Silicon Valley Pioneer at Age 16 Survived on 5 Cents of Carrots a Day

(p. A23) Jay Last, a physicist who helped create the silicon chips that power the world’s computers, and who was among the eight entrepreneurs whose company laid the technical, financial and cultural foundation for Silicon Valley, died on Nov. 11 [2021] in Los Angeles.

. . .

Ultimately, he agreed to join the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory because it sat in the Northern California valley where he had spent a summer harvesting fruit after hitchhiking there from his home in Pennsylvania steel country.

But he and seven of his collaborators at the lab clashed with Dr. Shockley, who later became infamous for his theory that Black people were genetically inferior in intelligence to white people. They quickly left the lab to create their own transistor company. They later came to be called “the traitorous eight,” and their company, Fairchild Semiconductor, is now seen as ground zero for what became known as Silicon Valley.

. . .

With the blessing of his parents — and carrying a letter from the local police chief saying he was not running away from home — he hitchhiked to San Jose, Calif., which was then a small farming town. He had planned on making a little money picking fruit, but he arrived before the harvest began.

Until it did, he lived, as he often recalled in later years, on a nickel’s worth of carrots a day. Whenever he faced a difficult situation, he said in an interview for the Chemical Heritage Foundation (now the Science History Institute) in 2004, he told himself, “I got through that when I was 16, and this is not that bad a problem.”

. . .

Using materials like silicon and germanium, Dr. Shockley and two other scientists had shown how to build the tiny transistors that would one day be used to store and move information in the form of an electrical signal. The question was how to connect them together to form a larger machine.

After using chemical compounds to etch the transistors into a sheet of silicon, Dr. Last and his colleagues could have cut each one from the sheet and connected them with individual wires, much like any other electrical device. But this was enormously difficult, inefficient and expensive.

One of the founders of Fairchild, Robert Noyce, suggested an alternative method, and this was realized by a team Dr. Last oversaw. They developed a way of building both the transistors and the wires into the same sheet of silicon.

This method is still used to build silicon chips, whose transistors are now exponentially smaller than those manufactured in the 1960s, in accordance with Moore’s Law, the famous maxim laid down by another Fairchild founder, Gordon Moore.

For the full obituary, see:

Cade Metz. “Jay Last, 92, Physicist and a Pioneer of Silicon Valley.” The New York Times (Monday, November 22, 2021): A23.

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

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Nov. 20, 2021, and has the title “Jay Last, One of the Rebels Who Founded Silicon Valley, Dies at 92.”)

Regulators Allow U.S. Carmakers to Offer Consumers the Same Safer Adaptive Driving Beam Headlights Already Allowed in Europe

(p. B5) I am driving in the California hills high above Malibu, in a deep-blue electric Audi E-tron, and I turn onto a pitch-black winding road. Instinctively, I reach to turn on the high beams. But before I have a chance to do so, the low beams automatically rise and spread out like a hand fan, filling the entire roadway with light and projecting it far into the distance.

A few seconds later, the headlights of an approaching vehicle set my headlights in motion; the high beams angle down as the light continually shape-shifts, changing patterns to avoid illuminating the oncoming car.

I had just experienced adaptive driving beam, or A.D.B., headlights, one of the most important advances in vehicle lighting technology in decades. With A.D.B. lighting, a vehicle’s headlights are essentially always on high beam, while cameras and software instruct them to constantly reshape the beam to avoid blinding oncoming drivers or shining in the rearview mirrors of those close ahead.

The bad news is that while widely used in Europe and Asia for over a decade, these smart headlights are illegal in the United States. On my demonstration drive, I was piloting a not-for-sale-here European model of the E-tron equipped with Audi’s futuristic digital matrix headlighting system.

The good news is that after years of unsuccessful attempts to allow the technology, A.D.B. lights will soon be on American cars and trucks, thanks to a section in the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that mandates their use.

According to the infrastructure act, adaptive beam headlights must be approved for U.S. use within two years.

. . .

The changeover to A.D.B.-capable headlamps could be swift for some drivers who own Audi, BMW or Mercedes models with deactivated units. Once the A.D.B. standard is approved, it’s possible that a simple software upgrade will activate them.

Some owners who could not wait for legalization say they have figured out how to activate their matrix headlights, and at least one aftermarket service dealer in Southern California will turn them on for $900.

For the full commentary, see:

Eric A. Taub. “WHEELS: Coming Soon: The Perfect Glow on the Road.” The New York Times (Friday, January 14, 2022): B5.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Jan. 18, 2022, and has the title “WHEELS: Smart Headlights Are Finally on Their Way.”)

