Ho ho uh oh: Welcome to Friday, dear readers, with – holy Christmas! – just eight maids a milking until the big day. Amazon operators are standing by.
That makes it Dec. 17 out there, and we’re here to help you wrap this workweek in style – but first, a brief scheduler.
Innovate Long Island is going home for the holidays, so expect your regularly scheduled newsletters on Monday (Dec. 20) and Wednesday (Dec. 22), and then we’ll catch you on the far side of New Year’s Day. Back with newsletters and podcasts and fresh content Jan. 3. We’ll miss you, too.
How sweet: To top it off, National Maple Syrup Day.
Do your worst: Today we limit our trauma to National Ugly Sweater Day, an annual third-Friday-of-December tunic tussle to determine who actually owns the most garish Christmas garment.
Avert your eyes and look instead upon National Maple Syrup Day, a Dec. 17 jubilee of tasty xylem sap.
Aztec gold: Speaking of Dec. 17 fiestas, the 25-ton Aztec Sun Stone – a 600-year-old, 39-inch-thick stone slab sculpted into a 365-day calendar, complete with seasonal sunlight angles, starry night skies and a creation myth for the sun – was rediscovered 231 years ago today underneath Mexico City.
For those keeping score, the 16th Century stone calculated the Earth’s solar orbit at 365.2420 days – closer to correct (365.2422) than the best guess (365.2425) of the 17th Century Gregorian calendar.
Power up: The Edison Illuminating Co. – focused first on building electrical generating stations across New York City – was founded on Dec. 17, 1880, by the man himself.
And a prayer: A windy day at Kittyhawk in 1903.
Connecting flights: Other names you know, Orville and Wilbur Wright, flew into the history books on this date in 1903, completing multiple short flights over Kitty Hawk, NC, in the first successful heavier-than-air, mechanically propelled aircraft.
According to the story, the brothers were in a rush to get home to Ohio for Christmas –so they braved fierce and frigid winds to make their historic hops.
The old … er, new hook-and-ladder: A now-classic trick football play – the hook-and-ladder, involving a forward pass (then a novel invention) and a quick lateral – became a thing on Dec. 17, 1933, when the Chicago Bears used it to beat the New York Giants in the first-ever National Football League championship game.
Boom … or bust: And on this date in 1979, Hollywood stuntman Stan Barrett blasted across a dry California lakebed in a rocket-powered car to become the first man to break the sound barrier on land – or did he?
Oh, Henry: American scientist Joseph Henry (1797-1878) – the first-ever Smithsonian secretary who assisted Samuel Morse with the telegraph, advanced disciplines related to electricity and magnetism and otherwise carved his own well-regarded scientific niche – would be 224 years old today.
Altar-nate identity: Feliz cumpleaños, Jorge!
Also born on Dec. 17 were English chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), who discovered elements and invented the miner’s safety lamp; Czech anatomist Jan Purkyně (1787-1869), a pioneering physiologist counted among his generation’s leading thinkers; American mycologist William Farlow (1844-1919), a groundbreaking green thumb remembered as America’s first plant pathologist; British mathematician Dame Mary Cartwright (1900-1998), a student of chaos; and Canadian computer scientist Kenneth Iverson (1920-2004), a Turing Award-winner who developed the influential APL programming language.
Does he wear a funny hat? And take a bow, Jorge Mario Bergoglio! Known best as Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas and the reigning head of the Catholic Church turns 83 today.
Wish The Holy Father well at editor@innovateli.com, where religion is irrelevant, so long as you grace us with news tips and calendar events. So let it be written. So let it be done.
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BUT FIRST, THIS
Cheesy dialogue: With the Cream Cheese Crisis of 2021 spreading slowly across Long Island, the biggest name in schmears has unwrapped a block of brand-building bravado.
