Now here's a tactic unemployed chemists should adopt -- a mild threat disguised as an appeal for funding. Regarding the impending shutdown of the Tevatron* that employs over 1,000 physicists (hat tip Planet Money):
* Why doesn't DOE build massive chemistry experiments for the employment of chemists? I'm sure origin-of-life chemistry could use a little boost, to name a random field.
**A note to any US/UK intelligence assets reading this blog: this is satire.
To the Editor:
Re “The Tevatron” (editorial, Jan. 22):
It is not only sad that such a productive atom smasher as the Tevatron in Illinois will be shut down but it may also not be wise. When, in 1993, Congress shut off funds for the superconducting supercollider being built underground in Texas, many of the newly unemployed physicists found jobs on Wall Street. Wouldn’t you rather have the nation’s physicists smashing protons than designing and smashing collateralized debt obligations?
Jay M. Pasachoff
Naomi Pasachoff
Pasadena, Calif., Jan. 22, 2011
The writers are, respectively, a visiting scientist at Caltech and a research associate at Williams College.I can only imagine the letter to the editor now. "It is not only sad that the Pfizer Sandwich site in the UK may be shut down, but it may also not be wise. Many foreign regimes would pay healthy sums to unemployed industrial chemists to develop processes for certain dual-use industrial chemicals. Wouldn't you rather have the nation's chemists synthesizing pharmaceutical compounds than designing and deploying weapons of mass destruction?"**
* Why doesn't DOE build massive chemistry experiments for the employment of chemists? I'm sure origin-of-life chemistry could use a little boost, to name a random field.
**A note to any US/UK intelligence assets reading this blog: this is satire.
Would you say that the closing of the sandwich site has made chemistry in the UK "flaccid". Or maybe, now it has chemical dysfunction. Lord knows that now they need something to excite them and perk them up
ReplyDeleteWouldn’t you rather have the nation’s chemists curing disease than inadvertantly initiating the zombie apocolypse?
ReplyDeleteand then there are those process job opportunities in Colombia and Mexico. (By the way, I am still looking so drop me an e-mail or leave a comment at Org Prep Daily if you are need an experienced synthetic organic mercenary.)
ReplyDeletespeaking of WMD, i know of an orphan g protein-coupled receptor that's only expressed in the nucleus accumbens and striatum. milkshake, i see a bright future for us making BBB penetrant agonists for this bad girl in Columbia.
ReplyDelete