For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Doctor Don Gliblee. I’m CEO of the Ethnopharamaceutical Research Group of Bethesda Maryland. I’m often invited to speak in front of large groups of people such as this, mainly investors. But I know there are no investors out there this morning, just a lot of happy graduates. And a few members of the press, because of the, um, thing. But because it’s not a seminar, I will try to tone down the moxie a little bit and stick to the inspirational stuff.

I’m a scientist. Some folks call me an investor but I’m more of a collector. I collect geniuses. There’s an old saying: A genius is someone who aims at something no one else see and hits the jackpot. Actually I made up that last part, but can you blame me? I mean I’m all for aiming properly, but let’s face it – the new American billionaires didn’t get that way by throwing three consecutive twenties in darts. They did it through lateral thinking. They did it by keeping their eyes on the prize.

I mean let’s take that darts metaphor. Say you go to your darts tournament, you throw your three twenties, and you go home with a blue ribbon. What have you got? A blue ribbon. Friend, you should have been playing for blue chips. What about morality you say? Principles? Well I’m all for ’em. Shining hill and all that. Last year I bought that hill! I’m putting a twelve-bedroom on it! Whaddya think about that, huh? And everyone talks about chasing his own gold medal. That old olympic sawhorse, right? You wanna come up to the house, I can show you the hole we’re digging for the olympic gold POOL! You know that’s the real problem with business today – too many stupid aphorisms. Darts metaphor, olympics metaphor – man, just show me your stock portfolio and shut the hell up!

I seem to have slipped back into seminar mode, but really, who cares? I’m here to give you advice, practical advice! Here it is: Get that loan paid off and start investing in pharmaceuticals. Back in ’91 my friend Jim came up to me and said, “Don, science is where the money is. Three words: Ethnopharmaceutical Research Group. I’m buying them on Thursday. Look ’em up.” I did look them up – and I bought them on Wednesday. Snatched ’em right out from under his nose!

I could have just sat there on my ass! Then I’d be down there in the green plastic chair and HE’D be up here on this podium. But I DID!... I mean I didn’t. How did I set that up? Never mind.

Science, science, stick to science…You’re graduating, right. So – congratulations, you’re all scientists now, and you’re going to go out into the world, and it’s going to be just great. I guess I’m here today to be a role model more than anything else, so let’s talk about me. I’m a bit of a celebrity, I admit it. Feels good. Actually I’m a bit of a celebrity in the wrong way, as we found out last week, but all publicity is, uh, et cetera.

It’s so easy for the public to misunderstand what scientists do. People just don’t get it, that in science there is no progress without the nutty idea. You understand this. We do not move forward without the nuttiness! And I’ve been nutty from day one! I was one of the first to do serious multidisciplinary studies in pharmacology and forestry science. And I told the people at Nature magazine, “Look, I soaked those Bristlecone Pine seeds in LSD, and if you don’t agree that these trees look like Tor Johnson in Plan Nine from Outer Space, maybe you should get Harvard Anthropology to prove that we only THINK they look like Tor Johnson!” But they didn’t want to pursue it.

You’re probably aware that we did make headlines last week at ERG when we “dumped” twenty thousand gallons of Ritalin into Lake Oswego. Now – no matter what we do at ERG, it seems the media just jumps all over it, so I can’t say I was surprised when the local stations started broadcasting footage of carp tapdancing in the streets of Portland. It looked fake to me, but we’ll leave that to the courts. Everyone’s screaming disaster. “Disaster” – the word is so overused! I call what we’re doing INNOVATION! But in the papers, the sentences always begin with “Disaster”. “Disaster – Preschool children up to their chests in benzene!” Oooh! “Disaster – Idaho deforested!” I mean, did they ever stop and think – maybe it’s an experiment? Of course not.

Crazy dreamers are always outcasts. It’s an old, old story. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Gates…all the great men of science were called crazy dreamers. Call me one too! I got my hand raised! I mean, where is the style in science? Hm? I think that the great unanswered questions of science don’t just deserve answers. They deserve witty retorts. I have a plaque on my wall that says “It crazy – but just might work!” And the fact that there are...two words missing from that plaque is exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t like the rules of grammar, change ’em! Lateral thinking! That’s what it’s all about! Whether I’m testing a new drug or coaching the ERG chess team, I always say the same thing – “Which way to the stretch pants?” Lateral. Vertical. And skew. That’s what it takes.

