Brain Drain

Catching up on the weekends is difficult and I should have written this ten days ago when I first found the bifold handout in an engineering building on campus. Last night, I heard the term “brain drain” on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” I knew the phrase from the 1960s because of the foreign medical doctors living in our neighborhood near City Hospital (now “Cuyahoga County MetroHealth”). 

Long ago, when I was working for Kawasaki Robotics, one of the company officers said to me that he considered “international people” to be special in themselves, different from the people in their countries of origin.

On the way home last week with the handout in my kit bag it was pretty easy to guess that Hyundai was not the only multinational corporation recruiting at the University of Texas Austin, and that UT is not the only place that those companies are visiting. 

If you had come to America to earn a doctorate in engineering and you were not sure of your future status here, it would make sense to actively arrange your next port-of-call, rather than leaving that to an encounter not of your own planning. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life 

Teaching Ethics to Engineering Students 

ArmadilloCon 41 

Entrepreneurship 

Virgin Galactic VX01 VX03

 A picture is worth a thousand words.

NASA-TV cut between its own feed and the press feed from Unity 22.

These are all sequential as presented by NASA.

Time and Altitude stamps show actuals.

 

 

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Space is the Place: Come to the High Frontier 

The Virtues of Aviation Culture 

Armadillocon 41 Day 3 Part 1 

Entrepreneurship 

The Audacity of Entrepreneurship

"What comes out of a team or a committee is the most daring idea that the least daring man can accept." John Arnold. "Space, Time and Education," Astounding Science Fiction, May 1953, pp. 9–25. Introductory remarks by John W. Campbell, Jr., editor, pp. 9–10.

Earlier this month, I (virtually) attended a conference of the American Astronomical Society. I participate in the History of Astronomy Division. One of the presentations was about Voyager. One of the presenters sighed that the government cancelled several follow-ups to include messages on deep space probes. I asked if they had any contact with Elon Musk. The expert replied that maybe some entrepreneur in the future might launch a mini-satellite with a solar sail, but no private firm can send a one-ton probe out of the solar system. After the conference, I sent him a link about Elon Musk's Tesla two-ton automobile orbiting the Sun. That is exactly the audacity of entrepreneurship. It radiates a fundamental optimism about what is possible in human achievement. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Entrepreneurship

Bob Swanson and Genentech 

The Public Good Be Damned

Politics and the Inverse Square Law 

Disruptive Diagnostics and the Business of Science 

Amateur Astronomy for Pay 

 

Ten Most Popular Page Views

Since, I opened this blog on January 2, 2011, these articles have tallied the most readers.

What (if Anything) Did Dorothy Learn? 

(3600 pageviews. January 6, 2012)

At the end of the 1939 movie version of The Wizard of Oz, Glinda the Good Witch says that Dorothy could have gone home any time, but she had to learn that for herself.  Scarecrow asks Dorothy what she learned.  …  Clearly, what begins as a cliché ends as a contraction.

Contradictions in the Constitution 

(2721 pageviews. August 13, 2013)

This grew out of a discussion on Galt’s Gulch Online.  Ayn Rand suggested that as admirable as the Constitution is, not having been based on a consistent philosophy, it contained the seeds of its own destruction.

Alongside Night to Run in Austin; Author to Appear  

(1800 pageviews. May 27, 2014)

With help from my anarcho-capitalist comrades here in town, we brought a screening of this movie and its author here for a weekend.

With a cameo by Ron Paul, Alongside Night is the story of the final economic collapse of the United States. We see it through the eyes of 16-year-old Elliot Vreeland.  Elliott searches for his father, a Nobel laureate economist who was targeted for arrest because he consulted with the Europeans to create a gold-based currency that effectively destroyed all confidence in the U.S. dollar. 

Bob Swanson and Genentech 

(689 pageviews.  July 3, 2013)

Bob Swanson was 29 when he provided the money for Prof. Herbert Boyer to start Genentech.  Like all overnight successes, the real story is more complicated, with deep roots.  Bright, accomplished, and motivated, Swanson had obvious potential – and a string of failures to show for it.

William Sheldon: Psychologist,Numismatist and Thief  

(603 pageviews. September 1, 2013)

Dr. William Herbert Sheldon, Jr., (1898 – 1977) came from a privileged family. The philosopher William James was his godfather. Sheldon created the 70-point grading scale that is the standard in modern American numismatics.  He also pioneered the study of Early American Copper, the Large Cents and Half Cents struck until 1857. He also stole coins from the American Numismatic Society; and he defrauded other collectors.

Debt: the Seed of Civilization 

(555 pageviews.  December 28, 2011)

In these days of anti-capitalist protest, it is important to know that keeping track of debts led to the inventions of counting and writing, and eventually gave voice to art.

