Mrs Spat approves of the tree tubs

You have done well, monkey-boy. These may remain.

Shock testimony: "Old age" ruled out as cause of death

Two chairs, one cat

Heisenberg's Cat. As she dozes off and reduces the uncertainty in her velocity, the uncertainty in her position increases, requiring more furniture for comfort.

You went full Rotwang, man. Never go full Rotwang

"Nanoblade"?! Wait, what, this sounds like a weapon that a post-humanist Ninja character might wield in a really bad Manga.

You look lost. Perhaps I should go back to the cortico-trunco-reticulo-proprio-spinal pathway (CTRPS). Or even further back.

Neuroskeptic was blogging just the other day about Sergio Canavero, who has a vision... a vision of transplanting heads from body to body... or as it may be, of transplanting bodies. But NS buried the lede, which is wasteful. Here at the Riddled Research Laboratory we prefer to stage a fake burial for the lede, in fact keeping it in a locked back room on life support, to use it as a donor for organ transplants.

So Canavero edited a special edition of Surgical Neurology International and went Full-Metal Rotwang, shaking his fists at a disbelieving world and shouting "You fools! I'll show you all!"

"Hysteria", "misbegotten dogma"... this is not the usual register of academic discourse, even in editorial advertisements, but then again, SNI is not your conventional scientific journal. It could best be described as "The kind of journal that invites a total reality-divorcé to edit special issues".

Now this "cortico-trunco-reticulo-proprio-spinal pathway", it is not recognised in textbooks, and indeed seems to be unknown outside the circle of Canavero and his supporters. It is (I gather) a component of the spinal cord. Most of the spine is white matter, afferent and efferent bundles of myelinated nerve axons, analogous to insulation-wrapped wiring, and Canavero does not believe that he can restore their function after joining the two spinal stumps in a head transplant. But that's alright, because the white matter doesn't actually have a function (its supposed importance is a 'previously misbegotten dogma'). It seems that motor and sensory functions are in fact served by the short, unmyelinated neurons of the butterfly-shape of grey matter within the spinal cord; the fools of the neurology establishment regard this as local circuitry, but this is where the CTRPS resides, and where Canavero can graft severed neurons back together.

A 'nanoblade' is required, one honed to nanometric atom-level fineness: sharp enough to bifurcate cells with minimal trauma to their membranes and contents. This may be the same as the GEMINotome "ultra‑sharp nanometer‑grade blade" -- aspirational cutlery for which Canavero's Chinese collaborators have developed the name if not the technology.

A second component of the regeneration protocol is electrical stimulation to help weld together the bisected halves of matching neurons from head and body. Canavero is aware of the parallels with Mary Shelley's novel, but he revels in them, like Gene Wilder's titular character in Young Frankenstein embracing his destiny.

If other laboratories are unable to replicate the results, they had probably tapped into the wrong kind of lightning strike to power the apparatus.

The third crucial component is the 'fusogen' to knit together the ragged edges of the severed membranes of donor and recipient hemi-neurons. This proves to be poly-ethyl glycol, infused with fractal nanoribbon graphene -- so it glows green in the dark, of course. Also to conduct the electricity ("in order to improve and accelerate the recovery of function, we tested PEG enhanced by these electrical conducting nanoribbons. PEG‑GNRs would achieve both membrane fusion, facilitate initial electrical conduction, and then act as a scaffold for sprouting fibers").

So there is re-vivifying electricity, and Daring Experiments that will Confound the Nay-Saying Fools of the Academy, you can see why the Mad Scientist Anti-Defamation League are eager to offer Dr Canavero their assistance. But wait, also there is an underground laboratory, where his South Korean colleague C.-Yoon Kim tested the procedure on rodents and dogs and monkeys!!

Alas, most post-operative rats were drowned "during a storm that filled the underground lab". Presumably the minions were watching for lightning strikes when they should have paid more attention to the water pumps. LESSON: locate next laboratory in a non-flooding mountain-top castle.

