For Mikey

Bloody ethics committees

You try getting permission these days for this kind of research. It's like asking the Spanish Inquisition for approval to study an interesting new heresy.

Invisible Keyboard!

Thus we are forced to conduct these experiments clandestinely at the Old Entomologist where no-one raises an eyebrow at such behaviour. We work in constant fear of discovery and the barstaff expect a big tip in return for their cooperation. But at the end of the day if the subject's hands stayed tied to the keyboard then we have a new blog-post, which makes it all worthwhile.

Viking Medical Care: Homœopathy edition

ITTDGY asks in earlier comments about homœopathy.
Tempting though it is to plagiarise someone else's explanation of the theory, let us APPLY SCIENCE instead. We take a sample of that explanation and dilute it with a 10-times-larger sample of biologically-inert words, shaking the mixture violently ('succussion') to randomise the order:

Orbs (zorb akvavit painting arm iodine) experimenting combination mescal methylene succussion, zorb akvavit painting arm iodine experimenting combination mescal methylene, orbs serial akvavit painting arm iodine. Experimenting combination mescal methylene orbs zorb, dilution painting arm. Iodine experimenting combination mescal methylene orbs, zorb akvavit striking, arm iodine experimenting combination mescal methylene orbs zorb. Akvavit painting dilution iodine experimenting. Combination mescal methylene orbs zorb akvavit.

Painting arm repertoires experimenting combination, mescal methylene orbs zorb akvavit painting arm iodine. Increases combination mescal methylene orbs zorb akvavit painting, arm iodine experimenting totality mescal. Methylene orbs zorb, akvavit painting arm, iodine experimenting combination remedies methylene orbs zorb, akvavit-painting arm, iodine experimenting.

Combination mescal molecules orbs zorb akvavit painting arm iodine experimenting combination. Mescal methylene memory zorb akvavit, painting arm iodine experimenting combination. Mescal-methylene orbs water.

Homœopathic science predicts that this derived explanation will be more potent than the original. If it isn't entirely convincing than we need to repeat the process of dilution. Very soon there will be no words remaining of the original text but that doesn't matter because the succussion causes the diluting words to acquire a form of molecular memory from the diluted ones. The only hitch is that we don't know what the text actually explains. This has to be determined by a process of 'proving' where a panel of homœopaths read it and see how it has affected them.¹

Vikings were well aware of all this. Here Thor prepares a remedy for axe injuries by succussing a 10C dilution of axe steel.





However, no-one ever described Thor as the brightest of the Æsir and he was never entirely clear on the concept of dilution, i.e. you don't have to drink the entire diluted dose.

Here Ragnar Hairybreeks visits the homœopathic apothecary to pick up a prescription of Berlin Wall to treat his feelings of powerless, oppression and negative energy.² The depraved perspective of the materia medica on the shelves is Lorentz contraction, a relativistic effect indicating that the woodcut artist was travelling close to light speed at the time.

Via Orac we learn of a homœopathic remedy consisting of diluted magnetic monopoles. I have no idea what symptoms it treats. The same German supplier also deals in Lux Solis britannicae, i.e. a preparation of English sunlight, which I would have thought was already quite homœopathic enough. So far no-one offers a homœopathic 12X dilution of "petrified hadrosaur pelvis containing a .375 bullet",³ which would probably be good for treating something -- unwanted time travel perhaps -- though the hard part would be translating it into Latin.

¹ For contemporary provings it is enough for the panel to meditate upon the text without reading it and delineate its effects that way.

² 'Berlin Wall' is a preparation of a piece of concrete, stone, steel and surface graffiti from the actual wall, ground up with lactose in a succession of 1-in-50000 solid lactose dilutions. Available in solid or liquid form.

³ Calibre fixed in updates.

Travel advisory

Prof. Robert Jackson is the principal researcher into spider vision and behaviour down at Canterbury University so we can safely take his word for it:

Obviously there is a need for further study into whether bugs are also protected from jumping spider predation if they are dragging one of those Samsonite suitcases with the built-in wheels and the telescopic handle, that always get stuck in the tram tracks.

A bug with all its possessions in a shopping trolley is automatically safe because it will become invisible.

I'm just not going to go there.

When I look inside your head Right up front to the back of your skull

Good news for Jennifer! From the Annals of Homeopathy Department we learn that a spider-based remedy an expensive dose of water indirectly exposed to extract of Portia fimbriata is recommended for sensitivity to noise, thin blood, "boundary issues, sensation of paralysis, MS and possibly anorexia. The proving brought to light also chemical sensitiveness, spider phobia, phantom pregnancy and panic attacks."

Here's Portia fimbriata in unextracted form. Her main eyes are miniature telephoto lenses, running the full length of her cephalothorax. They have no field of view to speak of (so she has auxiliary eyes for side vision) but in terms of acuity they're better than a cat's or a pigeon's eyes.

