A chariot will take me to The Valley of the Kings #2

Rowland Emett, 'Borg Warner Car of the Future':

Cornelius Bos, Grotesque Triumphal Chariot (1552) [h/t Peacay @ Bibliodyssey]

Just coincidence?

[previous chariot-related material]

I remain unconvinced that the city needs a theme bar inspired by the early-Renaissance 'Urine Wheel' tradition

As is always the case, no-one listens to Uncle Smut.

Just coincidence? I THINK NOT (#2)

Left: Direct-to-consumer fat-tyre bike, with carbon frame, named after 'Dopamine';

Right: Direct-to-consumer bicyclic molecule, with carbon frame, named 'Ketamine'.

Here is another view of the Ketamine, after I came off it at some speed while hurtling down the Clinical trail. Oh noes, the back wheel is not in a good state.
I was attempting to out-run the hallucinations.

[H/t Neuroskeptic]

Before the kiss, A red cap #2[Stealing from Neuroskeptic edition]

The likelihood of wearing red clothes while performing multivariate statistics does not vary with the menstrual cycle. Good to know.

H/t Neuroskeptic

A marble index (a prism and silent face) is all very well, but if your mind is for ever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone, it is a good idea to also take a GPS and a rescue beacon in case of getting lost

We are familiar with the concept of "existential threat" at the Riddled Research Laboratory, for we often hear it from angry picketers outside the gates of our High-Energy Jargon Accelerator facility, where they mingle with bill collectors.

The objective of the HEJA is to accelerate parts of speech and bang them together at high enough velocity to recreate the conditions of the Big Babel, and restore the broken symmetry between strong and weak verbs in a veritable neologasm of fresh verbal coinage... all harmless enough... but if you listen to those sky-is-falling alarmists, you'd think that our search for the God Participle runs the risk of destroying the meanings of words altogether. To which I reply "Calenture fritillary omicron flange."

Right: Jargon

Left: Not jargon

"Is it about a bicycle?"

This is Riddled, so yes oh best beloved, that was a good guess (or a lucky one) -- it is always about a bicycle.

More specifically, it is about Otto Rössler's desire to lower a frictionless rotating bicycle wheel into the gravity well of a neutron star. Partly to prove a point about the conservation of angular momentum under time dilation requiring changes in spatial scale, but mainly to impress the exotic-matter life-forms occupying the surface of the neutron star with our superior technology. It is apparently in the way of a Gedanken-experiment, showing once again that Gedanken-experiments are a terrible idea; the suffering they inflict on the Gedankens is inexcusable when the results do not generalise to humans.

Rössler has written repeatedly about the bicycle wheel -- on his blog, and in the European Scientific Journal, and in IJTRA -- where the last two are scammy hosting services which desperate or gullible academics pay to put their manuscripts on-line and call them "peer-reviewed papers". It appears to be related to his Telemach Theorem, and the less Homeric Olemach Theorem; between them they establish the hitherto-novel discoveries that the speed of light is a constant, and that all black holes are infinitely far away, and that Steven Hawking is WRONG about small black holes decaying rapidly through quantum evaporation. And therefore the Earth faces the EXISTENTIAL THREAT of immanent annihilation by engulfment by the mini-black holes which the Large Hadron Collider will create.

Rössler's career (see the Whackyweedia) gives an impression of having been the work of English comedy script-writers.

in August 2001 he was caught defacing the university auditorium with spray paint in an attempt to draw attention to his protests

He established the point that universities cannot compel tenured scholars to undergo psychological evaluation, which may only be binding under German law, but is still a helpful legal precedent for the rest of us.

Now his blog is hosted at the Lifeboat Foundation, which has not recently received the honour of attention from Riddled. It exists to foster research into ways of countering Existential Threats to Human Survival; to prepare us for Nanotech, and Hostile Artificial Intelligence, and Camus pointing his rifle at Arabs on the beach in a decidedly menacing fashion. Reassuringly, 'Climate Change' is not among the Foundation's concerns (nor is the HEJA) so we know that neither one is really a threat to civilisation after all. Given Rössler's particular enthusiasm, he serves as an advisor on the Particle Physics sub-committee, working to avoid Earth's demise through gravitational collapse.*

What concerns us here is Rössler's most recent, magisterial entry, with its matchless potential to turn the reader's gravity into levity:

Is it Ethical to heal a young white Elephant from his physiological Autism?