Kim's trials were not yet transplants, but proof-of-concept tests for severing and repairing spinal cords. That is to say, Kim claimed to have dissected each laboratory animal down to the neck vertebrae and split open one vertebra, so he could hook up the spinal cord and sever it. Before replacing the stumps in the vertebra, daubed with PEG, with such sub-micron precision that the two halves of each grey-matter neuron were adjacent again and the sliced membranes were contiguous, so that the PEG could fuse them -- allowing full restoration of mobility and sensation within days ("The two stumps of the spinal cord of the rats were kept in mechanical proximity by simple hyperextension of the head").

Details of the surgery ignore the earlier invocations of nanoblades and GEMINotomes, and specify a standard #11 scalpel. Which at the cellular level is about as sharp as a car bumper, crushing cells into oblivion rather than bisecting them; Kim might as well have invited Mrs Spat to sever the rats' spines, or used a cable.* To put it another way: none of this ever happened.

Kim claims affliations to Konkuk University's School of Medicine, and to Seoul National University's College of Veterinary Medicine, but the e-address he uses is vivavets@gmail.com.

* Bonus recapitation:

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If you stare with horrified fascination at Canavero's lurid fantasies and cannot look away, well, there's more!

Imagine what effect might ensue from a young donor body (say, in her 20’s) nourishing with her young blood 24/24, 7/7 the head of an aging body recipient! Yes, life extension on a level that simple, periodic transfusions of young blood have no way to match.
The real concern that needs to be addressed in this letter is whether one day HEAVEN is spun off as a cure for transsexualism (TS). Considering the dearth of donors for many needing new organs, this might seem like pushing the envelope. Yet, it makes sense starting the debate now.
To the casual eye, TSs come in two varieties: male-to-female (MtF) and female-to-male. In this case, common sense would suggest gender reassignment HEAVEN transplant the head of an MtF subject on a female body and vice versa.

No reference here to the pioneering research of Heinlein [1970] and Reiner [1984]; I am disappoint.

"A Call to Arms" is not a treatise on limb transplants (alas), but another SNI Editorial, in which Canavero goes Full Rotwang (again), complains that billionaire philanthropists aren't giving him any money, and speculates on the psychological hang-ups that motivate his critics.

Foraging news: Mrs Spat edition

Your new toy is very nice, Mrs Spat but we do not want to play with it.

I was showing it to you, monkey boy, not offering it to you.

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In other news, sufficiently advanced Google Translate is indistinguishable from Sam Beckett poetry:

It is somewhere.
By mist
By sight
To society
By sighting it
By sighting for a moment
It is somewhat snow again
By sighting for a moment
By singing out again
To what it says
Sighting and snowing again
It is somewhat somewhat snow again
Do not continue to do so.
Do not do it again.

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Hey ratbreath, this is my beanbag!

What happened to sharing?

You didn't share your rat!

There wasn't enough for two.

Gardening with Mrs Spat

Apparently the seedlings grow better if they are kept warm and sheltered from the sun.

"Why did this manuscript come back all soaked in cat urine"? "We thought you asked for pee-er review"

Hey monkey-boy! Why aren't we scientific authors yet? Other cats get physics-paper co-authorship! Even eedjit dogs!

OK, you two write the text. Then I'll de-LOLcat the spelling and submit it to the journal.

We provided lots of experimental data on 'The Properties of a Body at Rest'. You write the paper, then we'll tell you what sections in it are wrong and what you need to do again

I get this all the time from some of my human collaborators too.

What is this "web-cam" whereof the house-apes speak?

What the ack are you wearing now, monkey boy?

Mrs Spat is not impressed with my new t-shirt.

But it has an octopus on it!

Eat your branchial and systemic hearts out, P.Z. Myers.

Behold the invalidity of your argument

This cat is wearing camouflage.

I have no time for your house-ape jibber-jabber

Mrs Spat has garden-rubbish sacks to inspect.

