By Steve Rhodes
A (somewhat irregular) weekly look at the magazines laying around Beachwood HQ.
Cell Mates
What follows might sound like science, but bear with me. As one subject says in the New Yorker story “Darwin’s Surprise,” if you think about this for five minutes, it’s wild stuff.
“Viruses produce rapidly and often with violent results, yet they are so rudimentary that many scientists don’t even consider them to be alive. A virus is nothing more than a few strands of genetic material wrapped in a package of protein – a parasite, unable to function on its own.
“In order to survive, it must find a cell to infect. Only then can any virus make use of its single talent, which is to take control of a host’s cellular machinery and use it to churn out thousands of copies of itself.
“These viruses then move from one cell to the next, transforming each new host into a factory that makes even more virus. In this way, one infected cell soon becomes billions.”
Okay, so big deal. Nice biology lesson.
Well, the thing is this: Scientists are piecing together extinct viruses and bringing them back to life. By doing so, they can figure out how they work and, in the case of HIV, for example, find a way to stop them. But that’s not really the point of the article.
In doing this work, scientists have come to understand that viruses are a piece of our genetic code; they have helped determine our evolutionary history so dramatically that we still may be laying eggs if it wasn’t for them.
And why is this an important discovery?
Because dead viruses found in our genetic code and classified as “junk DNA” are like fossils that can chart our history. “Darwin’s surprise [at this development] almost certainly would be mixed with delight,” Michael Specter writes. “When he suggested, in The Descent of Man (1871), that humans and apes shared a common ancestor, it was a revolutionary idea, and it remains one today.
“Yet nothing provides more convincing evidence for the ‘theory’ of evolution than the viruses contained within our DNA.”
Your Press Corps
“‘Going After Gore‘ is a fascinating essay, but it seems to miss an important part of the story,” James MacMillan of Toronto writes to Vanity Fair.
“Armed with money, influence, and the protection of the First Amendment, the media bravely went out and inaccurately reported the story, not just once but repeatedly.
“Gore’s message was distorted because the reporters covering him were out of their intellectual depth, oeverwhelmed by any reference to recent political history, and completely uneducated about the issues.
“Now they offer the reasoning that ‘he probably could have overcome’ their incompetence.'”
(Vanity Fair has posted more letters responding to the Gore story on their website.)
Night Fever
I’m not a huge Saturday Night Fever fan, though the soundtrack cannot be denied, but this retelling of how the improbable blockbuster came together in the Movies Rock supplement is fascinating (not available online as far as I can tell).
* “The Bee Gees weren’t even involved in the movie in the beginning,” says Travolta. “I was dancing to Stevie Wonder and Boz Scaggs.”
* “The Bee Gees were broken. They were touring Malaysia and Venezuela, the two places where they were still popular.”
* “The Bee Gees played their demos [for producer Robert Stigwood]: ‘How Deep Is Your Love,’ ‘Stayin’ Alive,’ ‘Night Fever,’ ‘More Than a Woman.’ ‘[He] flipped out and said these will be great,’ Barry Gibb said. ‘We still had no concept of the movie, except some kind of rough script that they’d brought with them. You’ve got to remember, we were fairly dead in the water at that point, 1975.”
* “The music had a profound effect on the cast and crew. It changed everything.”
* Stigwood had the option for making Grease but because the musical was still going strong, he couldn’t begin production before the spring of 1978. Saturday Night Fever was something he did in the meantime.
* The film derived from a New York magazine cover story “whose illustrations helped persuade [author Nik] Cohn’s editor in chief, Clay Felker, to run it. The title was changed from ‘Another Saturday Night’ to ‘Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night.'”
* Cohn was paid $90,000 for the rights to the story, which turned out to be fictionalized though based on real reporting.
Mocking Mitt
“The [Mormon] church’s position is that, while Christ will indeed appear at the Mount of Olives, he will also build a new Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri, which will serve as the seat of his 1,000-year reign on Earth,” the New Republic recalls. “Romney had conveniently neglected to mention this part of his church’s doctrine.”
Because that would sound crazy.
But any crazier than the doctrine of any other religion or cult? I mean, we could try to square the circle on that whole Trinity thing. Similarly, I’m reminded of a Family Guy scene depicting Abraham walking down a mountain with his son, who says “What the fuck was that all about?”
Posted on November 29, 2007