[Betteridge's Law may apply].

 

[Thanks Neuroskeptic]

Apparently the Elephant in the Corner of the Room is there because it's autistic. It is probably hiding from those blind men. If cured of autism, however, the elephant has the potential to lead the world into a new era of Aquarius-themed universal love and comity; and the way to cure it is through the use of infrasound to ensure that it bonds and socialises with humans rather than with other elephants, and goes through the process of 'personogenesis' and learns to speak.

I think that's the gist, anyway, as the article is 90% digressive, with little in the way of a central narrative for these digressions to return to, interspersed with personal anecdotes. Neuroskeptic's summary may help. If there is a point, it is the hope that the imaginary talking white elephant -- by channeling the moral authority of Leo Szilard and Nelson Mandela -- can persuade the nuclear physicists at CERN to rethink their dangerous meddling with THE FORCES OF NATURE, where human and dolphin interventions have proven inadequate. "Smile-blindness" comes into it as the cause of human autism, which might make sense to Mirror-Phase psychologists (Winnicott, Lacan) and existential philosophers like Merleau-Ponty, but this is not a great recommendation, and I cannot think of any Existential Threat jokes involving Merleau-Ponty.

In 1975, a causal therapy applicable at a young age was proposed (Rossler, 1975). Gregory Bateson (personal communication 1975) and Niklas Luhmann (Luhmann, 1977, 1984) supported it. Jürgen Habermas’ only criticism concerned the fact that an illegally printed edition of his book had been quoted. Noam Chomsky showed interest in a long phone conversation. Konrad Lorenz said he appreciated it but it was “too difficult” for him to fully understand. No professional ever tried the therapy out or quoted it. For a review, cf. Ref. (Rossler, 2004).

This is perhaps the first paper I have seen that includes a request to the fourth author ("Anonymous Student" -- "young last author sitting in the audience") to contact the first author and

please reveal your name.

Rössler's next Gedanken-experiment will involve lowering a super-intelligent Uplifted non-autistic elephant into the well of a neutron star, suitably armoured against the vacuum and radiation, and riding a bicycle.


* The full list of Lifeboat board members rewards closer scrutiny. They have enlisted Pamela "Atlas" Geller to serve on the Diplomacy subcommittee, brainstorming ways in which the threat posed by Diplomacy can be countered. Glenn Reynolds provides expertise in Space Settlement. The New Money-Systems board has attracted most enthusiasm; good luck with your Bitcoin Endowment Fund.

Freak industrial accident: Midget caught inside Egg-whisk

Some of these case studies come from Electronic Gem Therapist Michael Kelly; some are from The Third Policeman. See if you can tell which is which!

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certain enzymes reading well above the normal at 167. His Assemblage Point was 10cm to the right in the anxious location and a shadow was observed in the depressed location on top of the liver. A radiometric scan of his liver revealed it to be 2 degrees hotter than his spleen. He received Bliss treatment and emerald and sapphire to his liver on five separate occasions before having his liver enzymes re-checked at 84

People menaced by arrows:
probably by Gauls*

MacCruiskeen eyed his book keenly.
‘Ten point five,’ he said.
‘Ten point five,’ said the Sergeant. ‘And what was the reading on the beam?’
‘Five point three.’
‘And how much on the lever?’
‘Two point three.’
‘Two point three is high,’ said the Sergeant.

It's 11 o'clock. Do you know 
where your Assemblage Point is?

Chris received sapphire at 1.6hz for one hour on two separate occasions.

[R.T.] received emerald, diamond and yellow sapphire at 3.6 Hz with a blue filter to both his knees for 30 minutes every week over a 14 week period.

