You earned it: You’ve done it again, dear reader – another workweek in the books, another weekend on tap. Take a couple days, why don’tcha.
Before you do, go pull the lever in Bethpage Federal Credit Union’s 2021 Best of Long Island contest, where Innovate LI is up for Best Long Island Blog (among the Arts & Entertainment categories). Just 11 voting days left – vote today, vote often, and thanks for your support!
Monster’s ball: Betcha can’t eat just one.
Let’s get ready to cruuummmble! Today is Dec. 4 and that’s National Cookie Day, an annual celebration that needs no further introduction (much as cookies don’t need their own day to be worshipped and devoured, but there it is).
December’s first Friday also brings Bartender Appreciation Day, with a dash of extra significance as the pandemic hits mixologists hard.
Egg-cellent: One of history’s greatest examples of dazzling supernatural powers conspiring with enigmatic preternatural forces – a mystical chicken egg with its own clipart – was laid 340 years ago today.
The hen was believed to have been influenced by Kirch’s Comet, known also as the Great Comet of 1680.
Write-ins: Innovator George Parker earned the first U.S. fountain pen patent on Dec. 4, 1894.
Parker may have enjoyed doodling on “triple paper,” which incorporated a colored watermark (visible when held to a light, an anti-counterfeiting marvel) and was patented in Britain by Sir William Congreve on this date in 1819.
Whopper of a tale: Gonna love it in an Insta.
Wasn’t it “flame-broiled”? Yes, but now it’s “flame-grilled.” Either way, the first Burger King restaurant – known as Insta Burger-King – opened on this date in 1954 in Miami.
Stations, Pathfinders and Pioneers in spaaaaace: And Dec. 4 is an historically huge date for NASA, with its 14-day Gemini 7 mission launching in 1965, its Pioneer 10 space probe reaching Jupiter in 1973 and its Mars Pathfinder probe blasting off in 1996.
For good measure, the space agency’s space shuttle Endeavor lifted off on this date in 1998, carrying six astronauts on the first-ever International Space Station assembly mission.
Mailing it in: Oglala Sioux chief Tashunka Witko (a.k.a. Crazy Horse, 1840-1877) – who defeated Custer at Little Bighorn and became one of very few Native Americans immortalized on U.S. postage stamps – would be 180 years old today.
Jeffrey, in character: El Duderino, if, you know, you’re not into the whole brevity thing.
Also born on Dec. 4 were heroic British nurse Edith Cavell (1865-1915), who saved lives on both sides during WWI and was ultimately executed by Germany; American geophysicist Frank Press (1924-2020), an advisor to four U.S. Presidents and plate-tectonics pioneer; American photographer Maurice Binder (1925-1991), who gave James Bond movies their early, eye-popping opening titles; American game show mainstay Winston Conrad “Wink” Martindale (born 1933); and British mathematician Michael Gerzon (1945-1996), a digital audio trailblazer.
True grit: And take a bow, Jeffrey Leon Bridges! The son of Lloyd, brother of Beau and seven-time Academy Award nominee (one win) – for all his amazing work, forever the “other” Lebowski – turns 71 today.
Wish The Dude and all the other Dec. 4 innovators well at editor@innovateli.com, where story tips and calendar events always abide.
About our sponsor: St. Joseph’s College has been dedicated to providing a diverse population of students in the New York metropolitan area with an affordable education rooted in the liberal arts tradition since 1916. Independent and coeducational, the college provides a strong academic and value-oriented education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, aiming to prepare each student for a life characterized by integrity, intellectual and spiritual values, social responsibility and service. Through SJC Brooklyn, SJC Long Island and SJC Online, the college offers degrees in 50 majors, special course offerings and certificates, affiliated and pre-professional programs. Learn more here.
BUT FIRST, THIS
Strange days indeed: Greater New York’s ABC7 – a.k.a. WABC-TV, local affiliate of the ABC Television Network – is taking an innovative trip down memory lane to mark the 40th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder.
Channel 7 is reconvening members of its 1980 Eyewitness News team (including anchor Ernie Anastos and reporters Geraldo Rivera, Doug Johnson and John Johnson) for a streaming special, “Eyewitness to the Death of John Lennon,” set to premier today on ABC7’s Android TV, Apple TV and Roku apps (and other connected-TV platforms). The special features rare footage and moment-by-moment developments as they occurred, including sports commentator Howard Cosell famously announcing the news to the nation during “Monday Night Football” and firsthand accounts by former Eyewitness News producer Alan Weiss, who was at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan on Dec. 8, 1980, as doctors worked furiously to save the mortally wounded Beatle.
