Corporate Freeloaders?

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Our local area is graced with the presence of a biomedical drug production facility.  The company manufactures important, lifesaving products from which mankind benefits and in doing so, the company makes a handsome profit.  They also have a production facility in a Caribbean Island Territory which also manufactures important products.  I understand that they are a very progressive organization. Friends, family, and colleagues from grad school work at the local plant and at the R&D office in Many Trees, in some coastal state. [Note: the name and location have been cleverly disguised or omitted- Th’ Gaussling]

Meanwhile, there is a constant buzz concerning the possibility of moving the entire mfg operation to this Caribbean paradise where the tax and labor costs are significantly lower.  I have no special inside information  here, I just know that this has been considered.

The situation outline is in no way unique to the particular company I’m thinking of. It is a very common situation.  Company decides to move operations off-shore to continue profit growth of a successful product. Shareholders continue to enjoy good returns on their investment, product pricing is competitive and the company continues to hold on to market share. Everybody’s happy, right?

Back at the corporate HQ, assets are safely nestled in the Unites States of America, under the 24/7 protection of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.  Corporate human and capital assets (shareholder assets, really) enjoy the benefits of the vast infrastructure of the USA.  Materials and people move safely and efficiently over land and through the skys of the USA.  The FAA assures air safety and orderly movement in the skies.  The DOT assures motor vehicle safety. State and federal monies provide for highways, bridges, and all of the motorway infrastructure to keep the trucks of raw materials and product moving. 

Federal, state, and local governmental agencies provide reservoirs for water and electricity. Plant process water comes from a pipe put in place by the local water district infrastructure.  Sanitary water treatment is provided by the municipality.  The streets are patrolled by city and county police who are charged with crime prevention.

Corporate scientists who invent the technology that the company profits from so handsomely and the executives who guide product to market were educated within the vast academic/research complex that has made the USA the envy of the world.  Graduate student and post-doctoral stipends in science and engineering are largely funded by some government agency or other.

Corporate researchers have access to enormous volumes of public domain technology and knowledge paid for by NSF and NIH grants. Researchers who were educated at public institutions with public subsidies take their talent and generate treasure for the corporations and the shareholders.

Yet, a great many corporate entities are escaping tax liability by moving manufacturing off-shore.  Corporations whose very existance is owed to their fertile, wealthy, and knowledge rich nation have somehow seen fit to evade paying back into the system so as to perpetuate that very system from which they benefit so handsomely.  Instead, others contribute to sustain it.

The advantage of substantial US infrastructure amounts to a kind of subsidy.  The purpose of this subsidy is to stimulate the formation of wealth generating organizations who can then provide jobs and stability for the economy.  Instead, we find that corporations are tapping US knowledge wealth and eventually using it to subsidize foreign economies. 

There are mathematical justifications for this transfer of manufacturing from the local to the foreign.  More profits flow to the shareholders- the big players and those who hold 401(k) plans.  Growth is sustained and a competitive edge is held.  But is it really? Could it be just the result of poor imagination?

Tom “Nuke ’em” Tancredo (R-CO)

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Our very own representative TomTancredo (R-CO) has outlined conditions under which he would retaliate against the Muslim shrines of Mecca and Medina. A terrorist nuclear explosion in the US would be grounds for President Tancredo to authorize release of nuclear weapons against these two Holy Sites.

Now, it stands to reason that if a nuclear explosion occurs in the US, the president has to do something. According to Iowapolitics.com, Tancredo said

“If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina,” the GOP presidential candidate said. “That is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. If I am wrong fine, tell me, and I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent or you will find an attack. There is no other way around it. There have to be negative consequences for the actions they take. That’s the most negative I can think of.”  

To Tancredo’s credit he did come up with an actual idea – on his own – that if we get nuked by terrorists, we should do something.  The problem with his solution of nuking Muslim shrines is that it would be a localized attack on a delocalized problem. Muslim antipathy towards the US is a political viewpoint; it is a philosophy that justifies their indulgence in one of mankinds most sensuous of opiate pleasures. 

That pleasure is the near universal impulse to throw oneself down prostrate and grovel before the deity.  Muslims of a certain bent (not all of them, mind you) have refined the notion of extreme groveling through the use of explosives. They enthusiastically celebrate this peculiar form of reverence with the pious formalism of martyrdom. For millions of young angry men with no viable economic future, it has an irresistable appeal.

Ascetic leaders like bin Laden are not motivated by the physical plane. Bin Laden is very much a charismatic hero figure who has cast off attachment to the material world. This is a kind of archetype. To the satisfaction of his followers, he lives in caves and walks the covetless path. Bin Laden’s goal is an Islamic Caliphate. A nuclear retalliation against any Muslim state, much less a shrine, will polarize many millions to bin Laden’s cause of Muslim hegemony for centuries to come.   