The Dreaming Jewels

A few months ago all the cool kids started using the Goofle Dream Machine. Now grown-up sister and the Doktorling Sonja have been showing off their fractal shuggoths, in an attempt to shame me into doing the same, which they will surely come to regret.

Turns out when you cycle an image repeatedly through the Gooflator, the distortions converge on a stable state after a few iterations.

This is partly because the templates it was been trained on and is trying to impose are orientation-specific... so if you really want to fuck an image over, you rotate it 90° between each iteration.

This is the way to reveal the CODE DEEP SEVEN technology that lurks in the darkness under the table. But to find the sad pekinese faces in the wall, it helps to invert the colour palette before goofling and then invert again afterwards.

There seem to be a lot of wine goblets lurking, latent, in the morphogenetic furniture of our lounge.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Grist mass

Here is the spacious new Riddled brewery premises and mastitis clinic, finished just in time for the maturation of the Christmas Ale. We asked the architect whether it really needed all the upward-pointing cloud-busting orgone cannons on the roof but he just muttered darkly and started lining up his felt-pens on his graph-paper in such an unwelcoming way that we decided against persevering with the questions. Also the design is totally not a rip-off of Homeward.

Despite Thundra's wild speculations, this year's formulation is 99.9% holothurian free. In this country, sir, sea cucumbers are not on the menu. Now sea-urchin gonads a.k.a. Kina, that is another matter.

To protect the recipe, not to mention our Intellectual Property in the field of Disruptive Milking-shed design, security in Riddled Towers is up to Code Fuligin, an all-time high. We run a tight ship here at Riddled which is the best kind for keeping the water out.

Another Kiwi is concerned about 'hacking attacks' which turns out to be a term of art and does not refer to the unfortunate occasion when Mrs Cat hoicked up a furball into the hop filter. We have hired Mother Hitton and her Littul Kittons to handle our Information Security, which is not a reflection on the rival bid from Evangeline van Holsterin's vile nephew Throgmorton and someone he knows from the mortuary.

Apparently the main hacking threat comes from North Korea. AK overheard a conversation to this effect down at the Old Entomologist after Poriferan Paraphyly Trivia Night, and if that level of sourcing is good enough for the news media then it's good enough for Riddled. It seems that the rogue state's leadership have misconstrued the name of this year's Christmas Ale as an insult and might use their advanced software-espionage capability to exact revenge. I can only say that 'Kim Ill Sung' is part of a time-honoured tradition of naming brews after dead collectivist totalitarians -- who can forget the Stalin Stout (a Purge in Every Pint) or the Trotsky Headsplitter Bitter? -- as well as being a good summary of the beverage's side effects.

Despite the heightened Intermesh security we are not ignoring more mundane Humint channels through which information might leak Which is to say that monitoring of the brewery staff is in full force. A cunning labyrinth has been constructed at the brewery entrance to prevent staff wandering around unsupervised; tigris gave Another Kiwi a model of the maze so he can lead them in and out at the changing of shifts, which he has glued to the end of the Rod of Lamentation.


UPDATE: Given the existence of labyrinths on the end of sticks, eventually holes in the wall will develop their own matching labyrinths as a form of self-defense. This is the result of evolution (and Narrativium) and should not be misread as any kind of evidence for "intelligent design".

Oh noes, Greenish Hugh has succumbed to temptation and accepted bribes from our commercial rivals, and is trying to smuggle out a sample of wort concealed in his stylish helmet! But AK has apprehended him, adroitly wielding the Rod of Lamentation and assisted by Mrs Cat.

Firm but loving disciplinary measures will be applied and I am sure that Greenish Hugh will see the error of his actions.

Below is an artist's impression of what Snuggles the Dog of Doom would look like after some sensory fine-tuning with the Evolvamat has bestowed upon him the olfactory capacity to recognise disloyal or insecure thoughts just from the subtle modulations of odour. Sadly, tigris looked at the sketch and managed to restrain her enthusiasm so Snuggles' dormant DNA remains unactivated.

Christmas Ale is best enjoyed from a small green sock. Apparently this is traditional.