Here is a great performance of “Step Right Up” by Tom Waits. Admittedly, Waits is an acquired taste but this is one of his best pieces.
Step Right Up
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Uncle Merck and Aunt Lilly
According to the November 26, 2007 C&EN, Merck has for a second time engaged the Indian firm NPIL to develop cancer drugs for two targets that they have disclosed. Merck will have the option to buy rights to the compounds, providing they successfully get through Phase IIa of clinical trials. The article discloses that Eli Lilly has made a similar agreement.
It is disappointing to see companys like Merck and Lilly outsourcing their R&D. I do not intend to besmirch NPIL. They have obviously crossed a threshold in their own R&D activity that meets the standard of major league pharma. But I do believe that Merck and Lilly deserve some scolding for outsourcing R&D.
R&D is one of the remaining activities for which the US maintains a bit of an edge. It is our magic. To accelerate the development of R&D expertise in India is to act against our self interest as a country. India will eventually develop this capability on their own- why help? Drug discovery is an art that should be jealously guarded by a company. To farm it out to a hard working developing country with lower overhead rates is ultimately foolhardy. Even though some particular art is protected, this activity is always stimulates a company.
Lucky India. They get to exploit advanced technology without having to have paid for 100 years of R&D. Instead of having to pay to develop synthetic chemistry, they can plug and chug with a newly educated populace and access to the literature.
And who paid for the universities and the NIH post-doctoral fellowships and the research assistantships for grad students who developed and published the technology and who became the scientists whom Merck hired? Take a guess.
Investors may reap near term gains and Merck may get a better market foothold in India. Some executives will look like bloody geniuses. The presidents and CEO will prattle on over brunch about bringing home shareholder value. But when R&D goes the way of garment manufacture and automobiles, these “heroes” will be retired to their gated community in Palm Springs. In the end, they have eroded the competitiveness of the USA in an aggressive and contentious market.
Thumbs down to Merck and Lilly.
Image of Comet Holmes
Here is a recent image of Comet Holmes as captured by friend and astrophotographer Tom Muzydla (Copyright 2007).
Tom shot this from his backyard in Loveland, Colorado. The comet is presently in the constellation Perseus. As of this date the comet has no discernable tail, at least by ordinary means.
Person of Gender
Some years ago, my first real job out of my post-doc was a one year teaching stint at a Catholic womens college. The post-doc was rather less than a great experience. But that is a post for another time. I did get a couple of JACS papers, a Mendeleev Communications paper, a divorce, and one Org Synth publication out of it. And, I got to work with some smart folks I still consider to be among my closest friends.
The post-doc years were a time of deep personal turmoil. The divorce was traumatic. It affects one in ways that are hard to appreciate in advance. Mostly, it presents an indelible stamp of failure to the bearer. If it weren’t for friends that I made while in Texas, frankly I don’t know where I’d be today. The adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” does have some truth in it.
The Catholic school I taught in was associated with a major football presence in the midwest. The womens college was run by the same group of nuns who were connected with the coed university across the street so venerated by football enthsiasts. It had its own exit from the toll road, two lakes, two golf courses, and a mosaic of the Saviour declaring a touchdown.
I bought furniture from Father Clarence and slept on a priest bed (without the priest, blessedly) for my academic year under the employ of nuns. Such furniture was typically donated back for eventual resale. Father Clarence offered to sell me the two 35 mm projectors used to entertain the revered Four Horsemen. Like an idiot, I declined his offer and regret it to this day.
The nuns who ran this single gender institution were an aging population. Initiates were hard to find- apparently most came from South America. The Blessed Sisters eventually handed off the university so they could concentrate on their hospitals.
Even though I received paychecks from the Sisters, I rarely saw them. We did have a nun from a different order in our department. She was a pistol. And a biochemist. Her interest was infecting caterpillars with deadly caterpillar viruses. Strange game, this. Our Dean was a hoot- she looked and sounded just like Ethel Merman.
I taught a class of 95 students, all women. I recall looking out into a crowd of 19-22 year old women, most with poney tails protruding out from the back of baseball caps and peering at me under bills that were severely curled. It was a general chemistry for non-majors section populated by students who couldn’t get into biology or the popular “physics for poets” class. These hapless students ended up with me as a prof. What rotten luck.
