Last week I spent a lot of time with some genome specialists who work at the Venter Institute. On Thursday I was given an update on the results coming in from Sorcerer II’s trip to Europe and the Mediterranean as well as results from the sampling we have been doing on my boat Solutions. As you may remember, we sample once a month along the California Bight. The status of things is that a tremendous amount of data has been acquired. However, very few of the samples have been sequenced at the present time. My feeling is that the people doing the sampling are the same people who do the sequencing. I was impressed with the care that these scientists take in handling and storing the samples.

I watched the Oscars Sunday night and was surprised to see The Hurt Locker win. I thought it was an interesting movie, but one that looked pretty staged to me. I’d rather have seen one of Matt Damon’s movies win, or Avatar. I haven’t seen Avatar, but I hear it’s very good. The Academy marches to its own drummer. I’m curious what the 400 blog readers thought about the award results.

– Bob

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FED Essay Contest

I would like to announce a new initiative being sponsored by the Foundation for Enterprise Development. It is the Creating Wealth by Sharing Wealth Nationwide Essay Contest, which is open to students at participating colleges and universities. The contest is designed to energize a national dialogue with students around their views on alternative corporate structures that can improve sustainability, performance, corporate culture, and alignment of incentives in companies of all kinds. The first contest will ask participants to write an essay of between 500 and 750 words on our book The SAIC Solution. There are currently more than 350 students participating at seven different universities, and I believe it will continue to grow. The FED is looking for additional supporters for this program. The idea is a good one, and I hope you will take a moment to look into it.

General Atomics

As many of you know, General Atomics is located here in San Diego. I worked there for 12 years, before I started SAIC. The current owners have created some very useful products. One such product that everyone is familiar with is their line of military and civilian drones, including the Predator. The Predator drone is being used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan for reconnaissance and attack. The company’s newest idea is a compact nuclear power reactor which will be powered by the heat from spent fuel rods from large reactors. According to GA, their process would be able to unlock a significant amount of the energy contained within these fuel rods. In the United States alone, this works out to the energy equivalent of 9 trillion barrels of oil. I will keep a close eye on the development of this new take on power generation and report my findings in this blog.

Other Items of Interest

Last Saturday, February 27th, the whole family drove to the Four Seasons Aviara Resort in Carlsbad. We attended the annual Heart of San Diego Gala for UCSD’s Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center. The UCSD Medical Center cardiovascular department is building new buildings, hiring new staff, and expanding its coverage to become the preeminent cardiovascular center in Southern California. This is an important program for the area, and I support it.

On Friday, the day before our drive to Carlsbad, we took the boat to Oceanside. This was primarily a pleasure trip. However, this upcoming Friday we will be doing ocean sampling for Craig Venter. We’re anxiously waiting to hear the results from our previous sampling efforts and from his around-the-world expedition on Sorcerer II. We’ll let you know.

– Bob

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As most of you probably know, this is not the best time to publish a new book. The industry is in tough shape and publishers are looking for sure things. Our story about Network Solutions, SAIC, and the Internet is one that should interest many people. I believe especially those who depend on the Internet being available as a tool for conducting their business. We have decided the story is compelling enough that we will write the book and worry about getting a publisher later. The story is so compelling that it is hard for me to believe no one will publish it. If you our readers feel this is the wrong approach, please let me know. Thanking you as usual for your opinions.

– Bob

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This past July 22-23, the FED conducted the 2009 Beyster Fellowship Symposium here in La Jolla at the Museum of Modern Art. There were more than 40 attendees, many of whom are being supported by the FED to write reports on specific aspects of employee ownership. The proceedings of the symposium will soon be available on the FED website. I encourage you all to read the report. If you know anyone who would make a good Beyster Fellow including PhD candidates for the Shared Capitalism dissertation award program (which is open now for applications), please have them review the program summary on the FED website.

I was pleased to see Larry Ellison and his BMW Oracle team win the America’s Cup. It seemed to me that the Swiss boat was outclassed. My friend Malin Burnham is already working to convince Ellison to bring the next Cup race to San Diego. I agree with him that San Diego would be a better location for the race than San Francisco. I support Malin in this effort and I hope he is successful.

– Bob

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Being a Republican, I was very pleased to see Scott Brown win the Senate seat in Massachusetts. One of the things that makes this country great is the fact that new superstars pop up from time to time within both the Democrat and Republican parties. In this case, Senator Brown shocked the nation and the President into realizing that there is a real need for compromise if we are to dig our way out of the current economic troubles. I watched his debates on C-SPAN and he clearly had a commonsense message for the American public. Although many of the people and politics of the Republican party are not to my liking, Brown is a breath of fresh air.

I kept pretty busy last week. On Tuesday I spoke on the phone with Admiral Bruce DeMars, who served as Director of Naval Nuclear Propulsion from 1988 to 1996. Admiral Demars is chairman of the Naval Historical Foundation, which is located in the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. We talked about an exhibit on U.S. Navy submarine activities he is helping put together at the Navy Museum. I found his idea interesting and I plan to support it. That is if they’re not snowed in too much.

On Friday we weren’t able to motor to Oceanside because the weather was bad. We instead went to the Loews Resort in Coronado. I’m keeping an eye on the America’s Cup. The first race was to take place yesterday, but it was postponed until Wednesday due to light winds. We’ll soon see if Larry Ellison’s boat and crew are up to the task of bringing the Cup back home to the United States. I hope they are.

– Bob

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This past week I attended an event at the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park, led by Craig Venter. He talked about his many discoveries using his sailboat and my motorboat for sampling the ocean, and pointed out how many new species of ocean life he has discovered as a result. According to Craig, he has discovered hundreds of thousands of genes, which will be of importance in the medical and alternative energy fields. As I have previously discussed, Craig and his organization are vigorously pursuing the potential commercialization of algae-based biofuels, including jet fuel. Craig’s team has met with some success, but commercially significant quantities are probably still 10 years off. We are getting closer.

On Sunday night my wife Betty, daughter Mary Ann, and son Jim had dinner at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club with UCSD engineering professor Joe Pasquale, his wife Barbara, and two Ph.D. candidates from the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. We have been supporting these two students for the past three years as they worked on their degrees under Joe. They have one year to go, but they already appear to be making progress on wireless solutions for the telecommunications industry. Overall, I was quite impressed.

– Bob

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