Month: March 2006

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Roses

Until last night, I hadn’t watched The Colbert Report on Comedy Central (myriad reasons, centering on lack of time & disinterest). Over dinner, Amy & I caught the broadcast, which included a profile of Congressional District 29. As part of the segment, Colbert interviewed Rep. Adam Schiff, which included this priceless exchange:

Schiff: Well, it was the most expensive race for the House in history.

Colbert: How much did it cost?

Schiff: We raised about $4.3 million and there were about $5 million in independent expenditures.

Colbert: After you were elected, did you pass legislation banning the very sort of unregulated donations that helped you win?

Schiff: Yes.

Colbert: Isn’t that the political equivalent of . . . sleeping with a prostitute and then strangling her to hide your shame?

Schiff: I wouldn’t want to say that.

Colbert spent the rest of the interview trying to get Rep. Schiff to accept a $100 bill.

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Long Last Love

Journalist and screenwriter Josh Friedman wrote a beautiful piece about his self-composed eulogy, necessitated by his recent cancer surgery:

[W]e all know that there’ll be a last time we do everything and that time and that day may be closer than we think. There’s already things we’ve done for the last time, maybe because we don’t do those things anymore, or maybe they don’t do us. I won’t anchor the 400m relay again, despite the fact that leaning into the curve of a black asphalt track with the baton in my hand, the finish line in front of me and the field behind me is the closest I’ll probably come to heaven.

Of course, I’ve had an asthma attack while losing my virginity for the last time, so maybe things even out.

These are lasts long lost, but they’re buried in the shallows and you don’t need cancer’s sharp edge to dig them up. We all straddle the past and future, and the present’s jammed up our ass like Tom Sawyer’s fence picket.

Read it all.

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Moon Over Malaysia

Check out the Virtual Memories Podcast!

I’m headed to the BIO conference in a few weeks. It’s in Chicago this year, a city that I haven’t seen much of. I had a parenteral drug conference there in the spring of 2000, and enjoyed the environs and architecture. I’m hoping for a little more time to get out and explore this time. This trip will unfortunately be contrasted by another conference two weeks later in Anaheim.

The BIO conference is dominated by regional economic development councils, which are intent on bringing biotech companies and their manufacturing facilities into their areas. These EDCs have a lot of incentives to offer and different ways of enticing companies to set up shop. I wrote all about it in the April issue of my magazine; I’ll post a link to that piece when it’s available, in case you’re interested in the stuff I spend my days working on.

A lot of these EDCs want trade magazine editors to visit during BIO, so they can explain to us what their region has to offer. Sometimes this evolves into a trip to that region; that’s how my Sweden/Denmark trip in August 2004 happened. I’ve been to a few other sites as part of this process: Puerto Rico, Spokane, WA, Phoenix/Scottsdale, and probably some others that I’m forgetting. Generally, I’m too busy to travel on some many junkets, so I make the rounds at BIO and learn what I can about the regions.

Which leads me to the invite I received from a PR firm by e-mail today. They’d like me to sit down for an interview with the CEO of the Malaysian Biotechnology Corp., the government agency devoted to building a biotech industry in that country. It was a pretty gracious invite, and it’s flattering that the firm considers my magazine worth the interview-time.

But I looked at the invite for a few moments, thinking, “Malaysia . . . Malaysia . . . Oh, that’s right! They won’t let you into the country if you have an Israeli passport!”

I spent a few minutes researching to make sure that was the case (which led me to the previous Prime Minister’s anti-semitic comments from 2003). Yup! Malaysia doesn’t recognize Israel’s existence (but does recognize Palestine’s: whew!).

I was prepared to write off the invite then and there, but it occurred to me that Israel might have the exact same policy. You never know. I’d hate to be more of a hypocrite than I already am.

I ended up having to call the Israeli consulate to clear up the issue: Malaysians aren’t treated differently than any other nationality coming to visit Israel; they just need a visa like anyone else. I told the young lady on the phone about Malaysia’s policy. She said, “Ooh. That’s not nice.” We agreed that my mother wouldn’t be happy about it, either.

After that, I struggled to write the e-mail to the PR rep. I didn’t want to take on an adversarial tone, or imply that she was morally compromised by helping represent Malaysia. But I did want to express my point of view about what I wouldn’t meet with them. I went with

I know this is going to sound terrible, but I can’t in good conscience discuss the attractions of a biotech base in a country that would turn away most of my family at the border because of the passports they carry.

As near as I can tell, Malaysia has a blanket ban on entry by Israeli nationals (with case-by-case exceptions), and I’m afraid that I can’t publicize/promote a country with that policy.

If I have my facts wrong, please let me know ASAP.

Thanks,

Gil Roth

Now there’s only a problem if the MBC decides to start advertising. Still, it wouldn’t be as bad as taking an 8-page ad insert from Sudan, like the NYTimes did. I was hoping it would open with the banner: “Sudan: More than Genocide and Civil Wars!”

Check out the Virtual Memories Podcast!

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Post Up

A couple of neat op/eds at the Washington Post this morning:

Robert Samuelson tries to break down the problems with French labor laws:

The dilemma of advanced democracies, including the United States, is that they’ve made more promises than they can keep. Their political commitments outstrip the economy’s capacity to deliver. Sometimes the commitments were made dishonestly. Sometimes they were made sincerely based on foolish assumptions. Sometimes they’ve been overtaken by new circumstances. No matter. The dilemma is the same. To disavow past promises incites public furor; not to disavow them worsens the country’s future problems.

Richard Cohen weighs in on the silence of the Muslim countries over the Abdul Rahman apostasy case:

[Y]ou can say that these horrors are usually being inflicted by a minority. You say it is a few crazed terrorists of Iraq who are doing the killing. It is not most Iraqis. You can say the same about suicide bombers and torturers and rogue governments, like the one Saddam Hussein once headed. You can take solace in numbers. Most people are like us.

Then comes the Rahman case and it is not a solitary crazy prosecutor who brings the charge of apostasy but an entire society. It is not a single judge who would condemn the man but a culture. The Taliban are gone at gunpoint, their atrocities supposedly a thing of the past. In our boundless optimism, we consign them to the “too hard” file of horrors we cannot figure out: the Khmer Rouge, the Nazis, the communists of the Stalin period. Now, though, this awful thing returns and it is not just a single country that would kill a man for his beliefs but a huge swath of the world that would not protest. There can be only one conclusion: They were in agreement.

And then Charles Krauthammer went after Francis Fukuyama with a two-by-four.

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Question of the week

Amy & I were watching VH1 Classic during dinner, and it was featuring a block of videos by Journey. This led us to the question that we now put to you, dear reader:

What was the ugliest rock and roll band ever?

(side questions: Can one bandmember’s ugliness bring down a whole band? And can one attractive bandmember redeem an otherwise ugly band?)

Comment away!