"For instance, it is possible that a medicine man may emit a focused electromagnetic signal during a fertility ritual that actually increases the germination rate of seeds in a field."

Here is Canadian-born psychiatrist Colin A. Ross using his optical energy beams to defeat the reigning champion of Chessboxing. For shame, Dr Ross, that is CHEATING, which we condemn in strong terms and impressive deep voices.

Eye-lasering in infancy

Eye lasers seem to have become a recurring theme at Riddled. I suspect that tigris and Another Kiwi added them as a rider to the corporate emission statement while I was up at the bar.

But Ross has a distinctive spin on the trope. He argues that his optical extraemissions are in the ELF radio band of 3 to 30 Hz (i.e. with wavelengths on the scale of the Earth's diameter), and are neural oscillations that instead of being measured by an EEG and labeled with Greek letters, have been focussed and directed along the optic nerves. Apparently they are not attenuated by distance in the usual inverse-square way, and allow us to cast the Evil Eye, also to communicate with submarines, which is why the US closed its Code SANGUINE ELF-transmitter facility.

Ross is thinking along similar lines to Professor Persinger (whom FMS preserve) of Ontario, and the two of them might find common ground if they got in touch, possibly by synchronising their β- and θ-rhythms with the Schumann resonant frequencies of the ionosphere.

Synchronised Omega
rhythms: Not advised

Human ocular extramission detection goggles

Fortunately Dr Ross is comfortable with espousing positions that stray from the psychiatric mainstream. He is expert in Repressed Memory Recovery therapy, with a special fondness for recovering memories of Satanic Ritual Abuse; also in Multiple Personality Disorder, and the CIA program to brainwash children and inculcate them with Manchurian-candidate programmed-assassin alternative personalities. More recently he has criticised the psychiatric profession for its over-eagerness to dish out the drugs before demonstrating evidence of therapeutic value.

Here Ross knows whereof he speaks, for he is on record for treating patients with an "ultra-high dosage" experimental regime of lorazepam and triazolam (51 mg/day instead of 0.5)... as part of treatment that the patients later characterised as an exercise in splitting their psyches into multiple Alters, motivated perhaps by curiosity.*

Ross was subsequently sacked from Boniface Hospital and made his way from Winnipeg to yes, naturally, Texas. From there he promotes the risible discredited 'trophoblast theory of cancer', and defends cancer-quack / scammer Gonzalez by extruding papers for journal-shaped rubbish-bins.** He also provides psychiatric services in Dallas, runs a trauma program in Michigan, provides the 'Hannibal' scriptwriters with inspiration, and advises other scriptwriters on how to convincingly construct a multiple-personality narrative.

No-one could have expected that

Most of the people the Ross Institute treats describe very traumatic and abusive childhoods.

Thx Doug Mesner

* Iatrogenic MPD should not be confused with Iagogenic jealousy [W. Shakespeare 1603].

** “Academicians’ Research Center” is a bunch of bottom-feeding Indian vanity-press grifters who are distinguished from other predatory publishers mainly by their unusual level of illiteracy.

Great Failures of Our Time

#78. Early Renaissance false eyelashes.

Hardcore body-mods, dudes!

Mirror-maze

Imagine my disappointment.

I was expecting a display of reflective corn-husks.

Bald truth

Trouble was brewing in the skies over Riddled Towers (For an Unforgettable Wedding Reception. Now with no eels) or was it? Large pink bulging clouds appeared and filled the locals with delight, horror or a feeling of inadequacy. But not all citizens were filled with nameless, faceless dread. Two stalwarts of the local Disturbance in the Heavens Squad, Messers Kiwi and Clyde, are shown here with a Stick and Attached Bladder and a Open Top Milk Churn though they freely confessed that they knew not why. They also vouchsafed that it was not their fault and giggled. Alot.
Enquiries at a local Public House, Medicant and Wooden Leg manufacturers revealed that some of the barstaff have doubts about the sanity of the men.
However it cannot be denied that somethings hang over us all. Needless to say oysters are off the menu.