I’ll give you an example. We have just made a major discovery, that no one knows about yet. In fact the PR guys set me up with this speech so we could get a little positive spin action going, and they specifically told me “Don’t talk about the thing.” Well you know what? I’m gonna talk about it. I’m on a roll. Now I don’t want to take exclusive credit for this...MAJOR breakthrough. In fact I really have to give props to Walter Firkin. He planted the seed. I remember plain as day – it was a Thursday night and Walter and everybody were down in the Rec Room having a research binge. It was a good night for the chess team. We’d just TROUNCED the FDA’s Blue Knights in sudden-death sprints. And we’re hanging out, getting tight, and Walter looked up at the periodic table and said, “Have you ever really thought about it?” And I looked at Helen, and I looked at Walter, and I said “Thought about what?” “Helium. Have you ever thought about helium?”

“Well, no,” I said. “We haven’t.” So Helen and I talk about the Orioles for ten minutes, and then all of a sudden Walter comes back with “No, I mean REALLY thought about it.” So you know he’s obviously pushing f-stops. Pupils completely dilated. We tell him, “Walter, you should probably go dry out,” and he runs out of the room barking. What he had said didn’t really hit me until two weeks later. I was in the tub, just coasting on a little patchouli, and I had a brainwave.

My God, I thought – what ABOUT helium? What’s THAT all about? Where’s all the helium coming from? And where the hell is it going? So of course I leapt out of the tub and started my research immediately. I was still naked two months later when I faxed in my final report, and that’s something else I wanted to bring up. I know it sounds like a stupid bumper sticker, “Party Naked”, “Surf Naked”… Research naked, my friends. You will never be more efficient. If you can get the data you need without using clothes, do it. All it takes is the right environment. Hell, you guys can all research at home! You’ve got internet.

So anyway – when I made that fax I did it with some trepidation, because what I had discovered was frankly shocking. I’m not going to beat around the bush, I’m not going to sugar-coat it, I’m just going to lay it out flat and give it to you straight. Helium is evaporating from the earth. Oh, yes. Our lovable number two element that has enhanced so many of our children’s birthday parties will be completely gone from this planet by the year 2050.

Why, you ask? Well the reason is shockingly simple. Helium is lighter than air. So naturally any helium you might see from time to time is only there because it’s on its way, up, up, up, before it looses the surly bonds of et cetera and enters the dreaded vacuum of space and whatnot. Now I know your reaction, because everybody at ERG had the same reaction – oh, that can’t be right, it’s an oversimplification, it’s impossible. It can’t be right.

Oh, that familiar phrase. “That’s impossible.” They said it was impossible for Madame Curie to invent the X-Ray machine, but she did it. They said it was impossible to break the sound barrier, they said it was impossible to turn lead into silicon. Everything’s impossible, right? That’s what people think. That’s what the MEDIA think. Well I don’t think so. And I don’t think you think so. I don’t think you’re going to let that kind of Philistine, close-minded thinking sour your judgment, am I right? You’re not going to reject something just because it’s impossible? Right? Come on! Are you with me?

(At this point in the transcript, a voice from the audience is clearly audible:)

YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT!

THAT’S right! NOTHING’S impossible! Nothing’s impossible because we’ve got science on our side, and science doesn’t lie! You can prove it yourself. You can actually go home tonight and prove it in the comfort of your own living room. Not that science doesn’t lie, I mean the thing about the helium.

Now to do this you’re going to need one helium balloon. Now I know what you’re thinking – here’s this guy up on stage saying we’re running out of helium and now he turns around and says “Go buy a balloon”. Obviously we shouldn’t waste our planet’s precious stores of helium. But hey, who cares? It’s only one balloon. Now take the balloon home, and then take it away from your nephew – because of course you took your nephew with you to the mall and purchased the balloon for him, because what adult ever purchases a balloon for him or herself? Actually, I should have said, buy two balloons – unless you’re incredibly cheap – otherwise he’s going to be crying in your living room in the middle of your experiment, and who needs that?