‘I take it, then,’ I said to old Mathers, ‘that when you say you can tell the length of life, so to speak, from the colour of your shirt, you mean that you can tell roughly whether you will be long-lived or short-lived?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘But if you use your intelligence you can make a very accurate forecast. Naturally some colours are better than others. Some of them, like purple or maroon, are very bad and always mean an early grave. Pink, however, is excellent, and there is a lot to be said for certain shades of green and blue. The prevalence of such colours at birth, however, usually connote a wind that brings bad weather—thunder and lightning, perhaps—and there might be difficulties such, for instance, as getting a woman to come in time. As you know, most good things in life are associated with certain disadvantages.’

For some reason, Gem Therapy no longer features in the buffet of no-cutting-edges Healing Modalities offered by the St Benedicts holistic Health Care centre [40 St. Benedicts St, Auckland] -- one can only suppose that the gemstones wore out their colours -- although therapist Michael Kelly retains the name "Vibronic Health" for his gmail address and his company name. We rely upon the mystic wonders of the Wayback Machine for access.

In the first step of his healing journey, Kelly "was initiated into the Sufi tradition and studied Psychology, Philosophy and Mysticism". In 2004 he received his training in "Dynamic Radiometric Thermal Diagnostics" and "Dielectric Resonance Management Procedures" from Dr Jon Whale. In 2005 he learned Biological Terrain Management ("utilizing analysis of Saliva and Urine for health assessment and intervention recommendations"), and in 2009 he "completed four years training in Western Biomedicine and three years training in Acupuncture, at the Auckland College of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine." He has munged together the best bits from these diverse techniques into his own eclectic, syncretic practice... or even 'synclectic'... a word I invented just now which combines the best bits of both.

Biological Terrain managed by Carl Warner

Unauthorised use of NLM logo, but
out-of-date logo so no-one cares

Alert readers will recall that as well as offering hypnotherapeutic and landlordly skills at 40 St Benedicts St, Kelly offers 'practical guidance' in the use of GcMAF... a cancer-curing wonder drug most often encountered in crowd-sourcing situations where dying people appeal to the kindness of strangers to help cover its costs. The St Benedicts site provides a list of GcMAF-prescribing doctors -- some with quite unusual qualifications -- while Kelly offers the "Swiss Protocol" (6 to 12 weeks of $3000-per-week GcMAF yogurt, injections, suppositories, inhalation and applied-directly-to-the-forehead) through his company ImmunoBiotech, based at the same address.

Yes, I promised Another Kiwi and tigris that there would be no more GcMAF-blogging. Yet I admit that I am powerless over my addiction to GcMAF sites, that my life has become unmanageable. The topic drags me back in, much in the manner of playing Wolfenstein 3D where you know that if you click on enough panels there will at least one more secret door or easter-egg apart from the ones you have already found.

One such site caught my eye due to the high level of precision to which its momentum is known, leading to a complete lack of information about its location and the use of a .biz domain rather than a country. In a non-localised, distributed, cyberspatial way it links to Switzerland... to David Noakes' Guernsey-based ImmunoBiotech supplier of blood-extract GcMAF*... and to Naturalsolutions.nz (another instantiation of 40 St Benedicts St) for all your magic yoghurt needs. On its "buy GcMAF" page, the site refers the eager reader to NZ ImmunoBiotech, with a caveat that "New Zealand medical doctors cannot advertise they treat with GcMAF" (to return the favour it recycles images from St Benedicts).

A Whois inquiry shows the GcMAF.biz domain to be registered to Patrick Arthur of Muehlebachstr 206, CH-8008 Zürich, who can be reached through the e-address "websystems4u@gmail.com".

The same Patrick Arthur (with the same details) used to run "tissuesupport.co". Until that site folded last year, it was St Benedicts' recommended supplier of DCA, the previous Wonder Cancer Cure that Doctors Won't Tell You About (until it recently lost its cancer-curativity and fell into desuetude). It also sold MSM or Methylsulfonylmethane, which is a popular Health Supplement on account of the naturalnesss implied by its name.

