From the Paris Review: “I sat down at a conference room round table and gnawed on an undercooked chicken quarter, looking around at my fellow VIPs. Most of the other attendees were of retirement age. Their hats, tattoos, and car bumpers in the parking lot indicated that many were former military, police, and/or proud gun owners. Many were Trump supporters—beseeching fellow motorists to, as one bumper sticker read, MAKE THE FOREST GREAT AGAIN, a catchphrase which had been written out over an image of a Bigfoot on a turquoise background in the pines, rocking a pompadour. The sticker was a small oval on the larger spare wheel cover of a mid-aughts Chinook Concourse RV. Above it and below it, in Inspirational Quote Font, was the phrase “Once upon a time … is Now!” As a thirty-six-year-old progressive, I was an outlier in this crowd. But, like many, I was a believer.”
Doctors are mystified by the sudden onset of unusual brain diseases
From the New York Times: “It turned out that Laurie Beatty was just one of many local residents who had gone to Marrero’s office exhibiting similar, inexplicable symptoms of neurological decline — more than 20 in the previous four years. The first signs were often behavioral. One patient fell asleep for nearly 20 hours straight before a friend took her to the hospital; another found himself afraid to disturb the stranger who had sat down in his living room, only to realize hours later that the stranger was his wife. But these anxieties and sleep problems quickly gave way to more acute presentations: limb pain and trouble balancing, teeth chattering and shocklike muscle spasms so violent that some patients could no longer sleep in the same bed as their spouses. Many patients developed vision problems; some experienced terrifying hallucinations.”
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A Grade 10 student invented a soap that might cure skin cancer
From Time magazine: “Last October, the 3M company and Discovery Education selected Heman, a rising 10th-grader at Woodson High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, as the winner of its Young Scientist Challenge. His prize: $25,000. His accomplishment: inventing a soap that could one day treat and even prevent multiple forms of skin cancer. It may take years before such a product comes to market, but this summer Heman is already spending part of every weekday working in a lab at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, hoping to bring his dream to fruition. When school is in session, he’ll be there less often, but will continue to plug away.”
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Harvard professor of divinity exercises his right to graze a cow in Harvard Yard
From Harvard magazine: “Tradition holds that the Hollis professor of divinity shall have the privilege of grazing his cow in Harvard Yard, and so in 2009 Prof. Harvey Cox did exactly that. On September 9, he led into the Yard a Jersey cow named Faith. The Reverend Peter J. Gomes, Pusey minister in the Memorial Church, offered an invocation to assembled faculty members, students, friends, Cox, and cow. Then the company proceeded with spirited music to the campus of the Divinity School, tying together the venues in which Cox has taught since he joined the faculty in 1965. After brief tributes, including a Latin oration, the party adjourned to the school’s Rockefeller Hall for refreshments and an evening of music by Soft Touch, the 17-piece big band in which the Hollis professor plays lead tenor saxophone.” (Thanks, David Weinberger!)
An Illinois mom named Vesta Stoudt invented duct tape during World War II
From JnJ.com: “From home repairs to camping to art projects, duct tape has thousands of uses. It even has its own fan website and festival. The iconic tape was invented by an Illinois mom named Vesta Stoudt who wanted to save soldiers’ lives in World War II. The year was 1943 and Stoudt, who had two sons serving in the U.S. Navy, was working at the Green River Ordnance Plant near Amboy, Illinois. She noticed that the boxes of ammunition she was packing and inspecting had a flaw. They were sealed with paper tape, with a tab to open them. Workers then dipped the entire box in wax to make it waterproof. But the paper tape was very thin, and the tabs often tore off.”
Plants have photoreceptors so they can tell if you are wearing a green or red shirt
From Plantlet.org: “Plants can see us. They can monitor their visible environment. They can see if you’re wearing a red or blue shirt. They know if you’re moving them from one place of your house to another. When you take a picture turning the flash on for a better and clearer image, plants know that. They can see the other plants that you put beside them. They see the sun setting down and coming up from the horizon. However, plants don’t see exactly like us. Their vision doesn’t create a full image. Plants can’t differentiate faces. They can’t understand the difference between you and your friend both wearing the same blue dresses. But they can see light in many lengths and colors.”
This flower is called the Queen of the Night and only blooms once a year at night
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as “serendipity engines,” such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis’s Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s The Browser, Clive Thompson’s Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy’s Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova’s The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com