mathewingram.com/work

From Scientific American: “Frances Glessner Lee discovered her true calling later in life. An heiress without formal schooling, she was in her 50s when she transformed her fascination with true crime and medicine into the foundation of a new field: forensic science. In the late 1920s she drew inspiration from a family friend, a medical examiner who was involved in notorious cases—including the infamous trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. For Glessner Lee, the puzzle of untangling the truth about violent deaths proved irresistible. She recognized that solving crimes demanded both rigorous methods and professional training. She helped found the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard. Her most unusual teaching tool: intricately crafted dollhouse dioramas that depicted grisly crime scenes. She pioneered new death investigation techniques, forged unlikely alliances, faced social and cultural obstacles, and helped foster what would become our lasting obsession with true crime.”

Scientists have created prototypes of human embryos from skin cells

From the BBC: “US scientists have, for the first time, made early-stage human embryos by manipulating DNA taken from people’s skin cells and then fertilising it with sperm. The technique could overcome infertility due to old age or disease, by using almost any cell in the body as the starting point for life. It could even allow same-sex couples to have a genetically related child. The method requires significant refinement – which could take at least a decade – before a fertility clinic could even consider using it. Experts said it was an impressive breakthrough, but there needed to be an open discussion with the public about what science was making possible. The Oregon Health and Science University research team’s technique takes the nucleus – which houses a copy of the entire genetic code needed to build the body – out of a skin cell. This is then placed inside a donor egg that has been stripped of its genetic instructions.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “She pioneered the field of forensic science using dolls”

If you pay attention to the news at all, you may have seen a host of alarming headlines recently about how the number of Americans who say they read for pleasure has declined sharply over the past 20 years, from a peak of 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. That conclusion comes from a study done by a number of sociologists at the University of Florida, who looked at two decades worth of responses to a benchmark survey called the American Time Use Survey, which asks 10,000 randomly selected Americans every year how they spent the day prior to when they took the survey. The Florida researchers looked at how many people said they read “for personal interest,” including books, magazines, newspapers, audiobooks, and e-readers (they also asked how many read a book with a child). It’s worth noting that — like a lot of consumer surveys — the American Time Use Survey relies on people answering the questions truthfully, and because of the way it is conducted, it also relies on people who are a) willing to pick up the phone when it’s an unknown number, and b) willing to answer a survey.

This dramatic decline in the numbers of people reading for pleasure is “deeply concerning,” according to one of the study’s co-authors, who called reading “a low-barrier, high-impact way to engage creatively and improve quality of life.” According to some neuroscientists, reading not only stimulates your brain in ways that other types of pleasure or activity don’t, but it can also lower your blood pressure, reduce stress, help with sleeping, and even help you live longer. Other experts noted that in addition to the data cited by the Florida study, different studies have shown that there has been a generational decline in students reading for fun, which some argue is a result of social-media addiction, poor literacy training, overly busy after-school scheduling by parents, or some combination of all three. For others, this decline in reading is part of a disturbing trend that they believer represents the dawn of a “post-literate” society, a return to the largely oral cultures of primitive societies, and therefore pretty much represents the end of modern civilization as we know it.

Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “So what’s so great about reading books?”

From Rolling Stone: “On March 19, 2000, Florian Reither stepped out of the 91st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center through a hollowed-out window and stood on a makeshift wooden balcony. This vertiginous performance wasn’t the act of a brazen stuntman, crazed trespasser, or suicidal employee. It was the work of the Austrian art collective known as Gelitin, which consists of Florian Reither, Ali Janka, Wolfgang Gantner, and Tobias Urban. Titled the B-Thing, the feat saw the four men, now all in their fifties, secretly construct a balcony inside the World Trade Center, temporarily attach it, and briefly stand on top of it, floating dreamily above New York City. In the 25 years since, those involved have largely avoided speaking about the event again. Outside of esoteric circles, it’s still relatively obscure. For a long time, many skeptics believed it never even happened and claimed that it was a hoax on a vast scale.”