There is some need deep within the human brain to assume an inferior posture before the deity. It cuts across all societies and religions.  It is seems somehow discordant that the diety who set the spin of galaxies and the organization of DNA in motion curiously requires that humans proclaim their regret for those very attributes that make them simply human.  It is a most peculiar and, I think, biological, proclivity.

It seems to me that the optimal response to an Islamic terrorist nuclear attack on the US can only be this- No nuclear response in kind.  We absorb it and we express our regret that this heinous act was perpetrated on us.  It would be our nuclear restraint that would cause the terrorist movement to stand out before the world as the focus of savagery.

Realistically, could a US president actually do this? It seems doubtful.  The pressure on a sitting president to release a nuclear weapon in response to nuclear attack at home would be enormous.  Our restraint and the cessation of one-sided middle eastern policies would do more to undermine bin Laden and his kind than any fancy weapons system or occupation force. It would be the one weapon that they could not counter.  Consider the examples of Christ, Ghandi, and King.

The extinction of Muslim extremism must come from internal collapse. Muslims themselves must conclude that vile and murderous behaviour is unacceptable and that the religious justification for murder is a misread of their covenant with the deity.  

Extremists amplify their effect with chemical energy- they use explosives.  A small number of terrorists become Robin Hood characters and receive encouragement and recruits from their more passive background of countrymen. You can’t destroy this with airpower and mobile infantry. 

A nuclear retalliation by the US would vitrify a few sandy locations, but it would also politically unify Muslims behind the extremist cause, irrespective of the damage done to the US in the first place. We cannot win by nuclear retalliation. We only facilitate further use of nuclear force.  The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is not valid in the conflict with suicidal terrorists. MAD is a doctrine that is only valid between nation states with armies and the desire to survive.

All of this is not to say that we wouldn’t be pursuing the perpetrators.  But nuclear demolition of Mecca would be counterproductive. Terrorism is a kind of franchise operation.  How do you nuke the 50 or 5000 scattered, clandestine operatives who did the deed? It’s a bug hunt. The destruction of Mecca would only validate core suspicions about us- that we are metaphysically corrupt and maybe bin Laden was right.

A state can’t successfully wage a military shooting war against an idea promulgated by clandestine operators with little to lose. But police investigation over 20 years in concert with intelligent and fair international policies could render the bin Laden characters obsolete. 

Russia Goes Deep

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Our Russian friends have apparently “claimed” the seabed under the north pole by planting their specially crafted Deep Sea Flag.  (Is it still a flag when it is underwater or is it just a stick with a wet cloth on it?)  In the grand tradition of empirialist land grabbing, these folks believe that they have staked a claim to the vast untold, untapped mineral riches of the arctic floor. Of course, the Canucks were not impressed-

Peter Mackay, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, dismissed the voyage to the Arctic floor as “just a show.”

“Look, this isn’t the 15th century,” he said, according to the Web site of Canadian Television. “You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say ‘We’re claiming this territory.'” 

According to Douglas Birch at Forbes magazine, the flag was planted in the sea floor 2 1/2 miles below the surface on what is called the Arctic Shelf.  [Th’ Gaussling didn’t realize that a shelf could be that deep. Sounds like an abyssal plain to me, but, hey… I’m not in real estate.]  The basis of the claim, Birch reports, is that the region is a part of the Eurasian continental shelf.  Russia’s public claim seems to be based on a kind of geographic tidiness.  But like all big issues today, it is really about resources.

In December 2001, Moscow claimed that the ridge was an extension of the Eurasian continent, and therefore part of Russia’s continental shelf under international law. The U.N. rejected Moscow’s claim, citing a lack of evidence, but Russia is set to resubmit it in 2009. 

The good news is that there won’t be any aboriginals to cruelly displace.  Seems to me that the Palestinians missed another big opportunity here- their sub must have been in the shop.  I would offer the suggestion that they give Putin an office on site there so he can keep an eye on the place.

National Treasure: H.R. 3043 and Scientific Publications

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On page 14 of the July 30, 2007, issue of C&EN, an article entitled “Bill Mandates Public Access” by David Hanson describes a section of a bill recently passed from the House to the Senate. The relevent text from the bill is as follows-

SEC. 217. The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law. 

