Dangerous artillery

 

In modern warfare, heavy artillery can be necessary. It can be fundamental to determine who wins a battle. It can contribute as much as you like to winning.

But heavy artillery will not be the actual means to achieve a decisive victory. Actual victory is achieved when the ground troops (infantry, cavalry, tanks or scouts) do actually keep the battlefield and the enemy is either gone, captured or dead.

The problem with heavy artillery is more in the when and the how to use it.

If you strike too early, its effects on the enemy will probably be quickly fixed and mended before your ground troops can take any advantage of it. If you launch it too late, you may probably not even have the time to do it, as the enemy will have taken your position before you strike.

If you use it without having considered all the effects of it, without the proper intelligence backing your plan, well, you may not hit the necessary targets to wreck the enemy as you should. If you shoot before coordinating appropriately with your ground forces, you may even hit them by the so-called friendly-fire. In this case, you couldn’t do your enemy a bigger favor.

We have recently seen the first serious move from the HP Headquarters after the appointment of the new top executives, Ray Lane and Léo Apotheker. Ray Lane himself sent an open letter to The New York Times in reply to a long range torpedo launched by the latter.

The first heavy artillery blow in the Oracle Wars show.

Well-intentioned backing from the incoming Chairman to his CEO… but was it the right shoot?

We think it might have been launched too quickly. Though it might have given the market a positive sign about “hey guys, despite whatever Larry Ellison might have said or might say in the coming future, we are not dead yet”, the main message was not strong enough (they pleaded “non guilty” more than “innocent” in the TomorrowNow affair) and the speed of it looked to us more like an attempt to cut short the thesis from NYT than a real solid argumentation.

Not only was it sent too fast. It was aimed to the wrong target. If the main blow from NYT (which could be read as Oracle, after the conflict of interest held by the author, as you can see in the previous links above) was targeting Léo Apotheker and the HP Board, we believe that attacking Hurd again was a very poor defense of HP’s new CEO and those who picked him.

As well, the heavy artillery blow was self-weakened from the beginning. From Ray Lane’s letter to NYT, the reader gets the impression that Léo Apotheker will be called as a key witness only after having been appointed CEO at HP. This is not actually true. Léo’s name appears in the list of Oracle’s witnesses dated August 5th, even before Mark Hurd’s scandal exploded.

If Ray Lane is capable of managing well the artillery he’s got as Chairman of the Board, he won’t make the best use of it aiming to past issues (and Mark Hurd is definitely something past for HP) as this won’t restore the confidence from the market peers that HP badly needs to wage its war. If selecting Léo Apotheker was the best option for the HP Board, let Léo prove it. Support him forward, and in the event of failure, remove him. But Mark Hurd has nothing to do with that.

One collateral effect as well from this unfortunate artillery firing could be as well weakening Léo Apotheker, as it probably limits his natural space of maneuver. It’s adding pressure on him, unnecessarily, as he already got all the IT industries eyes on him.

It is a matter of opinion, however, whether Oracle’s lawyers intended or not to actually call Apotheker. It belongs to the sphere of hypothesis that after Ray Lane’s letter to NYT, Oracle’s lawyers will eventually call Apotheker or not. But it is certainly true that Léo Apotheker’s presence at court was a possibility before anybody in the world could have even imagined that Mark Hurd was to leave the HP CEO job.

What did Michael Dell watch on TV in November 1973?

 

Today we’ve learnt that, after the ongoing Fishergate at HP and all the trailing episodes that keep it up, we have some sort of Intelgate at Dell’s.

Several millionaire fines have been set on Michael Dell and Dell Inc after inappropriate accounting practices from 2001 and 2006. Details published recently.  

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Technorati Tags: Dell,Apotheker,Intel,HP,Oracle,Ellison

One of the funny aspects of the story is that Dell Inc is quoted as having won (!) a judge’s permission to pay $100M to settle accounting fraud claims.

What a victory, we’d say. Who call’s a $100M fine a “win”? The only reasonable explanation we could think of is that Dell Inc feared a much higher cost… derived perhaps from a murkier feeling of guilt?

Another $4M fine to Michael Dell that will allow him to continue as the company CEO. Well, sounds cheap, according to the earnings of other CEOs in the industry. Just recall the recent figures published about HP’s Apotheker, who got about that much just for signing up for his new job, and another $4.6M for moving house to California, or Yahoo’s Carol Bartz, who tops the list of well paid toppers… Oracle’s Ellison being the 6th fortune in the planet…

Adding the fines imposed to Dell Inc, We would compare that to the hypothetical impact had this company not injected the money coming from Intel into the financial statements. Still would probably seem a bargain, we think.

