Hell's gate

As a diversion from less cheerful subjects like what is currently happening in politics in the United States, today we will consider: the Gates of Hell.

The interesting thing about the whole concept of hell is that it's connected to Christianity, and yet there's not much of a mention of it in the Bible.  The Old Testament version of the Bad Place, Sheol, was not really the traditional flaming inferno; it was more of a gray, dreary spot cut off from hope and light, sort of like Newark but with less traffic.  The concept of a fire-and-brimstone version of hell doesn't seem to come up until the New Testament, for example Matthew 10:28 and Mark 9:43, where we are introduced to such fun notions as "the fiery furnace" and "unquenchable fire" into which you get pitched if you break the Ten Commandments and commit the Seven Deadly Sins, unless you're also a deranged, doubly-impeached, multiply-indicted con man, in which case you get tens of thousands of self-proclaimed Christians supporting your re-election as president of the United States instead.

Wait, I said I was going to keep this post apolitical.  Oops.  My bad.

Because of the mention of fire, there's been a picture developed that hell is a hot place underground, which has of course connected it in some people's mind with volcanoes and other subterranean phenomena.  There are a variety of places on Earth that have been considered possible candidates for the gates to hell, three of which I describe below.

First, we have the Batagaika Crater in Siberia, which locals have nickname the "Hellmouth."  It's a pretty impressive feature, to be sure:

At its widest, it's a kilometer across and 87 meters deep, and is getting bigger. The crater has nothing to do with hell, though, unless you're talking about the manmade hell we're creating by ignoring the human causes of climate change; it's something geologists call a megaslump, when removal of groundwater and thawing of permafrost cause massive subsidence.  So it's pretty awful, but doesn't have much to do with the punishment of the damned.

A second candidate is the Necromanteion of Baiae, a tunnel system near the city of Naples which apparently hosted a magical oracle who was supposed to be able to communicate with the spirits of the dead.  She would enter the tunnel, breath the magical vapors, and come back and tell the locals what the dead had to say for themselves, which mostly was confusing, garbled nonsense, that the oracle's handlers then got to interpret whatever way they wanted.

What the dead probably should have told the oracle was "it's a stupid idea to breathe magical vapors in an area of high volcanic activity," because the gases coming out of the tunnel are high in sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, both of which are quite toxic, and explain her confusion without any magical explanation needed.  Baiae is near the Campi Flegrei, or burning fields, an area of fumaroles and boiling mud pits that illustrate that Mount Vesuvius didn't exhaust its capacity for violence when it destroyed Pompeii in 79 C. E.

Last, we have Darvaza, in the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan.  Like Batagaika, Darvaza is due to the actions of people -- in this case, a natural gas drilling facility that went very, very wrong.  At some time in the 1960s -- given that we're talking about the Soviets, here, there's no certain information about precisely what happened when -- the ground collapsed underneath a gas-drilling rig, and during the collapse the methane seeping from the walls of the crater ignited.  People expected that it'd burn itself out quickly.

It didn't.

Darvaza is still burning today, and has become a tourist attraction for travelers who don't mind the fact that (1) it reeks of sulfur, (2) if you stay there long enough, the fumes will make you violently ill, and (3) there are no amenities for miles around.  But if you're an adventurous sort, it's certainly something you won't see anywhere else on Earth.

So that's a trio of candidates for being the doorway to hell. If none of these float your boat, however, there are actually dozens of others.

And that's not even counting Newark.

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Free speech vs. the truth

There are times when my uncompromising support of the right to free speech runs head-first into my uncompromising commitment to the truth.

The topic comes up because once a week, I volunteer as a book sorter for the Tompkins County (Ithaca, New York) Friends of the Library Used Book Sale.  This event, which occurs twice a year (May and October), is one of the biggest used book sales in the United States; we sort, shelve, and sell around a half a million used books yearly.

Besides my desire to help the very worthwhile cause of supporting our local library system, I also volunteer for a purely selfish reason; if I put in thirty hours, I get to go to the volunteers' presale and have first crack at the books.  The fall presale is coming up on October 1, and I still haven't gotten through all the books I bought at the spring sale.  

This fact, of course, won't slow me down a bit.

