Thursday Things: Frozen Heads Edition
27 May 2021. Vol 3 No 21 By Dan McGirt. #94
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Ice, ice, baby. Photo by Alto Crew on Unsplash
The hot topic in the literary world this week — with a full moon out, no less — is John Steinbeck’s unpublished werewolf novel. Murder at Full Moon: John Steinbeck Wrote a Werewolf Mystery That No One Wanted to Publish—Until Now
One of the author's early works was a werewolf mystery novel titled Murder at Full Moon. The book was never published, and now fans are petitioning for its posthumous release, The Guardian reports.
Steinbeck was a struggling writer when he penned Murder at Full Moon. Publishers rejected the story in 1930, about a decade before his American classic The Grapes of Wrath hit shelves. The 233-page unpublished manuscript now sits in the archives of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin.
Esquire has a story on this too: What Were John Steinbeck's Publishers Thinking Rejecting His 1930 Werewolf Murder Mystery?
The upshot is that the literary agents for Steinbeck’s estate refuse to release the novel for publication, believing this best represents the author’s wishes. On the one hand, I get it — many authors have early or unfinished works that they don’t want to share with the world, even if they still keep the manuscript around.
On the other hand, Steinbeck DID try to get this book published during his lifetime, and the publisher rejected it.
On the other other hand, after he became a famous and successful author he certainly could have gotten it published and he didn’t. It’s a conundrum.
All I know is I read Steinbeck’s’ The Grapes of Wrath in high school English class. It was a fine work of literature, but I’d have much rather read Murder at Full Moon.
This seems like a prickly business. Global cactus traffickers are cleaning out the deserts
Trafficking can take a serious toll. Over 30 per cent of the world’s nearly 1,500 cactus species are threatened with extinction. Unscrupulous collection is the primary driver of that decline, affecting almost half of imperilled species. Yet this real...
Yes, there is apparently an international black market for stolen cacti, many of them rare or endangered species. As with most evils in the world, social media seems to be partly to blame:
Cactuses and other succulents are hot business today. They have become the darlings of social media, promoted by indoor plant influencers for their outlandish looks and minimal care requirements. The pandemic only increased their popularity…
Read the article for more fascinating details about the murky world of cactus smuggling and how it endangers ecosystems. And you’ll also learn about Operation Atacama in which centuries-old cacti stolen from the desert in Chile were rescued and returned home.
Please don’t steal me! Photo by Sam Goodgame on Unsplash
Newly discovered flower mimics the smell of rotting insects to trap coffin flies. This is one freaky flower.
Scientists have uncovered the deceptive pollination tactics of a first-of-its-kind flower that mimics the scent of decaying insects to attract and entrap so-called coffin flies.
Oh, you clever flower, you.
Flies from the genus Megaselia don't like to eat rotting flesh -- instead, they mate atop and lay their eggs inside decaying insect corpses.
Uh … okay. I mean, if that’s your thing, Megaselia. I’m not judging.
The novel flower isn't carnivorous, though. Rather, it traps flies to utilize their pollination services.
Once trapped inside the putrid scented petals, the coffin flies pollinate the female organs before being coated in pollen by the male organs.
Also not judging you, A. microstoma, with your freaky necro-insect coffin fly three-ways.
"Our results suggest that this is the first known case of a flower that tricks pollinators by smelling like dead and rotting insects rather than vertebrate carrion," said Dötterl, professor and head of the plant ecology group at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg in Austria.
No doubt. I’m going to guess there will be less smuggling of the flower that smells like dead insects than there is rare cacti. But who knows? Get all the freaky details in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Which I assume is the Penthouse letters of botany.
Narcissistic individuals perceive keepsakes from past relationships as trophies.
Narcissistic individuals are more likely to keep objects from their ex-partners as trophy keepsakes, according to new research published in Personality and Individual Differences.
The researchers conducted a survey of 330 Polish participants, which found those who scored higher on a measure of narcissism were more likely to agree with statements such as “Things associated with my ex-partner document my success” and “I consider my ex-partner’s stuff to be a sort of prey or trophy that belongs to me.”
“Narcissistic individuals use inanimate objects as if they were trophies that prove their attractiveness and mating success,” Niemyjska said.
Just for the record, and having nothing to do with this story at all, I wish to state that the collection of human heads in my freezer is maintained for scientific research purposes only. Back to our story…
Niemyjska and her colleagues were also interested in whether there were differences between grandiose and vulnerable narcissists. Grandiose narcissism is characterized by an exaggerated sense of superiority, extroversion and domineering behavior, while vulnerable narcissism is characterized by excessive self-absorption, introversion and insecurity.
Interesting. I was not aware there were different flavors of narcissism, but it makes sense that there would be. Anyway, the researchers found the link between narcissism and viewing keepsakes as trophies existed among both types of narcissists, but for different reasons. You’ll need to read the linked article if you want to know more, or just go straight to the published research in Personality and Individual Differences: “Hunting lovers: Narcissists keep trophies from their past relationships”
Again, the frozen heads are for research. Although I am pretty awesome and I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to have your head stored in my freezer. But they’re for science. Really.
This is the maximum age humans can physically reach, scientists say
Researchers believe they have identified the upper limit of human mortality: 150 years old.
Using an iPhone app and a huge amount of medical data from volunteers in the UK and US, scientists think they’ve confirmed the maximum age people can anticipate ever living to, the researchers wrote in a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
Long story short, they collected a lot of data with their app, crunched the numbers, and concluded that “human lifespan is most significantly based on two data points: biological age (associated with stress, lifestyle and chronic diseases) and resilience (how quickly the person returns to normal after responding to a stressor).”
As we age, our body’s resilience declines, and the researchers calculate (and by calculate I mean, “A team of experts in biology and biophysics presented results of a detailed analysis of dynamic properties of the fluctuations of physiological indices along individual aging trajectories.”) that by age 150, the body’s ability to bounce back from injuries, illness, and accumulated environmental damage is so reduced that no one could live past that age.
Maybe they’re right. Or maybe further advances in medicine, genetics, biopharmaceuticals, 1cryonics, etc. will lead to ways to extend the body’s resilience. I’d bet on the latter because I’m a big believer in human ingenuity when properly motivated. And what is more motivating that preventing death?
On the other hand, if 150 is it and we can get most people to that age someday, great. By the time I’m 150 all the copyrights on Steinbeck’s Murder at Full Moon will have expired and I’ll be able to read it.
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You know, freezing people to preserve life or otherwise cheat death. Sometimes just their heads are frozen. For science. Yes, Substack has footnotes now! You have no idea how much I love adding footnotes. But you will. You will.