The FDA, letters, and Knock at the Cabin
So far, I’ve seen my last letter in Massachusetts and New Hampshire papers. After complaining there haven’t been announcements to highlight, I’ve got a couple choices for my next letter. There’s the FDA approving GOOD Meat’s cultivated chicken and a White House report with recommendations to help advance the cellular-agriculture field.
I think the FDA news will be easier to communicate, so I’ll likely lead with that in my next letter, before returning to the need for increased federal funding for research. If you’d like to write your own letters, check this out:
Let’s do (Cell) Culture Talk. Here are some of the things I’ve been watching and reading lately.
Movie — Knock at the Cabin. I feel like my tolerance for dark subject matter in art has really decreased in recent years. A steady media diet of Blippi and Sesame Street will do that to you, I guess, haha! M. Night Shyamalan’s latest horror film is good for what it is, but I didn’t enjoy it.
Critics and apparently the director himself compared it to Signs, my favorite of his movies. I understand the comparison, as both are about families trapped in a single location. But Signs has a much more optimistic worldview.
TV — The Crown. I don’t know much about the British royal family, so I’m not sure how accurate the show is. However, it seems very well done. My wife and I are catching up on the newest season, which is about the House of Windsor in the 1990s.
Book — The Rights of the Defenseless by Susan J. Pearson. This text seeks to explain the complex cultural reasons why child and animal welfare were frequently paired in Gilded Age reform groups, which has always been something of a mystery to me. It’s a great work of history.
Book — Stay with Me, Lord: a Man’s Prayers by Herbert B. West. This was a reread. The author is my maternal grandfather. He died when I was very young, so I didn’t really get a chance to know him. The collection of prayers offers a peek into his life in the 1970s.
Game — Magic: The Gathering Arena. I’ve been playing around with a blue and black poison deck. It has zero creatures of any kind, even artifact ones. The deck currently includes four copies each of the following: Experimental Augury, Prologue to Phyresis, Serum Snare, Drown in Ichor, Distorted Curiosity, Infectious Inquiry, Vraska’s Fall, Mindsplice Apparatus, and Vivisurgeon’s Insight.
Sports — Knicks beat Nuggets, 116-110. Jalen Brunson received his Eastern Conference Player of the Month award before tip-off. It was great to get him back. Hopefully, he can stay healthy. Denver is the top team in the west, so this was a good win.
Sports — Knicks lose to Timberwolves, 140-134. Ooph, that was a frustrating loss against an injured Minnesota. Julius Randle had an incredible game, scoring a career-high 57 points. I was hoping he might break the Knicks’ record, but he couldn’t quite get there. To his credit, he didn’t force things down the stretch, putting the team’s needs first.
Sports — Knicks lose to Heat, 127-120. A number of New York players were complaining about the officiating after the game. I’m not familiar enough with the rules to know how valid the criticism is, but, on the replay, it certainly looked like Jimmy Butler switched his pivot foot on a crucial possession.
Sports — Knicks lose to Magic, 111-106. That was a rough performance, particularly in the first half. Brunson was out. RJ Barrett struggled. Randle was yelling at his teammates, who were trying to prevent him from getting ejected. Hopefully, the Knicks can pull things together.
Meditation passage — The Best by Lao Tzu. This was one of the first pieces I tried to memorize. Initially, I wanted to stick to passages in the atheist/agnostic section of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation website, but, ultimately, I scrapped that idea and started over with the so-called Prayer of Saint Francis, like Eknath Easwaran recommended.