The problem with being a sorter, though, is that sometimes we have to sort (and therefore offer for sale) books that are kind of... out there.  And I don't mean weird.  Weird is fine.  This week, for example, I put in the "Physical Sciences" section a three-volume hardcover set called The Biochemistry of Collagen.  I mean, I know collagen is important, but three volumes' worth?  (Other good examples I saw recently are Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself, The Official Spam Recipe Book, and Successful Muskrat Farming.)

So bizarre isn't problematic.  What bothers me is how to handle books that are, to put not too fine a point on it, bullshit.  For example, what to do with the book I ended up with this week -- Hyemeyohsts Storm's infamous Seven Arrows.  Storm claimed to be Cheyenne, but actually is of German ancestry.  His book is supposedly about Cheyenne history and tribal beliefs, but is a mishmash of maybe five percent facts and the other ninety-five percent made-up gobbledygook.  When his book came out, naturally someone asked the Cheyenne Tribal Authority about him, and they said they'd never heard of him -- and it turned out that Storm (his actual name is Arthur Charles) had presented a falsified tribal enrollment to his publisher to convince them he actually is Native.  As far as his book, the Cheyenne consider it "blasphemous, exploitative, disrespectful, stereotypical, and racist."

So, where do I sort Seven Arrows?  Anthropology?  It isn't.  Religion?  Maybe what Storm wrote reflects his own religious beliefs; and given the popularity of the book with New Age types, evidently he's convinced quite a few folks to join in.  Fiction?  Much like Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan books, he didn't publish it as fiction.  Both men (well, for Castaneda, until his death in 1998) acted as if what they'd written was nothing more than the literal truth, which makes the books the absolute worst sort of cultural appropriation -- attractive lies dressed up as a real, if esoteric, indigenous belief system.

And there are loads of people who do think it's all factual.  Apparently both Storm's book and Castaneda's multiple volumes are still used as teaching texts in college anthropology and ethnology courses, which I find absolutely appalling given how thoroughly both authors have been debunked.

Anyhow, when the actual book was in my hands, I was really troubled about what to do with it.  I'm not allowed to do what I wanted, which was to drop it in the trash where it belongs.  I eventually decided to put it in "Religion" because it seemed the closest, but honestly, I felt guilty even doing that.  I don't want anyone reading this book and having even the slightest inclination to believe it.

What about Laurel Rose Willson's book Satan's Underground, supposedly a true account about her being subjected to ritual abuse as a child in a Satanic cult, but later proven to be a complete fabrication?  (Willson herself later switched gears and wrote a different book, under an assumed name, claiming -- also falsely -- that she was a Holocaust survivor.)  Or The Third Eye by T. Lobsang Rampa (actual name: Cyril Henry Hoskin) which purported to be the real experiences of someone growing up in a Tibetan monastery -- when the real Rampa/Hoskin was actually an unemployed plumber from Plympton, England who had never been to Tibet in his life?

What about books on homeopathy, claiming you can treat your illnesses using "remedies" that have been diluted past Avogadro's Limit?  Or ones claiming you can fix your health if you consume lots of vinegar -- or only foods that are alkaline?  (Presumably not at the same time.)  Or pretty much anything by Joseph Mercola, Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, or Dr. Oz?

And that's not even getting into the political stuff.

I know that the principle of caveat emptor applies here; if people are ignorant or self-deluded enough to believe this nonsense, especially given how much information there is online debunking it, then they deserve to be bamboozled.  As P. T. Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute," and the unspoken corollary was that suckers deserve everything they get.  And the principle of free speech should also apply, right?

But.

I don't want to be part of it, you know?  I don't want people reading Seven Arrows and the Don Juan books and Satan's Underground, at least not without knowing what the real story is.  (I actually own the first four Don Juan books -- but next to them on the bookshelf are Richard de Mille's The Don Juan Papers and Castaneda's Journey, the most comprehensive takedown of Castaneda's fraud I've seen.)

But at the same time, how is surreptitiously throwing them in the trash when they cross my path at the book sale any different from the book bans and book burnings I've so often railed against?

Gah.  Ethical questions like this are beyond me.  Where's Chidi Anagonye when you need him?

