My colleague frienemy in the fight against alien mind control, Michael Menkin -- the inventor of the thought screen helmet, a Velostat-based technology that blocks the non-psychotronic telepathic communication used by paraterrestrials from the Reticulum constellation -- has offered his help to beleaguered Wales, where UFO sightings have become commonplace. Menkin's thought screen helmets (instructions for which he offers for free on his site,) will prevent the Welsh from being abducted by the UFOs, a risk that is increasing daily:

Mr Menkin said given the level of UFO activity over Wales, people should make a thought screen. He said: "The people in Wales will benefit by making their own helmets.

"Everybody would be a lot safer if they had one in the house. There seems to have been more reports (of UFOs) lately in Wales and Scotland and the western half of the British Isles."

Unfortunately, it seems that Reticulan agents and/or mind-control victims have already infiltrated local ufological groups and are spreading FUD against thought screen technology:

But Margaret Fry, of the Welsh Fellowship of Ufologists, dismissed the thought screens as "ridiculous".

Mrs Fry, from Abergele, in North Wales, said: "I have seen UFOs, but I don't believe in crackpot ideas like this.

"It's ridiculous. People in the Welsh Federation have been investigating UFOs for 40 years and none of us subscribes to this nonsense."

Meanwhile, the local hominoid community has offered its support of Menkin's foreign aid work. "THE WELSH ARE MINE!!!" howled Brenin Llwyd, from Cader Idris, in North Wales. "IF SILLY HATS KEEP PUNY HAIRLESS GREY SKY-THIEVES AWAY, SILLY HATS THE WELSH SHALL HAVE!!!" Brenin Llwyd went on to announce that he will begin canvassing Snowdonia, handing out informative fliers explaining the UFO abduction risk, as well as the construction and use of thought screen helmets. He will also continue to abduct children for safe keeping until the Welsh can properly defend themselves.

The archetype of fractal appendages manifests in the cephalopodan realm...

...or perhaps it originated there? Could it be that the awakening of dactyl fractal consciousness is merely an atavism from an earlier form of existence shared by the common ancestors of humans and octopuses -- an existence where such stifling notions as a finite number of limbs had yet to encumber our ancestors' tactile perceptions of their reality? Could we already be past this vertex on the parabola of evolution, and are now heading back up toward the infinite reaches of body segmentation? What next shall we see? Elephants with bushy multitrunks? Snakes sprouting snakes sprouting snakes? Hydraferrets? Could this be what the Maya prophesized will happen on December 21, 2012? Could the Singularity be cut short by the Multiplicity?

While further researching Lord Kelvin, I came across an interesting quote. The Universe a Vast Electric Organism (George Woodward Warder, 1903) quotes Prof. Garrett P. Serviss -- the author of Edison's Conquest of Mars, which co-stars Lord Kelvin -- in the New York American, May 16, 1903 (bold mine):

"The undulatory theory of energy is carrying everything before it. It is not saying too much to aver that wave motion is concerned in nearly all the phenomena of physical life . . . Think for a moment of what is included in the science of waves. In the air all sounds, all musical harmonies are waves; in the solid globe, all earthquakes are waves; in the ether light, electricity and heat are waves. It is waves that make the stars visible, and yet more mysterious oscillations picture for us on photographic plates marvelous nebulous objects. Lord Kelvin has been credited with the statement that the fluttering of a butterfly's wing sets up vibrations that shake the universe." (p.288)

I've searched for the original quote by Kelvin but have come up empty. The only references to it I can find on the Internet are in Warder and a mention in passing in Science of the New Thought (Erastus Whitford Hopkins, 1904). If anyone can find what statement of Kelvin's Serviss was referring to, please contact me, as this would add chaos theory to the multitude of scientific fields that Kelvin influenced in some way.

According to the Wikipedia article on the "butterfly effect", the connection of butterflies to the idea of sensitive dependence on initial conditions came from Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story "A Sound of Thunder". Granted it's Wikipedia, so it might as well say John Seigenthaler Sr. first came up with the idea, but if that's the accepted wisdom on the metaphor's origin, what shall we make of Kelvin's use of it half a century earlier? Time travel?

[UPDATE 2010-01-28: Looks like it was originally a mosquito, and Kelvin didn't recall saying it.]

Since I don't have Kelvin's original quote, I'll leave you instead with some entertaining figures from Hopkins' book above:

Read more...