Hanson’s article states that the Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers has asked members of Congress to reconsider this bill, or at least the mandatory submission to PubMed. Hanson reports that the PSP claims that-

“This language could serve to undermine the existing system of peer review and scholarly publication which disseminates high-quality research findings throughout the scientific community,” … 

Further down, Hanson gets to the real issue-

Brian D. Crawford, chair of the PSP committee and senior vice president of the Journals Publishing Group at the American Chemical Society (which publishes C&EN), says the House language violates fundamental copyright principles. The bill “would essentially force authors and publishers to, in essence, forfeit their copyrights” without compensation for their investments and would have many negative impacts on private-sector publishers, he says. [Italics by Gaussling]

What is telling is the quote by Brian D. Crawford, who suggests that the publishers stand to lose their copyright on the copy submitted by the NIH funded researchers.  If you are a publisher, should you be worried about this?  Probably.  The gravy train may be leaving the station.

Yes, the publishers have invested large sums in building publishing and distribution systems for the profitable dissemination of information.  But I would add that they have built these publishing engines on a system that hands voluminous copy to them for free.  Unlike other publishers who have to pay their authors for content, academic publishers do not pay contributors who, I might add, provide some incredibly valuable content. Academic publishers have built publishing businesses using content paid for by government granting agencies, and by extension, the public.

It’s easy to fault publishers for taking advantage of a system that hands them publishable content for free. But, on the other hand, circulation numbers for most publications is quite modest.  Even if advertising is used, the typical low circulation of any given specialized scientific journal is so low that only very modest advertising rates could be obtained. Many journals survive on subscription fees alone.  Examples of journals that have come to terms with advertising are J. Chem. Ed., Nature, and Science. 

The scientific publishing system is a sort of a deal with the Devil- the scientist gets the grant, does the work, and then what?  After dinner talks at the Elks Club? Of course not. A manuscript is prepared and in exchange for free printing and distribution, the publisher obtains the copyright. The copyright is the key.  It is a cash cow in the same way that the copyright to the Beatles songs are a cash cow, only with smaller numbers.

I think that Sec. 217 of H.R. 3043 is the right idea. The public has already paid for the research. Why should it be intercepted at no cost by printers who then have an everlasting copyright and control of what is rightly national treasure? The citizens have to pay taxes for the research and then turn around and pay commercial interests for the right to read it.  That is wrong.

If commercial interests want to make a profit on scientific publishing, then they need to find a better model.  The public shouldn’t be barred from access to what they have already paid for. Advertising may be the way to do it.  Perhaps the funding agency should have the copyright and publishers pay a fee to print and distribute it?  Comments?

Career Change in Chemistry? Be a HazMat Driver!

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Looking for a career change in chemistry?  Tired of loading other peoples samples into that GC sample carrousel? When you close your eyes do you see the pink color of phenolphthalein swirling in a flask? If so, then maybe it’s time to step up to the fabulous world of Over The Road Trucking- OTR.

I understand that drivers with a CDL and a hazardous materials endorsement can expect to find many well paying opportunities out there. 

When can we keep our shoes on?

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Check out Atomic Rocket for a tribute to Heinlein and Clarke and a repository of graphics and themes of space opera. Really a fantastic resource for science fiction writers.

Bruce Schneier interviews TSA Administrator Kip Hawley. Sounds like we’ll be taking our shoes off for quite a while. 

Filipino prisoners do the Algorithm March. The Algorithm March at the airport.

Prudent Professor Prophesy and Pragmatics

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I know it is hard to fathom, but as an undergrad the Gaussling wasn’t automatically the favorite of all the faculty in the chemistry department.  I had been independent for 4 years prior to my matriculation into the fabulous world of chemistry. With independence comes a strong dash of unruliness, an attribute that irritates those around me to this day. 

One faculty member who was especially irritated by a precocious bugger like me was a particular analytical professor.  He was and is to this day a bit of a fuss budget. But, he was and is a pretty smart guy too. One day in an unusually tedious analytical lab he was expounding on what an analyst could expect to be doing out in the world. As a part of an attempt to clue us in to the “real world”, he pointed out that one day in the not-so-distant future we would be writing procedures for others to follow.  His prophetic allusion to job descriptions struck me as an interesting comment.

Increasingly, I find myself synthesizing work structure and writing lab procedures for others to follow, just as this analyst had predicted. 

Which brings up another point.  One road rage trigger out in career space is the nimrod manager who himself cannot synthesize ideas or plans, but somehow has been blessed with veto power over those who do.  Sometimes the only realistic solution is to leave the company. 

It is possible to be so compliant in the corporate world that you labor against you own best interests.  On the windward side we have HR ever turning the screws by more tightly narrowing job descriptions, freezing out degrees of freedom. Eventually they have the option of discontinuing narrow positions by eliminating specialists.    