One morning driving into work I was in a serious auto accident where I nearly rolled over my pickup. The patrolman graciously dropped me off at the college where I ran to the classroom 10 minutes late. Not a single one of the vicious little trolls waited for me to arrive. (After all, it says somewhere in the new testament that a student only has to wait 5 minutes for the prof.)
I took over a class previously taught by a fellow who had just died. His office was closed and untouched by a disinterested family. It was an odd experience- he was fresh in everyones mind except for mine.
The main recollection I have from the experience is that perhaps 1/3 of the students I knew were genuinely dismayed that men taught at the University. They would point out that it made no sense for a women’s institution to have male faculty. As a “person of gender”, it was hard for me to disagree. But I would also point out that of the remaining 2/3 that I spoke with, half were uncertain about the wisdom of attending an all womens institution. So, for me it is hard to draw conclusions about the merit of single gender institutions. From a marketing view, there is/was demand for this kind of school. But whether demand is from parents or students is less clear to me.
Fools and Randomness
There is an interesting book out by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called Fooled by Randomness, 2005, Random House (!!?), 2005, ISBN 0-8129-7521-9. To get right to the point, Taleb has combined cognitive science and statistics with finance.
There is nothing new about cognitive scientists using statistics. But there is something distinctly recent, at least, about finance people thinking about how cognitive science and statistics might be applied to how we approach investment thinking. I don’t mean the cookbook use of cognitive science in investments, rather, I mean how we think about investment risk. The theme of Taleb’s book is concerned with how we think about randomness.
The reader can form her/his own opinion about Taleb’s ideas. Speaking for myself, I am intrigued with his thesis that many “experts” in economics and investments are largely deluded when it comes to perceiving risk. Taleb suggests that validation of forecasting methods and the use of error estimation is generally lacking in investment trading. The cognitive connection applies to how investment traders think. Taleb suggests that there is a general lack of probabilisitic thinking.
Coming to grips with infrequent and unexpected outcomes (black swans) is one of the most befuddling and confusing challenges we all face. Our primate brains form elementary strategies for dealing with certain risks. We catch a glimse of a big carnivore in the brush and we run.
But what to do if we have a bundle of money in the market and some social or economic perturbation comes along? What will the market do if the Molybdenum prices skyrocket or if China invades Taiwan? Individuals and industries are concerned with the value of their investments over the course of positive and negative events. Stock traders need to act on clues so as to protect the value of their accounts.
Taleb laments the lack of probabilistic thinking in the investment community. He suggests that individuals and firms who are deemed as highly successful in investments are in reality just very lucky more frequently than we realize.
Even for hacks such as myself who gasped and sputtered through a few semesters of exposure to probabilistic concepts, i.e., quantum mechanics, radiation science, etc., sweeping the mind free of deterministic biases requires constant attention. How is some MBA derivatives specialist going to temper her/his enthusiasm to buy or sell when phantom patterns appear in the market? Good question.
Happy Turkey Day
Eat to dullness. Drink to exhilaration. Thems is the rules, man.
Colonels of the Chemical Business
The strengths and weaknesses of a business are to a large extent a reflection of the strengths and weaknesses of the people running them. It is possible to standardize and depersonalize many aspects of a business. Accounting systems come to mind. There are benefits to be derived from rigid protocols for financial transactions, for instance. Purchasing and sales transactions are managed by accounting software straight from the old testament. Records of all actions involving the transfer of funds are visible from a hike down the audit trail. Wreckless use of funds or a whole range of malfeasances can in principle be found by independent auditors.
In contrast to the rigidity of business accounting systems is the fuzzy world of business development. Business development is a type of activity that combines purchasing, sales, and marketing. It has elements of project management down to some level of detail within the organization. Generally, business development managers are fairly high level managers who are chosen for certain attributes. Not least among the virtues are unflappable self-confidence, a nimble sense of decorum, and educated but nonthreatening countenance.
Business development people are charged with attracting new business. Where this differs with sales managers is that new business may be custom or cutting edge in some fashion. It is not likely to be plug-n-chug. Process development resources will have to be committed.