So far, I've been a Good Guy and haven't thrown away a book because I think it's bullshit.  I won't say I haven't been tempted, but as of right now I've sided with free speech and P. T. Barnum, as well as the Friends of the Library rules for volunteers.  I won't say it hasn't been without some pangs to my moral sensibilities, though.

Anyhow, those are the ethical conundrums faced by a book sorter.  Fortunately, most of the books I handle are unproblematic.  Even if The Official Spam Recipe Book makes me gag a little, I have a clear conscience about putting it in "Cookbooks."

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The Earth's dance partner

Ever heard of 3753 Cruithne?

I hadn't, which is surprising considering my obsession with astronomy.  It's an asteroid which is in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Earth -- in simpler terms, it is co-orbital.  It's sometimes been called "Earth's second moon," which is inaccurate because it doesn't orbit the Earth; in fact, its actual orbit is highly elliptical.  At its perigee, 3753 Cruithne is near the orbit of Mercury, and is outside the orbit of Mars at its apogee.

[Nota bene: the name "Cruithne" is from Gaelic, and because of the strange letter-to-phoneme correspondence in the Gaelic language, is pronounced "kroo-in-ya."  It's the name of an obscure king of the ancient Picts; its discoverer, astronomer Duncan Waldron, is Scottish, which probably explains the choice.]

Orbital resonance is one restricted solution to the more general three-body problem, which has yet to be solved by physicists.  The orbital interactions between two objects is thoroughly understood; add a third, and suddenly the math kind of blows up in your face.  You can run computer simulations starting with three objects of specific masses and velocities and see what happens, but a general set of equations governing any three (or more) body system has proven to be impossibly complex.  It's known that a few starting points generate stable orbits (resonance being one of those), and lots more of them prove unstable and eventually result in the objects colliding or flying apart, but trying to come up with the overarching mathematical scheme is currently out of reach.

3753 Cruithne's orbit, at least from our vantage point here on Earth, is a strange one.  If you were out in space, looking down on the Solar System, it wouldn't seem odd; an ellipse, tilted at a little less than twenty degrees away from the orbital plane of Earth:

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Derivative work: User:Jecowa, Orbits of Cruithne and Earth, CC BY-SA 3.0]

But because of the weird perspective of being in a non-inertial (accelerated) reference frame, what we see on Earth is quite different.  As we watch 3753 Cruithne, it appears to be traveling in a bean-shaped orbit, first approaching us and then backing away as if we'd said something inappropriate:

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons User:Jecowa, Horseshoe orbit of Cruithne from the perspective of Earth, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Makes me realize how hard it is to come up with any reasonable model of moving objects in non-inertial reference frames.  Looking at 3753 Cruithne's strange wanderings almost leaves me sympathetic with Ptolemy and his nested epicycles.  (Isaac Newton, who understood the problem better than just about anyone else, wasn't nearly so forgiving, and called Ptolemy "an outrageous fraud.")

Its orbit classifies it as an Aten asteroid, a group of asteroids whose orbits cross that of the Earth.  For those of you who are of an apocalyptic bent, however, no need to lose sleep over 3753 Cruithne; its orbital tilt makes it no threat.  Its position has been run forward by computer models for thousands of years, and it has a zero chance of striking Earth.

That's assuming the orbital resonance remains stable, of course, and there's no guarantee it will.  There are other players in this gravitational game of pinball besides the Earth and the Sun; Venus and Mercury also come close to 3753 Cruithne on occasion, and a near pass could give the asteroid enough of a gravitational tug to destroy the resonance and destabilize the orbit.  The great likelihood if this happens, though, is it falling into the Sun or being flung out of the Solar System entirely; the chance of some gravitational slingshot effect propelling it into the Earth is about as close to zero as you can calculate.

So that's today's astronomical oddity that I, at least, had never heard of.  An asteroid in an ongoing celestial dance with the Earth.  Just goes to show that to find strange new stuff out in space, you don't need to peer out at the far reaches of the universe -- there's enough right here near home to keep the astronomers busy for a long while.

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Out of your mind

One of the most striking pieces from neuroscientist David Eagleman's brilliant TED Talk "Can We Create New Senses for Humans?" centers around what is really happening when we experience something.

