Category: Entrepreneurship

Unlike DNA, RNA Has “Catalytic Power”

(p. 8) In the early 1980s, when I was much younger and most of the promise of RNA was still unimagined, I set up my lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After two years of false leads and frustration, my research group discovered that the RNA we’d been studying had catalytic power. This means that the RNA could cut and join biochemical bonds all by itself — the sort of activity that had been thought to be the sole purview of protein enzymes. This gave us a tantalizing glimpse at our deepest origins: If RNA could both hold information and orchestrate the assembly of molecules, it was very likely that the first living things to spring out of the primordial ooze were RNA-based organisms.

. . .

RNA discoveries have led to new therapies, such as the use of antisense RNA to help treat children afflicted with the devastating disease spinal muscular atrophy. The mRNA vaccines, which saved millions of lives during the Covid pandemic, are being reformulated to attack other diseases, including some cancers. RNA research may also be helping us rewrite the future; the genetic scissors that give CRISPR its breathtaking power to edit genes are guided to their sites of action by RNAs.

Although most scientists now agree on RNA’s bright promise, we are still only beginning to unlock its potential. Consider, for instance, that some 75 percent of the human genome consists of dark matter that is copied into RNAs of unknown function. While some researchers have dismissed this dark matter as junk or noise, I expect it will be the source of even more exciting breakthroughs.

For the full essay see:

Thomas Cech. “Move Aside, DNA. RNA Has Arrived.” The New York Times, SundayOpinion Section (Sunday, June 2, 2024): 8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the essay has the date May 29, 2024, and has the title “The Long-Overlooked Molecule That Will Define a Generation of Science.”)

The essay quoted above was adapted from the author’s book:

Cech, Thomas R. The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2024.

“A Pattern of Stumbles Across the World of Generative A.I.”

(p. B1) Days before gadget reviewers weighed in on the Humane Ai Pin, a futuristic wearable device powered by artificial intelligence, the founders of the company gathered their employees and encouraged them to brace themselves. The reviews might be disappointing, they warned.

. . .

(p. B5) Its setbacks are part of a pattern of stumbles across the world of generative A.I., as companies release unpolished products. Over the past two years, Google has introduced and pared back A.I. search abilities that recommended people eat rocks, Microsoft has trumpeted a Bing chatbot that hallucinated and Samsung has added A.I. features to a smartphone that were called “excellent at times and baffling at others.”

For the full story see:

Tripp Mickle and Erin Griffith. “Inside the Spectacular Flop of a Bold A.I. Device.” The New York Times (Friday, June 7, 2024): B1 & B5.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 7, 2024, and has the title “‘This Is Going to Be Painful’: How a Bold A.I. Device Flopped.”)

Musk’s Predictions Are “Just Guesses,” Part of “a Conversation”

(p. B4) In the past, Musk has suggested that sometimes people read too much into what he says.

“People shouldn’t hold me to these things,” Musk said in 2022 during a TED Talk interview. “What tends to happen is I’ll make some like, you know, best guess, and then people in five years, there’ll be some jerk that writes an article: ‘Elon said this would happen, and it didn’t happen. He’s a liar and a fool.’”

“It’s very annoying when that happens,” Musk continued. “These are just guesses, this is a conversation.”

For the full commentary see:

Tim Higgins. “How Misunderstood Is Tesla’s Musk?” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, June 24, 2024): B4.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 22, 2024, and has the title “Is Elon Musk Misunderstood, or Understood All Too Well?”)

Gates’s TerraPower Breaks Ground on Small Nuclear Reactor

(p. A16) Outside a small coal town in southwest Wyoming, a multibillion-dollar effort to build the first in a new generation of American nuclear power plants is underway.

Workers began construction on Tuesday on a novel type of nuclear reactor meant to be smaller and cheaper than the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet.

The reactor being built by TerraPower, a start-up, won’t be finished until 2030 at the earliest and faces daunting obstacles. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before.

What TerraPower does have, however, is an influential and deep-pocketed founder. Bill Gates, currently ranked as the seventh-richest person in the world, has poured more than $1 billion of his fortune into TerraPower, an amount that he expects to increase.

“If you care about climate, there are many, many locations around the world where nuclear has got to work,” Mr. Gates said during an interview near the project site on Monday. “I’m not involved in TerraPower to make more money. I’m involved in TerraPower because we need to build a lot of these reactors.”

Mr. Gates, the former head of Microsoft, said he believed the best way to solve climate change was through innovations that make clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, a philosophy he described in his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”

Nationwide, nuclear power is seeing a resurgence of interest, with several start-ups jockeying to build a wave of smaller reactors and the Biden administration offering hefty tax credits for new plants.