Now stand in the middle of your living room, and hold the balloon firmly between thumb and forefinger – actually this part works best if the humidity is at exactly 85% – and with the balloon hovering level with your head, relax, inhale, exhale, inhale, cough once, and release the balloon.

Then…watch what happens next. Did your balloon stop rising? For all but the poorest Americans, the answer is yes. Now why do you think it stopped? Why doesn’t it just keep going up and up and up? Well, if this were a real lecture I’d expect you to come back with the answer, but none of you is ever coming back so here it is: The ceiling is pushing down at the same pressure that the balloon is pushing up. If you want to be precise, it turns out that’s 31 millimeters of mercury, which of course is 789 kilopascals, or 1400 megajoules. That’s all pretty first-year. But here’s the insane, astonishing fact: Even though the ceiling’s pushing at a pressure equal to the balloon – the balloon is not! Why? Because the balloon is full of HELIUM!

That, my friends, is why helium is lighter than air – because it is exactly the SAME THING as air. There it is. Simple, elegant, devastating. Helium and air are the same thing.

And so it continues to evacuate the planet. For there is no ceiling in space. And there’s no ladder high enough to reach it even if there were. And there is no wall to lean it against even if there were a ladder. So what is the solution?

We need a substitute. We need something to take helium’s place in our everyday lives. Now what do we use helium for? Let’s break it down: 68% of all helium is used for inhalation. There’s nothing like that Chipmunk falsetto, am I right? 19% is liquid helium used to freeze tennis balls. And a surprising 9% of all helium last year was force-fed to chipmunks. Folks were curious I guess. And of course the remaining 4% went to party balloons. Ah, the party balloon. What a great American symbol, eh? Mom and Dad come home in the minivan, and little Rodney’s waiting on the lawn, and the door opens, and the van erupts in a rainbow of gaily-colored party balloons, and Rodney does a little dance, and they all fly away, and eventually land somewhere in the state of Chihuahua where a family of three finds them and makes them into a bungee cord.

Now those first three uses are industrial, vital to America’s economy and so forth, so in terms of conservation there’s not much you or I can do. But we can address the balloon question. How? By dropping the helium, and using another gas in its place – methane.

Yes, it’s a new and unique solution, and coincidentally it comes courtesy of my brother, Dutch. Dutch Methane is a new limited partnership headquartered in Alabama with retail stores in Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle. Recent earthquakes in Uzbekistan have caused the release of huge pockets of subterranean methane which we – they have collected using specially coated circus tents. That’s a process we intend to patent, by the way. Soon this bounty of methane will be available for sale at Dutch Methane retail outlets all across America. And then, with methane taking the place of helium in industry and in the home, we can say goodbye to wasted helium forever.

Now don’t think I can’t hear what you’re saying. “Helium floats, and it’s completely nonreactive…and Methane is heavier than air, it stinks, it’s poisonous and it’s explosive as hell.” Well, those are all reasonable concerns – and if you feel an uncontrollable fear of methane for any reason then you must be a WIMP! Why don’t you show a little BACKBONE for God’s sake! (Heh, heh.) Nah, I’m kidding.

But seriously – think about it. I mean, A, Do you really want your balloon to float? What purer metaphor is there for loss than the teary-eyed child whose balloon has gone its merry way into the stratosphere? With the methane balloon, it’ll never happen again. It’s your ticket to fun, year-round. And B, yes, there are safety issues. That’s the point. You know, safety can be a good thing sometimes. But our time is limited. And so is helium. Now don’t you think a spike of adrenalized fear would be just the thing to make your time on Earth that much more memorable? You know we all end up on the slab. I say, why not go without eyebrows?

That’s right, folks. Methane is the helium alternative! It is safe, it is cheap, it is safe, and it is also COMPLETELY SAFE! Why don’t you try Methane today?

Anyway, thanks for listening, happy graduation, and SCREW THE EPA! Yeah! All right!...Our recruiters are out in the lobby.