Regardless what it feels like, all that's going on -- the internal reality, as it were -- are some fairly weak voltage changes bouncing around in the brain.  The brain is locked inside the skull, and on its own is blind and deaf.  It needs the sense organs (Eagleman calls them our "peripherals") to send electrical signals in via input nerves to the right places in the brain, and that stimulates changes in the voltage in those areas.

That's it.  Everything you've ever experienced -- good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant -- boils down to that.  And if something messes around with any step in that process, that altered electrical state in the brain becomes the basis of what you see, hear, feel, and think.  If the wiring is faulty (thought by some researchers to be the cause of the peculiar disorder synesthesia), if there's a problem with the levels of neurotransmitters, the chemicals that either pass signals along or else block them (probably involved in schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, among others), or if you've taken drugs that change the electrical activity of the brain -- that becomes your reality.

I was reminded of this sobering observation when I read an article sent to me my a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia.  Entitled, "Have Scientists Found the Source of Out-of-Body Experiences?", it describes research into a part of the cerebrum called the anterior precuneus, which appears to be involved in our sensations of conscious awareness.  Neuroscientist Josef Parvizi of Stanford University was working with epilepsy patients who were experiencing drug-resistant seizures, and found that when the anterior precuneus was electrically stimulated (the patients already had electrodes implanted in their brains to try to reduce the frequency and severity of their seizures), they had sensations of floating, and of dissociation and disorientation.

"All of them reported something weird happening to their sense of physical self," Parvizi said in an interview in Scope, Stanford Medicine’s blog.  "In fact, three of them reported a clear sense of depersonalization, similar to taking psychedelics."

Luigi Schiavonetti, The Soul Leaving the Body (1808) [Image is in the Public Domain]

What it made me wonder is if the anterior precuneus might be involved in other types of dissociation.  It's one thing when you artificially trigger a part of the brain to malfunction (or at least, alter its function) using electrodes or chemicals; but what about when it just kind of... happens?  I know I've had this experience while listening to music.  When I was about twelve, my grandma gave me a little portable radio, and I listened to it constantly.  One evening, I happened upon a radio station playing classical music, and just as I tuned in, I heard the wild, joyous trumpets and violins of the overture to J. S. Bach's Magnificat in D.

Then the chorus came in.

Three minutes later, I remembered where (and who) I was.  My face was wet with tears.  I don't know where I'd been during that time, but it wasn't in my attic bedroom in my grandma's house, with its creaky wood-plank floors and pervasive smell of dust and old books.

It was such a powerful and overwhelming event in my life that I wrote it into one of my novels, The Hand of the Hunter -- with setting and character changes, of course -- but to this day when someone says they had a "spiritual experience," this is what I think of.  It's happened to me more than once since then, always associated with music (the first hearings of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Stravinsky's Firebird, Debussy's The Drowned Cathedral, Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, and Mozart's Requiem had similar effects on me), but that first encounter was by far the most striking.

I wonder if the mental and physical sensations that accompanied it had something to do with the anterior precuneus?  And if, by extension, it might be the source of all such transcendent experiences?

If so, what possible purpose could this serve?

Figuring that out is considerably above my pay grade, but considering the similarities -- a loss of awareness of where your body is, dissociation, the feeling of a "time slip" -- it did bring the question up.

In any case, finding a part of the brain that, when stimulated, it makes you lose connection to the outside world is pretty staggering.  I recall one of my mentors Cornell University Professor Emeritus Rita Calvo (of the Department of Human Genetics) saying that if she were going into biology today, she'd choose neuroscience instead of genetics.  "With respect to the brain, we're right now where we were with the gene a hundred years ago.  We have an idea of some of the 'wheres' and 'hows,' but little understanding of the mechanisms behind them.  Think of what was on the horizon for geneticists in 1923 -- that's what the neuroscientists have to look forward to."

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PsychicGPT

Well... we should have seen this coming.  Or at least, they should have.

According to a recent report, visits to psychics are way down because people are paying to use online "psychic chatbots" to make predictions about their future.