In the chemical business, a business development manager is likely to be very technically oriented. Where this differs from a “straight” sales person is that a business development person will be able to engage the potential customer in highly detailed technical discussions with the customers project management staff as well as strategic discussions with upper level management. The ability and authority to seamlesly represent the company from technical issues to business agreements is the range of the business development manager. Very often they are corporate officers at the VP level or above. This means that they can commit the organization.
Getting the business is only part of the job. In the fabulous world of chemicals, a new product often means that new supply chains for raw materials must be secured. Some new raw materials will be existing items of commerce. Others may require custom synthesis. Business development people may be involved on the buy side if for no other reason than to assure continuity and timeliness.
In order to engage a custom supplier of a raw material, disclosure of confidential material may have to be done. Furthermore, meetings between senior managers may be necessary to initiate the process of taking the supplier to the first step by supplying a proprietary procedure to obtain samples and commitment from the supplier. The business development manager is an obvious choice to take the lead in the procurement of key raw materials, at least initially.
Business development people are on the road a good share of the time. They attend trade shows, conferences, customer visits, and other public speaking venues. They are often seen as the face of the company.
What is perhaps not widely appreciated is the negative side of the business development job. The high profile of the job means that you’ll report to inscrutible executives with all of the second guessing and intrigue that goes along with life at that level. You’ll have a big target on your back and people will be gunning for your job. The job carries many heavy responsibilities, including the possibility that you’ll bring a dangerous piece of business to the facility. Even if you don’t blow up the plant or injure someone, problematic products or those with lower than anticipated margins can garner unfavorable attention. Presidents and CEO’s tend to forget the 10 great products against the glare of the one dog you brought in to the plant.
Getting product out the door
Manufacturing is all about getting product onto a truck and watching it leave the gates of the plant. Because after the shipping documents are given to the driver, the invoicing begins. This is a very time sensitive action. The customer can’t pay until the invoice is received and the 30-days-net countdown begins.
It is deeply satisfying to package a chemical product that you have prepared with your hands and your wits. I find the act of packaging product after it has passed QA appproval to be my favorite part of the process. It also means that I can start something new. Rarely does one hear anything from the customer if the product is satisfactory. The only time you hear from the customer is when something has gone wrong.
The bean counters will render the process into some bland abstraction that has inputs and outputs. They’ll yammer on about ROI and earnings before taxes, interest, and … whatever. I’m glad to see that the MBA’s learn something in business school besides how to manage their IRA’s. But there is more to business than the electronic transfer of funds.
What really matters to me is that I did something useful this day. It matters that my hand-made product is useful to someone else and performs as required. Making things and stuff contributes to the ongoing process of civilization. I feel sorry for the pure finance people. They don’t know the satisfaction of isolating a water-white product in 99 % purity and slapping a label on the bottle and giving it to the shipping folks. I still get a kick out of it.
Microbalkanizing the Balkans
I was enjoying my morning shot of Pomegranate juice when I saw something sad on Reuters. There is secessionist talk again in Serbia. The drums are beating in the distance.
BELGRADE, Nov 19 (Reuters) – Serbia is warning the West ahead of a new round of talks on its breakaway Kosovo province that a declaration of independence by the Albanian majority would lead to new secessionist moves in the Balkans.
“If the independence of Kosovo is recognised, it would not be the final stage of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, but the first stage of new disintegration and secession in the Balkans,” Serbia’s Kosovo minister, Slobodan Samardzic, said.
You see, I thought that the Balkans had already … Balkanized. I wonder what the Russians will do? Putin seems kind of frisky lately.
Ethnic identity is a kind of hallucinogen. Unrestrained self-medication leads to exaggerated claims of merit and delusions of manifest destiny. When taken with a dose of religious or economic idealism, the patient may present with paroxysms of fascist ideation.
[Note: this is a revision of another posting]
JAXA
JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, is progressing very well in their exploration of the solar system. The agency maintains a website that displays the earth’s global rainfall picture in “near real time”.
JAXA has recently placed an orbiter into a peripolar orbit around the moon along with relay satellites. The spacecraft SELENE has recently begun a year long survey mission of the moon. Among the instruments on board is an HDTV camera which has sent back some spectaular images.
There is nothing trivial at all about putting a probe in lunar orbit. The Japanese space program seems very impressive and they are justifiably proud of their achievements.
Lamentations on Chemistry 