Thursday Things: Meaning of Life Edition
15 September 2022. Vol 4 No 37 By Dan McGirt. #162
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Spoiler alert Life is but a dream Photo by Sergei Zhukov on Unsplash
Spins A Web Any Size
We all love Spider-Man. Well, maybe crooks don’t. In the comics, Spider-Man would often leave the bad guys he captured all webbed up to a lamppost for the police to apprehend. I’m not sure if that really checks out from a criminal procedure and civil rights perspective, but in the world of the comics, it works.
But Spider-Man has also made a significant contribution to crimefighting in the real world. I first came across this story a couple of years ago. I’ve even got a vague suspicion that I already included this in Thursday Things once before — although I checked and I’m now pretty sure I didn’t.
Anyway, Spider-Man directly led to the invention of the ankle monitor. Strange but true!
How Spider-Man Led to the Invention of the Prisoner Ankle Monitor
Court-ordered ankle monitors bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S. every year. Law enforcement uses the devices to monitor more than a hundred thousand people every day, a number that’s expanding rapidly. They play a key role in American criminal justice. For such a crucial technology, though, they began in an unlikely place: a lowly Spider-Man newspaper comic from the 1970s.
The Amazing Spider-Man comic by Stan Lee and John Romia ran in newspapers across the country throughout the late 1970s. One storyline that lasted from August of 1977 into September featured the evil Kingpin, who attaches a tracking device to Spider-Man. You can blame Spider-Man for planting the seed in a judge’s mind.
Judge Jack Love from Bernalillo County, New Mexico saw the series and would later credit Spider-Man with inspiring him to approach an engineer about producing a tracking device for low-level criminals. He became one of the first judges to use the authority of the bench to mandate offenders wear location-monitoring devices.
Well, partial credit for the ankle monitor must go to the Kingpin of crime it seems, which is certainly ironic.
Anyway, read the article for the whole fascinating story!
“Wait, shouldn’t I be getting royalties for that?” Photo by Stem List on Unsplash
Workout Pill?
We can’t all obtain superpowers from a radioactive spider (believe me, I’ve tried). The next best thing is hitting the gym. Sure, going to the gym can be a hassle. Plus all the aches and stiffness that may come from working out too hard, because you’re super dedicated to maintaining your physique. But what if you could take a pill that produces the same effects on your muscles and bones that exercise does? Interested? Read on!
Scientists identify drug that mimics effects of exercise on muscle and bone
Maintaining a regular workout routine can help you look and feel great—but did you know that exercise also helps maintain your muscles and bones? People who are unable to engage in physical activity experience weakening of the muscles and bones, a condition known as locomotor frailty. Recently, researchers in Japan have identified a new drug that may aid in the treatment of locomotor frailty by inducing similar effects as exercise.
So what does this drug do exactly?
In a new study published in Bone Research, researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) developed a novel drug screening system to identify a compound that mimics the changes in muscle and bone that occur as a result of exercise. Using the screening system, the researchers identified the aminoindazole derivative locamidazole (LAMZ). LAMZ was capable of stimulating the growth of muscle cells and bone-forming cells (osteoblasts), while suppressing the growth of bone-resorbing cells (osteoclasts).
As it turns out this identified compound would potentially be of benefit to people who are bedridden or otherwise unable to get basic exercise and therefore suffer “weakening of the muscles (known as sarcopenia) and bones (known as osteoporosis).”
And that is a good thing. What it isn’t is an excuse for you to skip gym day. Go to the gym! Get that workout in! There will be endorphins after, I promise.
Meaningful Meaningness
I only tumbled to this website yesterday, so I haven’t done much more than bookmark it. It seems to be an in-progress online book about meaning. Or the meaning of meaning. Or something meaningful.
Better ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—around problems of meaning and meaninglessness; self and society; ethics, purpose, and value.
A work in progress: for email notifications of new pages, please subscribe!
So if that interests you, bookmark it and check back. How did I find it? Because Laura Deming tweeted that she was reading this and Laura is a genius and I’m always interested in what she’s thinking about. True, a fair percentage of the time I have no idea what she’s even talking about, but I always learn something when I check in with her online. I just want her to hurry up and solve death prevention!1
Anyway, never say Thursday Things doesn’t post meaningful things.
Thank you for reading Thursday Things!
Again, please click the hearts, leave a comment, and use the share feature to send this issue to a friend who might enjoy it. See you next Thursday!
And maybe along the way, perfect that workout pill. It would be a real time saver.