Because the AI fortunetellers use "sophisticated algorithms and machine-learning techniques... and are unaffected by human emotions and preconceptions," there's been a sudden surge of the worried and/or lovelorn turning to what amounts to ClairvoyantGPT.

"In the digital age the convergence of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge technology has given rise to new possibilities," writes Jerry Lawton.  "One such innovation is AI Tarot reading where the age-old practice of Tarot cards meets the power of artificial intelligence...  Through natural language processing and data analysis AI algorithms aim to mimic the intuition and insight traditionally associated with human Tarot readers.  This fusion of technology and divination opens up new possibilities for individuals seeking guidance and self-reflection.  AI Tarot reading brings the wisdom of Tarot cards to your fingertips anytime and anywhere.  With just a few clicks you can access Tarot readings from the comfort of your own home or even on the go.  Digital platforms and mobile applications make it easy for individuals to receive instant guidance and insights eliminating the need for in-person consultations.  AI algorithms follow a set of predefined rules and principles providing objective interpretations of Tarot cards.  These algorithms analyze vast amounts of data, taking into account various factors and symbolism associated with each card.  By eliminating subjective biases AI Tarot readings offer consistent and reliable insights that remain unaffected by human emotions or preconceptions."

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Well, that all sounds pretty amazing, so I had to try it out.

I was restricted in my choices given that I am not going to give some random fortunetelling website my name and email address (this eliminated about half of them) and I was damn sure not going to pay for it (eliminating most of the other half).  I finally settled on EvaTarot.net, the home of Eva Delattre, "tarologist," which met my criteria of being free and not condemning me to a lifetime of getting spam emails from psychics.

Anyhow, after doing the "pick a card, any card" thing, here's what it told me about my future.  I've abbreviated it somewhat, because it was kind of long, but otherwise, it's verbatim.

The cards show that you are now in a period favorable to personal development.  This idea of getting better is highlighted by the cards you have selected which show that at work, and in your personal projects, you are adopting a new attitude and a new way of looking at things.  Nowadays you tend to think more about the consequences of your acts; there is no question of doing things at random, and making the same mistakes as in the past.  This new dynamic opens many doors that go beyond your personal projects.

That's good to hear.  I do feel that repeating mistakes from the past is a bad idea, which is why I have a lifelong commitment to making all new and different mistakes.

A proposal will be made that will surprise you for two reasons.  First because of the person who will do it: you didn't expect that from her.  Then by the proposal itself, which will be just for you and which will be totally unexpected.  It will make you very happy, and you will be overwhelmed to be the subject of this proposal.  "The innocent will have their hands full", as they say!  Innocent because you were not expecting this. Hands full because it will fill you with joy.

Then it's up to you to think about the consequences of this request: to accept? to refuse?  It's up to you.  Whatever happens, you'll have to give an answer.  Take the time to think, because the answer you give will engage you for months in a pattern that you will not be able to get out of easily.

Huh.  If the proposal is to turn my upcoming book release into a blockbuster movie, I'm all for it.  But the decision-making part worries me a tad.  It's never been my forte.  In fact, I've often wondered if I have some Elvish blood, given Tolkien's quip, "Go not to the Elves for advice, for they will say both yes and no."

You need calm and tranquility at the moment.  You have been tried by long-lasting problems that never seem to get better, it plays on your morale and your daily life goes by so quickly you never seem to get a grip on it.  You must have patience, create a bit of distance from a system that is going too quickly for you, and get some perspective on your situation.  The card shows a character whose head is buried in the present, trapped by the rhythm of their life, unable to escape.

Well, once again, patience has never been one of my strengths.  So this is accurate enough with regards to my personality, but at the same time I'm struck by how generally unhelpful it is.  "You need to be more patient, so develop some patience!  Now!" doesn't seem like a very good way to approach the problem.

Not, honestly, that I have any better ideas.  Unsurprising, I suppose, given that "my head is buried in the present."

What stands out about all this is how generic my reading is.  That's how it works, of course; you may remember James Randi's famous demonstration of that principle in a high school classroom, where students were told that a detailed horoscope had been drawn up for them using their birthdates, and they were asked to rate how accurate it seemed for themselves personally on a scale of zero to ten.  Just about everyone rated it above seven, and there were loads of nines and tens.

