Art Diamond – Page 47 – artdiamondblog.com

At Disney World, Cheerful Main Street Strikes Back Against Dark Elitist Star Wars Hotel

Star Wars was never a good fit with the optimistic good-will of Walter Elias Disney, the entrepreneurial dreamer from Marceline, Missouri. I smiled when I read the story quoted below.

(p. A1) Disney bet big that superfans would pay thousands of dollars to spend two days in the ultimate Star Wars experience. It’s going the way of the Death Star.

Part hotel, part immersive role-playing experience, Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser will close in September [2023], less than two years after opening with great fanfare. The hotel transports visitors to the world of the popular film franchise over two nights. Guest cabins resemble a spaceship, with views of outer space projected on screens designed to mimic windows.

Stays in the Starcruiser don’t come cheap: A family of four can expect to spend $6,000 and up, depending on the type of cabin chosen and visit dates. Travel agents and industry insiders say the high price contributed to gradually weakening demand after the property opened.

Walt Disney Co. has tested its theme park fans’ budgets in recent years, hiking the price of tickets, hotels and food at its attractions. Those higher prices and operational changes have drawn the ire of some of the Disney parks’ most loyal customers, including people who purchase expensive annual passes to visit the parks multiple times each year. Under Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger, Disney’s parks division has started scaling back some pandemic-era changes that upset longtime fans, . . .

. . .

(p. A2) A Disney spokeswoman attributed the Galactic Starcruiser’s cost to the way it thoroughly immerses guests in a fantasy world.

. . .

The Galactic Starcruiser’s steep price tag was a hard sell for even some of the most ardent Star Wars devotees, fans and travel industry analysts say.

. . .

“This premium, boutique experience gave us the opportunity to try new things on a smaller scale of 100 rooms, and as we prepare for its final voyage, we will take what we’ve learned to create future experiences that can reach more of our guests and fans,” a Disney spokeswoman said in an email Thursday [May 18, 2023].

While aboard the Starcruiser, visitors interact with costumed Disney employees, completing missions on the ship. Singers dressed as aliens give performances at dinner.

. . .

The attraction won an outstanding achievement for brand experience award from the Themed Entertainment Association, one of the industry’s top honors.

. . .

The hotel was expensive to operate in large part because of the so-called cast members who played roles in the immersive experience, said Dennis Speigel, founder and CEO of International Theme Park Services, which consults on projects at amusement parks.

For the full story, see:

Jacob Passy and Allison Pohle. “The Empire Strikes Out At the Star Wars Hotel.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, May 20, 2023): A1-A2.

(Note: ellipses, bracketed year, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 19, 2023, and has the title “Disney’s Star Wars Hotel Was Too Much—Even for Star Wars Fans.”)

“Range Anxiety” Leads Chinese to Prefer Hybrids Over EVs

(p. B12) Don’t write off hybrid electric vehicles.

After Tesla, the most highly valued U.S.-listed EV company isn’t homegrown Rivian or Lucid but Li Auto, a Chinese manufacturer that went public in 2020 by listing American depositary receipts.

. . .

What is surprising is that Li has overtaken NIO to lead the new generation of Chinese startups. Li doesn’t make the purely electric vehicles that were popularized by Tesla and that have become the technological focus of other startups and most old-school car manufacturers. Instead, it specializes in extended-range EVs, which use a generator to power up the battery with gasoline if it runs out of juice.

. . .

The popularity of what is essentially a plug-in hybrid, albeit a cutting-edge one, is notable in the Chinese market, which has in many ways led the transition to EVs.

. . .

But Chinese charging infrastructure is patchy, leading to range anxiety. Brokerage Bernstein expects 65% growth in plug-in hybrid sales in China this year, versus 25% growth for pure EVs.

For the full commentary, see:

Stephen Wilmot. “Move Over EVs, Hybrids Are Hot in China.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023): B12.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated February 27, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

“Evaluate an Argument on Its Own Merits, Not on the Race of the Person Making It”

(p. A22) In 1991, Stephen L. Carter, a professor at Yale Law School, began his book “Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby” with a discomfiting anecdote. A fellow professor had criticized one of Carter’s papers because it “showed a lack of sensitivity to the experience of Black people in America.” When the professor, who was white, learned that Carter was Black, he withdrew the remark rather than defend his claim. It was a reminder to Carter that many people, especially among his fellow establishment elites, had certain expectations of him as a Black man.

