Category: Entrepreneurship

Seeds of Plant Mostly Used for Pain Relief in Roman Era, Found Stashed in Buried Bone in “Far-Flung” Province

A couple of thousand years ago some humans had figured out how to use a medicinal plant for effective pain relief. And they did so without having conducted randomized double-blind clinical trials. And no agency of the government blocked them from easing their pain.

(p. D2) . . ., Mr. van Haasteren was cleaning the mud from yet another bone when something unexpected happened: Hundreds of black specks the size of poppy seeds came pouring out from one end.

The specks turned out to be seeds of black henbane, a potently poisonous member of the nightshade family that can be medicinal or hallucinogenic depending on the dosage.  . . .

This “very special” discovery provides the first definitive evidence that Indigenous people living in such a far-flung Roman province had knowledge of black henbane’s powerful properties, said Maaike Groot, an archaeozoologist at the Free University of Berlin and a co-author of a paper published in the journal Antiquity last month describing the finding.

The plant was mostly used during Roman times as an ointment for pain relief, although some sources also reference smoking its seeds or adding its leaves to wine.

For the full story see:

Rachel Nuwer. “Psychedelic Stash: Ancient Seeds Courtesy of a Doctor, or a Doctor Feel Good.” The New York Times (Tuesday, April 9, 2024): D2.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 21, 2024, and has the title “Long Before Amsterdam’s Coffee Shops, There Were Hallucinogenic Seeds.”)

The academic paper co-authored by Groot and mentioned above is:

Groot, Maaike, Martijn van Haasteren, and Laura I. Kooistra. “Evidence of the Intentional Use of Black Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) in the Roman Netherlands.” Antiquity 98, no. 398 (2024): 470-85.

Babies’ Curiosity Leads Them to Prefer Persons Who Inform

(p. C2) . . . Katarina Begus of Birkbeck, University of London and her colleagues . . . started out exploring the origins of curiosity. When grown-ups think that they are about to learn something new, their brains exhibit a pattern of activity called a theta wave. The researchers fitted out 45 11-month-old babies with little caps covered with electrodes to record brain activity. The researchers wanted to see if the babies would also produce theta waves when they thought that they might learn something new.

The babies saw two very similar-looking people interact with a familiar toy like a rubber duck. One experimenter pointed at the toy and said, “That’s a duck.” The other just pointed at the object and instead of naming it made a noise: She said “oooh” in an uninformative way.

Then the babies saw one of the experimenters pick up an unfamiliar gadget. You would expect that the person who told you the name of the duck could also tell you about this new thing. And, sure enough, when the babies saw the informative experimenter, their brains produced theta waves, as if they expected to learn something. On the other hand, you might expect that the experimenter who didn’t tell you anything about the duck would also be unlikely to help you learn more about the new object. Indeed, the babies didn’t produce theta waves when they saw this uninformative person.

. . .

Babies leap at the chance to learn something new—and can figure out who is likely to teach them. The babies did prefer the person in their own group, but that may have reflected curiosity, not bias. They thought that someone who spoke the same language could tell them the most about the world around them.

For the full commentary see:

Alison Gopnik. “Mind & Matter; Babies Show a Clear Bias—To Learn New Things.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Oct. 29, 2016 [sic]): C2.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Oct. 26, 2016 [sic], and has the same title as the print version.)

Begus’s co-authored academic paper is:

Begus, Katarina, Teodora Gliga, and Victoria Southgate. “Infants’ Preferences for Native Speakers Are Associated with an Expectation of Information.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 44 (2016): 12397-402.

“Heavily Subsidized Renewables” Mostly Add to Total Energy Consumed Instead of Replacing Fossil Fuels

(p. A17) Despite extravagant hype, the green-energy transition from fossil fuels isn’t happening. Achieving a meaningful shift with current policies is too costly. We need to change policy direction entirely.

. . .