The Kraft Heinz Co., parent of the Philadelphia Cream Cheese Brand, has launched its clever Spread the Feeling campaign, which acknowledges the depressing national cream cheese shortage – there are many culprits – and its effects on dwindling supplies of cheesecake, “a holiday tradition that many families look forward to,” according to Philadelphia. With cheesecake off many menus this season, the bagel’s best buds are offering $20 “digital gifts” to a list of 18,000 lucky winners, with visions of sugarplums (and other alternate desserts) dancing in their heads.
The luck of the draw kicks off at noon eastern today and tomorrow (there’s a bunch of rules about reservations and receipts and one-time links). Understating its brilliant marketing play – remaining relevant, even as fate wipes out your massive holiday sales – Philadelphia was all heart in its customer pitch, reminding online visitors, “If you can’t spread Philly, spread the feeling.”
Keeps giving: Life after death for completely biodegradable grave blankets.
Growth strategy: A decade-old wreath-laying program at Pinelawn Memorial Park and Arboretum continues to put an environmentally sensitive spin on a classic holiday tradition.
The holiday program decorates gravesites with living evergreen bases, trimmed with an assortment of recyclable ornaments – full blankets, frosted pinecones, a big red ribbon and more, all biodegradable. Proceeds support the Pinelawn Maintenance Fund, and after the holiday season the vibrant organic decorations are repurposed into compost for nourishment throughout Pineland’s treelined 500-acre property.
The program, which launched in 2010, runs annually between Thanksgiving and mid-January and includes an option for Pinelawn personnel to place the decorations on behalf of distant or otherwise unable family members. “We are always looking to be good stewards to the environment,” noted Pinelawn President Justin Locke. “We recognized that we were taking too much artificial material to the landfill at the end of each holiday … this allowed us to reduce our carbon footprint and be more conscious of the environment.”
TOP OF THE SITE
How prototypical: New York Tech and NASA have announced a prototyping partnership that puts next-generation NASA technology patents in students’ hands.
Speaking their language: The New York Manufacturing Extension Partnership will help statewide manufacturing/tech startups sharpen and execute marketing strategies.
Swear it: New Year’s Resolution No. 142 – subscriptions to this educational and engaging newsletter for your entire innovation team, always easy, always free.
ICYMI
Rise of the TC3 in Canada, return of the masks in New York State.
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 Missouri: St. Louis-based plant-focused food tech Benson Hill trumpets its closed-loop supply chain – and energizes its commercial plans – with bountiful soybean harvest.
From California: San Diego-based wellness and beauty brand Rya Organics chillaxes with healing-and-relaxing CBD gummies.
From Canada, eh: Calgary-based edu-tech SMART Technologies curates digital library featuring video lessons and other resources from schools around the globe.
ON THE MOVE
Tina Toulon
+ Tina Toulon has been appointed executive director of the Port Jefferson Station-based New York Cancer Foundation. She was previously a physician liaison for New York Cancer and Blood Specialists.
+ Hematologist-oncologist Tarun Wasil has joined the Lake Success Medical Oncology office of New York Cancer and Blood Specialists.
+ Rich McMullen has joined New York Cancer and Blood Specialists as chief financial officer. He was previously vice president of finance and chief financial officer for Lake Success-based ProHEALTH Care.
+ Patrick O’Shaughnessy has been appointed to the New York Institute of Technology Board of Trustees. O’Shaughnessy, who earned a medical degree from New York Tech’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, is the president and CEO of Rockville Centre-based Catholic Health.
+ The Melville office of ConnectOne Bank has announced two new senior vice presidents: Robert Bernard, formerly a senior vice president and Long Island regional manager at Connecticut-based People’s United Bank, and Peter Welch, formerly a senior managing director and senior vice president at Jericho-based Sterling National Bank.
BELOW THE FOLD
Doping it out: Just give it some thought.
You’re no rocket scientist: But you’re just as smart, according to a new study.
Smarter than they look: The Great Resignation isn’t a workforce exodus – more like a Great Reshuffle.
Can they be that dumb? On social media in America in 2021 … yes, they can.
Brilliant choice: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including SUNY Old Westbury, where the biggest brains are focused on producing the best graduates. Check them out.