There is no John Galt: And That’sWorse

(359 pageviews. September 13, 2014)

What you tax you get less of; and what you subsidize you get more of.  The brightest people in the world are making video games; and no one is on the Moon.  It did not take a genius to figure this out: it is a universal law of human action

Supplies and Demands

(342 pageviews. November 25, 2011)

In Economics 101, the Supply curve and the Demand curve are displayed.   The point where they intersect is called “equilibrium” where the most efficient allocation of resources is claimed to occur.  This ignores the fact that the other choices do not disappear. People are still demanding and supplying all along both curves.

Scripophilly

(337 pageviews. August 10, 2013)

Scripophily is the study of stock certificates, bonds, and related fiduciary instruments. It is a subset of numismatics, the art and science that studies the forms and uses of money. Like coins, banknotes, checks (drafts), and tokens, stock certificates reveal the daily life and work of the times. And like other numismatic items, they can be highly artistic.

Republicans for Voldemort

(323 pageviews.  May 20, 2014)

In point of fact, such a claim would be unnecessary, as for instance, "Republicans for Bush" or "Republicans for Palin."  Logic demands that we accept Voldemort as a Democrat and allow that some Republicans favor his reign.

POPULAR THIS WEEK

In addition to those above, these were among the other posts that recently gained some attention.

Against Gulching

(88 pageviews. December 25, 2016)

The defining attribute of fans of the Atlas Shrugged movies is that they are people who want to set themselves apart in a separate, isolated and hidden community of like-minded people. Many dream of a physical locale. Most enjoy online communities. In those discussions, the occasional reports of attempts at a “Galt’s Gulch” receive close attention. Although the plot element of “Galt’s Gulch” served a poetic purpose, it was not a call to action.

Short Snorters

(14 pageviews. September 26, 2016)

A short snorter is paper money, signed by people who share a common experience. During World War II, with 16 million men and women in the American armed forces, the custom spread rapidly. After the war, it faded just as quickly.

Art and Copy

(7 pageviews. January 23, 2013)

Products become icons because of the insightful and compelling work of advertising.

Art & Copy (2009) is a film by Doug Pray.  “Everything that was done to launch that product is now done differently because of that product. ... Every computer company on the planet does their ads on a Mac.” – Lee Clow, creator of the Macintosh “1984” ad.

The Weatherman Songbook

(5 pageviews. February 5, 2014.)

"Some of the best things in life are free / If you can steal them from the bourgeosie!" When Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn came to Eastern Michigan University to speak to the New Students for a Democratic Society in 2010, I was there. Bill did not recognize me even though I was at the Flint War Council, December 27-31, 1969.

Peace is More Powerful

(4 pageviews. May 31, 2105)

Imagine a successful protest in Berlin 1943 against the Holocaust.  Between February 27 and March 6, about 200 German women stood outside a detainment center, demanding the release of their Jewish husbands. …  "Researchers used to say that no government could survive if just 5 percent of the population rose up against it," Chenoweth says. "Our data shows the number may be lower than that. No single campaign in that period [1900-2000] failed after they'd achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population." She adds, "But get this: every single campaign that exceeded that 3.5 percent point was a nonviolent one. The nonviolent campaigns were on average four times larger than the average violent campaigns."

JUST TO NOTE

I found a mirror site in Sweden:  http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.se/  I did not set it up; someone else unknown to me did that.  I also found that many readers come here via a Russian site, yandex.ru, which I have never visited because my personal protection is not strong enough for me to go gallivanting.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Open Secrets   

Science in the Middle Ages  

Money is Speech  

Laboratory Misconduct in the Courtroom  

India Two Point Oh: Amita and Raj 

Corporations and Capitalism

Many libertarians are opposed to corporations, calling them creations of the state.  They certainly are creations of law. Corporations are an improvement over traditional modes such as Shariah law; and they have ancient roots of their own in Roman law. 

Before corporations as we understand them today were invented, unrelated people could only come together for business as partnerships. By law, if one partner died, the partnership was dissolved. No one can speak for a dead person. Limiting businesses to partnerships would make modern enterprise impossible. 

The family business is a different matter. Under traditional law, left over from agrarian times, the family business is a kind of farm, owned by the pater familias, and ownership passed by inheritance. In order to avoid the limitations of partnership, every co-owner would have to be adopted into the family. In that case, the head of the family decides your shares and your profits. That is what privilege is, literally, private law. The pater familias can do whatever on the farm. In Roman times, he could sell family members into slavery.

However, Roman law also recognized the collective entity: the herd. The herd exists independent of any one animal. If you buy or sell the herd, some die and others are born along the way. It is the same herd. Roman emperors granted charters to groups of individuals: burial societies and fire fighters were among the first. Some people claim that the Benedictine Order, chartered in 579, is the oldest continuing corporation. Wikipedia has other ideas here.  But note that many of those are family businesses. 