Studies show that when countries add more renewable energy, it does little to replace coal, gas or oil. It simply adds to energy consumption. Recent research shows that for every six units of green energy, less than one unit displaces fossil-fuel energy. The Biden administration finds that while renewable energy sources worldwide will dramatically increase up to 2050, that won’t be enough even to begin replacing fossil fuels—oil, gas and coal will all keep increasing, too.

. . .

The current plan underpinning the green-energy transition mostly insists that pushing heavily subsidized renewables will magically make fossil fuels disappear. But such expectations are “misleading,” as a 2019 academic study concluded. During past additions of a new energy source, the researchers found, it has been “entirely unprecedented for these additions to cause a sustained decline in the use of established energy sources.”

What causes us to change our relative use of energy? One study investigated 14 shifts that happened over the past five centuries, such as when farmers went from plowing fields with animals to tractors powered by fossil fuels. Invariably, the new energy source would be better or cheaper.

. . .

The way to achieve an eventual transition is to improve green-energy alternatives. That means investing much more in research and development. Innovation is needed in wind and solar, as well as storage, nuclear energy, and other possible solutions. Bringing the costs of low-CO2₂energy sources below those of fossil fuels is the only way that green solutions can be implemented globally, and not merely by a few wealthy countries.

When politicians say the green transition is here, they are really asking voters to support throwing more good money after bad. We need to be smarter.

For the full commentary see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “The ‘Green Energy Transition’ That Wasn’t.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 25, 2024): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 24, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

The “recent research” mentioned above is:

Rather, Kashif Nesar, and Mantu Kumar Mahalik. “Investigating the Assumption of Perfect Displacement for Global Energy Transition: Panel Evidence from 73 Economies.” Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy (2023) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-023-02689-8.

The “2019 academic study” mentioned above is:

York, Richard, and Shannon Elizabeth Bell. “Energy Transitions or Additions?: Why a Transition from Fossil Fuels Requires More Than the Growth of Renewable Energy.” Energy Research & Social Science 51 (May 2019): 40-43.

The study of 14 shifts in type of energy that was mentioned above is:

Fouquet, Roger. “The Slow Search for Solutions: Lessons from Historical Energy Transitions by Sector and Service.” Energy Policy 38, no. 11 (Nov. 2010): 6586-96.

Coastal Cities Can Adapt to Flooding

(p. A9) Cities around the world face a daunting challenge in the era of climate change: Supercharged rainstorms are turning streets into rivers, flooding subway systems and inundating residential neighborhoods, often with deadly consequences.

Kongjian Yu, a landscape architect and professor at Peking University, is developing what might seem like a counterintuitive response: Let the water in.

“You cannot fight water,” he said. “You have to adapt to it.”

. . .

Niall Kirkwood, a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard who has known Mr. Yu for years, acknowledged that it can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to convert land in city centers that have already been densely built. Still, he said, Mr. Yu’s impact as a innovator has been incalculable.

“He’s created a clear and elegant idea of enhancing nature, of partnership with nature that everyone, the man on the street, the mayor of a city, an engineer, even a child, can understand,” Professor Kirkwood said.

. . .

John Beardsley, the curator of the Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, which was awarded to Mr. Yu last year, echoed Professor Kirkwood, saying Mr. Yu’s impact on policy in China, a country that has been more likely to imprison environmental activists than take their messages to heart, has been astonishing.

Mr. Beardsley attributes this to Mr. Yu’s adroit political skills and infectious enthusiasm,  . . .

“Kongjian has managed to be very critical of the government’s environmental policies while still maintaining his practice and his academic appointments,” he said. “He’s both brave and deft in this regard, threading a very narrow needle.”

For the full story see:

Richard Schiffman. “One Architect’s Advice For Flood-Prone Cities: Act as a Sponge Would.” The New York Times (Friday, March 29, 2024): A9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 3, 2024, and has the title “He’s Got a Plan for Cities That Flood: Stop Fighting the Water.”)

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.”