In my previous post on the tragic fall of Emperor Norton I, I recounted how Norton had his rightful empire taken from him and perverted by what became the Bohemian Grove Cabal. Yesterday, travel site Roadside America posted a visitor tip for the grave of Emperor Norton. The included photo provides shocking new evidence of the Cabal's crimes, arrogantly left for all to see:

(Photo detail enhanced using advanced ZPi
Conspiracy-Zooming-and-Insetting technology.)

There's an owl statue next to his grave!

As you recall, the owl is the symbol/mascot of the Cabal, before an effigy of which they perform their secret, bon-fire-lit, robe-shrouded, possibly-human-sacrificey rites:

That an owl statue sits next to the grave of the man from whom the Cabal usurped an empire -- undoubtedly placed by the same agents of the Cabal who had him reinterred (ostensibly) at that cemetery in 1934 -- is more than a sick joke, it's a warning: "We've turned emperors into paupers! Don't cross us."

Moreover, it's also a sign that the Cabal is still watching. The statue almost certainly contains recording devices to document the visitation of loyal Nortonians who have not yet accepted the Emperor's removal from power and bowed before the Cabal's New World Order, used to target individuals for reeducation and/or immolation. Any pilgrims planning to visit the grave should take extra caution lest they find themselves the "guest of honor" at a Cremation of Care ritual. (Unlike Roadside America, we here at ZPi don't send our readers willy-nilly to their dooms.)

UPDATE: For those still unsure of the Cabal's reach:

Overhead view of the US Capitol Building.
Note the owl image formed by the streets.

Current usurper of Norton's legacy.

Monorailists have always claimed that their beloved technology is merely a panacea for public transportation needs, regardless of the constant spontaneous combustions and elephant suicides. Well, now the real agenda of the Monorailists has been revealed: Total Information Awareness through a Monorailular Panopticon!

THE MONORAILS ARE WATCHING!

Linceus GmbH is promoting technology that it calls "Sensors in Motion", which consists of an unmanned monorail drone armed with sensors and "countermeasures" designed to zip through cities at 50mph along an omni-present network of monorail tracks to keep citizens surveilled and in line:

Drive Technology

Linceus implements a "state-of-the-art" high-speed and all-weather application of contactless magnetic drive technology. This technology developed by SEW guarantees durability for many years of minimal maintenance.

The Linceus system comprises high-velocity mobile sensors and active measure packages driven along slim aluminum monorails. The advanced "contactless" technology used for the induced magnetic motorization system is unique and most reliable.

The induced magnetic motorization system of Linceus ensures high reliability and silent "frictionless" operation. It carries the required sensor and countermeasure payload

Command and Control Center

The Linceus system comprises an open architecture command & control software that enables full control and remote event management of an unlimited number of riders and payloads. It can also be integrated with higher-level command & control systems.

The system's command and control software enables the user to pre-program the rider's surveillance pattern as well as to auto-track detected moving targets. The system features shunting tracks for rapid launching of riders to sensitive areas.

Linceus is an open system that can be integrated with any C&C of the customer. Integration with other sensors, such as radar, EO, UAV, etc., is also possible. The system can handle GIS, video analysis and GPS. It offers the flexibility of tailor-made controlling of as many riders as required and different modes of operation.

According to Wired's Danger Room, the revealed countermeasures include "dazzling spotlights, high-decibel acoustics and other nonlethal means of warning the unwitting" as well as optional laser pointers and laser rangefinders. This last option will make it possible to use the system to "paint" subversives for liquidation from afar via smart-missiles:

While optimized for independent operations, the robotic patrols also work in support of ground patrols and anti-infiltration squads. And in cases of extreme threats to sensitive border areas or high-value installations, the system can be linked into external sensors and ground-, sea- or air-based shooters.

While they won't admit it, I think it's safe to assume that system's countermeasures includes an on-board psychotron, allowing it to not only observe, but to obligate behavior. Also, the choice of aluminum rails is no coincidence, as these will act as circumambient psychotronic deflector surfaces to better target mind-control transmissions at unbeanied citizens hiding in the city's nooks and crannies.

Much like with the Monorailists' work on the Puppy Mover and Monorail Cat, the sinister nature of these monorail spies is being memetically hidden using "cuteness". Who could possibly fear a drone that looks like a cartoonish smiling head riding on a cartoonish caterpillar? (Note how the drone bears an uncanny resemblance to "beloved" fast-food executive "Jack", whose smiling head can be seen on millions of car antennas. As every paranoid knows, those "antenna balls" are really RFID markers designed to help identify consumers who haven't yet bought into Jack in the Box, Inc's pro-Corporatist propaganda. Obviously Linceus GmbH has licensed JBX's memetic engineering technology to induce the same sort of voluntary compliance as exhibited by those who willingly place the markers on their cars.)

