Category: Entrepreneurship

“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.

“A Major Environmental Group” Will Fund Geoengineering Research

(p. A18) The Environmental Defense Fund will finance research into technologies that could artificially cool the planet, an idea that until recently was viewed as radical but is quickly gaining attention as global temperatures rise at alarming rates.

The group hopes to start issuing grants this fall, said Lisa Dilling, associate chief scientist at E.D.F., who is running the project. She said research would focus on estimating the likely effects in different parts of the world if governments were to deploy artificial cooling technologies.

. . .

The Environmental Defense Fund has previously expressed skepticism about techniques like these. But Dr. Dilling says the discussion about ways to cool the planet isn’t going away, regardless of opposition. “This is something that I don’t think we can just ignore,” she said.

The group will fund what is sometimes called solar radiation modification, or solar geoengineering, which involves reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space. Possible techniques involve injecting aerosols into the stratosphere, or brightening clouds to make them more reflective.

. . .

That a major environmental group like the Environmental Defense Fund is investing in solar geoengineering research sends a powerful message, said Larry Birenbaum, a partner at the LAD Climate Fund, one of the groups funding the research. He said his group had been urging environmentalists for years to pay attention to solar geoengineering.

“We’re not going to convince everyone about the necessity for research,” said Mr. Birenbaum, a former senior vice president at Cisco Systems. “The climate community in general needs to be convinced, because this is on the fringe now, and it deserves not to be.”

For the full story see:

Christopher Flavelle. “Experiments to Artificially Cool the Earth Are Getting a Major Backer.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 11, 2024): A18.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 10, 2024, and has the title “Environmental Group to Study Effects of Artificially Cooling Earth.”)

“America Is Where Everything Is Possible”

(p. 23) Remo Saraceni, a sculptor, toy inventor and technological fantasist best known for creating the Walking Piano that Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia danced on in a beloved scene of the hit 1988 movie “Big,” died on June 3 [2024] in Swarthmore, Pa. He was 89.

. . .

Remo Saraceni was born on Jan. 15, 1935, in Fossacesia, a city on the southern coast of Italy. His father, Giuseppe, worked with relatives to make shoes and other leather goods, and his mother, Filomena Carulli, managed the home.

Remo began inventing as a boy. His father got into trouble, he told The Chestnut Hill Local, when Remo turned a poster of Mussolini into a kite.

He took classes in electronics in Milan and worked as a radar specialist in the Italian military, but as a civilian he worked as a television repairman. He also started his own brand of large portable suitcase-like turntables. He came to the United States in 1964 for the World’s Fair and to seek a better livelihood — even though he spoke no English and had no American friends and no savings.

He again found work as a TV repairman and affixed a note to his bathroom mirror: “America is where everything is possible.”

For the full obituary see:

Alex Traub. “Remo Saraceni, 89; Invented Walking Piano in ‘Big’.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, June 16, 2024): 23.

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

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date June 14, 2024, and has the title “Remo Saraceni, 89, Dies; Inventor of the Walking Piano Seen in ‘Big’.”)

Europe’s Regulations Reduce Economic Dynamism

(p. A23) Growth and dynamism: In 1960 the E.U. 28 — the 27 countries currently in the European Union, plus Britain — accounted for 36.3 percent of global gross domestic product. By 2020 it had fallen to 22.4 percent. By the end of the century it is projected to fall to just under 10 percent. By contrast, the United States has maintained a roughly consistent share — around a quarter — of global G.D.P. since the Kennedy administration.

Think of any leading-edge industry — artificial intelligence, microchips, software, robotics, genomics — and ask yourself (with a few honorable exceptions), where’s the European Microsoft, Nvidia or OpenAI?

. . .

How much state protection, in social welfare and economic regulation, are Europe’s aging voters willing to forgo for the sake of creating a more dynamic economy for a dwindling number of young people?

For the full commentary, see:

Bret Stephens. “This D-Day, Europe Needs to Resolve to Get Its Act Together.” The New York Times (Wednesday, June 5, 2024): A23.

(Note: ellipsis added; bold font in original.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 4, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

Alert Children Make “Staggering Discovery” That “Advances Science”

(p. D2) In the summer of 2022, two boys hiking with their father and a 9-year-old cousin in the North Dakota badlands came across some large bones poking out of a rock. They had no idea what to make of them.

The father took some photos and sent them to a paleontologist friend. Later, the relatives learned they’d made a staggering discovery: They’d stumbled upon a rare juvenile skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

. . .

The friend of the father who identified the fossil, Tyler Lyson, who is the museum’s curator of paleontology, said in a statement that the boys had made an “incredible dinosaur discovery that advances science and deepens our understanding of the natural world.”

. . .

In a video, the brothers, Jessin and Liam Fisher, 9 and 12, and their cousin, Kaiden Madsen, now 11, said that they were busy hiking and exploring when they first came across the bones and had no inkling they could be so special. “I didn’t have a clue,” Jessin says in the video. At first, he added, Dr. Lyson believed they belonged to a duck-billed dinosaur.

