Play ball! Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, and not just any Wednesday but the eve of the 2024 Major League Baseball season (which technically started last week in Korea, with the Dodgers and Padres splitting a two-game MLB World Tour set and all-world sensation Shohei Ohtani suddenly facing long odds).
Tomorrow, however, is the league’s official Opening Day, with all 30 teams in action and our beloved Mets set to kick things off with a 1 p.m. tilt against the Milwaukee Brewers, weather permitting (is there still a team in the Bronx? We’re not sure). Whether you root, root, root for the Metropolitans, those Damn Yankees or any other team, get excited!
Rocks solid: Have it your way on International Whiskey Day.
Curtain up! Light the lights! Today is March 27 and we’ve got nothing to hit but the heights on World Theatre Day, a front-row seat to everything that makes live performances so magical.
For those who prefer to keep their art to themselves, it’s also National Scribble Day, encouraging us to pour our personalities into expressive doodles and other drawings.
International menu: Today’s bill of fare certainly encourages creativity, highlighted by National Spanish Paella Day, an annual celebration of Spain’s national dish – a delectable base of round-grain rice, green beans and lima beans with any combination of shrimp, chicken, rabbit and/or duck.
And wash it down with a snifter of Scotch, Irish, Canadian, bourbon, rye, maybe some Japanese whiskey – it’s all good on International Whiskey Day, an annual celebration of fermented grain mash poured neat (or over rocks, if you prefer) every March 27.
Are you telling me there’s not one condo available in all of Del Boca Vista? Fictious Seinfeldian condominium complexes, Disney World, the laughingstock “Florida man” and the second-highest total of banned books among U.S. States (trailing only Texas) all came later, but it was this date in 1513 when Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León first sighted the Florida peninsula.
Anchors aweigh: The mighty U.S. Navy unofficially set sail 230 years ago today.
Hooyah! Speaking of sailors, the U.S. Congress – with Barbary pirates and other seaborne threats in mind – passed a resolution on March 27, 1794, calling for the hasty creation of a national navy. (President Washington would sign the Naval Act of 1794 three months later, for those keeping score.)
All on the line: Other innovators making the call on this date include engineers from the American Bell Co. and the Southern New England Telephone Co., who cobbled together history’s first long-distance telephone call – a 235-mile connection linking New York City and Boston – 140 years ago today.
Hold my beer vino: Upping the ante was Italian inventor and electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi, who completed history’s first international radio transmission on March 27, 1899 (across the English Channel from South Foreland, England, to Wimereaux, France).
Stiff competition: And it was this date in 1998 when New York City-based Pfizer Pharmaceuticals’ patented drug Sildenafil citrate was approved for sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The concoction was marketed as Viagra, the first medical pill designed to treat impotence. (There are now four available in the United States.)
See right through him: German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845-1923) – a Nobel Prize winner who discovered the highly penetrating form of radiation that became known as X-rays – would be 179 years old today.
Shoot first: Tarantino movies are known for their dialogue, plot twists and signature violence.
Also born on March 27 were English engineer Sir Frederick Henry Royce (1863-1933), who designed automobile and airplane engines and co-founded Rolls-Royce; Canadian engineer and feminist Elizabeth Muriel Gregory MacGill (1905-1980), the first woman in the world to earn an aeronautical engineering degree; American mechanical engineer John Pierce (1910-2002), the father of satellite communications; American jazz singer and pianist Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990), a gifted performer and bona fide jazz great; and American film director, screenwriter and actor Quentin Tarantino (born 1963), currently working on his 10th and final movie.
Songbird Supreme: And take a bow, Mariah Carey! Huntington’s own Christmas Queen – whose five-octave range and melismatic style made her a global pop-music sensation well beyond her annual Yuletide hit – turns 55 today.
Wish the American superstar well at editor@innovateli.com, where all we want for Christmas – and any other time of the year – are your news tips and calendar events. (And yooouuu – ooouuu – ooouuu … see what we did there, with the melisma?)
About our sponsor: Northwell Health is New York’s largest healthcare provider and private employer, with 21 hospitals, 900 outpatient facilities and 85,000 employees. We’re making research breakthroughs at the Feinstein Institutes and training the next generation of medical professionals at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and the Hofstra Northwell School of Graduate Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. Visit Northwell.edu.
BUT FIRST, THIS
On the grid: The region’s largest utility is trumpeting more than $2 million in economic-development grants spread around Long Island in 2023.