In 1973, Richard Nixon defended his record strongly by declaring to the Washington Post “I’m not a crook” in the arch-famous Watergate affair.

A famous quote indeed, probably still familiar to many Americans, who learnt then that the Top Guy was abusing his resources in a fraudulent manner.

Maybe these days there is another Top Guy that is trying to convince himself that he’s not a crook since he won’t probably convince others. Maybe he should have watched carefully TV in 1973.

The shadow of doubt

 

It seems that a columnist from NYT has added some fuel to the war between the titans…

And though it is not the first one the same journalist writes after more or less similar thesis, this time he has provoked some reaction from the HP biggies.

None less than the incoming non executive Chairman of the Board himself.

In a polite and educated letter to NYT, Ray Lane replies back to the author in a double-pronged manner:

In one hand, he pleads “not-guilty” for his CEO.

On the other, he drives attention to the sacking of HP’s former CEO, in an attempt to settle for once and for ever the reasons for that. He actually sides with his new board colleagues and endorses the ousting.

It could be somehow imaginable that sooner or later there could be articles in the press like this one. As a matter of fact, this is not the first one, and probably won’t be the latest…. but this one has provoked a formal reply from the highest HP figure so far. Personally.

What makes us think that the author of the NYT column has touched HP in an extremely sensitive aspect, in an extremely sensitive way, and in an extremely sensitive moment.

Assuming that a Chairman of the Board of a company such as HP does not have the time to answer like he’s done all the opinions which are spreading so rapidly throughout the internet, why has he backfired so quickly?

The shadow of doubt will surely float around, we suppose.

One thing under any reasonable doubt is certain though: There is a trial going on, and Léo Apotheker is going to be called as a witness, according to WSJ.

We will see in a few weeks how this story keeps going, but we could expect Big-Mouth Larry becoming growingly excited about the prospects of embarrassing HP…

Bon appétit, monsieur

Moving forward in his war against the world, Big-Mouth Larry has recently reinforced his eyeing on a chip-maker. No later than in the recent shareholder’s annual meeting, we heard, a few days ago.

So it Big-Mouth Larry is just considering the menu, we’d say, as the choices are there.
ARM, Broadcom, Nvidia… or AMD, why not?
There’s a lot of buzz around, and there are a lot of apparent good business reasons for betting for AMD, not the lightest the fact that Oracle is about enterprise business, and enterprise business is about servers, a segment where AMD is way ahead the rest of the candidates.
With a $4 billion market cap, AMD can be easily taken over. Their CEO Dirk Meyer has declared AMD’s not on sale, but they’d be happy to listen to any proposal in the interest of their shareholders…
We’d agree. But not for the same reasons. We believe it will be AMD as much as we think that all the good business reasons have come after Big-Mouth-Larry has made his mind up.
We think that AMD is the chosen one, as this would certainly hit Big-Mouth’s nemesis, HP, harder than any other choice. In the server space, in the PC’s, in the Notebook’s, eventually in tablet’s, and as well in the workstation’s.
It might not do any good to his health, as the frankfurt in the picture certainly does not to a man of his age, but it appears too big a temptation to resist to the voracious Big-Mouth Larry, as the frankfurt in the picture certainly is.
Bon-appétit, monsieur… but keep your cardiologist’s number at hand, just in case.

Coherence for trust

 

We believe one of the biggest needs a company like HP does need these days is trust.

Trust from customers, trust from partners, trust from shareholders, trust from vendors, trust from employees too. Trust from the market, in short.

If it only were for the fact that trust is the base of the share value that ultimately will hold, support and sustain the company career in the market.

Trust in its values, its leadership, its ways and procedures, its fair play.

Though History has plenty of examples of leaders that have succeeded based on the general trust they have inspired, the recent episodes starred by HP generate some doubts in our minds.

In early August CEO Mark Hurd is ousted after some ethics and confidence principles.

HP takes its time to name a successor, while zillions of rumours of all imaginable flavors, like Bertie Bott’s beans, spread all over the media.

In a context background were relatively recently Oracle was swiftly but openly sliding to war against the rest of the Universe, including HP in particular, the latter needed a bold and clear move that as well went as fast as reasonably possible.

