Three weeks ago, Kamani Hubbard was born with fully functional sixth digits on both hands and feet. While polydactylism occurs in 1 out of 500 births, it's very rare for the digits to be more than deformities. Kamani's extra fingers and toes are so perfect that no one noticed the abnormal number until his father spotted them well after birth.

While the decision to remove the extra digits is the parents', Kamani's doctors are advising that he be allowed to keep them:

"It's merely an interesting and beautiful variation rather than a worrisome thing. I would be tempted to leave those fingers in place," said Dr Michael Treece, a paediatrician at St Luke's.

"I realise children would tease each other over the slightest things, and having extra digits on each hand is more than slight. But imagine what sort of pianist a 12-fingered person would be. Imagine what sort of a flamenco guitarist. If else, think of their typing skills."

Baseball experts have already pointed out that the extra fingers could come in extremely useful in pitching the ball.

Now that humanity is beginning to perfect lateral polydactylism -- possibly as part of some sort of flamenco-guitar-related sexual-selective force -- could we start seeing the inevitable exponential polydactylism necessary to manifest the Handelbrot Set?

The same psychology team that last year reported two-thirds of the British population suffer from orthonoia has come out with a new study showing a link between orthonoia and excessive sleep.

For those who don't remember and can't be bothered to read the first link above, orthonoia is the gullible doppelganger of paranoia. Orthonoids are easily lulled into a sense of trust and security, leaving them prey to the Varied & Sundry Agents of Evil, whom orthonoids are incapable of suspecting and thus avoiding. Those who seek to control society are always looking for ways to decrease natural, healthy paranoia while increasing dangerous, self-defense-defeating orthonoia.

Of course, since this research was funded by the Wellcome Trust -- being as they are a part of the Medical Establishment and named for the man who introduced England to the modern pill, ushering in the age of pharmacological orthonoia -- they frame the findings as showing that people need to get more sleep in order to overcome paranoia:

"As most of us know, a few nights of poor sleep can make us feel stressed, muddled in our thinking and disconnected from the world," says [Dr. Daniel Freeman, a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London]. "These are ideal conditions for paranoid fears to take hold. Regular, good-quality sleep is important to our psychological wellbeing."

....

"The good news is that there are several tried-and-tested ways to overcome insomnia," he says. "In particular, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has proven benefits. The intriguing implication of the research is that use of the sleep techniques may also make us feel safer and less mistrustful during the day. A good night's sleep may simply make us view the world in a much more positive light."

If sleep doesn't turn you into the model of a trusting, unquestioning citizen, maybe it'll at least soften you up enough for you to trust practitioners of "cognitive behavioural therapy" (otherwise known as "brainwashing"), which Dr. Freeman just so happens to be. No wonder the Government and the Medical Establishment are always insisting that you should get at least eight hours of sleep a night... That's how They get you!

Still from the docudrama They Live! Note the sleep commands.

To paranoid researchers, the findings of this study aren't surprising. One of the main ways that orthonoia is induced is through psychotronic mind control, which is widely suspected to have a stronger effect during REM sleep. Without resistance from the conscious mind, imagery and ideas can be easily slipped into the brain through dreams.

There is, however, some question about the causation: does sleeping as little as possible increase paranoia through an increase in conscious psychotronic resistance, or are paranoids just less likely to sleep since they know what's lurking out in the shadows, waiting for them to lower their guards? There's also the confounding variable of late-night talk radio, which is very informative to the paranoid mind. Exposure to it -- which, obviously, increases with lack of sleep -- could also contribute to an orthonoia decrease.

Dr. Freeman is using the media buzz from the study to promote his book, Paranoia: The 21st-Century Fear. As he notes, paranoia has been increasing recently. Although he pointedly neglects to mention it, this is thanks to the tireless efforts of sleepless paranoids staying up late into the night to post on their blogs about inexpensive mind control protection. (You're welcome.) But Dr. Freeman isn't writing a paean to paranoia. His orthonoiac thesis is that there's too much paranoia in the modern world and that we need to "tackle it".