. . .

In March [2024], TerraPower submitted a 3,300-page application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a permit to build the reactor, but that will take at least two years to review. The company has to persuade regulators that its sodium-cooled reactor doesn’t need many of the costly safeguards required for traditional light-water reactors.

“That’s going to be challenging,” said Adam Stein, director of nuclear innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, a pro-nuclear research organization.

TerraPower’s plant is designed so that major components, like the steam turbines that generate electricity and the molten salt battery, are physically separate from the reactor, where fission occurs. The company says those parts don’t require regulatory approval and can begin construction sooner.

For the full story see:

Brad Plumer and Benjamin Rasmussen. “Climate-Minded Billionaire Makes a Bet on Nuclear Power.” The New York Times (Thursday, June 13, 2024): A16.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 11, 2024, and has the title “Nuclear Power Is Hard. A Climate-Minded Billionaire Wants to Make It Easier.”)

Gates’s 2021 book, mentioned above, is:

Gates, Bill. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. New York: Knopf, 2021.

People Feel “Stuck” in Lives Lacking Freedom and Hope

People need more control over their lives to feel hopeful for a free flourishing future. Fewer government regulations and more innovative firm managers could allow more of us to be “unstuck,” working on challenging but doable projects that improve the world and allow fulfilment. (I discuss these issues in more depth in Openness to Creative Destruction.)

(p. 9) The hallways on the television shows I watch have been driving me mad. On one sci-fi show after another I’ve encountered long, zigzagging, labyrinthine passageways marked by impenetrable doors and countless blind alleys — places that have no obvious beginning or end. The characters are holed up in bunkers (“Fallout”), consigned to stark subterranean offices (“Severance”), locked in Escher-like prisons (“Andor”) or living in spiraling mile-deep underground complexes (“Silo”). Escape is unimaginable, endless repetition is crushingly routine and people are trapped in a world marked by inertia and hopelessness.

The resonance is chilling: Television has managed to uncannily capture the way life feels right now.

We’re all stuck.

What’s being portrayed is not exactly a dystopia. It’s certainly not a utopia. It’s something different: a stucktopia. These fictional worlds are controlled by an overclass, and the folks battling in the mire are underdogs — mechanics, office drones, pilots and young brides. Yet they’re also complicit, to varying degrees, in the machinery that keeps them stranded. Once they realize this, they strive to discard their sense of futility — the least helpful of emotions — and try to find the will to enact change.

. . .

We’re not stuck in our circumstance. We’re stuck in the ways of living that perpetuate it.

If enough of us give up the sense that things are inevitable — that we’re stuck — it’s possible that we can course-correct humanity, or at least nudge it toward a hopeful path.

There’s another more realistic option that offers a thrill and reward of its own. If we don’t let the stucktopia keep its hold on us, if we rebuke it, maybe we shift ourselves ever so slightly toward optimism, and give the system whatever small hell we can.

For the full commentary see:

Hillary Kelly. “It’s Not Your Imagination. We’re All Stuck.” The New York Times, SundayOpinion Section (Sunday, July 7, 2024): 9.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 6, 2024, and has the title “Welcome to Stucktopia.”)

“Funny, Obsessed Weirdos . . . Taking Children’s Entertainment . . . Seriously”

(p. C4) . . . to everyone other than Muppet obsessives, Henson the artist is still a bit shadowy. Good news: Now we have “Jim Henson Idea Man” (on Disney+), a tribute to the artist and a treasure trove of archival footage and interviews about his work and life.  . . .

The film, directed by Ron Howard, starts with Henson and two of his Muppet friends, Fozzie Bear and Kermit the Frog — Henson’s alter ego — being interviewed on TV by none other than Orson Welles.

. . .

. . . what struck me especially was that Howard has made a movie that every young artist should watch (and older ones, too), whether they’re making puppets, paintings, music, movies or anything that requires creative labor.

That’s because the film shows that Henson’s work was rooted in an unquenchable drive for exploration. One interviewee notes that he was lured into working on “Sesame Street” by the promise that he could make the kind of short experimental films he loved — and suddenly I realized that my taste for unhinged abstraction in film had been partly shaped when I was 4 and plopped in front of PBS.

. . .

The immense delight in “Jim Henson Idea Man” comes with simply watching funny, obsessed weirdos like Henson and his friends doing something nobody else was doing, something few people do anymore: taking children’s entertainment (and later adult entertainment) seriously as craft. I’ve heard naysayers argue that it’s silly to ask children’s movies to be any good, since they’re just for kids. But Henson knew better: Every opportunity to make something was a chance to explore with the audience. There’s a reason, then, that his work lasts.