The modern corporation was the steam engine of commerce. It allowed the creation and management of capital on the scale demanded by the industrial revolution, and wholly beyond the needs of simpler, land-based societies. Shariah Law recognizes partnerships, not corporations. Also, it forbids the payment of interest. Anyone who lends money becomes a partner and shares in the profits. It worked well enough for simpler times and places. However, even Shariah recognizes something called a waqf. A waqf is like a foundation. It was created first over wells: everyone needs it; no one can own it; it must be managed for the common good. Sometime later - I know only about Cairo 1600 - the waqf was used to create family

Trustees of Dartmouth College
v. Woodward,
17 U.S. 518 (1819) was
the landmark case
in U.S. law for
corporations.

foundations that let merchants aggregate their wealth without it being redivided by inheritances. 

In the West, universities were chartered as corporations to allow them to survive their founders. They also could make their own laws for their own communities: Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge, Padua, Heidelberg, ... When Cambridge discovered its original charter to be unhelpful, they went to Parliament for one -- and got a seat in Parliament as a result. Even Sir Isaac Newton served a term.

As for the modern corporation, you could not own most of your comforts without them. To condemn the entirety because of the actions of a few individuals is collectivism.

In the future, the corporation may be the legal structure by which a software earns its legal rights. We already have electronic filing. There is no way to know who the original actor is. She might be a program.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Capitalist Culture
Venture Capital
Money as Press and Speech
Numismatics: The Standard of Proof in Economics

The Ferengi Rules of Commerce

Intended as humor or parody, this little book offers a megagram of useful – if contradictory – advice.

Before the invention of the Ferengi in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Star Trek universe never had much room for trade and commerce. In the Original Series, Star Fleet dominated Earth and the Federation of Planets. It was a command economy. Whether mining colonies, exploration, war, or agriculture, the process of decision-making was hidden from the viewers, but it clearly was not via the market or bought with money.  

In the Original Series, the only traders we met were Cyrano Jones (who sold tribbles) and Harcourt Fenton “Harry” Mudd.  Neither was heroic, or dashing, or even especially intelligent. In the Next Generation episode The Neutral Zone we met a life ship of cryogenically preserved humans, one of whom insisted on checking on his Wall Street profits.  Captain Picard must explain that now, in our time, we do not care about the acquisition of things, but on improving ourselves.

Then came the Ferengi. Originally introduced in ST:NG The Last Outpost, they did not acquire any substance of character until Deep Space Nine. Armin Shimerman played the bartender (and bar owner), Quark.

It comes out in The Siege of AR 558 (Deep Space Nine), that planet Ferengeran never knew imperialism, racism, or slavery.

I confronted Armin Shimerman at a trekker con in Livonia, Michigan, in the early 21^st century.  He said that he had read The Fountainhead in college and was going to revisit the works of Ayn Rand in preparation for the up-coming season.

This book is presented as the distilled wisdom of Ferengi society. It is necessarily discontinuous because the rules were invented ad hoc by the script writers.

·       #1.  Once you have their money, never give it back.

·       #3.  Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.

·       #8. Small print leads to large risks.

·       #13. Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.

·       #27. There is nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman.

·       #58. There is no substitute for success.

·       #62. The riskier the road, the greater the profit.

·       #79. Beware of the Vulcan greed for knowledge.

·       #109. Dignity and an empty sack is worth the empty sack.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Money as Speech and Press

Valentine's Day: Love and Money

Money Without Banks and Governments

Space is the Place: Come to the High Frontier

Bob Swanson and Genentech

Money is a culture medium for growing viable enterprises into self-sustaining engines of creation. 

Bob Swanson was 29 when he provided the money for Prof. Herbert Boyer to start Genentech.  Like all overnight successes, the real story is more complicated, with deep roots.  Bright, accomplished, and motivated, Swanson had obvious potential – and a string of failures to show for it.  In the documentary, Something Ventured (see below), Thomas J. Perkins said that his firm, Kleiner Perkins Venture Capital, brought on Bob Swanson, but “there was not much for him to do.”  Swanson said that he would look into biotechnology.  Perkins replied that if something was there, they would be interested, otherwise… And at that point, Perkins trailed off into a gesture and face.  Clues are always little things.

“So we hired Bob Swanson, whom Eugene Kleiner had known through venture capital circles. Bob had worked for Citibank in their venture capital operation and he and Eugene had been involved in a failed deal. Eugene had been impressed with Swanson's ability to think straight and get things done. So when Bob was looking for a new position, we hired him. That would have been about late 1974. We were in Embarcadero Center Two then, on the top floor.[…]  Bob worked on various deals for us. And, I have to say, not very successfully. Eugene, in particular, was increasingly unhappy with Bob. He didn't think much was going to be happening.” – Thomas Perkins [Source 5]

Robert A. Swanson was born in Brooklyn, New York, November 29 1947.  When he was still an infant, his family moved to Florida where his father worked for Eastern Airlines.  He attended MIT and completed his bachelor’s in chemistry in 1969 and followed that in 1970 with an MBA at the Sloan School of Management.  [Source 1] (Wikipedia gives 1970 as the year of both degrees.) 

