Summer!

Hey there. Summer’s coming up, although last week's +90 degrees made it feel like it’s here already.

This issue starts with a special NPR piece first aired on this day twenty three years ago. From there we go to Open Tabs, Medical, Health and Science; then two new features: Let’s Get a Little Geeky, and Political Stuff That’s Not Partisan, as in, news and stories from Washington D.C. that are ‘objectively’ worth noting regardless of political lean. A recent observation from Robert Reich, pretty cool and smart guy, wraps up this issue; it hits on something I’ve posited for quite some time

We'll throw in a Photograph or two, too.

But First…Book News! Summer is vacation, no school, travel time, lying around time, get out there and have a good time time, but it’s also a great time to start writing that book you’ve been thinking about writing for soooo long.

To assist you, or someone you know, in that endeavor, the new edition of The Way to Begin is now available online and through bookstores. If you’re a reader who prefers to read a book rather than write, that's great, and thank you on behalf of all writers. But if you've been thinking about, planning, learning how to, researching the heck out of a story to write or know someone who’s been seriously thinking about it, The Way to Begin offers a method to begin. It's a small book but its goal is huge: to get that story out of your head and on to paper or screen. For new writers, whether the dream is writing that first book or putting the narrative together for a podcast, The Way to Begin shows how to convert the blank page into the opening of a story.

Hope to have other book news to share soon…

June 5, 2001 – Mom's Voice

I like to share this story in some way every June 5th. It originally aired twenty-three years ago on NPR's All Things Considered. A couple of notes: first, the segment remains accessible via NPR's archives (where the link takes you), and that 'always here' link has become an unexpected, special way to honor our mom; second, what I remember as having originally been a four-minute piece has been compressed/slightly sped up whilst in the archive, such that it is now three minutes. Just FYI. From NPR's story description:
"Commentator Mike Harkins' mother died of emphysema last year (2000). She had come from Scotland and always got together with friends from Great Britain to sing. Months after her death, Harkins discovered a reel of audio tape in a box, and once again got to hear his mother's voice." Mom's Voice

Open Tabs

Can you hear me now?

Phones now have satellite-signal connection technology. Does that mean you finally can hear me in a tunnel?

Hey present, the future's here. It brought that thing that makes things inside of you. What? No, I haven't been drinking...

In the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, an assassination attempt wounds someone very important which then requires the shrinking of a special kind of space ship and its crew – described at one point by the film preview's narrator as having a cast of (said with dramatic fervor) "four men and a beautiful girl" – and the injection of now micro-sized ship and crew into the important someone to save his life and prevent world destruction. Or something like that.
Oh, and I think there on a timeline to fix the internal damage then get the heck out before the crew and ship grow back to actual size. No, really, I think that's in there.

I do have to wonder why they made Raquel Welch's spacesuit, I mean floatingaroundinsomeone'sbody suit so baggy...

That's a long lead in to the actual Open Tab, to wit, yep, scientists can now create, mold and shape things after they inject them into your body.

An mRNA developed vaccine is NOT going to turn you into anything other than an immunized human being. Sheesh.

I have to work hard to not fill this space every month(ish) with an extended piece (or rant) about medical/science disinformation. Even with all the dangerous nonsense being tossed around, it's not that hard to get real, credible, informed vaccination information, say, from a doctor, for example. But apparently it's simply easier to read or listen to people WHO HAVE NO ADVANCED MEDICAL OR SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION, BACKGROUND, OR COMMON SENSE.

Sorry, went a little off the rails for a moment. Or as regular readers are familiar... I digress.

I do understand that everyone wants to make the right health care and medical decisions for themselves, their families, and heck, everyone. But vaccine resistance, pointing to bullish*t studies (like the discredited one on vaccines cause autism, written an ex-doctor, 'ex' because he lost his medical license, because he essentially MADE STUFF UP), personal exemptions, and sheer noise thrown up about all this maddens and puzzles me.

If your kid's arm is broken, do you take him to a house painter or shipping clerk to fix it?

If you have a rash, do you show it to an insurance salesperson to get the diagnosis?

Get your eyes checked in a shoe store?

Got cancer, so you call a plumber?

We get ourselvess to our educated, trained, licensed doctor.

But yet, when it comes to vaccines, people take things away from conversations with their friends, who heard this about that on a podcast, about a guy who knows this guy who said his cousin's best friend grew a third eye after getting the (fill in the blank) vaccine then read this Internet article that said we'd all be cured if we ate horse vitamins.