Arctic Sea Ice Was 25 Percent Higher in 2021 Than in 2020

(p. A9) Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has reached its minimum extent following the summer melt season, and coverage is not as low as it has been in recent years, scientists said Wednesday [September 22, 2021].

The National Snow and Ice Data Center, at the University of Colorado, said that the minimum had most likely been reached on Thursday and estimated this year’s total ice extent at 1.82 million square miles, or 4.72 million square kilometers.

That is the 12th-lowest total since satellite sensing of the Arctic began in 1979 and about 25 percent higher than last year.

In a statement, Mark Serreze, the director of the center, described this year as a “reprieve” for Arctic sea ice, as colder and stormier conditions led to less melting. In particular, a persistent zone of colder, low pressure air over the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska slowed the rate of melting there.

For the full story, see:

Henry Fountain. “Colder Conditions Eased Melting of Arctic Sea Ice.” The New York Times (Thursday, September 23, 2021): A9.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 22, 2021, and has the title “Arctic Sea Ice Hits Annual Low, but It’s Not as Low as Recent Years.”)

Charles Morris Uncovered “Tantalizing Nuggets” on Innovation and Entrepreneurship

In researching my Openness to Creative Destruction, I found two of Charles Morris’s books very useful, providing thought-provoking analysis and compelling examples. The two were The Dawn of Innovation and The Tycoons.

(p. A24) Charles R. Morris, a former government official, banker and self-taught historian of economics who as a prolific, iconoclastic author challenged conventional political and economic pieties, died on Monday [December 13, 2021] in Hampton, N.H.

. . .

Mr. Morris wrote his signature first book, “The Cost of Good Intentions: New York City and the Liberal Experiment” (1980), after serving as director of welfare programs under Mayor John V. Lindsay and as secretary of social and health services in Washington State.

The book was a trenchant Emperor’s New Clothes analysis of how the Lindsay administration’s unfettered investment in social welfare programs to ward off civil unrest had delivered the city to the brink of bankruptcy, and it pigeonholed Mr. Morris as a neoconservative.

But as a law school graduate with no formal training in economics, he defied facile labeling.

While his 15 nonfiction books often revisited well-trodden topics — including the Great Depression, the nation’s tycoons, the cost of health care, the Cold War arms race and the political evolution of the Roman Catholic church — he injected them with revealing details, provocative insights and fluid narratives.

“The Cost of Good Intentions” (1981) was less a screed about liberal profligacy as it was an expression of disappointment that benevolent officials had become wedded to programs that didn’t work. He concluded that the best and the brightest in the government, as well as complicit players on the outside, had figured that if a day of reckoning ever came, it would not be on their watch.

. . .

He would . . . belie Thomas Carlyle’s characterization of economics as “the dismal science” by injecting tantalizing nuggets.

Reviewing Mr. Morris’s “A Time of Passion: America 1960-1980” (1984) for The Times Book Review, Michael Kinsley wrote that “some of the most vivid moments in this book come when he stops the rush of history to describe incidents from his own time as a poverty-program and prison administrator.”

“He truly has been ‘mugged by reality,’ in Irving Kristol’s famous definition of a neoconservative,” Mr. Kinsley added, but concluded, “Overall, his book radiates a generosity and good will that set it apart from the typically sour neoconservative creed.”

. . .

“I think we’re heading for the mother of all crashes,” Mr. Morris wrote his publisher, Peter Osnos, the founder of PublicAffairs books, early in 2007, adding, “It will happen in summer of 2008, I think.”

Mr. Osnos recalled that after the book was published, “George Soros and Paul Volcker called me and asked, ‘Who is this Morris, and how did he get this so right, so early?’”

For the full obituary, see:

Sam Roberts. “Charles R. Morris, Author Who Disputed Economic Dogma, Dies at 82.” The New York Times (Wednesday, December 15, 2021): A24.

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

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Dec. 15, 2021, and has the title “Charles R. Morris, Iconoclastic Author on Economics, Dies at 82.”)

The books by Morris that I found especially useful were:

Morris, Charles R. The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution. Philadelphia, PA: PublicAffairs, 2012.

Morris, Charles R. The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy. New York: Times Books, 2005.

EU Plans to Color Nuclear and Natural Gas as “Green,” Allowing a “Nuclear Renaissance”

(p. B6) The European Union has drawn up plans to classify some nuclear power and natural gas plants as green investments that can help Europe cut planet-warming emissions, a landmark proposal that, if approved, could set off a resurgence of nuclear energy on the continent in the coming decades.