Portia's retina is not a sheet of photosensors as in our eyes, picking out umpteen details at once in massively parallel processing, but rather a one-dimensional sort of boomerang that shuttles back and forth across the focal plane as if the visual world is a bar-code to be scanned. She adjusts the angle of the retina to pick out different bar-codes. Also she can reverse the polarity of her eyes and project laser beams from them. O RLY? No, not RLY.

What with this visual acuity and her complex behavioural repertoire, arachnologists wax lyrical about Portia and come up with endearments like "eight-legged cats". The behavioural complexity is because she predates other spiders in preference to insects, and sometimes her prey is a webspinner and sometimes it is a stalking- pouncing-type wolf spider so she has a range of strategies to match each potential target. Also it helps to recognise other members of her species in time to mate with them before attempting to eat them. Actually this is good advice in general, not just for spiders, ARE YOU READING THIS Frau Doktorin?

Also, she solves mazes. Given a choice of pathways bent coathangers to follow, Portia will eschew the more direct path that becomes a dead-end, and pick the roundabout path that will lead her to FEED ME SEYMOUR despite initially heading away from it. This is more deferred-gratification forward planning than I possess myself but at least I am better than her at using "eschew" in Scrabble games.

Several decades ago I flatted with Mike Tarsitano who was studying Portia's maze-solving abilities. Several times a day he would creep around the house with a supply of plastic specimen bottles, catching orb and wolf spiders to take out to the university as food for his experimental subjects, or at least that was the excuse he would give. The business with the mason jars is another story entirely. I have no idea why they're called that name since they turn out not to be large enough to contain an entire mason.
UPDATED: Bonus O RLY.
UPDATED²: intended to cite earlier spider-related studies by Fish but got side-tracked.

Yes, your Worship. He was eaten by owls

Should post something but am awash with painkillers and Vicars Vice. Also we have been watching Zombieland. Will write something tomorrow about spiders -- unless you would prefer the "Mervyn Peake and post-encephalitic parkinsonism" rant. Perhaps we should set up a poll for this sort of question.
Here's The Renderers.

Ombudsmøøse has nothing to hide! Transparency edition

According to the old Sámi proverb, there is more than one way to skin a møøse.
OK, this is really a reindeer.

If you think that Zombie Blitzen is looking rather shopworn and delapidated these days then evidently you haven't seen the state of Santa and Mrs Claus. They have become a graphic demonstration of the general ethical principle that not only should presents not be opened before $mas, but some are best not unwrapped at all.

I hope you're not waiting for the animated version.

UPDATE: People in comments demand draggable enhancements.

Orb Cities

A new and rather unsettling (forgive the pun) aspect of the capitulation of Western Civilization to Orbofascism is the decision by several cities to become orb cities.
The degenerate  inhabitants of these cities construct large glass orbs around their city boundaries and then enter into a pact with demi-gods of the new religion to hold their cities aloft. As can be seen in the illustrations shown WHICH ARE NOT PHOTOSHOPPED, the useful idiot citizens are frequently tricked into providing a new toy for the demigods to roll around on in their backyards.
Notice, also, and as well that the first two cities are held aloft by naked persons. This is due to contractual agreements being reached with so called "Adult magazines" who were in the forefront of capitulation to the repressive and restrictive nudist Orb cults.

Franz Radziwill, painter of orbs

Apparently what enabled him to see the Vitons was painting his arm with iodine while experimenting with a combination of mescal and methylene.
More orbs here and here. Also, and furthermore, someone's uploaded the text of Sinister Barrier.

Beckett-Blogging

The Vulture Zombie

dragging his hunger through the sky
of my skull shell of sky and earth

stooping to the prone who must
soon take up their life and walk

mocked by a tissue that may not serve
till hunger earth and sky be offal

I had never seen a house throw up before

Apparently it didn't like the yellow wallpaper.

Existential threat

Famous existentialist Herr Doktor Bimler has asked for evidence of the existence of existential threats and here we have one:  A £4bn black hole.

"As you can imagine, this is a fairly existential problem... " Chris Huhne the energy and climate change secretary disclosed tonight.

Adding fuel to the fire it seems that it is connected to the Nucalah powers-that-be and thus it is connected to our very state of being. I only hope that it does not end badly, i.e. we find out that we are in denial about our deaths and aren't really on an island at all, merely an atoll.
This hole affair raises questions about the cost of the black hole and why Britain thought that they needed one, anyway. I mean what was the point? Yes one can use the black hole for intergalactic travel but we are yet to see the benefit of that aside from regular episodes of Dr. Who. Are the incursions by Pancake Monsters worth it?