The book description uses a very telling phrase in saying it "takes us beyond the tabloid headlines" (bold mine). As you would know if you had read the first link in this post, tabloids (the newspapers that peddle in salacious scandals, not the pills invented by Henry Solomon Wellcome) were created by the Powers That Be to misdirect people away from true paranoia by keeping their natural paranoid instincts preoccupied with manufactured controversy and petty fears. This empty-calorie pseudoparanoia not only atrophies people's ability to be authentically paranoid, it also serves to deflate any true paranoid suspicions by making them look ridiculous when ensconced in celebrity trivia and fad diets. That the Wellcome Trust, of all organization, would use that phrase in the description of a book attacking paranoia could only be a intentional shout-out to their fellow evildoers in the Forces of Mind Control.

Well, that's enough blogging for tonight. Now to stay awake until dawn, then I'll be safe from the Shadow People for another day.

Here's an interesting political cartoon by Ryan Walker from the July, 1904 issue of The Comrade:

Of interest isn't the political message of the cartoon -- a condemnation of the Republican-controlled US congress' refusal to prohibit government contracts with trusts -- but rather the metaphor being used: an octopus in a saw-mill. Although this trope is all but forgotten in the modern political cartoonists' lexicon, the ecological horror of its origin haunts the forests of Cascadia to this day.

As mentioned previously, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus will instinctively hide deep inside the branches of its tree if the tree is violently disturbed -- as when being felled by loggers. This often resulted in octopuses going undetected until the trees got to a saw-mill, where the octopuses usually met an unfortunate demise in the mill works. Besides killing the innocent cephalopods, these accidents cost timber companies thousands of dollars every year during the 19th and early 20th centuries due to valuable timber and pulp becoming stained with octopus ink and mills being forced to shut down for the better part of a day for deoctopussing.

Needless to say, this did not please the timber companies, nor the workers who had to clean the mangled, inky octopuses out of the works. To the timber industry, tree octopuses were nothing but costly nuisances -- a view that led to anti-octopus eradication campaigns being promoted in logging camps. Sadly, these profit-motivated cephalopodicidal outbursts were one of the major contributing factors to the tree octopus' current endangered status.

But during the time when tree octopuses were still abundant in the forests of the Northwest, "an octopus in a saw-mill" became a common idiom for an annoyingly messy accident waiting to happen. This makes the joke of the cartoon clearer: Not only will the buzz-saw hurt the trusts octopus, it'll also gum up the blade of legislation and splatter ink on Uncle Sam's patriotic finery, tarnishing his image. Presumably the Socialist editors of The Comrade found this prospect darkly amusing.

UPDATE 2009-10-02: Google Books has a collection of full issues of The Comrade, including the one with the above cartoon. Also, if you are interested in political cartoons or propaganda featuring octopuses, do visit Vulgar Army, a blog devoted almost exclusively to just that.

James from Seattle/Olympia writes in with a discovery he made in his Christmas tree:

2008-12-25: "Pacific NW Xmas tree Octopus"

Just letting you know, we spotted this adventurous tree octopi feeling particularly festive.

Sometimes tree octopuses hitch a ride in Christmas trees harvested from farms on the Olympic Peninsula. When its tree is being jostled violently, a tree octopus will hunker down deep inside the branches near the trunk and camouflage itself to look like bark. This is a defensive mechanism to protect it from wind storms and sasquatch trying to shake octopuses to the ground. They may stay hidden like this for days after a particularly violent shaking, such as experienced by Christmas trees when they are chopped down and transported.

Many octopuses have a natural instinct to decorate their lairs with attractive baubles, and O. paxarbolis is no exception. When it finally comes out of hiding and explores its tree, finding it covered in shiny ornaments and sparkly lights, it will become so mesmerized by the baublely abundance that it'll hardly notice that its tree is sitting in some human's living room.

Scandinavian immigrants considered it good luck to find a tree octopus in their Christmas tree. Granted, that's because they like to eat them. But for us more enlightened cephalopodophiles, we can consider it a sign of good luck that the species hasn't yet gone extinct.

And to keep it that way, please remember to remove any octopuses you find before disposing of your Christmas tree. They can be put in a shoe box -- with a bit of moist branch to make them feel comfortable and some tinsel to keep them distracted -- and taken to your nearest chapter of the Friends of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus for reintroduction into the wild.

O Alumbaum, o Alumbaum,
How are your boughs so shiny!
You sparkle even in the nights,
So I hide you from satellites.
O Alumbaum, o Alumbaum,
How are your boughs so shiny!