I understand not everyone has the kind of time that I have to keep track of all these medical and science things. And I truly understand parents' concerns about what's good/what's bad for their child. But our better living through science place in life is an actual thing. We're here because billions of people haven't died from multiple diseases because people received vaccines that saved them from some very horrible ends. Science doesn't lie, it just is, and it doesn't presume either: experiment, result, here's the how and why, and if we can't figure out exactly 'why' the result is what it is, we're not going to fill the gap with 'and then a miracle happens.' And there's no slight intended to anyone or diety re that last sentence.

I was a terrible high school student, for a variety of reasons, including terrible educational guidance in high school. But I eventually blossomed outside of the institutions and the course of my adult life has enabled me to have an understanding and appreciation of the sciences. I have had the pleasure of working closely with doctors, medical researchers, scientists, chemists, technologists, and engineers. Great minds, great people, occasionally quirky, yeah.

Those are the people we talk to, listen to.

Alternate treatments, herd immunity, nutritional and vitamin treatment, none will prevent the contraction of a transmissible disease, including measles, chicken pox, mumps, and Covid. It is not an assured outcome – the exposed could walk away uninfected, for a variety of reasons (although with, say, measles, there is an 85% chance of being infected simply by entering a room an infected person was in up to forty-five minutes ago).

And there are cases of an immunized still becoming infected. These rarities exist because as science tells you...that's life! There's a percentage of uncertainty to everything we do. But we up our percentage for NOT being the next link in a chain of then you infected me, I infected them, they infected everyone, if we're immunized.

Note: Measles cases in the U.S. have topped 1,000, with a major cluster still in the small Texas town where the outbreak began.

To sort through the very things mentioned above, I will occasionally grab something to help address spur of the moment, popular misunderstandings or other shenanigans. And thus, because mRNA vaccines and the understanding of what they actually are/do are in the news, I'm sharing some guidance from a doctor doing a necessary thing and doing it well.

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina is "a public health enthusiast with a passion for making science accessible. I have a Master’s in Public Health and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. By day, I’m an epidemiologist, data scientist, scientific consultant to organizations like the CDC, wife, and mom to two adventurous little girls. By night (and occasionally during nap time), I’m the founder and writer of the SubStack newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist."

Dr. Jetelina's newsletter is the best of its kind, giving readers facts, current content, context, and history in a readable, accessible style. In this day and age her newsletter should be read by everyone.

I'm pulling in her explanation of mRNA because it's eloquent in its content and simplicity, and to blunt some of the ridiculous statements being made by people everywhere, including within the highest levels of the federal government.

Thanks Dr. Jetelina.

Gene editing

And this seems like a good place for an article about a baby's life saved via a gene therapy that didn't even exist six months ago. Whew, that's quite a sentence. Yeah, science.

Billy Joel's recent diagnosis

Best to forgo any intro here and simply give you this explanation of Normal pressure hydrocephalus

Let's Get a Little Geeky

This scientist holds the birthplaces of stars in her hands. Literally. Well, kind of literally...

Political Stuff That’s Not Partisan (PSTNP)

Best way to describe PSTNP is that it's about stories that objectively deserve to be read or seen even though the stories may have political components, which makes this story about a plaque honoring some very brave people a perfect inaugural piece. There's certainly some kind of political one-upmanship at play, but what curdles me is how petty this is relative to why the plaque was created.
The plague has been ready for quite awhile, but it's still not up yet, still missing from the very halls that the plaque's honorees defended against a riotous mob.

Some important words from Robert Reich

Professor Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, current Substacker, wrote an explanation reminder of sorts as to how dictators and authoritarians rise to power. What resonated with me about his piece was the focus on keeping the masses poorly educated, so that as a dictator 'explains' things, claims this and that, pulls books off shelves, punishes universities, the masses come to believe the only authority they've got, the master I'm power. Here's an extract from his post:
"Throughout history, tyrants have understood that their major enemy is an educated public. Slaveholders prohibited enslaved people from learning to read. The Third Reich burned books. The Khmer Rouge banned music. Stalin and Pinochet censored the media."

Some of the declarations, brags, and responses to journalists' questions, along with the mandates coming out of the White House, are certainly disturbing, but are in large part explained simply: the current President does...not...read.

Does. Not. Read.

We have work to do.

But let's leave with this

Thanks for your time, I never take it for granted. If you like what you get from this, tell your friends. Ah, what the heck, tell them even if you don't like it. I'll understand.

May your horizons be vast and your path lined with flowers.

MWH