“I live in a box,” he wrote, one bearing all kinds of labels, including “Careful: Discuss Civil Rights Law or Law and Race Only” and “Warning! Affirmative Action Baby! Do Not Assume That This Individual Is Qualified!”

This was a book that refused to dance around its subject.

Weaving personal narrative with a broader discussion of affirmative action’s successes and limitations, “Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby” offered a nuanced assessment. A graduate of Stanford and Yale Law, Carter was a proud beneficiary of affirmative action. Yet he acknowledged the personal toll it took (“a decidedly mixed blessing”) as well as affirmative action’s sometimes troubling effects on Black people as the programs evolved.

. . .

An early critic of groupthink, Carter warned against “the idea that Black people who gain positions of authority or influence are vested a special responsibility to articulate the presumed views of other people who are Black — in effect, to think and act and speak in a particular way, the Black way — and that there is something peculiar about Black people who insist on doing anything else.”

In the past, such ideas might have been seen as “frankly racist,” Carter noted. “Now, however, they are almost a gospel for people who want to show their commitment to equality.” This belies the reality that Black people, he said, “fairly sparkle with diversity of outlook.”

. . .

At the same time, Carter bristled at the judgment of many of his Black peers, describing several situations in which he found himself accused of being “inauthentically” Black, as if people of a particular race were a monolith and that those who deviated from it were somehow shirking their duty. He said he didn’t want to be limited in what he was allowed to say by “an old and vicious form of silencing.”

In an interview with The Times in 1991, Carter emphasized this point: “No weight is added to a position because somebody is Black. One has to evaluate an argument on its own merits, not on the race of the person making it.”

For the full commentary, see:

Pamela Paul. “A 1991 Book Was Stunningly Prescient About Affirmative Action.” The New York Times (Friday, May 26, 2023): A22.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 25, 2023, and has the title “This 1991 Book Was Stunningly Prescient About Affirmative Action.”)

The book praised in the commentary quoted above is:

Carter, Stephen L. Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby. New York: Basic Books, 1991.

Is Leonardo’s Ferry Moored Due to Global Warming or Due to Bureaucratic Credentialism?

(p. 4) On a recent sunny morning on the banks of the Adda River in northern Italy, schoolchildren on a class trip to Imbersago — the “Town of the Ferry of Leonardo da Vinci” — gathered next to a moored boat and listened as a guide explained how the flights of the river’s birds, the formations of its rocks and the workings of its ships inspired Leonardo’s genius.

“Why doesn’t it move?” one of the students interrupted, pointing to the ferry, which sat behind a chain and a sign reading, “Service suspended.” It looked like a deserted summer deck atop two rowboats.

. . .

. . . some of the townspeople say an Italian problem more daunting than climate change is the real culprit for the ferry’s immobility since May [2023].

“Bureaucracy,” said John Codara, who owns the gelato shop next to the ferry.

. . .

“I mean Leonardo wasn’t a moron,” he said, under a framed picture of Leonardo. He demonstrated how the ferry worked on a small wooden model made by a local pensioner — “It’s to scale; it’s worth 500 euros,” or nearly $550, and argued that low water and weak currents meant operators required elbow grease to move it across the cable connecting the two banks.

“The force of the ferry is these,” Mr. Codara said, pointing at his biceps.

What they did not need was an advanced nautical degree, he said, as he marched out of his cafe and made a beeline for a sign honoring “The Human Face of the Ferry” and its pilots over the past century. “Harvard, Harvard, Harvard,” Mr. Codara said with derision as he pointed at the names. “They all went to Harvard.”

Roberto Spada, 75, whose father was one of those ferrymen, said he helped navigate the ferry as a 12-year-old and was interested in helping out the town by doing it again as a volunteer.

“I thought with my license I could do it,” Mr. Spada told the mayor as they leaned against other signs posted next to the ferry that featured both Leonardo’s sketch and an excerpt from Dante’s “Inferno” about Charon, “ferryman of the damned.”

A retired truck driver and president of the local fishing association — which has the ferry as its logo — Mr. Spada had a boating license but seemed bewildered as the mayor explained all of the certifications and bureaucratic hoops that needed to be jumped through to pilot the ferry.

“It’s a really long process,” said Mr. Vergani, the mayor.