A prop from the movie Citizen Kane that was going to be thrown out sold for $15 million

From the BBC: “A prop central to the celebrated opening scene of Citizen Kane – widely regarded as one of the best films ever made – has sold at auction for $14.75m. The wooden Rosebud sled, one of at least three known to have survived, was long thought to have been lost until it was given to director Joe Dante in 1984, saving it from destruction. It is now the second most expensive piece of memorabilia to have ever been sold – a pair of ruby slippers used in The Wizard of Oz sold for $32m in December. The version sold on Thursday had not been seen for many years until it ended up in the hands of Dante. He told Heritage auctions how he was making the film Explorers in 1984 on the same studio that was formerly owned by RKO Radio Pictures, which produced Citizen Kane. Dante said crews were on site clearing out storage areas when one worker, who knew he liked vintage films, asked if he wanted it.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “They built a balcony on the WTC and started a conspiracy theory”

From Popular Mechanics: “Megan Barroso was looking forward to her Fourth of July plans in 2001. Perhaps because the 20-year-old Moorpark College student had no intention to be alone: She was going to attend a friend’s family barbecue in the suburbs northwest of Los Angeles, then watch the fireworks with friends at Silver Strand Beach. The gatherings began to blend into one another, in the way college-age social events do: The friends got milkshakes; they ended up at another party at a friend’s house in Thousand Oaks. Somebody sprinkled red glitter over everyone’s heads.Around 2:45 a.m., the group decided to head home. Barroso departed in her Pontiac Sunfire, a rental she was driving while her car was in the shop, and drove about 15 minutes before a friend called to let her know she’d accidentally left with someone else’s cellphone in her purse. Barroso turned around to bring the phone back. She never made it.”

How did an expensive Ferrari sports car wind up buried in someone’s backyard?

From Now I Know: “In early 1978, a couple of boys were hanging out in their yard in Los Angeles, digging in the dirt. Their family had just moved into the home – a rental – a few months earlier, and the kids were exploring as kids do. As they dug, they hit something oddly metallic and definitely not something that should have been buried in their yard: a 1974 Dino 246 GTS, an expensive sports car made by Ferrari. The car was wrapped in plastic, albeit imperfectly. Towels were stuffed in the exhaust pipe, as if to keep soil-dwelling bugs from getting in. There was even a carpet placed along part of the top of the car, to protect it from, well, who knows what. It looked like whoever buried the car had tried to preserve it, in hopes of recovering it later. But who, and why? And how do you bury a fancy sports car in the middle of Los Angeles without anyone noticing?”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “How glitter helped solve a brutal crime in California”

From Wikipedia: “The Mocking of Christ is a small 13th-century panel painting by the Italian artist Cimabue. It depicts the mocking of Jesus and is one of three panels known from Cimabue’s Diptych of Devotion. The painting was discovered hanging above the hotplate in the kitchen of an elderly woman living in Compiègne, northern France. The woman was in her nineties and was selling the house, which had been built in the 1960s, and moving from the area. Ahead of the move in June 2019 the owner called in a local auctioneer to determine if any of her possessions were worth selling; the remainder were to be thrown away. The work was put up for auction in 2019 and reached a hammer price of 19.5 million Euros, which reached 24 million Euros once selling fees were included. The winning bid was placed on behalf of two anonymous collectors, and set a new world record for a pre-1500 artwork sold at auction.”

A shipwreck eluded searchers for 139 years but citizen scientists found it in two hours

From the Smithsonian: “On September 15, 1886, the F.J. King was transporting a load of iron ore across Lake Michigan when the ship encountered a storm and started leaking. The crew tried to pump out the water, but the three-masted schooner eventually became so flooded that Captain William Griffin ordered everyone to abandon ship. They clambered onto the ship’s yawl boat and headed for shore, where they were later picked up by a nearby schooner, La Petite. In the early morning hours, they watched the F.J. King sink bow-first beneath the waves. For decades, shipwreck hunters searched for the vessel without success. The F.J. King proved so elusive she even earned a reputation as a “ghost ship.” Brendon Baillod, president of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association, led the efforts to find the F.J. King along with his research partner Bob Jaeck. They decided to invite 20 citizen scientists and historians along for the search, to share in the excitement of looking for a missing wreck.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “A painting worth $30 million was almost thrown in the trash”