Joe Stracci's blog. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: writing, art, technology, Apple, food, fatherhood, parenting, and music. And photography. And design. And sports. Oh, and probably some politics too.
“Massive block text to lend legitimacy to this sorry endeavor.”
— Legitimate-sounding Anglo Saxon name (year between 1859 and 1967)
You hear that? That’s the sound of every Freshman Comp/Academic Writing teacher in America nodding violently while reading this pitch-perfect piece.
The breakthrough is notable in part for the unconventional manner in which the drug attacks its target. There are many kinds of cancer, but treatments have typically combatted them in one way only: by attempting to destroy the cancerous cells. Surgery aims to remove the entire growth from the body; chemotherapy drugs are toxic to the cancer cells; radiation generates toxic molecules that break up the cancer cells’ DNA and proteins, causing their demise. A more recent approach, immunotherapy, coöpts the body’s immune system into attacking and eradicating the tumor.
The Agios drug, instead of killing the leukemic cells—immature blood cells gone haywire—coaxes them into maturing into functioning blood cells. Cancerous cells traditionally have been viewed as a lost cause, fit only for destruction. The emerging research on A.M.L. suggests that at least some cancer cells might be redeemable: they still carry their original programming and can be pressed back onto a pathway to health.
This is a fascinating article. This approach seems so obvious that it feels simultaneously maddening and completely understandable that it took so long to develop. On the other hand, by the end of this piece, I wondered what people would make of it in—100 years. Or even worse, in 200 years. What about 500 years? So much talk and work about and on cancer works from an assumption that it is something that eventually will be overcome. But what if (and pardon me for getting super nihilistic for a moment) cancer is something that we aren’t meant to beat/eradicate/cure? What if we’re beating our heads (and wallets) against the wall, fighting an enemy on the molecular level, for nothing?
Ten years ago this week, Arcade Fire released Funeral, an album that not only transformed this once-ramshackle Montreal orchestro-rock collective into instant indie-rock icons, but forever transformed the very concept of indie rock from a fringe movement born of economic circumstance into an aspirational career model. Arriving just as the Internet’s corrosive effect on major-label hegemony was becoming apparent, Funeral showed how a fearless, fiercely committed band could take advantage of the power vacuum—in the album’s wake, "indie" became not so much an ideological rebuke to the concept of playing arenas as an alternate, service-road path to realizing it.
I’ll be 30 tomorrow. I take music very seriously. Arcade Fire is, without a doubt, on my list of the most important musical discoveries of my life.
Oh, and a side note—please make sure to check out the video Berman embedded in the piece. I’ve linked to it before and watched it many times and it’s yet to not give me goosebumps.
Oh, and another side note—for those who heard the “Reflektor is going to be Arcade Fire’s last album” rumors, here’s some good news.
What the NOVA special makes clear is that to believe strongly in the importance of vaccination isn’t really an indication of bias. It’s merely to be aware of the mass of evidence that points to their safety and effectiveness. While the program does acknowledge that there are very rare occasions of severe reactions to vaccines, it doesn’t take one of those infuriating stances where both sides of the debate are treated as equally meritorious merely because they both happen to exist. Instead, viewers are given the facts about how valuable vaccines have been since they first became available for disease prevention.
You can find when and where to catch this incredibly important 42 minutes of television here.
“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”
I’m sure I responded with a gasp and dumbfounded silence. I had imagined the Jobs’s household was like a nerd’s paradise: that the walls were giant touch screens, the dining table was made from tiles of iPads and that iPods were handed out to guests like chocolates on a pillow.
Nope, Mr. Jobs told me, not even close.
While I certainly don’t think of Steve Jobs as a great source for parenting tips, I think there is something valuable to be taken from this article overall.
At the supermarket near his home in central Virginia, Tom Burford likes to loiter by the display of Red Delicious. He waits until he spots a store manager. Then he picks up one of the glossy apples and, with a flourish, scrapes his fingernail into the wax: T-O-M.