For the full story, see:

Jason Horowitz. “Leonardo’s Ferry Left High and Dry in a Warming Climate.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, April 23, 2023): 4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 25, 2023, and has the title “Leonardo’s Ferry Left High and Dry by Global Warming and Red Tape.”)

In “Hashing Things Out” to Save Lives Bateman “Could Be a Pit Bull”

(p. 20) Don Bateman, an engineer who invented a cockpit device that warns airplane pilots with colorful screen displays and dire audible alerts like “Caution Terrain!” and “Pull Up!” when they are in danger of crashing into mountains, buildings or water — an innovation that has likely saved thousands of lives — died on May 21 [2023] at his home in Bellevue, Wash.

. . .

Bob Champion, a former scientist at Honeywell who worked with Mr. Bateman, said in a telephone interview: “Don had a true passion for saving lives. He was a peach, but behind closed doors, when we were hashing things out, he could be a pit bull.”

. . .

“He never lost his childlike wonder about flying,” Ms. McCaslin said by phone. “He did a lot of his great work from his 40s on.”

. . .

Mr. Bateman told the National Science and Technology Medals Foundation in 2011 that in the late 1960s there were fatal accidents nearly every month, during which a pilot would “fly into something, like a mountain, or go in short on the runway.”

. . .

Determined to do something, Mr. Bateman developed — and in 1974 patented — his first ground proximity warning system: a small box that integrated data from within the aircraft, including the radar altimeter and airspeed indicator, and gave the pilot a 15-second warning of an approaching hazardous condition.

. . .

In the 1990s, the system improved exponentially. Engineers working with Mr. Bateman added GPS and critical terrain data, including topographical maps of Eastern Europe and China that had been charted by the Soviet Union as far back as the 1920s; they had been acquired in Russia at Mr. Bateman’s request.

“We knew, as engineers, that if we could get the terrain data, we could do an awful lot,” he told The Seattle Times.

For the full obituary, see:

Richard Sandomir. “Don Bateman, 91, Engineer And Pioneer Who Invented A Cockpit Warning System.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, June 4, 2023): 20.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated June 8, 2023, and has the title “Don Bateman, Who Kept Airplanes From Crashing, Dies at 91.”)

Government Infrastructure Serves Elite More Than Ordinary Citizens

(p. A1) In a country where major industry and political fortunes alike are often tied to a vast, interwoven rail system, India has lavished public resources on new trains, but its purse strings have been much tighter when it comes to ensuring the safety of those already racing along its tracks.

Those decisions loomed large on Sunday [June 4, 2023] in the aftermath of a devastating train wreck that killed at least 275 people in eastern India.

. . .

Over the past years, India has been polishing its long-ramshackle infrastructure as never before, and its railways, which are at the heart of the world’s fifth-largest economy, have been a prime beneficiary. The government spent almost $30 billion on the rail system during the past fiscal year, up 15 percent from the year before.

But the amount spent on basic track maintenance and other safety measures has been falling. A report last year by India’s auditor general, an independent office, found that less money was being allocated for track renewal work and that officials had not even spent the full (p. A11) amount set aside.

. . .

. . . most of Mr. Modi’s initiatives have been aimed not at the basic steps needed to get trains from Point A to Point B without mishap, but at improving speed and comfort. He regularly extols higher-fare new electric Vande Bharat trains connecting bigger cities and has made an early priority of a Japanese-style bullet train, though it can do nothing to improve the lives of the country’s ordinary passengers.

For the full commentary, see:

Alex Travelli. “Rail Funding In India Put Upkeep Last.” The New York Times (Monday, June 5, 2023): A1 & A11.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 18, 2023, and has the title “Money for Show Horses, Not Work Horses, on India’s Rails.”)

Rage That Transplant Medicine Stagnates

The essay quoted below provides one more example of why we should unbind medical entrepreneurs to allow them to bring us more and faster cures.

(p. 8) Today, I will explain to my healthy transplanted heart why, in what may be a matter of days or weeks at best, she — well, we — will die.

. . .

Organ transplantation is mired in stagnant science and antiquated, imprecise medicine that fails patients and organ donors.

. . .

Over the last almost four decades a toxic triad of immunosuppressive medicines — calcineurin inhibitors, antimetabolites, steroids — has remained essentially the same with limited exceptions. These transplant drugs (which must be taken once or twice daily for life, since rejection is an ongoing risk and the immune system will always regard a donor organ as a foreign invader) cause secondary diseases and dangerous conditions, including diabetes, uncontrollable high blood pressure, kidney damage and failure, serious infections and cancers. The negative impact on recipients is not offset by effectiveness: the current transplant medicine regimen does not work well over time to protect donor organs from immune attack and destruction.

