Author: Gil

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AQ Targets Muncie

When the 9/11 attacks happened, two of my coworkers were at a conference in Chicago. They wanted to get back to their families here in NJ, but the airlines were shut down. So they rented a car and started driving.

Rather than go the whole length in one trip (everyone was pretty burned out over the course of the day), they elected to stop at a motel when they reached Akron, OH. The next morning, they read the local paper (the ABJ) while having their breakfast and checking out. One of the guys told me that the newspaper included emergency evacuation plans in the event that Akron was struck by a terrorist attack.

“Not to sound mean,” he said, “but I really don’t think the terrorists were planning to hit New York, Washington, and then–the coup de grace–Akron!”

It’s in that spirit that I offer you an NYTimes article about the national database of potential terrorist targets. Which state, according to the DHS, has the most targets? Indiana!

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

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Highways, Byways, etc.

On Sunday, George Will offered a tribute to the Interstate Highway System, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer:

Eisenhower’s message to Congress advocating the interstate system began, “Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods.”

No legislator more ardently supported the IHS than the Tennessee Democrat who was chairman of the Senate Public Works subcommittee on roads. His state had benefited handsomely from the greatest federal public works project of the prewar period, the Tennessee Valley Authority, which, by bringing electrification to a large swath of the South, accelerated the closing of the regional development gap that had stubbornly persisted since the Civil War. This senator who did so much to put postwar America on roads suitable to bigger, more powerful cars was Al Gore Sr. His son may consider this marriage of concrete and the internal combustion engine sinful, but Tennessee’s per capita income, which was just 70 percent of the national average in 1956, today is 90 percent.

Meanwhile, a 3-ton slab of concrete fell inside Boston’s Big Dig tunnel, killing a passenger in a car. Evidently, this is not connected to the Big Dig concrete fraud case. But after going $12 billion over budget, you can imagine that corners had to be cut somewhere, right?

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Mile Low?

Witold Rybczynski has a new slideshow up at Slate, examining the architecture of Denver’s art museum, on the occasion of Liebeskind’s new addition, to be completed in September.

Whether you like this sort of mannered architecture is a matter of taste. Frank Gehry’s swirlings and churnings have always seemed lighthearted and whimsical, buoyed by an endearing take-it-or-leave-it quality. Libeskind’s forms strike me as aggressive. Standing in front of his building is like being buttonholed by someone shouting insistently in your face: And this! And this! And this!

I hope my “Denver correspondent” (that means you, Craig) will provide some comments on this.

(I really need to get around to reading his City Life sometime this summer, but it’s The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril for me right now, followed by Gilead.)

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Pf***ed

Sorry for the lack of posts, readers! I’m really busy on the home-stretch of that Top Companies special issue. Gotta finish the final profile today, so’s I can head to the shore tomorrow without worrying about it.

I decided to save the biggest one for last: Pfizer. As you may not care from last year, Pfizer is the biggest of the Big Pharmas, but it’s also got a ton of vulnerabilities, as many of its big sellers are getting hit with patent expirations and generic competitors. Here’s a little bit of this year’s report, just so you know I’m not slacking off from VM for no reason:

In his 2005 letter to shareholders, Pfizer chairman and chief executive officer Hank A. McKinnell, Jr. wrote, “The Pfizer built in the 1990s is fading away as some of our prominent, current medicines lose patent protection. This transformation process—this cycle of renewal—is not unexpected. We have been planning for it for years, understanding that while renewal brings challenges, it also creates numerous opportunities.”

That’s quite an understatement. Last year, we pointed out that many of Pfizer’s top sellers are going to lose patent protection in the next five years. The company got a feel for what’s on the way when epilepsy treatment Neurontin went generic during 2005; the drug’s sales dropped from $2.7 billion to $640 million. Antifungal treatment Diflucan did the same, shedding $445 million in sales.

With $1.3 billion of Bextra sales vaporized in 2005, and Celebrex shedding another $1.6 billion, Pfizer needed to add $6.1 billion in sales last year just to keep pace. That’s more revenue than any of the bottom three companies on our list generated in 2005.

And with Zithromax facing its first full year without U.S. patent protection ($2.0 billion in 2005 sales, after its patent expired in 4Q2005), Zoloft ($3.3 billion) going generic in June 2006, and Norvasc ($4.7 billion, the company’s #2 seller) and Zyrtec ($1.3 billion) set to lose protection in 2007, Pfizer needs to generate huge amounts of new revenues.

It fell short in that mission in 2005, with drug sales falling $2.0 billion in 2005. They’re down $394 million in 1Q2006 (-4%).

Tune in next year to find out if Pfizer manages to recoup sales with Lyrica, Sutent, Chantix, and a million other new drugs!

Till then, back to work. Then play!

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Question of the Week

Since finishing that Robert Moses book last week, it’s been kinda tough for me to start another book. It’s as if I’m caught in its wake. I spent the last few days catching up on some long-form comics, like Eddie Campbell’s The Fate of the Artist, which I’m afraid left me flat. Compared to his most recent collection, After the Snooter, it was a distinct let-down.

I’ve also been catching up on magazines. Amy & I went on a subscription binge a few months ago, and now I’ve got the Virginia Quarterly Review and Foreign Affairs to beat me into submission.