The European Commission said it had begun consultations with European Union countries on the proposal, which is intended to provide a common set of definitions of what constitutes a “sustainable investment” in Europe. Any final plan can be blocked by a majority of member states or by the European Parliament.

“The Commission considers there is a role for natural gas and nuclear as a means to facilitate the transition towards a predominantly renewable-based future,” the statement, released on Saturday [January 1, 2022] said.

. . .

. . ., the political tide has increasingly turned in favor of nuclear power as a low-carbon solution to mitigate climate change — especially a new generation of smaller, cheaper plants across the globe, said George Borovas, head of nuclear practice at the global law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth.

“There will be a nuclear renaissance,” he said. “It’s not going to be for everyone, but it will be for a number of countries.”

Investment money wouldn’t start flowing right away, noted Ms. Drew of Credit Suisse. Banks will need to update their sustainable investment governance for funds offered to clients, to include nuclear and gas alongside renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

And small modular nuclear reactor projects, in particular, still need to get off the ground. “It’s early days. You have a few people with business plans looking for funding,” she noted.

But as the industry scales up, so will the investments. A number of companies, from Rolls-Royce to Westinghouse, are working on models that can be put together in factories and assembled on site at the fraction of the cost of traditional behemoth nuclear plants.

For the full story, see:

Liz Alderman and Monika Pronczuk. “Europe Prepares to Classify Nuclear and Natural Gas as Green.” The New York Times (Tuesday, January 4, 2022): B6.

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

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 4, 2022, and has the title “Europe Plans to Say Nuclear Power and Natural Gas Are Green Investments.”)

Entrepreneurial Bystander Identifies Stranger’s Cancerous Mole and Saves His Life

(p. B9) Nadia Popovici kept shifting her eyes from the hockey game to the back of Brian Hamilton’s neck.

Mr. Hamilton, an assistant equipment manager for the Vancouver Canucks, had a small mole there. It measured about two centimeters and was irregularly shaped and red-brown in color — possible characteristics of a cancerous mole, signs that Ms. Popovici had learned to spot while volunteering at hospitals as a nursing assistant.

Maybe he already knew? But if so, why was the mole still there? She concluded that Mr. Hamilton did not know.

“I need to tell him,” Ms. Popovici, 22, told her parents at the Oct. 23 [2021] N.H.L. game between the Canucks and the Seattle Kraken at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.

Ms. Popovici typed a message on her phone and waited for the game to end. After waving several times, she finally drew Mr. Hamilton’s attention, and placed her phone against the plexiglass.

“The mole on the back of your neck is possibly cancerous. Please go see a doctor!” the message read, with the words “mole,” “cancer” and “doctor” colored bright red.

Mr. Hamilton said he looked at the message, rubbed the back of his neck and kept walking, thinking, “Well, that’s weird.”

. . .

Indeed, Ms. Popovici was correct, and she had just saved his life.

. . .

Specifically, doctors later told him, it was type-2 malignant melanoma, a type of skin cancer that, because it was detected early, could be easily removed and treated.

For the full story, see:

Eduardo Medina. “Discovering Cancerous Mole From Stands, She Saves a Life.” The New York Times (Tuesday, January 4, 2022): B9.

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

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 4, 2022, and has the title “Hockey Fan Spots Cancerous Mole at Game and Delivers a Lifesaving Note.”)

Rational Environmentalism Takes Account of Costs of Climate Regulations

Source of graph: online version of WSJ article cited below, based on Nordhaus model.

(p. A19) The U.N. estimates that even if no country does anything to slow global warming, the annual damage by 2100 will be equivalent to a 2.6% cut in global gross domestic product. Given that the U.N. also expects the average person to be 450% as rich in 2100 as today, that figure falls only to 434% if the temperature rises unimpeded. This is a problem, but not the end of the world.

That means we don’t have to panic but instead can decide policy rationally. Economist William Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for his work on effective climate solutions, and the chart nearby shows the outcome of his model to find the optimal climate policy. His crucial point is that the damage global warming inflicts aren’t the only costly part of climate change; climate policies also create significant economic harm. Since we have to pay both costs, his model aims to minimize their sum.

. . .

That model shows that the optimal policy mix would be one that slows the average temperature’s rise so that by 2100 it only reaches 6.3 degrees. That’s the option that minimizes the total damages from climate change and climate policies.

. . .