If you have ever taken a personality test battery as part of career advancement, you’ll see what psychologists have been up to since they collectively got bored with rat mazes and Skinner boxes and discovered marketing.  In many corporations certain profiles are culled and steered up the ladder. There is logic to this, obviously, but I retain a conceit that merit is demonstrated by deeds.  Organizations who apply scientific Human Resource management now presume to remove growth opportunity with psychological instruments that are sold to them by sales people. I have been told by straight-faced practitioners that they themselves do not understand the test theory or methodologies, much less profess a clue as to the statistical limitations.

Unfortunately, my dear old professor didn’t warn us about this aspect of career space.

Houston – hic!- We have a – urrrpp – Problem!

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Good lord.  What a bad year for NASA. First astronaut Lisa Nowak goes non-linear in a fit of lunacy that even National Lampoon would claim is over the top. Now there is talk of sabotage and drunken astronauts. 

Intrepid, hard drinking stick and rudder aviators have long been part of the lore of flight. Remember the Happy Bottom Riding Club? The image of the astronauts as a preening, squeeky clean corps of orbiting sunday school teachers is the result of years of pathetic NASA propaganda. It is an absurd fiction and it needs to stop.

There is no doubt that astronauts as a group are disinclined to do anything that would negatively affect their flight status and the likelihood an inebriated astronaut would adversely affect a mission is between slim and none.  The buzz over Paris Hilton has run its course and the news business is looking for more titillation to maintain the national slack-jaw coefficient.

NASA should spend its resources trying to find more compelling reasons to maintain manned spaceflight rather than ginning up SOP‘s for greater oversight of astronaut blood alcohol levels. 

Fundamental Competencies

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The cover story of the latest issue of C&EN is concerned with the “Global Top 50” chemical companies.  To nobody’s surprise, Dow, BASF, and Royal Dutch Shell occupy the top three positions again this year.  The dollar numbers are impressive enough, but have a look at the column on the far right of the table on page 14- “Return on Chemical Assets”.  This is an important column.  It signals which operators can squeeze the greatest value out of their plants.  The winner in this column is 11th ranked SABIC with a 30 % return on assets and reported 43 % operating profit margin.  Compare that with 2nd ranked Shell (11 and 9 %) and 3rd ranked ExxonMobil (6 and 2 %).  There has to be a story there.

On page 16 of the cover story, the figure titled “Narrowing In” shows the market coverage over several decades.  It is clear that the big chemical players exited the pharmaceutical business in favor of chemicals.  One of the euphamisms is that this is a return to core competencies.  A more cynical comment might be that the players fled from core incompetencies. There is truth in both views.

Another table shows R&D spending as % of chemical sales.  These numbers have been flat across the industry since Y2000.  An investor might look at this and conclude that the players are conservative, and that would be right. Chemical industry does tend to be conservative.  But a chemical catalog president would look at the numbers and proclaim that this is indicative of a cash cow for sales of specialty R&D chemicals.  OK, the growth is flat. But it is safe.

Credibility in the Blogosphere

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One of the fun “burdens” of blogging is the constant pressure to write new posts with new content.  Since I am not Jacques-Yves Cousteau or Henry Kissinger, I have to thrash around for ideas that are compelling yet not in conflict with confidentiality issues related to my career. I have much to say about many fascinating chemistries in diverse industries that, owing to confidentiality, I’ll have to take to the grave.  No doubt there are many other bloggers out there who are in the same pickle. 

As I get further into this activity I am constantly impressed with the number and variety of really bright people out there writing blogs.  I have tried to highlight a few of them on the Blogroll of this site.  The flow of good blogs, commercial or amateur(ish), continues to accelerate. 

What is disappointing about blogging is the continued growth of snarky, half-assed commentary. I have been fortunate on this blog to receive very thoughtful and insightful comments, and for that I am grateful. I have only edited out a handful of inappropriate responses.  I suspect this is due to the specialized nature of this blog, modest visitation rate, and its content.  The blogs with the most negative or ill conceived comments seem to be those that are visited by a broader group of participants.

As we move forward with this form of communication, it becomes apparent to me that the need for edited content is as great as ever.  Take this blog for example.  I could easily take the encyclopedic approach and spend all of my efforts writing pedagogical content.  Even if someone liked such content, there would always be the nagging issue of credibility.  Without good editors and gate keepers, factual content and editorializing would inevitably meld into a dried brick of pedagogical poundcake that no one could trust.  In fact, one could not even trust that the poundcake would be the same from one day to the next.

I’m not sure how we’ll deal whith the problem of unedited content.  I am alarmed at the amount of reliance on the www content that I am hearing from university friends and from public school teachers.  I think we should all revisit the library for an update on what makes information credible.