Hosted by current Eyewitness News anchor Bill Ritter, “Eyewitness to the Death of John Lennon” is also scheduled to air Sunday on WABC-TV.
New dimensions: COVID-19’s “spike” protein binds to a cell’s receptor protein in this 3D recreation by Carlos Simmerling and his team.
Spike-alike: A supercomputer simulation of the infamous SARS-CoV-2 “spike” protein has earned a Stony Brook University scientist and friends a prestigious High-Performance Computing award.
Carlos Simmerling, associate director of SBU’s Laufer Center For Physical and Quantitative Biology, has earned the all-new-for-2020 Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based Covid-19 Research, bestowed last month during SuperComputing 2020, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis.
Simmerling, also an SBU chemistry professor and the university’s Martha Laufer Endowed Professor of Physical and Quantitative Biology, shared the award with a team of scientists that used Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit supercomputer to create an “atomic detail” simulation of the SARS spike protein. “The power of using supercomputing to unravel aspects of SARS-CoV-2 that cannot be seen in such detail in lab experiments shows incredible promise … to be better prepared to fight other coronaviruses and prevent future pandemics,” Simmerling said.
TOP OF THE SITE
Slow solution: COVID-19 vaccines are coming, but it’ll be months before Joan and John Public get theirs – if they even want them.
Center stage: Playing past COVID, a new $17 million student center will rise at St. Joseph’s College-Long Island.
Innovation in the Age of Coronavirus: New positives (and new testing centers) are rising fast as the second wave crashes over the region – stay afloat with Long Island’s one-and-only pandemic primer.
ICYMI
Seawolves, cats and extinct Cretaceous birds – oh my!
BEST OF THE WEST (AND SOMETIMES NORTH/SOUTH)
Innovate LI’s inbox overrunneth with inspirational innovations from all North American corners. This week’s brightest out-of-towners:
From Canada, eh: British Columbia-based wellness-tech innovator Hapbee Technologies launches a “wellbeing wearable” that brings all the feels.
From Florida: Sarasota-based slumber master Minute Sleep Club introduces all-natural sleep supplements – and a revolutionary “sleep quiz.”
From Canada, eh: Ontario-based lithium-ion battery recycler Li-Cycle Corp. brings Rochester-based “black mass” facility up to speed.
ON THE MOVE
Colleen Merlo
+ Colleen Merlo has been named CEO of the Ronkonkoma-based Association for Mental Health and Wellness. She previously served as executive director of Central Islip-based Long Island Against Domestic Violence.
+ Woodbury-based D&B Engineers and Architects has announced several new hires:
- Alexandra Gibson has been hired as a proposal coordinator I in the firm’s Marketing Department. She previously worked as a lead proposal manager at Virginia-based Planate Management Group.
- Andrew Marrandino has been hired as a water supply engineer. He is a graduate of the Ohio State University College of Engineering.
- Christina Tuohy has been hired as a water supply senior associate. She previously served as a senior engineer at Melville-based Arcadis of New York.
- Ryan Neilan has been hired as a water supply senior engineer. He previously served as a resident engineer at AECOM PM/CM Group in Brooklyn.
- Kathryn DeVita has been hired as proposal coordinator I in the firm’s Marketing Department. She previously served as a proposal manager at Syosset-based LiRo Engineers.
- Majid Ali Mahmood has been hired as an architect. He previously served as an architectural technician/assistant project manager at Poughkeepsie-based Swartz Architecture.
- Leah Miramontes has been hired as a water supply engineer. She previously served as a civil design engineer at Holtsville-based Key Civil Engineering.
- Kelly Kiernan has been hired as a water supply engineer. She is a graduate of Farmingdale State College.
- Allen Fok has been hired as a water supply engineer. He previously served as a project engineer at Islandia-based Roux Environmental Engineer & Geology.
About Time: Gitanjali’s bright future.
BELOW THE FOLD
Forever young: Time’s Kid of the Year is a 15-year-old water-testing wonder.
Middle-age spread: How COVID ruined a perfectly good midlife crisis.
Senior circuit: Better old-age care is essential – here’s how to do it.
Through the ages: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate LI, including St. Joseph’s College, which boasts a century-plus legacy of preparing young minds to be successful professionals and excellent people. Check them out.
