October 22, 2021

Fall 2021 Tiny Letter

Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone

As a child, one of my primary grievances with my parents was the moratorium on Saturday morning cartoons (or cartoons at any time, really). I think I and my two siblings perceived that every other child would wake up to watch hours of any cartoon they wanted, without limitation. Meanwhile, we were mostly limited to PBS. Memory is fuzzy, but I seem to remember Monty Python's Flying Circus, Benny Hill, and perhaps The Twilight Zone serving as replacements. Monty Python, of course, was far more subversive than anything The Roadrunner could convey, and Benny Hill1 was quite entertaining to young children blissfully unaware of the concept of sexism. I wonder what that show would look like today? I imagine it would be a great challenge to reboot.

Earlier I had read a biography of Rod Serling, but didn't remember too many details. This beautifully done graphic novel refreshed my memory, and filled in a number of pieces I wasn't aware of.

In 1943, Serling envisioned serving as a paratrooper in World War II. Too short to qualify, he pleaded his case repeatedly until his superiors relented and let him in. The training was grueling, and many of his fellow trainees washed out, but he remained. Deployed to the Philippines, Serling saw all manner of horrors, was shot once, and at the war's end, received a letter informing him that his father had died of a heart attack at age 53.

Serling's experience in wartime would invade his sleep and inform his writing throughout his life. He was incredibly prolific, starting with radio plays while in college, eventually creating The Twilight Zone. The show was, in part, a clever means to evade ever-present censorship from networks and sponsors, a challenge he contended with for most of his career. Serling found that he had wide latitude to address matters of morality, human psychology, race relations, and other sensitive topics, as long as he did so in the context of science fiction.

Though the last show of the original series aired in 1964, The Twilight Zone has made a lasting impact on American culture, with reboots in the 1980s, 1990s, and most recently in 2019, led by Jordan Peele (of Key & Peele). It's also a forerunner to the truly excellent Black Mirror.

Remarkable trees throughout the world

Exactly what it says on the tin. Truly phenomenal photos.

Remarkable Trees Throughout The World | Moss and Fog

A collection of remarkable trees, from marvelous to strange, throughout the world. 

Hell yes, saviors!

You may not be aware of the tireless, groundbreaking work of Katalin Karikó. She has plodded away four years, often at a low salary, because she believed in the value of her work on mRNA. Ridiculously smart, but also humble, Karikó is a key reason why the Pfizer & Moderna vaccines even exist.

Messenger RNA innovators Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, the Roberts Family Professor of Vaccine Research in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, and Katalin Karikó, PhD, an adjunct professor of Neurosurgery at Penn and a senior vice president at BioNTech, are honored with what is widely regarded as America's top biomedical research prize for the discovery of a therapeutic technology based on the modification of mRNA that makes it remarkably safe and effective.

The global impact and recognition of Weissman and Karikó's work has its roots in their years of research together at the University of Pennsylvania investigating mRNA as a potential therapeutic. Their groundbreaking study published in 2005 found that their concept—which brought fresh hope to a field beset by skepticism and false starts—could be a reality: that mRNA could be altered and then delivered effectively into the body to initiate a protective immune response. Their method to turn cells into factories that can temporarily produce proteins that serve as therapeutic compounds or stimulate the body's immune system to attack a specific pathogen also minimizes harmful inflammatory responses.

Weissman and Karikó have won several prizes, including the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. Karikó may still be up for the Nobel. In my fantasy world, following a substantial cut to the US military budget, we take a bunch of that money and use it to train and nurture 10,000 Katalin Karikós.

Soon, I'll be at Walgreens getting my Pfizer booster shot. You will note that in airport customs areas, they typically have a photo of the current president. I think at every pharmacy and doctors office, they should have a photo of Karikó instead. Although given her modesty, she would probably hate that idea. Have you gotten your booster and your seasonal flu shot? If not, what are you waiting for? You don't get the full benefit of the 5G nanotechnology unless you get both. At least, that's what I've heard.

The lasting trauma of an evangelical upbringing

Jon Rueger writes exceptionally well about the outsize impact his evangelical Christian upbringing has had on his mental health. TL;DR not good. Running in the hippie liberal circles that I do, I encounter some Christians, but almost no evangelicals. So I can't say I have any firsthand experience with this belief system. However, there is something very familiar about the experience the author describes.

Writing about purity culture, he says:

The legacy of purity culture, from my vantage point, is an entire generation of men and women needlessly freighted with shame: divorced from our own bodies, completely incapable of presence, and technically stunted to boot: equally inept with bra clasps and zippers as with intimacy and vulnerability.

I believe we ignore the influence of fundamentalism at our peril. Despite it being a minority viewpoint in the United States, it has strong influence on our courts, laws, even social mores. Reading essays like the author's helps give some context for it.

http://www.kucingnoir.com/2018/01/18/roman-as-fuck/

I like my dance music a little more sophisticated than ‘oontz oontz’

If you like Louis Cole, you might also like his band Knower. (Thanks, Paul)