Then they were asked to trade horoscopes with the person next to them... and that's when they found out they were all given the exactly same horoscope.

We're very good at reading ourselves into things, especially when we've been told that whatever it is has been created Especially For Us.  Add to that a nice dollop of confirmation bias, and you've got the recipe for belief.

Of course, maybe my overall dubious response was because I chose the no-strings-attached El Cheapo psychic reading.  You get what you pay for, or (in this case) didn't pay for.

In any case, I suppose it was just a matter of time that the AI chatbot thing got hybridized with psychic readings.  What I wonder is what's going to happen when the AI starts to "hallucinate" -- the phenomenon where AI interfaces have slipped from giving more-or-less correct answers to just making shit up.  You pay your money, and instead of a real psychic reading, all you get is some AI yammering random nonsense at you.

That, of course, brings up the question of how you could tell the difference.

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Magnetic nonsense

Loony people are hardly a new invention.  Any claims that "people are crazier now than they used to be" generally springs from one of two things, the first of which is a bad memory.

The other, though, is more interesting, as well as more troubling.  In the past, when Great-Aunt Ethel started babbling in public about being visited at night by a sexy alien who wanted to take her up to his spaceship and bring her back to Zeta Reticuli to be his immortal love slave, we had the option of saying, "That's wonderful, auntie, but let's go inside and get you a nice cup of tea and watch The Beverly Hillbillies, okay?  Wouldn't that be fun?"

Now, the Great-Aunt Ethels of the world have computers with internet access, where they can connect with all the other Great-Aunt Ethels.  And influence people who are already on the borderline, so as to create the next generation of Ethels.  And because a lot of social media sites now allow you to monetize your content, they're able to make tons of money off it, extending their reach even further.

We're in a world where the Ethels have just as great a capacity for being heard as the scientists do.

And this brings us to Sherri Tenpenny.

Tenpenny is an anti-vaxx activist who was identified by the Center for Countering Digital Hate as one of the "Disinformation Dozen" -- the twelve people who, put together, are responsible for 65% of the vaccine misinformation out there online.  (Other shining lights on this list are Joseph Mercola, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Christiane Northrup.)  Tenpenny, though, brings things to a whole different level, way beyond the usual "vaccines cause autism" nonsense.  Here's one example:

The stated goal is to depopulate the planet and the ones that are left, either make them chronically sick or turn them into transhumanist cyborgs that can be manipulated externally by 5G, by magnets, by all sorts of things.  I got dragged through the mud by the mainstream media when I said that in May of last year in front of the House Committee in Columbus, [Ohio].  Well, guess what?  It’s all true.

The whole issue of quantum entanglement and what the shots do in terms of the frequencies and the electronic frequencies that come inside of your body and hook you up to the "Internet of Things," the quantum entanglement that happens immediately after you’re injected.  You get hooked up to what they’re trying to develop.  It’s called the hive mind, and they want all of us there as a node and as an electronic avatar that is an exact replica of us except it’s an electronic replica, it’s not our God-given body that we were born with.  And all of that will be running through the metaverse that they’re talking about.  All of these things are real...  All of them.  And it’s happening right now.  It’s not some science fiction thing happening out in the future; it’s happening right now in real time.

Sure it is, Great-Aunt Sherri.  Here, have a nice cup of tea.

The trouble is, Tenpenny and others like her are getting rich off this stuff.  Some social media sites -- notably Facebook and YouTube -- have taken steps to stop her from spreading her insane lies, but even so, her message is still getting out there.  Business management information provider Dun & Bradstreet reported that her clinic, the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, has an average annual sales total of a bit over four million dollars.

And that's despite the fact that the State Medical Board of Ohio recently revoked her medical license.

What gets me is that nothing she says, however ridiculous, seems to diminish her popularity.  In June of 2021 she stated that she had "spent over ten thousand hours studying the origins and effects of COVID since the pandemic began," despite the fact that at that point only eleven thousand hours had passed since the pandemic was declared.  She also claimed that the vaccine turns you into a human magnet:

I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the internet of people who have had these shots and now they’re magnetized.  They can put a key on their forehead and it sticks…  There have been people who have long suspected there’s an interface, yet to be defined, an interface between what’s being injected in these shots and all of the 5G towers.