A Monocle for Leibowitz

We get mail!

Subject: CVNet - Frontiers Special Topic: "Binocular rivalry: a gateway to consciousness"
From: Georgios Keliris [georgios.keliris@tuebingen.mpg.de]
To: "cvnet@mail.ewind.com" [cvnet@mail.ewind.com]
Thread-Topic: Frontiers Special Topic: "Binocular rivalry: a gateway to consciousness"
Sender: owner-cvnet@lawton.ewind.com
X-Antivirus: AVG for E-mail 9.0.894 [271.1.1/3512]
CALL FOR PAPERS
Frontiers Special Topic: “Binocular rivalry: a gateway to consciousness”

We are pleased to announce an upcoming Special Issue on Binocular Rivalry and related Multistable Perceptual Phenomena in “Frontiers in Human Neuroscience”, for which we are now accepting submissions.

Hosting Journal: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Topic Title: Binocular rivalry: a gateway to consciousness

Description: Brain-mind problems like consciousness have been stimulating the interest of philosophers and scientists since the ancient times. In the last decades, the dramatic development of neuroscience has allowed studying such phenomena at several different levels – from single neurons to behavior. Binocular rivalry, a paradigm dissociating the sensory input from the conscious perception during dichoptic viewing of incongruent images, has been a celebrated example of such a tool. During the last century, empirical research on binocular rivalry contributed the first important insights into the neuronal mechanisms of subjective visual perception. Recent advances in brain imaging and electrophysiological recording/stimulating techniques as well as novel theoretical concepts and analytical methods could be exploited to expand our knowledge on this fascinating phenomenon of visual perception and elucidate the neural processes underlying visual consciousness. This special topic aims to bring together contributions that could expand the current frontiers of knowledge in binocular rivalry. In particular we would like to focus on reviews, hypothesis & theory or original research articles that specifically combine novel concepts, analytical tools and neurophysiological techniques with binocular rivalry. We expect that these contributions will a) integrate the vast knowledge already existing in the field b) formulate and, when possible, address questions under the light of recent methodological advances in neuroscience and c) provide a benchmark that will stimulate future cutting edge research.

Submissions of articles on related topics such as multi-stable perception and other families of interocular suppression phenomena are also welcome and will be considered with equal weight.

I have nothing to say on binocular rivalry that's not already on the Intertuber, so here's an artist's impression of trinocular trivalry instead.

Due to "rivalry" not rhyming with "chivalry", I am unable to provide the Special Issue with a rude limerick. My submission will deal with the little-known history of Renaissance experiments in 3D movies, and will involve a certain amount of Explaining Voice.


One factor for the commercial failure of the trials was the absence of red and green lenses, due to anaglyph magic-lantern displays not being invented until 1858. Not everyone was prepared to undergo injections into the eyeballs to dye one green and the other red.

Instead, the images for the left and right eyes were screened side-by-side.


Early experiments with stereoscopes to help fuse the two images were promising. Before the mirror apparatus could be brought down to a reasonable size, however, the research was terminated when Brother Bartholomew fell downstairs during a loss-of-depth-perception episode.

The history of Renaissance animated movies has already been documented in a series of Riddled publications. The technology never really took off. Partly this was because the directors were forced by funding constraints to farm the work out to multiple studios to ensure buy-in from all the monasteries, and monks at each scriptorium had different graphic styles, which didn't always mesh when the gels were assembled. The other problem was that they could not help themselves from adorning each image with extraneous foliage, illuminated capitals in gold leaf and whelk purple, and random devils running riot in the margins, pooping and farting sulphur on account of being unable to distinguish between scatology and eschatology.

Giant Floating Heads: Update

I can cope with the giant floating heads and the expectant crowds, but really this is a bit on the nose. If you want to resort to levitating cannon-fire to drive the heads away, that's fine, but please don't do it during the Riddled production of Hamlet, right in the middle of the grave-digger scene. It has divided the attention of the audience. The disruption was all too much for Another Kiwi who had been rehearsing enthusiastically for the role of 2^nd Drunken Gravedigger and as you see he has collapsed. FROM THE SHOCK.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of the whole dismal episode is the critics' enthusiastic response to our "ground-breaking innovative direction" and the rave reviews in the paper the next day.