A probably not irrelevant coup about one month after Hurd packed his stuff from Palo Alto, drove him into the arms of Big-Mouth-Larry at Oracle. This could be seen today as the natural aftermath of a series of unfortunate declarations from the Oracle’s Pontifex Maximus where words like idiots, resignation en masse and other delicatessen were not infrequent.

We think it is not unlikely that HP’s Board took this last bravado from Big-Mouth as a somewhat personal insult to HP and its board… and even eventually determined them to twist the path they could very well have followed up to that point by naming CEO a more expected or natural candidate. At the end of the day, all the media have been filled up regularly with the names of Bradley, Livermore, Joshi, Tim Cook and quite a number of others…The usual suspects. HP even tried to prevent Hurd from teaming with Big-Mouth by filing suit against the move… a minor clash that ended up quickly with no further consequences than making more obvious who was on which side. The war theatre even afforded getting special guest stars as Jack Welch who starred an unforgettable panegyric for some in pectore candidate…

So 55 days after Cathie Lesjak stepped up temporarily as interim CEO, enter the unexpected Léo Apotheker… followed by Ray Lane as the new non-exec Chairman of the Board. Rescued from unemployment, and with a background at SAP that won’t lead him to succeeding Jack Welch as Manager of the Century precisely, he still might deserve a pass.

Apparently, the stage was set for just a “wait and see” status quo, the market anxiously awaiting the next move. But not all the elements had been considered so far.

Next November the show will go on in a different scenario, a trial about inappropriate procedures by SAP against Oracle. The hot topic won’t be about guilt versus innocence, but more about how much. As a matter of fact, SAP has admitted responsibility, and though being tens of millions a reasonable fine for them, Big-Mouth talks of billions.

We do not know the level of engagement and involvement of the apparently calm Léo… but the matter sounds fishy enough to consider whether he was appropriate or not for HP, given the situation HP’s in, and the reputation it is rapidly earning.

If Hurd was ousted based on ethics… why the very same judges forget so easily about ethics now? Was that important to slap Big-Mouth in his face? Is the slapping worth a reputation?

If you are interested in details, yo may want to read The New York Times.

 

Léo Apotheker, new HP CEO

Ray Lane, new Chairman of the Board at HP’s.

Heroes and sidekicks

 

Who could recall Batman without Robin? How could Shrek have conquered half of the world's hearts with no Donkey? Even Mr Incredible would have failed without Frozone.

Out from Disney’s or Dreamwork’s worlds, real life, and eventually business world has no standalone heroes without sidekicks: Bonnie and Clyde, Robin Hood and Little John, King Arthur and Lancelot… No Hewlett, no Packard; no Gates, no Ballmer…

On the contrary, villains usually operate in a standalone mode… The Joker, Lord Farquaad, Syndrome, Michael Dell…

Quite doubtful, by the way, about the lonely Ellison… that could be the exception of the rule. Maybe age has softened him a bit (despite such a big mouth) and looks for his sidekick in his dear friend Mark. Still wondering though about who the latter is sidekick to; might make his mind up after a nice seafood dinner…

So… we got this nice couple stepping up: Léo and Ray…

Tough choice to make at this moment, who the hero is, and who the sidekick is. Theoretically, one would think that an exec would play the main role, and a non-exec would stay in the backstage providing sidekick support… but still, it could be the reverse, having Mr-Backstage-Nice-Guy behind the steering wheel, while the exec limits himself to the actual execution of Mr-Nice-Guy’s higher-level strategy.

Ambiguous enough, we have an Apotheker (that’s German for “pharmacist”) that might have the magic potion that his new company needs urgently… and we have what someone called the a Ray of sunshine to shed the light his new company urgently needs too.

Light or potion? Light to prepare the right potion, or the appropriate potion to enlighten around?

We think that after the recent experiences with CEOs that HP has had, this time they’d better try to position themselves in the right lane and race fast as light rays before the oracle’s rage strikes hurder.

Back to ruling SAP, Léo?

 

One of the good things about numbers is that they may tell you more than what they seem… and though interpretation might as well vary, readers can be really wise when drawing conclusions…

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=HPQ+Interactive#chart7:symbol=hpq;range=20101001,20101007;compare=sap;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

Observe carefully the trend since we started to hear rumors about a sound wedding between (h)ardware and (s)oftware, with curious initials…

Silicon Valley might be great for living there… but maybe someone’s mind is homeward bound, Léo?