Yesterday, unable to settle on a new book to read, I decided to go back and reread one of my favorites, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. (If you’re interested, there’s a neat piece in the Guardian about Stoppard’s new play, Rock ‘n’ Roll. It sounds pretty neat to me.)

What brought me back to Arcadia was the weird realization that, if you asked me what my favorite novel is, I would have no answer for you. Arcadia was a fave of mine upon a time, and it still resonates for me. In fact, if I had been immensely talented, it’s probably the piece I would have tried to write, given my interest in its subjects (chaos mathematics, the mistakes of history, English letters).

I can tell you what my favorite movie, my favorite comic, and my favorite record are (Miller’s Crossing, Little Italy and Stop Making Sense), but I’d have a devil of a time deciding on a favorite novel.

It’s not for lack of trying (here’s that list of all the books I’ve finished since 1989, when I started college). But there’ve been so many phases, and so many directions I’ve taken, that it’s really difficult for me to settle on a single novel. When I think of what I might have answered in years past (Gravity’s Rainbow, Tropic of Cancer, The Recognitions, Pale Fire, Invisible Cities, Going Native, Anna, Portnoy, Gatsby, Lolita, “Marcel”) I wonder what each answer tells me, and what changed that struck them from the top rank. (Fortunately, the “novel” requirement knocks out the Athenians, Homer, and Shakespeare, and that Arcadia. And if I have to pick a non-fiction book, it’d either be Ron Rosenbaum’s essays or that book on Robert Moses.)

For a moment, I tried to convince myself that it was somehow a universal problem afflicting our age, but I’m pretty sure it’s just me. Maybe I’ve oversatured myself with these books. Maybe I’ve simply become too fluid, or disconnected from the influences I thought I had. Maybe I need to — or already have — circumscribed my life in ways that keep some books from mattering so much to me.

Nowadays, I’m wondering if All the King’s Men is the book that speaks to me the most, or if it’s Gould’s Book of Fish. I’d better keep looking.

You, meanwhile, need to tell me what your favorite novel is, and what it means to you.

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I Was a Marvel Zombie

Fun article at the Washington Post on the differences between Marvel & DC comics. I was a Marvel geek throughout my youth, as I found the DC books to be way too square.

DC, back then: It’s your kid brother, wacked out on Pop-Tarts, still in his underpants at 10 a.m., insisting on “Super Friends” over “Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space.” Thinks he’s Batman at night, thinks he’s Aquaman in the tub. It’s make-believe, make-believe, make-believe. A hot dog is not a death ray, now sit down and eat. And who used all of the red and orange crayons? And why is Robin always in here naked with my Barbies?

Marvel, back then: It’s your big sister’s boyfriend, already 18 and “kind of different, but nice,” your mother observes, although he rides a motorcycle with no helmet. He draws an Incredible Hulk for you on a sheet of paper, and that’s it, you’re hooked, he’s a god. From him you learn about Ghost Rider and Conan the Barbarian and Silver Surfer. He listens to Rush.

DC, back then: Shlockarific television! “Batman” in the ’60s (Ka-pow! Wham!), “The New Adventures of Wonder Woman” in the ’70s. The toys, the cartoons, the read-along storybook LPs.

Marvel, back then: Put out a comic book starring the rock band Kiss.

DC: “Sgt. Rock.”

Marvel: “Doctor Strange.”

But look at DC now: It has become a retreat for grown-ups who’ve had it with the Marvel characters’ endless angst. When you weary of 22-year-old mutants, Batman can seem comfortably adult. Superman feels right. Green Lantern is a terribly interesting idea, a meditation on burden. Wonder Woman and Aquaman are filled with what seems like literature and history.

And look at Marvel now: After decades of fawning over bad-boy Wolverine, everyone started paying a lot more attention to Captain America. He kind of rocks, in a way you never knew, and so does Iron Man. For years nobody except total Marvelheads read “Iron Man.” The World Trade Center collapsed and Marvel took it personally, bub, and started drawing firefighters and cops more. Started drawing flags and sunsets. Had a moment.

All hail Tom Spurgeon for linking to this.

Tom also posted a link about the American Library Association’s annual meeting, which was the first major event to be held in New Orleans since the flood. The report is written by a comics/pop culture site, but the content isn’t geek-specific.

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Get off the bus

The Airbus problems I mentioned two weeks ago have gotten worse. According to this BizWeek article and this followup news item, executives at Airbus and EADS, its parent company, are getting the axe due to utter incompetence in keeping on top of the A380’s production.

[Airbus sales exec John] Leahy says that until this spring, managers on the plant floor downplayed the problem. “If you asked any one department, they’d say, ‘I’m a little bit behind, but we’re going to catch up,'” he says. But Airbus executives were concerned enough to ask the consulting firm of McKinsey & Co. in April to examine the problem. It was McKinsey’s report, in early June, that triggered the EADS announcement.

Yet others say the situation is no surprise, because Airbus’s corporate culture openly discourages employees from alerting managers to potential problems. “If you tell them bad news, they simply don’t listen,” says Andrew Walker, a former top engineer at the factory in Broughton, Wales, where the A380’s wings are built. “No one dares tell a high executive that something isn’t possible, because he risks losing his job,” says a local union leader at the Toulouse factory who asked for anonymity.

That fear could explain why Airbus failed to grasp the severity of the problem sooner, even though the company had similar problems in the 1990s with long-range versions of its A340 aircraft.

Make mine Boeing.