A triple-bond is not inherently unstable. In chlorine azide, though, you've got a strongly electronegative halide (chlorine) bound via tenuous single-bond to a partial triple-bond in the nitrogen compound. One of those nitrogens has a partial charge at all times.
Bottom line: that chlorine wants to dissociate, badly. When it does, it's going to take the azide with it. It's like a chemical hair-trigger, waiting to be pulled by the nearest partial charge.
Maybe Loic meant: "Insane high level of _potential_ bound tension coupled with a Cl detonator." (My emphasis.)
It seems to me that the Cl atom is easily removed from the N-C bond, by something as simple as water vapor. My chemistry isn't great, but I would hazard a guess that even the slight polarity of the water molecule is enough to remove the Cl from the N-C bond, thereby the potential for explosive behavior.
I did go back to university recently and among other things I did do one term of basic chemistry. Initially it is like applied maths with weird rules, and then a lot of lab work, which is completely different. I had to work quite hard at it.
The physical chemistry part, which really was more physics than chemistry, was a lot easier for me, as it was actually logical and I could puzzle out an answer if I needed to. Whereas IMHO in a lot of chemistry, when you are new, you need to know all the exceptions by hearth.
I studied some organic chemistry and biochemistry during the IT death. I got ill, or I might be a chemist today. Really hard work, but fascinating.
I went there with the vision of building subroutine libraries and making bacteria programmable.
But biochemistry wasn't so fun, since the big proteins and other macro molecules are magical. You can't design them -- you have to get already created ones or evolve them.
Those aren't previous submissions of this entry, but of (in one case) an earlier "Thing I won't work with" and (in the other) the series as a whole, which didn't then include this one.
along with the related category, "how not to do it": http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/how_not_to_do_it/