Now, wait a minute!

 

We start to see around some claims about HP employees’ morale reaching new lows…

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/HP-Employee-Morale-Hits-New-siliconalley-803856163.html?x=0&.v=5

Well, though the sample is quite limited so far in terms of the number of employees that have responded to the “request for feedback”, as well there is a significant time constraint: Léo Apotheker has not yet formally started in his new job.

It seems to us pretty unfair to even dare to publish verbatim the feedback of just a couple of individuals.

This is not meaning that these two chaps are not right in the long run… just that it is too risky an assertion to have it as the basis for a conclusion that is highlighted in the headline.

We know of people who have known of much better days at HP years ago. We do as well. And though the reasons for the changes within the HP world can be thoroughly and passionately discussed, we believe any single employee from this relevant company should consider several things before just letting the first feelings that pop up in their minds reach the email of a journalist that just needs to fill up his words’ quota.

Of course this about letting time pass, and judge after having had some perspective. At the same time, newcomers should be allowed the time to start and show what their plans are.

But probably the most important thing is that employees themselves should try to avoid this feeling of “over-protection” they sometimes too much seem to expect from the company they work for. Even if this was a feeling that came as a consequence of former Management’s attitude and manners. Even if “employee-protection” was a motto in the past, this does not really entitle anybody to assume that the company he or she works for is really obliged to the employee beyond a certain limit. It is the responsibility of that employee to care for himself. As much as he would not allow the company to tell him or her what to do with his salary once he or she has earned it, right?

And while they let newcomers develop their plans, and while time provides a better judgment, it is the employees obligation to support his company as much as he or she is able to precisely to make sure that the company will later provide for him.

Sounds too Kennedy-an, doesn’t it? “It’s not what your country can do for you…”, some veterans might recall…

Well, that might very well be the problem of our times… people in the basis of families, companies, or any other organization, that just limit themselves to milk a cow they think they have been born with the right to milk.

Once these guys do this… then they will earn the right to say whatever they feel like about managers, companies and even the rest of the world.

 

They need toilets too…

 

What’s wrong with the 666-guy? the 66-year-old and 6th fortune in the world seems to have gone a bit nuts.

We mean… what has the whole world done to this guy, that needs to declare war to anything that moves?

He started the war when hiring his tennis-buddy… and he is basically trying to justify it by blaming the rest of the world so far, and probably part of the Universe tomorrow.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-07/ellison-s-rants-expose-oracle-anxiety-as-ibm-hp-add-software.html?cmpid=yhoo

 

Or maybe an unstable balance between testosterone and dopamine…

http://www.forbes.com/2010/10/07/brain-science-neurobiology-leadership-managing-hormones.html?partner=yahootix

We are not in a position to discuss biology not psychiatry… but maybe suggest a more direct and simple approach (could be Occam approves this).

A bit of megalomania here and there?

History has quite a number of examples of people that, having reached the point of an astounding success and power, they fall under the spell of confusion, and start to get unable to differentiate themselves from living gods, with the responsibility of differentiating good from evil: Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler…

It’s amazing how selective their minds can be to forget that, regardless how much they like it, they are (and will continue being) mere human beings. Probably their super-high standards of living, they environment where their daily lives develop expose them too much to temptations… But we believe that every time they have to pay the toll of visiting a toilet (an unavoidable task that probably happens several times a day, and in the case of a 66 year old veteran many more times likely), they could consider that precisely those very moments, they are not at all different from six billion other human beings who probably do not need to boast around about how great they are.

Joe?

 

Say it ain't so, Joe

Head Murray

Say it ain't so, Joe please, say it ain't so
That's not what I wanna hear Joe
Ain't I got a right to know
Say it ain't so, Joe please, say it ain't so
I'm sure they telling us lies Joe,
Please tell us it ain't so.

They told us our hero has played his trump card
He doesn't know how to go on.
We're clinging to his charm and determined smile,
But the good old days have gone.

The image and the empire may be failing apart
The money has gotten scarce
One man's word held the country together,
But the truth is getting fierce

Say it ain't so, Joe please, say it ain't so
We pinned our hope on you Joe
And they're ruining our show

could be Joe’s his middle name?

Excusatio non petita…

 

One of the last posts before this one suggested toadies following the big Toad after this “we al stand together” motto…

Well, we were told we had not really been too clear.