. . .

I am speaking for my transplant cardiologist, the finest physician I have ever known, who sat across from me last month and cried into his palms when he told me I had incurable cancer.

For the full essay, see:

Amy Silverstein. “My Donor Heart And I Will Die Soon.” The New York Times, SundayOpinion Section (Sunday, April 23, 2023): 8.

(Note: ellipsis added; in the original, the word “we” in the first sentence is in italics.)

(Note: the online version of the essay has the date April 18, 2023, and has the title “My Transplanted Heart and I Will Die Soon.”)

Xi Deflects Focus Away from Economic Stagnation by Telling Youth to “Eat Bitterness”

(p. B1) China’s young people are facing record-high unemployment as the country’s recovery from the pandemic is fluttering. They’re struggling professionally and emotionally. Yet the Communist Party and the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping, are telling them to stop thinking they are above doing manual work or moving to the countryside. They should learn to “eat bitterness,” Mr. Xi instructed, using a colloquial expression that means to endure hardships.

Many young Chinese aren’t buying it. They argue that they studied hard to get a college or graduate school degree only to find a shrinking job market, falling pay scale and longer work hours. Now the government is telling them to put up with hardships. But for what?

“Asking us to eat bitterness is like a deception, a way of hoping that we will unconditionally dedicate ourselves and undertake tasks that they themselves are unwilling to do,” Ms. Li said.

. . .

(p. B4) A record 11.6 million college graduates are entering the work force this year, and one in five young people is unemployed. China’s leadership is hoping to persuade a generation that grew up amid mostly rising prosperity to accept a different reality.

The youth unemployment rate is a statistic the Chinese Communist Party takes seriously because it believes that idle young people could threaten its rule. Mao Zedong sent more than 16 million urban youths, including Mr. Xi, to toil in the fields of the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. The return of these jobless young people to cities after the Cultural Revolution, in part, forced the party to embrace self-employment, or jobs outside the state planned economy.

Today the party’s propaganda machine is spinning stories about young people making a decent living by delivering meals, recycling garbage, setting up food stalls, and fishing and farming. It’s a form of official gaslighting, trying to deflect accountability from the government for its economy-crushing policies like cracking down on the private sector, imposing unnecessarily harsh Covid restrictions and isolating China’s trading partners.

Many people are struggling emotionally. A young woman in Shanghai named Ms. Zhang, who graduated last year with a master’s degree in city planning, has sent out 130 résumés and secured no job offers and only a handful of interviews.

. . .

“To ask us to endure hardships is to try to shift focus from the anemic economic growth and the decreasing job opportunities,” said Ms. Zhang, who, like most people I interviewed for this column, wanted to be identified with only her family name because of safety concerns.

. . .

Mr. Xi “talks about the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation all the time,” said Steven, who graduated from a top U.K. university with a master’s degree in interactive design and has yet to find a job. “But isn’t the rejuvenation about not everyone engaging in physical labor?” Because of the rapid development of robots and other technologies, he said, these jobs are easily replaceable.

. . .

Now after months of fruitless job hunting, he, like almost every young worker I interviewed for this column, sees no future for himself in China.

“My best way out,” he said, “is to persuade my parents to let me run away from China.”

For the full commentary, see:

Li Yuan. “THE NEW NEW WORLD; China’s Grads Struggle to Find Work. Xi Shrugs.” The New York Times (Friday, June 2, 2023): B1 & B4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated June 1, 2023, and has the title “THE NEW NEW WORLD; China’s Young People Can’t Find Jobs. Xi Jinping Says to ‘Eat Bitterness.’”)

Mermaid Remake: “Joy, Fun, Mystery, Risk, Flavor, Kink — They’re Missing”

(p. C1) The new, live-action “The Little Mermaid” is everything nobody should want in a movie: dutiful and defensive, yet desperate for approval. It reeks of obligation and noble intentions. Joy, fun, mystery, risk, flavor, kink — they’re missing. The movie is saying, “We tried!” Tried not to offend, appall, challenge, imagine. A crab croons, a gull raps, a sea witch swells to Stay Puft proportions: This is not supposed to be a serious event. But it feels made in anticipation of being taken too seriously. Now, you can’t even laugh at it.