. . . carbon taxes aren’t the only smart way to ameliorate climate change. There are two other effective solutions.

The first is innovation. If research could drive the cost of one source of clean energy below that of fossil fuels, consumers would switch with no prompting.

. . .

The second is economic growth. Just about every problem, including the dangers of global warming, are easier to deal with when people are more prosperous.

For the full commentary, see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “A Reasonable Alternative to Preaching Climate Doom.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Nov. 11, 2021): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated November 10, 2021, and has the title “A Reasonable Alternative to COP26 and Preaching Climate Doom.”)

The survey mentioned above is reported in detail in:

Association, American Psychological. “Stress in America™ 2021: Stress and Decision-Making During the Pandemic.” Washington, D.C., 2021.

“Intolerance Leads Not to Progress, but Stagnation”

(p. C10) . . . this past year I revisited the works of Friedrich Hayek, the great 20th-century expositor of classical liberalism. His most sweeping work is “The Constitution of Liberty”—a legal history as much as a defense of freedom—which includes a timely case for tolerance. We cannot foresee the particulars of human progress, which means “we shall never get the benefits of freedom, never obtain those unforeseeable developments for which it provides the opportunity,” if freedom “is not also granted where the uses made of it by some do not seem desirable.” Thus intolerance leads not to progress, but stagnation.

For the full review, see:

Raymond Kethledge. “12 Months of Reading; Raymond Kethledge.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021): C10.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 10, 2021, and has the title “Who Read What: Business Leaders Share Their Favorite Books of 2021.”)

The book praised by Kethledge is:

Hayek, Friedrich A. The Constitution of Liberty. Reprint ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

During Pandemic, Conditions and Information Constantly Change, Making Decision-Making Stressful and Exhausting

(p. A14) What should you wear today? What to eat for lunch? If life’s daily questions are getting harder to answer nearly two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, you aren’t alone, according to a new survey.

The survey, conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association, found that 32% of American adults were sometimes so stressed about the pandemic that making basic decisions was tough.

. . .

“For many, the pandemic has imposed the need for constant risk assessment, with routines upended and once trivial tasks recast,” the study said. “When the factors influencing a person’s decisions are constantly changing, no decision is routine. And this is proving to be exhausting.”

For the full story, see:

Allison Prang. “Can’t Decide? It Could Be Pandemic Stress.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Oct. 27, 2021): A14.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Oct. 26, 2021, and has the title “Can’t Decide What to Wear? It May Be Pandemic Stress.”)

The survey mentioned above is reported in detail in:

Association, American Psychological. “Stress in America™ 2021: Stress and Decision-Making During the Pandemic.” Washington, D.C., 2021.

UNO Center Study Finds “Vast Majority” of Jan. 6th Rioters “Were Not Affiliated with Organized Groups”

Nice photo of Gina Ligon, director of NCITE, in Mammel Hall blocking our view of Jun Kaneko’s “Mr. Papercliphead” sculpture (my name for it, not Kaneko’s). (Source of photo: Omaha World-Herald article quoted below.)

(p. A3) UNO’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (known by the acronym NCITE) was less than a year old when rioters bearing banners of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol as Congress certified Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. But it has given new focus to the work of NCITE, which was established in 2020 with a 10-year, $36.5 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security to be the agency’s research hub.

“I’ve never seen so many resources and such consistent energy toward understanding the domestic terror threat,” said Gina Ligon, the center’s director. “(The Jan. 6 attack) has made what we’re doing more urgent.”

. . .

“My first thought was that it was this organized, top-down militia that got everyone spun up,” Ligon said.

That’s not the way it turned out.

A study released last week by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism — part of the NCITE consortium — showed that just 11% of those arrested so far were members of known extremist organizations.

“The vast majority were not affiliated with organized groups,” said Seamus Hughes, the program’s deputy director.

The study also dismissed any notion that large numbers of rioters were down-and-out “skinheads” associated with past far-right groups.

Instead, the analysts found a diverse group ranging in age from 18 to 80, representing 350 counties in 45 states. Most (87%) are male, and most had jobs. There were business owners, real estate agents, a yoga instructor, a state legislator and even a musical theater actor.

Although some press attention has focused on the arrest of current or former military service members, only 11% had ties to the military.

For the full story, see:

Steve Liewer. “UNO Experts Find Surprises in Capitol Riot Arrest Data.” Omaha World-Herald (Monday, Jan. 10, 2022): A3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 13, 2022, and has the title “UNO Counterterrorism Experts Find Surprises in Capitol Riot Arrest Data.”)