For the full review see:

Alissa Wilkinson. “CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; Took Kid Stuff Seriously.” The New York Times (Wednesday, June 5, 2024): C4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the dated May 31, 2024, and has the title “CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; ‘Jim Henson Idea Man’: In a Joyful Weirdo, Lessons for Young Artists.”)

Arthur Diamond Praises The Bear in “The Bear’s Out-Stuck Neck”

My commentary on The Bear was posted to the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) web site on Tues., July 9, 2024.

A direct link to the commentary is: https://www.aier.org/article/the-bears-out-stuck-neck/

On Facebook, I added the following comment:

“The Bear has the courage to show a passionate persevering crew of misfit chefs prioritizing merit (the food) over so-called D.E.I. (the color and gender of those who prepare the food). Courage is not the only virtue of The Bear–count also wit, plot, admirable (though flawed) characters, and intelligence. My review applies to seasons 1 and 2, and not as fully to the still-enjoyable season 3 that was posted to Hulu on June 27. At the end of season 3 we are left hanging on whether season 4 will uphold or betray the spirit of the The Bear in seasons 1 and 2.”

The “Silver Linings” of Illegally Trafficked Corals

(p. D4) Corals are not plants: They are tiny invertebrates that live in vast colonies, forming the foundation of the world’s tropical reefs. Marine life traffickers hammer and chisel them off reefs in places like Indonesia, Fiji, Tonga, Australia or the Caribbean, then pack them into small baggies of seawater so they can be boxed up by the hundreds and shipped around the world. While most coral is shipped into the United States legally, individuals and wholesalers, growing in number, are being intercepted with coral species or quantities that are restricted or banned from trade, often hidden inside shipments containing legal species.

. . .

Corals are better left in the wild, experts say, but there are silver linings after illegally trafficked specimens are confiscated and properly cared for by experts. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a confiscated coral if you’ve visited some aquariums.

Walk past the Indo-Pacific Barrier Reef exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium, for instance, and you can view a Turbinaria coral that was confiscated in 2005, shortly after Ms. Stone joined the aquarium.

It took years for the Turbinaria to recover, but now the colony has grown to more than 2.5 feet in size under her care and taken on a shape like a giant eye.

For the full story see:

Jason Bittel. “Mobilizing a Network to Save Marine Corals.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 25, 2024): D4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 24, 2024, and has the title “Unlikely Wild Animals Are Being Smuggled Into U.S. Ports: Corals.”)

Movie Entrepreneurs Often Self-Finance Their Projects

(p. C4) The essential tragedy of movies is that they are wildly expensive to make and release. That’s one reason that filmmakers, especially those who want to control the means of production, have funneled their own money into their projects as long as movies have been around. Charlie Chaplin invested in his own work, as did John Wayne and Spike Lee. In 1979, when Coppola’s partly self-financed war film, “Apocalypse Now,” opened, he told The Times, “If I ever get the bucks that, say, George Lucas got from ‘Star Wars,’ I’d put every penny into changing the rules.” Lucas, who had invested his own money to help make “Star Wars,” used profits from that film to continue the series.

. . .

Weeks later, . . . all I could think about was something [Coppola] said in 1982. “It’s so silly in life not to pursue the highest possible thing you can imagine, even if you run the risk of losing it all,” he said. “You can’t be an artist and be safe.”

For the full story see:

Manohla Dargis. “Willing To Risk It All For Art.” The New York Times (Friday, June 8, 2024): C1 & C4.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 6, 2024, and has the title “Francis Ford Coppola: ‘You Can’t Be an Artist and Be Safe’.” In the last quoted paragraph, I quote the numbers from the print version. The online version, as of the time I checked, had numbers from June 10, 2024.)

Neuroscience Evidence Suggests Knowledge Can Be Nonverbal

You can know how to ride a bike, without you being able to explain how to ride a bike. Michael Polanyi’s famous bike example shows that some actionable (“tacit”) knowledge can be nonverbal. Our dachshund Walter knows (nonverbally) that when I get the watering can from the top of the refrigerator, he is likely to be able to run out of the door to the deck with me soon. A dog can have nonverbal knowledge. In some areas of knowledge, most especially in medicine, we often mandate that action is only allowed based on verbal knowledge, and even more narrowly, on a particular kind of verbal knowledge, randomized double-blind clinical trials (RCTs). Outcomes outcomes would be better and quicker if we allowed action on all kinds of knowledge.

(p. D5) Dr. Fedorenko . . . [is] a cognitive neuroscientist at M.I.T., using brain scanning to investigate how the brain produces language. And after 15 years, her research has led her to a startling conclusion: We don’t need language to think.

. . .