. . .

(p. C8) . . ., the movie’s worried — worried about what we’ll say, about whether they got it right. That allergy to creative risk produces hazards anyway. I mean, with all these Black women running around in a period that seems like the 19th century, the talk of ships and empire, Brazil and Cartagena just makes me wonder about the cargo on these boats.

For the full movie review, see:

Wesley Morris. “Remake Finds Its Feet but Loses Its Bubbles.” The New York Times (Friday, May 26, 2023): C1 & C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the movie review was updated May 26, 2023, and has the title “‘The Little Mermaid’ Review: The Renovations Are Only Skin Deep.”)

Simple Beeping Pagers Tell Patients a Doctor’s Distraction Is Work-Related

(p. A10) Pagers, those pre-cellphone, one-way devices that alert the carrier that someone is trying to reach them, can seem like something out of a time capsule.

. . .

There are people who just refuse to let their pagers go, including some doctors and bird watchers. They say pagers allow them to separate parts of their life in a way phones don’t, and that the lower-tech one-way communication of a pager is less distracting than looking at a phone full of alerts and apps.

. . .

Another advantage of the pager? It’s easy for staff to throw one in frustration instead of turning on each other, according to Dr. Colm McCarthy, an orthopedic surgeon in Fall River, Mass.

Tired during a busy on-call night once, he chucked his pager in a closet where it broke.

He gave up his pager when he got his current job, and transitioned over to the apps on his phone. Now, though, when he gets a message on his phone, it’s awkward to answer it, he says. If he’s looking at the phone, he worries patients might wonder what he’s paying attention to while with a pager, it’s obvious it’s work.

He has multiple apps on his phone. Last year, his hospital adopted the fourth app that connects him to patients. When a patient wants to reach him, he gets a message with a phone number. He then has to call that number to get a message with the patient’s phone number.

The mute function on the apps is easily overridden by alerts, so to separate work from home life, he keeps his phone on silent altogether, he says. He often misses messages from family and friends because of that.

For the full story, see:

Ariana Perez-Castells. “What the Beep? Die-Hards Refuse to Let Go of Their Pagers.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, May 20, 2023): A1 & A10.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 19, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

In Blackberry Movie “The Excitement of Disruption and the Thrill of Creation Become Tangible”

(p. C9) In Matt Johnson’s “BlackBerry” — a wonky workplace comedy that slowly shades into tragedy — the emergence of the smartphone isn’t greeted with fizzing fireworks and popping champagne corks. Instead, Johnson and his co-writer, Matthew Miller (adapting Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s 2015 book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry”), have fashioned a tale of scrabbling toward success that tempers its humor with an oddly moving wistfulness.

. . .

. . ., we’re in Waterloo, Ontario, in 1996, where Mike Lazaridis (a perfect Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Johnson) — best friends and co-founders of a small tech company called Research in Motion (RIM) — are trying to sell a product they call PocketLink, a revolutionary combination of cellphone, email device and pager.

. . .

The corporate types don’t understand Mike and Doug’s invention, but a predatory salesman named Jim Balsillie (a fantastic Glenn Howerton), gets it. Recently fired and fired up, Jim sees the device’s potential, making a deal to acquire part of RIM in exchange for cash and expertise. Doug, a man-child invariably accessorized with a headband and a bewildered look, is doubtful; Mike, assisted by a shock of prematurely gray hair, is wiser. He knows that they’ll need an intermediary to succeed.

Reveling in a vibe — hopeful, testy, undisciplined — that’s an ideal match for its subject, “BlackBerry” finds much of its humor in Jim’s resolve to fashion productive employees from RIM’s ebulliently geeky staff, who look and act like middle schoolers and converse in a hybrid of tech-speak and movie quotes. It’s all Vogon poetry to Jim; but as Jared Raab’s restless camera careens around the chaotic work space, the excitement of disruption and the thrill of creation become tangible.

For the full movie review, see:

Jeannette Catsoulis. “When Geeks Clash With Suits, They’re All Thumbs.” The New York Times (Friday, May 12, 2023): C9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the movie review has the date May 11, 2023, and has the title “‘BlackBerry’ Review: Big Dreams, Little Keyboards.”)

The book that is the basis of the movie under review in the passages quoted above is:

McNish, Jacquie, and Sean Silcoff. Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of Blackberry. New York: Flatiron Books, 2015.