Jack Welch, Manager of The Century according to Fortune Magazine in 1999, former CEO at General Electric, certainly stands behind, and certainly stands by, and definitely stands together with.

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20101005/jack-welch-slams-hp-board/?reflink=ATD_yahoo_ticker

apparently here Mr Welch is measuring his respect for HP’s Board…

Quite straight forward, Mr Welch is probably very right in some of his assertions… as having three outsider CEOs in eight years is not really encouraging anyone to believe in leadership capability within the monster HP, he might as well be going a bit too far in his praise and hail about Bradley.

As a matter of fact… wasn’t Toad, from the first days after HP became hurd-less, the foremost runner to the top job? Wasn’t he the most obvious candidate, the one that had most to win?

If so… why did HP’s board take so long (much more than with Carly, much more than with Hurd) to apparently appoint him. If it had been natural and logical, and coming from inside, choosing him and confirming him should not have been major hurdles.

Mr Welch’s extraordinary blast against HP’s Board is, in our opinion, the heaviest attack, even beyond the oracle’s Pythia’s… (quite childish, we believe). But beside being quite right in its beginning propositions, we might have overacted with that specific highlighting of his former employee.

Should he have stopped at the point of remarking HP’s Board lack of developing leadership, we would show no concern and probably full support to his theory… but was is the real point behind such a passionate declaration in defense of the toad? Why on earth has he suddenly steps up to defend the toad publicly in the “Board versus the Toad” case?

If the point was HP’s Board lacking leadership culture, he could have, for the sake of courtesy, mentioned several internal candidates from HP’s, as almost all media did: Bradley himself, Livermore, Donatelli, or even the guy with the funny Pokemon-series name.

Such an even violent defense of Bradley looks as if he had something to win after Bradley’s achievement, should this have happened… Maybe just the self-pride of having been The Manager of the Century mentoring the new Manager of the Biggest Techno Corporation? Not likely in our opinion.

If the toad was really the best candidate… did he really need this “involuntary” allegation from Mr Welch? We don’t think so. Moreover, we really think Mr Welch’s mentioning of the toad alone, by name and first name, nothing less than three times in one sentence has not delivered a nice favor to the toad precisely.

Mr Welch’s opinions are certainly to be respected… if it only were for his age, background and reputation. But as Manager of the Century, he probably is not unaware of corpses in the closet that many toppers frequently have.

Can anybody, including Toad, be sure there are none this time?

Being the Manager of the Century does not necessarily guarantee infallibility and omniscience. There might be reasons he is unaware of that explain why HP prefers to have a pharmacist that became the first SAP top official that had no idea about software coding.

Latin scholars will probably think about “excusatio non petita… accusatio manifesta”…

Potion maker or potion drunkard?

 

Quite much like being Barty Crouch and playing Mad-Eye Moody…

potion maker, or potion drinker?

Toad and toadies

 

Guys with any resemblance, as light as it could eventually be though, should watch out for whatever Toad and toadies might be up to…

Toad and toadies…

Step ahead, please!

 

The ball is on the pharmacist’s roof… The Pythia has spoken, and has formally unburied the hatchet in a not-so-subtle style so far.

The audience is anxiously awaiting the next move, and we believe it won’t leave the scenery unshaken.

We think the potion maker is already at the cauldron, gathering all the ingredients for the recipe that credits his position.

It will be a sound and powerful move. Unimaginable some time ago, but probably not for the Pythia, as her rage is not for free.

Stupid and pathetic a move, she’ll probably claim, as subtlety and patience are not her topmost strengths at this moment.

Whatever the Priestess at Delphi claims, the potion-maker is certainly seeking a position that can push him to being strong and profitable.

He simply and plainly cannot afford anything else, as the supreme judges at Wall Street await any signal to start their unshakable verdicts.

The move will be strategic and profound, stormy and problematic, not an easy pill to swallow for a pharmacist though.

Silence and prudence for the moment in the pharmacist’s camp, but swift and planned, slithering and promising, the strike will come.

Too much hardware in the warehouse… some software and programming would not do any harm…

The show’s indeed begun

Tough times in the most promising brawl of the last years. Hard times in both sides, though certainly in one of the camps these times show a bit hurder…

The guy should be careful about his blood pressure; otherwise, he won’t need a Sectumsempra jinx to have his veins burst.