Monorail spies: winding their way through your neighborhood soon.

Linceus' first evaluation system will be deployed at the Ben-Gurion-Airport in Tel Aviv. Eventually all major cities will be completely enthreaded with monorail surveillance. Move to the wilderness before it's too late!

Recently installed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, shown
here weilding a portable psychotron "pistol" (target unknown).

The Rasputnik VI mind-control pistol: The psychotron core (A) is housed inside a containment tube (B) and is connected to the integrated engramputer and powersupply module (C) through a ring of back-scatter nubbins (D) to protect the user from self-inflicted brain-washing. The business end of the psychotron is capped with a removable psychotronic polarizing plate (E) which keeps the mind-control ray focused along a narrow path, allowing for single-brain targeting. The ruggedized design uses only passive cooling fins (F), thereby limiting moving parts. A unique feature of Russian portable psychotron technology is the perpendicular transceiver channel (G), which allows the pistol to deflectively relay inductively amplified satellite signals to targets hidden under aluminum roofs.

A formidable mind-control weapon in the hands of President Medvedev. Fortunately, Russian paranoids have developed effective countermeasures:

Natalya Polovko models her anti-psychotronic clothing.

UPDATE 2009-02-15: Ms. Polovko's website has gone missing! Hopefully Medvedev hasn't gotten to her with the new Rasputnik VII. Until she surfaces again, you can read an article by her (in Russian, but no pictures) at the Psychotronic Terrorism site (also in Russian, and worth exploring).

Weird Washington: Your Travel Guide to Washington's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, by Jefferson Davis, Al Eufrasio, Mark Moran, and Mark Sceurman.

Weird Washington was published this month by the people who created the Weird U.S. series, which includes other Weird books on various U.S. states. This, after Weird England, is their second book dealing with Weirdness outside of the U.S., and the first set in the Republic of Cascadia (they promise a Weird Oregon next year; no word on Weird B.C.)

As the subtitle suggests, the book is about legends, secrets, people, places, events, and things of the Cascadian prefecture of Washington that can all be classified as "weird" by conventional orthonoid reckoning. It's a hardcover coffee-table book with color photos and illustrations on nearly every page. Topics are broken up into short, distinct, browsing-friendly articles -- organized into chapters such as "Local Legends", "Bizarre Beasts", "Roadside Oddities", "Unexplained Phenomena", etc. -- written in a light yet informative style. It has an index. What more could you want?

Oh, yes... the actual articles. Given the book's magisterium, there are many well-trodden topics: they of course have sections on Sasquatch (and again it's from the cryptozoological viewpoint, not the Sasquatch viewpoint -- although there is a pro-Sasquatch story of a man saved from choking on candy by a Sasquatch), the first modern sightings of flying saucers above Maury Island and Mt. Rainer, Cascadian Birdmen, the Fremont Troll, Fremont in general, and a certain skyjacker that everyone should stop asking questions about.

Regardless of these unavoidable inclusions, there's still much that will be new to most people. Some highlights:

• Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard, author of a 1908 food-fad book titled Fasting for the Cure of Disease, opened the Wilderness Heights Sanitarium in Olalla, where she held her wealthy patients hostage as she slowly starved them to death and embezzled their money. (See the book Starvation Heights for more on this.)
• Washington (well, Cascadia, actually) was named Fu-Sang by Chinese explorers who discovered it circa 450 AD.
• Dead bodies dropped in the deep, cold, alkaline waters of Crescent Lake undergo a process of saponification whereby all their fat is turned into soap.
• A seemingly bottomless hole on Mel Waters' property in Ellensburg may contain a singularity linking our world to an alternate reality where the Nazis won WWII and Roosevelt dimes were minted three years before our history records!

Of particular interest to me was their full-page article on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (sandwiched between articles on flying jellyfish and a monstrous, dam-clogging sturgeon). It includes a rare photo of previously undocumented Tree Octopus behavior: luring squirrels with nuts. (They "link" to me in the text, so consider this review a link back.)

However, the Tree Octopus article does highlight one serious objection I have to the book (and others in the series that I've read): the writers, so fearful of any lawsuits from disgruntled ghost-hunters or murder-house buyers over incorrect information in their books, have taken to disclaiming everything they write. For instance, all their books carry a disclaimer that they are "intended as entertainment" and that the "authors and publisher make no representation as to [the stories'] factual accuracy".