“We can’t sell that now,” the manager protests.
To which Burford replies, in his soft Piedmont drawl: “That’s my point.”
Burford, who is 79 years old, is disinclined to apple destruction. His ancestors scattered apple seeds in the Blue Ridge foothills as far back as 1713, and he grew up with more than 100 types of trees in his backyard orchard. He is the author of Apples of North America, an encyclopedia of heirloom varieties, and travels the country lecturing on horticulture and nursery design. But his preservationist tendencies stop short of the Red Delicious and what he calls the “ramming down the throats of American consumers this disgusting, red, beautiful fruit.”
As we all begin our yearly autumnal pilgrimage to pay way more for apples (and cider doughnuts, and kettle corn, and lemonade, and funnel cake, and pizza, and turkey legs) than we ever would in the supermarket, please treat the above piece as a PSA. Help stop the scourge of the Red Delicious!
In truth, the iconic red sauce meatball—one of the foundational foods of Italian cuisine in the U.S.—has more to do with the New World than Naples. Its development, and its influence on what Italian-American cuisine would become in the U.S., is inextricably tied to New York City. This is the city where Italian-American became American, and where the meatball as we know it began.
Yet Italians have been making meatballs since the days of ancient Rome. So why does today's red sauce version look so unlike the meatballs you'll find in Italy?
If you’ve got an Italian heritage, and you’re from New York City, you should read this.
The reply brings to mind numerous other Republicans saying "I'm not a scientist" (or Marco Rubio's "I'm not a scientist, man") to dodge uncomfortable questions about scientific topics like evolution and climate change.
Is the earth round? The reality is that I’m not a cartographer.
In suggesting that patriarchy is dead, I am not claiming that sexism is finished, that men are obsolete or that the triumph of feminism is at hand. I may be a middle-aged white man, but I’m not an idiot. In the world of politics, work and family, misogyny is a stubborn fact of life. But in the universe of thoughts and words, there is more conviction and intelligence in the critique of male privilege than in its defense, which tends to be panicky and halfhearted when it is not obtuse and obnoxious. The supremacy of men can no longer be taken as a reflection of natural order or settled custom.
This slow unwinding has been the work of generations. For the most part, it has been understood — rightly in my view, and this is not really an argument I want to have right now — as a narrative of progress. A society that was exclusive and repressive is now freer and more open. But there may be other less unequivocally happy consequences. It seems that, in doing away with patriarchal authority, we have also, perhaps unwittingly, killed off all the grown-ups.
A sprawling (if not a bit messy) examination of the American cultural landscape. Scott makes some great points. The only problem is that the people who don’t want to hear what he has to say is exactly who could stand to absorb it.
The announcement of a new Apple product line is always a big event, and their recent unveiling of the Apple Watch (technically, the WATCH) was no exception. I’ve specifically avoided forming any real opinions on a product that isn’t going to be released for another, at least, six months. (if you’re interested, though, I think the new messaging paradigm that they’re attempting to introduce with the watch is the real that’s-some-Jetsons-shit feature.) However, that hasn’t stopped the rest of the internet from weighing in.
Of course, if you wanted to do some reading, get some good, thoughtful feedback, you could read, say, “A Watch Guy’s Thoughts On The Apple Watch After Seeing It In The Metal” (via Daring Fireball). I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but damn—there’s an entire Watch Nerd World out there, apparently.
Or, if you’re (like me) nerdy and lame and not all totally there, you could dive into Dylan Matthews’ take:
There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the just-revealed Apple Watch. Who wants to use a touchscreen that tiny? Why would I want to send my heartbeat to my friends (a real feature of the watch emphasized in the product's unveiling)? Why should people who aren't titans of finance spend $349 on a watch?
But the best reason for skepticism is that it's, at root, a watch, with the primary purpose of telling time. And time is an illusion.
Now that’s a think piece.