O Alumbaum, o Alumbaum,
You dampen the psychotrons!
You help me resist mind-control,
Emitted from the grassy knoll.
O Alumbaum, o Alumbaum,
You dampen the psychotrons!

O Alumbaum, o Alumbaum,
You're coated in corundum!
I know you won't rust in the rain,
So weathermen won't seize my brain.
O Alumbaum, o Alumbaum,
You're coated in corundum!

(Learn more about the Seasonal Aluminum Deflection Tree.)

We here at ZPi approve of all shoe-based protest. Clog the machine!

In a 5-4 decision last month the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the U.S. Navy in a dispute over the training use of sonar that ecologists claim is damaging the hearing of whales, causing them to die in mass strandings. The majority opinion, while acknowledging the "ecological, scientific and recreational interests" of protecting whales, nevertheless concluded that the public interest unquestionably lies in preparing for war in order to secure peace, and that whales are expendable.

But in a recent editorial in the Hattiesburg American titled "Squid supremacy must not rule seas", Dorothy Rose Myers of Hollywood, California, exposed the true national security threat at stake:

Whales are the only natural enemy of large squid. Squid will eat anything in the ocean, multiply by the millions and usually inhabit the depths of the ocean where whales like to feed. Without whales, squid will devour everything in the ocean and there will be a world famine.

... When the squid have eaten everything at the bottom of the ocean they will begin to rise and devour everything in each successive layer until they are supreme in the ocean. Squid supremacy trumps military supremacy. And squid will inherit the earth.

Surely the U.S. Navy must be aware of this threat. How could they not have noticed the increase in giant squid sightings in recent years? Or the swarms of aggressively predatory Humboldt squid (known in their traditional waters as Diablo Rojo -- "Red Devil") moving ever Northward? Or the now-common squid attacks on racing yachts? This suggests an ominous possibility: Could the U.S. Navy be in league with squid kind? Could the Navy's sonar technology actually have been intended to be cetacidal in order to eliminate their decapodal ally's natural enemy: the whale?

Before you dismiss this theory of a coming "Squidpocalypse" made possible by the (intentional?) actions of the U.S. Navy, consider that Ms. Myers is no mere armchair conspiracy theorist. She came to understand the mind-set of the upper echelons of the U.S. military while serving as a Pentagon employee during the Eisenhower administration.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower is, of course, famous in paranoid circles for his 1961 farewell address to the Nation, where he warned of the danger of the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the Military-Industrial Complex. Little did Eisenhower know that his fears would not only be realized, but now compounded in the form of a Military-Industrial-Squid Complex.

Yutaka Yoshinouchi has filed a Japanese patent application (JP2008038574) that at first glance appears to cover both Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanies (AFDBs) and Aluminum-Shielded Enclosures (ASEs), but there are some key differences that should allay fears of lawsuits against AFDB/ASE builders and advocates. Here is the official English translation of the abstract:

INVENTION FOR ANSWER COPING WITH MIND CONTROL

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve a problem wherein an answer coping with mind control by aliens from the sky is desired because mind control by a vicious Gray Orion interfering with free mind of human beings should never be allowed, and leaving as it is leads to the satisfaction of the aliens watching vigilantly for a chance of earth invasion.

SOLUTION: Indoor defense is carried out by using an irregularly reflecting material for a wall, using a radio wave absorber/lead, and disturbing signal pulses by laser or the like to disturb Tesla wave pulses. Outdoor defense is carried out by wearing a helmet covered with the irregularly reflecting material, a helmet with laser spread around, or a helmet covered with the radio wave absorber/lead. On the other hand, defense is carried out by rotating laser horizontally and obliquely upward from high-rise buildings, parks, facilities, and the like in each area.

Fig. 2: Helmet configurations.

First of all, note the scope of the mind-control protection claims only applies to the primitive radio-based technology used by the vicious Gray Orions (who are not related to the psychotronics-using Reticulans, a.k.a. "Greys", whose center of civilization is in the Zeta Reticuli system). The Gray Orions are one of a multitude of Paraterrestrial Entity Factions (PEFs) seeking influence in the Sol system. They are a little-heard-of PEF precisely because of their backwards mind-control technology, which is easily overwhelmed by the psychotronic smog of the Earth's noosphere. Mr. Yoshinouchi must have had some run-in with an agent of the Gray Orions and made a personal enemy to even bother with developing paranoid technology to counter them.