For the full story see:

Livia Albeck-Ripka. “Family Discovery: Stumbling Upon a Tyrannosaurus Rex In the Badlands of North Dakota.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 11, 2024): D2.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 10, 2024, and has the title “Family Discovers Rare T. Rex Fossil in North Dakota.” Where the wording of the versions differs, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

The study co-authored by Camarós, and mentioned above, is:

Tondini, Tatiana, Albert Isidro, and Edgard Camarós. “Case Report: Boundaries of Oncological and Traumatological Medical Care in Ancient Egypt: New Palaeopathological Insights from Two Human Skulls.” Frontiers in Medicine 11 (2024) DOI: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1371645.

On the antiquity of cancer, see also:

Haridy, Yara, Florian Witzmann, Patrick Asbach, Rainer R. Schoch, Nadia Fröbisch, and Bruce M. Rothschild. “Triassic Cancer—Osteosarcoma in a 240-Million-Year-Old Stem-Turtle.” JAMA Oncology 5, no. 3 (March 2019): 425-26.

Biden’s Tax and Regulation Plans Shift “Demonized” Silicon Valley Toward Trump

(p. B1) In 2021, David Sacks, a prominent venture capital investor and podcast host, said former President Donald J. Trump’s behavior around the Jan. 6 [2021] riot at the U.S. Capitol had disqualified him from being a future political candidate.

At a tech conference last week, Mr. Sacks said his view had changed.

“I have bigger disagreements with Biden than with Trump,” the investor said. Mr. Sacks said he and his podcast co-hosts were working on hosting a fund-raiser for Mr. Trump, which could include an interview for their “All In” show.  . . .

Such public support for Mr. Trump used to be taboo in Silicon Valley, which has long been seen as a liberal bastion. But frustration with Mr. Biden, Democrats and the state of the world has increasingly driven some of tech’s most prominent venture capitalists to the right.

. . .

(p. B5) Delian Asparouhov, an investor at Founders Fund, the investment firm founded by Mr. Thiel, recently marveled at how much the political winds had shifted. This month, Mr. Trump made a virtual appearance at a venture capital conference in Washington. There, he thanked attendees for “keeping your chin up” and said he looked forward to meeting them.

“Four years ago you had to issue an apology if you voted for him,” Mr. Asparouhov wrote on X.

Mr. Sacks, Mr. Palihapitiya and Founders Fund did not respond to a request for comment. Sequoia Capital declined to comment.

The comments and activity by the group of tech investors are particularly noticeable given Silicon Valley’s blue background.

. . .

The . . . “techlash” against Facebook and others caused some industry leaders to reassess their political views, a trend that continued through the social and political turmoil of the pandemic.

During that time, Democrats moved further to the left and demonized successful people who made a lot of money, further alienating some tech leaders, said Bradley Tusk, a venture capital investor and political strategist who supports Mr. Biden.

“If you keep telling someone over and over that they’re evil, they’re eventually not going to like that,” he said. “I see that in venture capital.”

That feeling has hardened under President Biden. Some investors said they were frustrated that his pick for chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, has aggressively moved to block acquisitions, one of the main ways venture capitalists make money. They said they were also unhappy that Mr. Biden’s pick for head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, had been hostile to cryptocurrency companies.

The start-up industry has also been in a downturn since 2022, with higher interest rates sending capital fleeing from risky bets and a dismal market for initial public offerings crimping opportunities for investors to cash in on their valuable investments.

Some also said they disliked Mr. Biden’s proposal in March [2024] to raise taxes, including a 25 percent “billionaire tax” on certain holdings that could include start-up stock, as well as a higher tax rate on profits from successful investments.

Mr. Sacks said at the tech conference last week that he thought such taxes could kill the start-up industry’s system of offering stock options to founders and employees. “It’s a good reason for Silicon Valley to think really hard about who it wants to vote for,” he said.

. . .

Mr. Andreessen, a founder of Andreessen Horowitz, a prominent Silicon Valley venture firm, said in a recent podcast that “there are real issues with the Biden administration.” Under Mr. Trump, he said, the S.E.C. and F.T.C. would be headed by “very different kinds of people.” But a Trump presidency would not necessarily be a “clean win” either, he added.

Last month, Mr. Sacks, Mr. Thiel, Elon Musk and other prominent investors attended an “anti-Biden” dinner in Hollywood, where attendees discussed fund-raising and ways to oppose Democrats, a person familiar with the situation said. The dinner was earlier reported by Puck.

For the full story see:

Erin Griffith. “Silicon Valley Notables Are Shifting to the Right.” The New York Times (Friday, May 24, 2024): B1 & B5.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 22, 2024, and has the title “Some of Silicon Valley’s Most Prominent Investors Are Turning Against Biden.”)