Well, to his defence it might be conceded that his opponent has not really proven yet having what it takes to wage this collusion. More a Chamberlain than a Churchill, more a Munich than a Danzig, the withdrawal of the suit filed against the hard defection was an unconditional surrender, to quote Sir Winston.

So… who would have needed to visit an oracle to have guessed that sooner than later this would come up?

Quite heavy, though, the artillery fire that has been launched… a good promise of more to come. Still, an unnecessary boasting that, unless proven with numbers and facts in the mid and long turn, just means admitting weakness.

Now, having said this, the most important subtle and hidden message here is in the other camp’s silence.

If these guys read Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/47e1f058-cf19-11df-9be2-00144feab49a.html?referrer_id=yahoofinance&ft_ref=yahoo1&segid=03058), as I write this they must be enjoying the momentum, from discreet but unmistakable smiles to open laughter…

But while they congratulate themselves, they should still be very careful judging the cost of the laughter… a $30M worth laughter could be very expensive if the potions from the pharmacist don’t work.

The luckiest of men these days, the great winner so far, is on the spot, and should not forget he probably still loves Paris in the Springtime…

By the way, when you have issues (especially when being 66) with your blood pressure, you should not disregard getting some prescription from the pharmacist, should you? it should not be an issue for a Top 6 Fortune 500 guy…

Fairy tales (might) have happy endings

Once upon a time (how could a proper fairy tale start differently?…) there was a genuine fairy tale prince. He lived in a castle like that one so often portrayed in Disney’s movies and shows, so much inspired in the real one at Neuschwanstein.

He was the coolest prince ever, halfway between Prince Josef in the classical Sissy movies and Prince Charming in Shrek’s. He was even regularly portrayed in magazines and TV shows here and there.

So often he attended parties, cocktails or social meetings (high profile customer events, if you’d prefer Marketing terminology) he was quite used to having a drink or two. But he went above a certain limit, he had the habit of wandering through the palace garden to break up jinxes and spells cast on fairy tale princesses. One must say that a few times before, His Highness had already problems about that…

So His Highness was in one of these cases in a moment in which he reached for the garden pond… and just when a lost moonlight beam reflected over a water flower, he suddenly discovered her.

Needless to mention, so many times he’d gone through this, he immediately recognized her.

She was a genuine common frog ignoring such a savior, and just looking for bugs to calm down her hunger. A bit excited by a toad croaking around, she got distracted in a moment when the huge monster made her a prisoner of his.

Under the gentle starry night, he tenderly caressed her and… kissed her as gently as he could; but the frog was no fake, and the prince became… a toad!.

As he found his nose right above the waterline, he discovered that for once these things happen, it worked precisely the contrary it should have, and ever since he keeps springing and croaking all around.

It appears quite difficult to keep his old ways and customs, as servants won’t allow him back into his palace, despite he does not really adapt well to a frog-ish life…

Thus nowadays, in the lovely garden of his dad’s, there is one prince less, and one todd more…

 

magic and show

If we talk magic and talk show we won't avoid falling under the spell of the supreme sorcerer of the show business...

We should not skip that, and pay our corresponding homage to Mr Walt Disney...

Shall we bring something interesting to think about?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXPyNi-XvgI&feature=related

One is Tod... the other one's Toby... let your mind make the link...

no magic so far...

Facts are there... and hard as they can be, they show that so far no magic has shown up in the recent events that have occurred around our particular and unofficial Harry Potter story.

Trends just follow suit the same looks in the last eight weeks, and modern chemists, as German as BASF, Bayer or Höchst can be, may need to get back to basics, to turn to the times when magic was not that different from alchemy, and when master Nicolas Flamel was looking for the philosopher's stone...

We've got the chemist; we've got the frame, the context and the entourage... and it seems that a significant portion of our little world is putting al its hopes in finding a philosopher's stone that will turn everything upside down, any metal into gold, and ultimately deliver inmortality to the chosen ones...

Do you believe in magic? Answer to yourself... but having, as we do, the scenery set up, may the show begin.

Pharmacists are not doctors

Pharmacists may be wise, intelligent and experienced people.

But when it comes to healing, responsibility is on the doctor. It is the doctor who takes over the responsibility of the diagnostics...

The pharmacist won't do... unless there is a clear diagnosis.

Do we have this?

just needed one or two suggestions...

... to dare to try to start something like this...

No idea about how this will go, but, having nothing to lose, why not?

So lets see how stories develop.

Thanks for following if you do.