Fig. 3: Tesla-wave-pulse disrupting laser configurations.

Next note that Mr. Yoshinouchi's invention goes beyond passive deflective shielding and incorporates lasers. As I understand it, the lasers are integral to the anti-mind-control system that he is patenting, meaning that AFDBs/ASEs on their own would not be covered. To the best of my knowledge, no paranoid researcher has thought to use AFDB-mounted lasers to counter Tesla-wave pulses. This truly is an innovative development, even if it will only work on Gray Orion radio signals (and will undoubtedly reveal your paranoid status to government spy satellites).

Finally, note that the patent application specifically calls for "radio wave absorber/lead", not psychotronically deflective aluminum. This obviously exempts AFDBs/ASEs, although lead- or Velostat-based derivative technologies, if used in conjunction with lasers, might fall under the patent's scope.

Unfortunately only the abstract was translated into English. The text of the full description and claims is in image format so I can't machine translate it easily. I would be very interested in a full translation, both to see the details of his unique design and perhaps learn a bit of Mr. Yoshinouchi's history with the Gray Orions.

Speaking of J.J. Abrams and trivial entertainment news with minor connections to subjects on my site... Perhaps in acknowledgement of his service in the War of the Worlds, Lord Kelvin has been honored with a starship in his name in Abrams' upcoming Star Trek reboot.

The USS Kelvin (designation NCC-0514) was, according to one fan site's calculation, constructed in the 2220s -- predating both the USS Enterprise and James T. Kirk. George Kirk, James' father, apparently served as first officer on the Kelvin before it was destroyed by Romulans:

While the plot of the movie is closely guarded, might we suspect Kirk's father died in that explosion? Could this be the event that prompted Kirk to give up his misspent youth of driving Corvettes off of cliffs to follow in his father's footsteps by joining Star Fleet, thus setting him on the path to become the greatest Starship Captain in the history of the Federation, if not the Alpha-Quadrant, and save countless lives from a quadro-triticale famine on Sherman's Planet by averting the Tribble Menace? Sure, why not.

Obviously this ship is even more important than the Enterprise to the history of Star Trek. How fitting that it should named in Lord Kelvin's honor.

The manifested Jungian archetype of polydactylism pokes its many fingers further into the doughy belly of popular culture.

Gemma Arterton, the new "Bond Girl" in the latest 007 film, A Quantum of Solace, was born with 12 fingers. Unfortunately, her two extra digits were removed shortly after birth by the Medical Establishment -- dogmatic proponents of physiological uniformity who would rather butcher healthy mutants than have to spend valuable golf-time learning the names of new body parts. But try as they might, Establishment doctors are on the losing side our evolutionary destiny:

"My dad had them [extra fingers], and my granddad," Arterton told Esquire magazine. "I feel like we're one step ahead -- a sign of things to come. ... We could do more stuff if we had extra fingers -- faster texting, faster emailing, better guitar-playing."

Also of note in the entertainment world, the new FOX series Fringe features a six-fingered hand-print both on its marketing posters and on bumpers before the commercials:

Besides documenting the mysterious Observers and the menace of giant floating place-names, Fringe follows investigators searching for the truth about "the Pattern" -- an emergence of strange scientific phenomena and experiments that may signal a tipping point in Humanity's patience with J.J. Abrams. But could the show actually be on to something? Could there be a "the Pattern" in real life? And if so, is it not logical to surmise that "the Pattern" is the Handlebrot set -- a single, yet infinitely complicated, unifying pattern of our existence that has been for eons guiding our development into the polydactyl super-beings that Gemma Arterton foresees?

Undoubtedly, yes.

On a less momentous note, a while back I moved my Dactyl Fractal Zoom toy from the wallpaper subdirectory (where I haphazardly put it after I originally created it) to a proper subdirectory of its own. This broke the link from Stumble Upon, a popular random-link site which was the source for most of the traffic to the toy. Well, now some Stumble Upon user has found the new location and re-stumbled it, which has resulted in the Dactyl Fractal Zoom getting around 40,000 hits just today. Egads! Anyway, I added a few links to the containing page, so hopefully all those people won't just stumble past the rest of my site. My apologies to those who preferred the starker, link-free version.