Max Beckmann, painter of orbs

Beckmann showed only two orbs in this street-scene from Frankfurt but notice how they have brought all electrical activity to a standstill. The sky-trains are no longer running along their overhead wires while the nuclear-missile facility at the left is disabled with the missiles off-line and the blue canopy protecting the silo locked in its closed position. Also is that cat in the foreground sprouting wings??
Scientists do not fully understand the Electro-Magnetic Pulse weapon used by the orbs, but obviously it is some form of high-tech weaponised legume, possibly related to the Black-Eyed Beans from Venus (Van Vliet, 1972).

Beckmann was aware of the orbs right from the start of his artistic life, and they dominate this first self-portrait, painted in 1898 when he was only 15. Some people might see his wordless communion as a kind of acknowledgement of the orbs, as if Beckmann was somehow in their debt or had traded something with them in exchange for esoteric knowledge. I could not possibly comment.

My River Road Trip

Here is the Youtube of when I went up the Whanganui River Road recently. The picture quality is not too fabulous, due to lord-knows-what and the camera work is a little dodgy due to you can't get good help no more. The sound is probably better off after the map has been on except for 4:59 to 5:30 or so when you can hear a Bellbird.
There are gratuitous photo's of wild goats. And ducks.There is beautiful scenery.
There is a poem inna notebook that is being a bit difficult about getting finished.

The fungi are scaring me

A post on my grown-up sister's blog calls my attention to the existence of predatory, carnivorous mushrooms.

This species of basidiomycetes vanished during the Cretaceous mass extinction, until paleontologists found a fungus mite preserved in amber and were able to recover the DNA from its stomach contents. Now it is kept safely in captivity OMG THE POWER IS DOWN IT'S BREAKING DOWN THE BARS AAARRRGGH

This murderous ascomycetan came from another world and conceals itself with a scramble suit while it kills the members of a mercenary band one by one, taking their heads as trophies, until Arnold Schwarzenegger bests it in hand-to-hand combat! *



OK, there was none of that.

Nevertheless, few opportunities arise to use the "When I saw, Mushroom head" tag, so we must make the most of them.**

* Actually this was all a terrible cross-cultural misunderstanding. The fungus was merely offering the mercenaries the opportunity to visit the planet Yuggoth, with the proviso that due to constraints on the size of the cargo, it was only possible to transport their isolated brains.

** This post was going to be called "Before the kiss, a Red Cap", but ZRM used that line in comments on an earlier thread.

Communications officer, me

Friday night at the Riddled office can get a little fraught as Smut wants to show off his new boobies what he bought on the internet and Brett's all "Listen I can burp the national anthem of Zambia". Luckily my cooler head prevails and I distract the lads from seeing my man Murchison leaving with the week's takings in a sack.
It's funny how blogging has affected our hands, no one told us about this. A quick pint down at the Old Entomologist and we're good chums again

"That boy will never leave the house again all summer!"

said mikey in recent comments when the subject of multiple boobies came up, as it so often does.

It is as if someone used the Riddled time machine to steal mikey's ideas and go back to commission a line of soft huggable multiple-boobied nuclear mushrooms from the design duo of Dunne and Raby. One of these would be the perfect accessory for the Legoland model of Hiroshima.

"Priscilla" is modelled on a 1957 test in Nevada (a 37 kiloton device suspended from a balloon) whose images have become the iconic Ephesian Diana of our times.*

* One archivist points out that most of the images widely circulated and identified as the Priscilla test are actually photographs of the Grable test, part of Operation Upshot-Knothole in 1953, on account of the DoE sending out the wrong pictures at some point. So someone is right on the Internet and everyone else is wrong.

One day we will all go into the water, when we can no longer resist our attraction to multiple-breasted siphonophorae.