The National Grid Economic Development Grant Program awarded funds to 20 Island-based projects last year, the company said in a statement, promoting growth in industries ranging from construction to technology to manufacturing and new jobs created across the board. With green infrastructure and other clean-energy priorities in mind, Massachusetts-based National Grid USA – a spinoff of British multinational National Grid plc servicing gas and electricity customers in Massachusetts and New York – backed an expansion of Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Discovery Park, cybersecurity certification for Holbrook-based Accurate Industrial Machining and new professional manufacturing certifications for Copiague-based Astra Products, among other efforts.
Several smaller projects – including a renovated Northport hotel, a kosher pizzeria in Plainview and a new tasting room for Lindenhurst’s Great South Bay Brewery – also earned the utility’s support. “Our economic-development programs have a very innovative and varied portfolio,” noted National Grid Senior Economic Development Representative Niles French. “Seeing projects from start to finish is very rewarding knowing that National Grid’s grants have extended a helping hand to these transformative projects in the community.”
Human league: Should self-aware AI systems enjoy human rights? Most U.S. adults don’t think so.
All rights reserved: American adults are confident in artificial intelligence’s abilities – and increasingly certain that giving AI systems human rights is a bad idea.
These are the major takeaways of a new study conducted by Stony Brook University researchers Jason Jones, an associate professor in Stony Brook’s Department of Sociology, and Steven Skiena, a distinguished teaching professor in the university’s Department of Computer Science. Comparing data collected from U.S. adults in 2021 and 2023 (sandwiching the 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot), the researchers collated opinions on whether Artificial General Intelligence systems – where machines learn and think like people – could (or should) be constructed, and whether they should be afforded the same rights as humans.
While belief in the achievability of AGI increased over the two-year span, the results – published in February in the peer-reviewed journal Seeds of Science – suggest increasing resistance to the notion of granting machines human rights. “What we truly wanted to know was the distribution and average of public opinion,” noted Jones, a member of SBU’s Institute for Advanced Computational Science. “A random, representative sample is the gold standard for estimating that in survey research.”
TOP OF THE SITE
Very amusing: An A-list sponsorship and an ambitious $10 million expansion plan – complete with new rides – will help create new memories (and jobs) at “Long Island’s favorite amusement park.”
Get a clue: The mayor, the doctor, the university president, the famous DJ, the NBA forward, the entertainer, the activist … whodunnit? They all did, and you’ll learn how on “Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast,” nearly four-dozen intimate one-on-one interviews with the leaders of the Long Island innovation economy. Mystery solved!
VOICES
Travel through history, master the present and glimpse the future, all in Innovate Long Island’s amazing Voices Library, where the biggest brains in regional innovation – lawyers, media masters, real estate experts, social-service professionals and others – share their front-row perspectives on critical business issues and offer best-practice solutions to today’s biggest challenges. Smarten up now!
STUFF WE’RE READING
Significant changes: Subtle shifts can dramatically affect corporate innovation. Forbes switches things up.
Significant signal: A critical “mayday” sent before the Baltimore bridge tragedy likely prevented a higher death toll. The Baltimore Sun hails the heroes.
Significant others: Reimagining a society where platonic friends can be life partners, with the same benefits afforded married couples. Vox makes a commitment.
RECENT FUNDINGS
+ Conduce Health, a New York City-based multispecialty, value-based care marketplace, raised $3 million in seed funding led by Connecticut Innovations, AlleyCorp and CityLight.
+ Loyal, a California-based biotech developing drugs for dogs, raised $45 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Todd & Rahul’s Angel Fund.
+ WavMaker, a Tennessee-based music-licensing platform for video creators, raised $5 million in seed funding led by Vicky Patel.
+ AirMyne, a California-based greentech startup, raised $6.9 million in seed funding led by Y Combinator, Impact Science Ventures, Another Brain and Wayfinder.
+ Portal Biotechnologies, a Massachusetts-based cell-engineering platform, raised $5 million in pre-seed funding led by Pear VC, Conscience VC and 10x Capital.
+ Pocket FM, a California-based audio entertainment platform, raised $103 million in Series D funding led by Lightspeed and StepStone Group.
Like this newsletter? Innovate Long Island newsletter, website and podcast sponsorships are a prime opportunity to reach the inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and executives you need to know (just ask Northwell Health). Marlene McDonnell can tell you more.
BELOW THE FOLD (Spring Cleaning Edition)
Eternally yours: After 20 years, still gets you in the feels every time.
Chemical reaction: Are common household cleaners causing autism?
Addition by subtraction: Ten things you should definitely declutter this season.
Clean sweep: Appreciating the enduring relevance of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” two decades later.
Clean living: Please continue supporting the incredible institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including Northwell Health, where researchers are awash in innovation – and always brushing up on the latest science. Check them out.