So we knock at a few Domain-info inquiries... timidly, half-expecting the secret panel to slide open and reveal Mecha-Hitler behind. What a relief to find that the other person who registers domains at Muehlebachstr 206, Zürich, with the "websystems4u@gmail.com", is Patrick A. Kelly. Who does not have minigun arms. The Riddled legal advisory team of Trahison and Clerisy (solicitors and commissioners for oaths) insisted that I be as explicit as possible about this evidence of non-hitlertude.

Not PAK

Like Michael Kelly, Patrick travelled the world and sat at the feet of spiritual masters -- Indian Yogins, Chinese Daoists and Middle Eastern Gnostics -- and drank deep of different founts of spiritual wisdom as one drinks of the blushful hippocrene and the Fountain of Girl.*** Then he settled in Zürich and syncretised or eclecticated all those wisdom traditions into an all-encompassing World Wide Way.

Synclectic WWW symbol

Ecretic symbol

The practical expression of the World Wide Way is 9 Clouds Tai Chi. Do not be despondent if if you wish to avail yourself of its teachings but you are not Swiss-resident, for it is a franchise, with dojos in China, and one in Auckland... at 40 St Benedicts St.

I would not be surprised if Patrick A. the meditation guru and Patrick Arthur the distributor of DCA and GcMAF were the same person. But at the deepest level, are we not all one person?

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‘Was there a fall?’ he asked.
‘A light fall at five-thirty.’
‘Five-thirty is rather late if the fall was a light one,’ he said.‘Did you put charcoal adroitly in the vent?’
‘I did,’ said MacCruiskeen.
‘How much?’
‘Seven pounds.’
‘I would say eight,’ said the Sergeant.
‘Seven was satisfactory enough,’ MacCruiskeen said, ‘if you recollect that the reading on the beam has been falling for the past four days. I tried the shuttle but there was no trace of play or looseness in it.’
‘I would still say eight for safety-first,’ said the Sergeant, ‘but if the shuttle is tight, there can be no need for timorous anxiety.’

‘Six point nine six three circulating,’ MacCruiskeen was saying.
‘High,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Very high. There must be a ground heat. Tell me about the fall.’
‘A medium fall at midnight and no lumps.’
The Sergeant laughed and shook his head.
‘No lumps indeed,’ he chuckled, ‘there will be hell to pay tomorrow on the lever if it is true there is a ground heat.’
MacCruiskeen got up suddenly from his chair.
‘I will give her half a hundredweight of charcoal,’ he announced.

Moar biological terrain

* "What's sagittis molesworth what case come along boy -- sagitta sagitta sagittam first declension -- with arows by with or from arows. The gauls are atacking the ditches with arows -- telisque -- telisque, molesworth?"

** UPDATE #1. Mr Noakes is under a lot of stress these days,  on account of regulatory-body inquiries into his blood-sourced GcMAF enrichment activities, and did not handle himself well in a recent BBC interview. In retrospect it may have been a mistake for him to have shifted to Guernsey as his base of operations. The local paper are not his biggest fans.

Now Guernsey is just a wee chunk of land just off the French coast, but the in-breds have their own establishment squirearchy, and their own language (a variety of Norman French), and the squirearchy will not be having with parvenus and nouveau-riche and arrivistes -- assuming that Norman French has terms for these concepts! -- turning up in their bailiwick and making a lot of noise. Especially if the noise might call attention to the main industry of Guernsey, i.e. being a tax haven. So the attention of authorities was somehow directed to Noakes.

*** Fountain of Girl is one of the few curative properties not attributed to GcMAF.

The Land Leviathan

Two motorbikes are smashing a path through Legoland!

Followed by a remote-controlled bathchair! You would think that the proprietors of Legoland would learn from experience and put up a sign.

In fact that lower image is a rare still from the 1919 movie "Earth Against White Slavers from Mars" from Edison Studios, their first venture into the alien-invasion genre. It was mocked mercilessly by movie critics of the day on account of the shoddy special effects -- "The Martian war machine," wrote one critic, "looked like a remote-controlled bathchair smashing a path through Legoland" -- and the studio was overcome with embarrassment and destroyed all the negatives. Thus it is little-appreciated except by members of the Riddled Time Travel and Film Club.

