{"id":261642,"date":"2024-05-30T09:19:30","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T14:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=261642"},"modified":"2024-05-30T09:19:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T14:19:30","slug":"the-vaticans-secret-role-in-the-science-of-in-vitro-fertilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/05\/30\/the-vaticans-secret-role-in-the-science-of-in-vitro-fertilization\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vatican\u2019s secret role in the science of in-vitro fertilization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Vanity Fair<\/a>: “On a spring day in Rome in 1957, 30-year-old Bruno Lunenfeld gave one hell of a presentation. For four years he had been developing a therapy that would induce ovulation in women struggling with infertility. What he needed now was the support of the Istituto Farmacologico Serono, whose staff scientist had been working on a similar endeavor. The men listened politely, but at the end of the presentation they told him, with regret, that they couldn\u2019t help. It seemed unlikely, for instance, that Serono would be able to procure the vast quantities of one specific essential substance without which the drug couldn\u2019t be made. Lunenfeld left, but then a member of the board approached him with an idea. In the end, over a hundred post-menopausal nuns provided 30,000 liters of their urine, and that was enough to make 9,000 vials of 75 units, which in turn was sufficient for 450 ovulation induction cycles.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Webster Apartments: One of Manhattan\u2019s last women-only boarding houses<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From the Paris Review<\/a>: “I am greeted by the same sight that greeted tens of thousands of young women before me, the same sight that greeted a younger self when my cab from JFK pulled up a decade ago, that greeted the department store girls arriving in the city with their belongings in trunks a century before that, and all the residents between and since: a red-brick facade towering over West Thirty-Fourth Street, its name proudly chiseled into stone,\u00a0“The Webster Apartments.” Charles Webster was the cousin of Rowland Macy and head of Macy\u2019s department store. Upon Webster\u2019s death in 1916, he left one-third of his wealth to build and maintain a hotel for single working women in Manhattan\u2019s retail district\u2014somewhere the Macy\u2019s shop clerks could lay their heads. Rent would be kept low enough for their meager earnings, with the apartments not run for profit. And so the Webster\u2019s doors opened in November 1923.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can\u00a0see other issues\u00a0and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

An interview with one of New York’s most notorious professional pickpockets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Pickpocketing:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From the New York Times<\/a>: “Wilfred Rose spent a career studying the pants pockets of New Yorkers, always on the lookout for \u201ca nice stiff wallet\u201d full of cash, or better yet, the fainter outline of a dozen folded bills. \u201cWhen they are wearing a suit, or nice pants, you can visualize it,\u201d said Mr. Rose, whom detectives describe as one of the city\u2019s craftiest pickpockets. \u201cYou know when it\u2019s there.\u201d For years, Mr. Rose had his run of New York, largely evading detection and arrest. There was the time, he claims, that he decided to show off after spotting an off-duty sergeant, a renowned chaser of pickpockets, on his way to Yankee Stadium. Mr. Rose sidled up to him in the crowded train, plucked a roll of $300 from the man\u2019s pocket and slipped $30 or $35 of his own money, in smaller denominations, into the sergeant\u2019s pants. When the sergeant recognized Mr. Rose one stop later, he patted his pocket, reassured to feel money there.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Editor’s note<\/strong><\/em>: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you <\/em>really <\/strong><\/em>like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via <\/em>my Patreon<\/em><\/a>. Thanks for being a reader!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarence King lived a double life: One as a white man an one as a Black man<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From NPR<\/a>: “Ada Copeland, an African-American woman born in Georgia just months before that state seceded from the Union, moved to New York City in the mid-1880s. There, she met a man named James Todd. He was light-skinned, handsome, had a good job for an African-American man in that time \u2013 a Pullman porter. They hit it off, and eventually married. They had five children and a house in Brooklyn. Their story would be unremarkable if not for one detail: Nothing James had told his future wife was true. “James Todd was really not black, he was not a Pullman porter, and he was not even James Todd,” author Martha Sandweiss told NPR. “He was in fact Clarence King, a very well-educated white explorer.” King’s case is also remarkable because he didn’t inhabit his assumed identity all the time. When he was away from his family, King went by his real name and moved easily through white society. In essence, he lived two lives.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The German version of The Jungle Book is the most popular German movie of all time<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From the Hollywood Reporter<\/a>: “Germans have bought 27.3 million tickets to watch the original Jungle Book<\/em> in theaters, nearly 10 million, by admissions, more than Titanic<\/em>, the second-most successful film here with 18.8 million tickets sold. Avatar<\/em> is a distant third with 11.3 million. The film\u2019s amazing teutonic success story is attributable to talent and lucky timing, and of a group of irreverent German musicians and cabaret artists who freely adapted the original Disney songs to suit their generation. It is, most of all, the story of Heinrich Riethmuller, the German composer and music producer who, after producing the German dub work for Disney\u2019s Mary Poppins<\/em> in 1964, got offered the Jungle Book<\/em> gig. For the first time, Riethmuller had full control: he wrote the German translation and adapted the film\u2019s songs.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Darwin’s multimillion-dollar notebooks have been missing for more than 20 years<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Cambridge<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From the BBC<\/a>: “Cambridge University Library has announced that two notebooks written by Charles Darwin, worth many millions of pounds, have been missing for 20 years. One of them contains the 19th Century scientist’s famous Tree of Life sketch, exploring the evolutionary relationship between species. Following an “extensive search”, curators have now concluded they have probably been stolen. They are launching a public appeal for help in trying to find them. The notebooks were last seen in November 2000 after an internal request to remove them from a special manuscripts storeroom to be photographed. They were taken to a studio, which at the time was in a temporary building in the grounds of the university library because work was taking place. It was only during a routine check two months later that it was discovered they were missing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a sandbox for men looks like<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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need. pic.twitter.com\/5VMtNRlIMT<\/a><\/p>— internet hall of fame (@InternetH0F) May 29, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>