Immediately after completing his MBA, he was hired by Citicorp Venture Capital.  Within three years, they were impressed enough with him that he was sent to San Francisco to open a Citicorp Venture Capital Office there.  In 1975, he joined Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.  (Perkins recalled that as “late 1974.”) [Source 5]

Swanson had read about the research in recombinant DNA and gene splicing.  He sought out Dr. Boyer and asked for 10 minutes.  The two men spent three hours in a tavern.  Swanson’s knowledge of chemistry served him well, as he could understand the nuances in the different techniques being pursued by different researchers.  Swanson saw the market for Boyer’s work.  They launched Genentech on April 7, 1976. [Source 2]

In 1977, Genentech started with human growth hormone by contracting for production with City of Hope Hospital in Los Angeles and with the University of California at San Francisco. That allowed Genentech to move up to cloned human insulin in 1978.  They followed that with other successes: alpha interferon, gamma interferon, a hepatitis B vaccine, and thrombolytic (clot-producing) agents for hemophiliacs, and then tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) to dissolve blood clots associated with heart attacks.

America’s bilateral East Coast / West Coast dichotomies are easy to cite, especially in technology.  (In Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy pointed out that the Spacewars video game came from MIT, whereas Stanford gave us Adventure, based on Lord of the Rings.)  But Robert Swanson understood the importance of social capital, built with strong employee bonds.   His scientists could publish their work, something most big drug companies were reluctant to allow.  Also typical of the West Coast, Genentech held Friday parties known as ho-hos.  As Genentech researchers remembered it: 

“The Ho-Ho tradition began simply with refreshments for employees every Friday afternoon. At the end of one particularly hectic work week, a manufacturing VP said, "Oh, another Friday afternoon, ho, ho, ho, ho." And the name stuck. …
The Ho-Ho was an occasion for play and absurdity. One time Swanson and Boyer came dressed up as Tweedledee and Tweedledum… But from the start, Ho-Hos were more than just fun. To Swanson, the Ho-Ho was “a wonderful idea, because you need a place where people at all levels of the organization, from the president on down, can get together in their shirtsleeves and talk about the issues, as equals... One of the things you worry about, as you get higher in an organization, is whether people are comfortable telling you the truth about the way they see the needs of the company - where are we screwing up as a company?” 

The firm posted a profit in 1979 and went public in 1980. That public offering came at some human cost for the venture capitalists.  Perkins and Swanson disagreed on the timing, with Swanson being opposed to going public.  Eventually, Swanson saw Perkins’s point, but their strained relationship was worse off for it.  Still, Bob Swanson worked as CEO of Genentech through its steepest growth curve through 1990.  Tom Perkins was chairman of the board.  Then, from 1990-96 Swanson served as chairman.  In 1990, Genentech and Roche Holding Ltd. completed a $2.1 billion merger. Initially Hoffman-LaRoche bought a majority interest in Genentech. Then in 2009, LaRoche bought the rest of the stock, but turned around and sold off blocks of it in to the public.

After leaving Genentech Bob Swanson formed a private investment management firm (K & E Management), and served as chairman of Tularik, Inc., a firm researching gene expressions that can be harnessed to produced therapeutics. He also volunteered his time to civic organizations and to his daughters’ soccer teams.

In the book, 1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium, (New York :, Kodansha International, 1998) the authors ranked Bob Swanson number 612 for launching the biotechnology revolution.

After a year of battling brain cancer via surgery and chemotherapy Bob Swanson passed away on Monday, December 6, 1999, at his home in Hillsborough, California. (The Guardian gave it as November 30.)  He was 52.

Sources:

1. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1999/swanson-1208.html (Obituary)

2. http://www.gene.com/about-us/leadership/our-founders (Tribute)

3. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/07/business/robert-a-swanson-52-co-founder-of-genentech.html (Obituary)

4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/1999/dec/10/obituaries.genetics (Biography)

5. http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt1p3010dc (Program in the History of the Biological Sciences and Biotechnology: Kleiner Perkins, Venture Capital, and the Chairmanship of Genentech, 1976-1995; interviews conducted by Glenn E. Bugos, Ph.D.)

6. "The Origins of Biotechnology: A Genentech Perspective"

http://blog.zymergi.com/2013/01/origins-biotech-genentech.html

(Personal recollections and images of artifacts including company newsletters.)

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Venture Capital

Disruptive Diagnostics and the Business of Science
Epigenetics

Austin Biobash November 2012

Austin Biobash February 2013

Biohackers