The scientists . . . ran studies to pinpoint brain circuits that were involved in language tasks, such as retrieving words from memory and following rules of grammar. In a typical experiment, volunteers read gibberish, followed by real sentences. The scientists discovered certain brain regions that became active only when volunteers processed actual language.

Each volunteer had a language network — a constellation of regions that become active during language tasks. “It’s very stable,” Dr. Fedorenko said. “If I scan you today, and 10 or 15 years later, it’s going to be in the same place.”

The researchers then scanned the same people as they performed different kinds of thinking, such as solving a puzzle. “Other regions in the brain are working really hard when you’re doing all these forms of thinking,” she said. But the language networks stayed quiet. “It became clear that none of those things seem to engage language circuits,” she said.

In a paper published Wednesday [June 19, 2024] in Nature, Dr. Fedorenko and her colleagues argued that studies of people with brain injuries point to the same conclusion.

Strokes and other forms of brain damage can wipe out the language network, leaving people struggling to process words and grammar, a condition known as aphasia. But scientists have discovered that people can still do algebra and play chess even with aphasia.

For the full story see:

Carl Zimmer. “Is It Still a Thought If It’s Not in Words?” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 25, 2024): D5.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 19, 2024, and has the title “Do We Need Language to Think?” Where the wording of the versions differs, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

The Nature paper co-authored by Fedorenko, and mentioned above, is:

Fedorenko, Evelina, Steven T. Piantadosi, and Edward A. F. Gibson. “Language Is Primarily a Tool for Communication Rather Than Thought.” Nature 630, no. 8017 (June 20, 2024): 575-86.

Polanyi’s tacit knowledge is different from Hayek’s local knowledge, although they are both important and are often discussed together. Michael Polanyi’s description of “tacit knowledge” can be found in:

Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1966.

Dick Nunis Was Resolved That Walt Disney’s “Dreams Would Live On”

(p. C3) When Disneyland opened in 1955, it was, in many ways, a disaster: There were rides out of service, restaurants that ran out of food, soft asphalt that consumed the heels of women’s shoes—all of it broadcast on national television.

Little wonder, then, that there was trepidation as the Walt Disney company approached the 1971 opening of the far more ambitious Walt Disney World, especially as the word spread that it might not open in time. So, when Dick Nunis, the head of operations at the parks in Anaheim and Orlando, took control of the project, he was given carte blanche to do whatever it took to open the gates on Oct. 1.

. . .

Nunis, who died Dec. 13 [2023] at the age of 91, fired contractors who got in the way, held meetings at 5 a.m. and put signs up all over the property that said the park would open on Oct. 1. He made sure construction workers knew that their families were invited to the park a week before opening. He flew palm trees in on helicopters the night before the gates opened.

Not only did he understand the logistics of what it would take to hire thousands of employees, motivate construction workers and oversee the myriad details of opening a resort, he had worked closely with Walt Disney for a decade and knew how the company’s founder and creative visionary—who had been dead for almost five years—would have wanted it done.

“He understood the culture that Walt wanted there,” said Sandy Quinn, who started as marketing director of the resort years before it opened. “Walt didn’t want employees, he wanted a cast. He didn’t want customers, he wanted guests. They weren’t uniforms, they were costumes. And it was a mindset.”

Nunis didn’t just get the Magic Kingdom and the first phase of Disney World open as planned. He spent his 44-year career at Disney opening and overseeing parks around the world, and acting as a steward of Walt Disney’s philosophies as the company grew in the decades after his death in 1966.

. . .

“I had no idea at the time, but in those early years with Walt, he was looking for someone he could mentor by nurturing, challenging, and testing, to ensure that his ideals and those dreams would live on,” Nunis wrote in his memoir. “He was looking for an ‘apprentice.’ As that apprentice, my role and my life expanded beyond what I had ever imagined.”

. . .

Mary Nunis said that although the couple visited Walt Disney World on occasion after he retired, he didn’t walk the park as he had for the more than 40 years he was with the company, which she believed was because he wouldn’t be able to handle seeing something he wanted to change and not be able to change it. But he remained fiercely loyal to Walt Disney and his ideas.

“He just loved Walt Disney,” Mary Nunis said, “and knew that dream was what he wanted to try to maintain.”

For the full obituary, see:

Chris Kornelis. “Dick Nunis Got the Magic Kingdom Open.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024): A10.

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

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date January 5, 2024, and has the title “Dick Nunis, Walt Disney’s ‘Apprentice’ Who Got the Magic Kingdom Open, Dies at 91.”)

Nunis’s memoir, mentioned above, is:

Nunis, Dick. Walt’s Apprentice: Keeping the Disney Dream Alive. Los Angeles: Disney Editions, 2022.