This post-modernism-under-advice-of-counsel is taken to absurd lengths in their Tree Octopus article by actually floating the possibility that tree octopuses might not be real, thereby washing their hands of the whole thing should any impatient ecotourists be disappointed at not being able to find any of the elusive creatures right away! I say, throw caution to the wind and just tell readers straight up: if you don't see any tree octopuses, perhaps they just don't like you (or you aren't offering them something they want.)

That irritating quirk aside, the book is an enjoyable read, although a little heavy on the ghost stories and cemeteries for my taste.

Introducing my newest font, Clean Your Neighborhood. It comes from a WPA poster issued by the NYC Tenement House Dept. under Mayor LaGuardia. Apparently, during the 1930s people were just throwing cans, barrels, wooden boards, crumpled garbage bins, and shirts willy-nilly throughout the city alleyways, making a real mess. No wonder everyone was so depressed! LaGuardia put a stop to it by enlisting the unemployed to tidy the place up a bit. Depression solved!

(Of course, a side-effect of LaGuardia's clean-up effort was the removal of all the psychotronically shielding bits of tin from Tin Pan Alley, thus exposing New York's previously sheltered paranoid culture to the ravages of mind control, replacing depressive realism with psychotronically programmed "happiness".)

Also, for those who never read my "What's New" box on the front page, I noticed that I neglected to mention my last font on the blog, so, here it is: Slow Down Girls!

Apollo (a.k.a Tony Allison) offers the service of his
samurai sword to Jupiter against Satan's demons.

11 years and 11 days ago, around 11:11 a.m., the city of Seattle was held at bay for 11 hours by a lone man armed with nothing but determination and a samurai sword. His name was Tony Allison, although on that day he preferred to be called Apollo.

The morning was proceeding like any other in late 20th century Seattle: the streets were alive with the practiced hustle and bustle of Frappuccino-swilling, nouveau riche dotcommers and tourists mesmerized by the simple antics of fishmongers as the last dying strains of grunge wafted through the air. Little did they know that the bland tranquility of their orthonoiac lives was about to be slashed open by the God of Poetry and Truth, made manifest in a martial-arts-trained transient released a year previously from Western State Hospital.

According to a contemporary news report, an off-duty police officer was first alerted to a leather-jacketed and camo-pantsed man with a sword disturbing (presumably in the psychological sense) passers-by. The officer followed the man from Pike Place Market. At the corner of Second and Pike, the man took what the police report described as a "defensive stand" and refused to drop his sword. The officer called for back-up. So began the great Seattle Street Samurai Standoff of 1997.

Apollo -- for that was who he declared himself to be -- made no aggressive moves, apart from the occasional dramatic poses and cryptic pronouncements. The police, cautious of his martial prowess, chose not to provoke him. Instead they cordoned off the streets and commenced negotiations via bullhorn.

They asked him again to please put down the sword and surrender; he again refused. They offered him $50 for his sword; he ignored their bribe. They tempted him with a Big Mac; he held fast. They spoke fondly of his dead brother in hopes of changing his mind; he was unmoved. They tried reverse psychology on him, telling him Satan was preventing him from surrendering; he wasn't fooled by their lies. They shined bright lights at him; he wore shades. Growing desperate, nonleathal projectiles and pepper spray were tried; he repelled them through sheer willpower. It seemed nothing would stop lone Apollo from standing his ground on the sidewalk athwart the combined forces of the City.

The orthonoids of Seattle were not happy. Traffic was brought to a stand still and businesses were evacuated. Hundreds called 911 demanding action and offering advice on how to deal with this unexpected menace to civilization -- some suggested throwing a net over him, others shooting him with tranquilizer darts, and not-a-few using lethal force. Talk radio was apoplectic -- more so than usual. If Apollo was aware of the effect he was having on the psyche of Seattle, he showed no sign of concern. His concerns were beyond what the small minds of conformity could comprehend.

But the City would have its way. After nearly half a day unbudged from his sidewalk post, steadfast Apollo was finally brought down using a two-pronged tactic of cold water sprayed with firehoses and prolonged exposure to a large fan -- designed, after consultation with medical experts, to weaken his muscle control through hypothermia -- followed by a rush to pin his body with a 12-foot ladder and his sword arm with a pole. Even with these extreme measures he showed nigh-Rasputinesque levels of resilience: the high-pressure hoses were only able to knock him down temporarily and it took nearly three minutes to finally wrest the sword from his pinned hand.