Well, I can state definitively that based upon an experiment I just ran with my car keys, this is incorrect. 

And this is considering that I've now had four COVID shots (the original two plus two boosters), and have been vaccinated against all the usual childhood diseases, as well as typhoid, yellow fever, shingles, hepatitis A and B, and a yearly flu shot since (if memory serves) 1995.  Despite all this, as the above highly scientific photograph shows, I am not even a tiny bit magnetic.

I have also not been turned into an electronic avatar or a transhumanist cyborg, which I honestly feel a little disappointed about, because that sounds badass.

Given the fact of the connectivity we have now for information of all sorts, we no longer have the option of hustling Sherri Tenpenny back into the house and getting her settled in the recliner in front of The Beverly Hillbillies.  The best thing we can do is to shine as bright a light as possible on her nonsense.  We can't let her go unchallenged, especially on such subjects as vaccination, where peoples' health and lives are at risk.

It'd be one thing if she was talking about sexy aliens from Zeta Reticuli.  She's not.  Her rhetoric is, literally, killing people.

We're not going to be able to stop her from shouting.  The important thing is that the sane people, the ones who actually know what they're talking about shout back -- louder.

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Inner space

Donald Rumsfeld famously said, "There are known knowns.  These are things we know that we know.  There are known unknowns.  That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know.  But there are also unknown unknowns.  There are things we don't know we don't know."

At the time, much fun was made of his choice of words.  But although I wouldn't choose this as an exemplar of clarity, I have to admit the point he was making is valid enough.  Sometimes discovery starts with determining exactly what it is we don't yet know, with sketching out what astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (more eloquently) called "the perimeter of our ignorance."

This is the point of the Unknome Project, which is an effort to take our own genome and figure out what parts of it are, at present, unstudied and unexplained.  Cellular biologist Seth Munro and his colleagues at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, have developed a catalogue of thirteen thousand gene families found in humans (or other mammals that have been sequenced), coding for over two million proteins, and assigned each a "knownness score" -- a number describing to what extent the function of each is understood.  And three thousand of the families -- a little less than a quarter of them -- have a knownness score of zero.

That's a lot of genes that were (at least before Munro et al.) unknown unknowns.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Christoph Bock, Max Planck Institute for Informatics, DNA methylation, CC BY-SA 3.0]

What's even cooler is that the group is working to chip away at this bit of the perimeter of our ignorance, and to learn something about the mysteries of our own genetic inner space.  They found 260 genes with low knownness scores that are also present in fruit flies -- a much easier species to study -- and used a technique to suppress the expression of those genes.

Astonishingly, reducing the expression of sixty of these hitherto-unknown genes killed the flies outright.  Dampening others inhibited such important functions as reproduction, growth, mobility, and resistance to stress.

If these poorly-studied genes have analogous effects in humans -- and it's suspected that they do, given that they were evolutionarily conserved since the last common ancestor of humans and fruit flies, something like a half a billion years ago -- that's a lot of critical parts of our genome we don't yet understand.

What it got me wondering is how many of these are involved in diseases for which we haven't yet determined the causes.  There are so many disorders -- like, unfortunately, most mental illnesses -- for which the treatments are erratic at best, in part because we don't know for sure what the underlying origin of the condition is.  In my own case, I know for sure that depression and anxiety run in both sides of my family -- my mother and maternal grandmother both suffered from major depression, and a paternal great-grandmother committed suicide after (according to the newspaper article that reported it) "becoming mentally unbalanced by the illness of her husband."  Part of the problem with these sorts of things is, of course, that it's hard to tease apart the genetic from the environmental factors.  Growing up with mental illness in the family certainly doesn't make for an easy childhood; as my wise grandmother once said, "Hurt people hurt people" -- something that was certainly true enough within her own family.

It's fantastic that Munro and his colleagues are working to try and elucidate the functions of these mysterious genes, and I hope that perhaps some of them might turn out to be good targets for medications to alleviate conditions that have heretofore been resistant to treatment.  Certainly, anything we can do to reduce the perimeter of our own ignorance -- to eliminate some of those unknown unknowns -- is a good thing.

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