The original concept was stolen from Frank Shuman's cunning plan to win World War I with a 5000-ton three-wheeled crushing machine which would crash through the countryside at 100 m.p.h  killing civilians (it was not designed to survive an encounter with artillery), powered by 1000-horsepower steam engines yet to be built, until its oil or coal ran out. In short it was the Project Pluto of its day.

You might ask yourself, "So how do we transport a 5000-ton backwards-driving 'Land Battleship' from the shipyards of Sheffield to the shooty places? Fording rivers is all very well, but isn't there an English Channel in the way, or even an Atlantic Ocean if the giant future-destroyer is constructed in the US?" You might especially ask that if you are a paid shill for the rival Submarine-Land- Dreadnaught lobby or the printing-in-red-ink lobby.

But Frank Shuman was a distinguished engineer whose concrete piles, wired glass, wool- degreasing machines and other inventions have made him famous,* and he has thought of everything. Once we have built the dykes and drained Doggerland, our 5000-ton Wartrikes can drive to Europe directly. Take that, Submarine-Land- Dreadnaught lobbyist!

The last time we were visited by a lobbyist for the Printing-in-red-ink industry it was not a pleasant experience.

Bonus giant tanks here and here!

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* Also a remarkably prescient pioneer of solar power.

...Belatedly UPDATED because readers keep asking "Uncle Smut, what's a Juggernaut?" Kids today! I hope this helps.

Life imitates Far Side Cartoons

Praying mantids have depth perception, based on each eye seeing slightly different images, an ability they require for their remarkable facility on bicycles. Of course this is a 1986 observation and old news for the usual crowd at the Old Entomologist, where it inspires the monthly "Magic-Eye Autostereograms for Anthropods" competition.

It is not known which algorithm they use in their little insect neural ganglia for the computation disparities. It may be the classic Marr-Poggio iterative / cooperative algorithm from 1976. Marr and Poggio originally designed this for perceiving the separate layers of wedding cakes. Trufax!

Anyway, here are some scientists making dinky little polarised-filter glasses for praying mantids and showing them 3D movies. It turns out that the movie has to feature an appropriate subject and plot, like maybe a giant female mantis who eats humans and is totally hawt, otherwise the subjects describe the 3D experience as a 'gimmick' and not worth the extra $6. Research continues into how much extra they are willing to pay for Sensurround sound, high-frame-rate, and Odorama.

The spiders are feeling left out of this research, but I don't know what they have to complain about, they still get all the best drugs. Also they are not called upon to squirt out egg-cases half the size of their abdomens and shaped like Lego blocks.

It's got a basket, a bell that rings and things to make it look good

The client's brief was clear enough: "Predict coming trends in personal transport". Any of us who invested heavily in the flying car industry, only to lose our stake due to lack of consumer demand for the product, can sympathise with the client's desires.

One thing we have learned in the past is not to heed predictions from Space-Time Eddie, no matter how confidently he couches them in a sepia cloud of bafflegab about 'nostalgia for infancy". "The future lies with the Perambulance", sez Eddie -- "the merging of the tricycle and the rubber baby buggy bumpers". He is too easily led astray by his own nostalgia for his career as a stunt baby.*

Another Kiwi and I maintain that Eddie should not have left his blueprints overnight filed next to a copy of L. P. Hartley's "The Travelling Grave", and the resulting conceptual bleed-through and morphogenic crossover is entirely his own fault.

Certainly he should not blame us and our corner-paring, cheese-cutting preoccupation with cost reduction for the disappearance from his design of useful but expensive fripperies such as "wheels" and "front window".

At least tigris has taken the certainty of rising sea levels into account for her scenario.

Another thing we have learned is not to describe the Riddled Futurology and Life-Styles Working Group as a "think tank". To do so is to exert a strong influence -- not necessarily a benign one -- upon the design of the Working Group's offices.

The members do not need roof-top landing strips for personal jets and Another Kiwi is adamant that they must move back to the old premises. It may have had its drawbacks (like being lowered into a well as the only way to enter or leave), and contemporary architects will sneer at the feather-waving gargoyles, but just look at the state-of-the-art flying envelope e-mail protocol!

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* Stunt baby.