In the end, no one was injured -- presumably since the demonic forces chose not to show themselves before Apollo's sword. Also, to the great relief of Seattleites, no Starbucks were harmed.

Assistant Police Chief Harv Ferguson had this to say after the standoff: "I've never seen anything like it in my 30 years. I don't want to make an icon out the guy, but I simply had to marvel at his ability to withstand all of that."

Although he was brought down, this was no real defeat for Apollo. He had made his lone defensive stand before all of Seattle, and Seattle, for a while at least, bowed to his will and grudgingly marveled at his iconic greatness. But what was Apollo's stand defending?

Among his pronouncements during the standoff Apollo mentioned having brothers in China and Russia. Could this have been a reference to the most memorable example of the Lone-Figure-Standing-Against-the-World archetype -- the Mercurial Tiananmen Square protester who stood down a line of Communist tanks? Or perhaps Bacchus Yeltsin astride a tank in defiance of a military coup? If only the SPD had a tank to complete Apollo's symbolism!

Tankless though his stand may have been, I believe Apollo, like his brothers before him, stood for the Individual in the face of insurmountable powers aligned against him. His stand was not just in self-defense -- that is, defense of the integrity and sovereignty of the Self against either dilution into the cloud of the Collective or subservience to the will of Another -- but defiance of social conformity, which unjustly demands that one shouldn't strike poses with a samurai sword in downtown Seattle, no matter how totally kick-ass that would be.

Even in his fall, Apollo had a defiant message for us: maybe the Individual can't win, but at least he'll go down brandishing his sword and looking cooler than the cowered tools of conformity could ever hope to look. Their jealousy shall be the Individual's ultimate victory!

Who was Tony Allison that day? Apollo, folk hero for the oppressed Individual, or just a crazy guy with a sword disrupting the mundane flow of society and scaring tourists? I choose the former. His stand has been mostly forgotten, and Tony's sword is presumably retired for good, but it may be no coincidence that this website -- my own defensive stand against the Forces of Mind Control, the Belgian Conspiracy, monorails, and tree octopus extinction -- was started later that same year.

So, for whatever inspiration he brought me, I offer this paean to Apollo, disruptor of the orthonoiac, wherever he may be.

UPDATE 2008-11-25: Video of Tony Allison's stand.

Back in 2005, I reported that monorailists were threatening to weave nanomonorails into our clothing. At the time these nanomonorails were constructed using nanobiotechnology adapted from Black Helicopter research. The Monorailists used ATP and kinesin, two biological molecules found in our cells, thus making a nanomonorail that was a sort of human/nanomonorail chimera -- a "manomonorail", if you will.

Nanomonorail stalled in middle of track -- just like a real monorail!

Now Monorailsts in Spain -- presumably following some sort of disagreement with the Black Helicopter nano­bio­tech­nicians -- have devised a new form of non-biological nano­monorail technology which they claim has the theoretical ability to move 100 million times faster than those using biological motor proteins.

Both the rail and the shuttle of their nanomonorail are built from carbon nanotubes, the car sliding over the rail like a sleeve. Movement comes from thermomechanical action instead of through a perversion of biology:

They attached each end of the nanotube track, about 300 nanometres long, to metal platforms, so that the tube stretched between them through empty space. Then they fixed a flake of gold to the shuttle tube, which was intended to hold molecular cargo.

When the researchers passed an electrical current through the bridging nanotube, which acts like a 'wire' connecting the metal plates, they found that some shuttle tubes moved towards the nearest plate. Others simply revolved at a fixed location.

"At first we thought it was the electrons that were moving the nanotube," says Bachtold. But the direction of motion didn't depend on the direction of the current.

Instead, the researchers concluded that the current was simply heating up the device, and that this was what was moving the shuttle. This mechanism "came as a surprise", says Bachtold.

Because heat is conducted out of the nanotube by the metal plates, the system is hottest in the middle and cooler at the ends. This means that the thermal shaking of the track tube is strongest in the middle -- which makes the sleeve tube move towards whichever end is nearer. It is a little like shaking the free end of a rope tied to a tree, with a hoop threaded onto the rope. The waves in the rope will usher the hoop towards the tree.

Fortunately for those dreading the day when nanomonorails bind the entire biosphere into a fine, homogeneous gray mesh, there's a major problem the Monorailists need to work out: their shuttle gets hot enough to destroy any cargo on board. Not surprising considering the same problem is too-often exhibited by macromonorails.