The Chucksphere

Here’s a list of Mayday Mystery connected crap I’ve run accross lately.
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers:
Dick, Philip K. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. VALIS and Later Novels. Pgs 615-819. New York: Literary Classics of the United Sates, Inc, 2009. pg 731.

Fourier series and hybrid images:
“That’s not different wavelengths of light; that’s different wavelengths of the variation across the image. And it could be done fairly easily by anyone with knowledge of Fourier series and access to decent image manipulation software. But I think the images to be merged would have to be fairly similar to each other: Converting one block of text to another block of text is probably outside the range of possibility.” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=419079)

Barthes: “Roland Barthes wrote a book in called ‘S/Z’ in which he put forward multiple readings of one short story. Later he published ‘The Pleasure of the Text’ – I think the title is telling.” (http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/gwy4e/gary_paulsen_on_what_the_author_thinks_versus/)

Algae, light, mice, mind control (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/mf_optigenetics/all/1) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88TVQZUfYGw)

Similar: (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091015123552.htm) (http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/26/harvard-controls-the-minds-of-worms-with-lasers-video/)

Optogenetics and cyborgs (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/mf_optigenetics/3/)

Cracked article (http://www.cracked.com/article_19191_7-bizarre-advances-in-animal-cyborg-technology.html)

Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking With Einstein. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.
“And crucially, the more you know, the easier it is to know more. Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows, the more it catches.” (pg 209)
“Thomas Bradwardine…described a means of memoria sillabarum, or ‘memory by syllables,’ which could be used to memorize words that were hard to visualize. Bradwardine’s system involved breaking the word into its constituant syllables and then creating an image for each syllable based on another word that begins with that syllable…In order to memorize a word by sound, its meaning has to be completely dismissed.” (pgs 131-2)

“Classified data has been digitally encoded since before computers were invented. Spies have used book ciphers for centuries to send numeric correspondence that can only be read when paired with the proper text. Bibles make good code books because of the varience between printed editions and the numbering of chapter and verse.” (Burn Notice, Season 4, episode 9. “Center of the Storm”) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_cipher)

“‘Amour peut moult, argent peut tot’ (love may do much, but money more). These are some of the sayings by which peasants characterized marriage in sixteenth-century France.” (Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. pg 1)

Just kidding. There is no hope here. The demands of college have pretty much determined that the most content I’ll be able to produce for any of the Chucksphere projects is the occasional emo rant or an extremely belated May Day Mystery post (I’m still working on December’s). However, I spruced up the blog by putting it on the front page, then spruced it up again by changing the pallete to something not retarded. The content, though, is still up to its usual level “inspiration.” Let’s take a look at how the Projects faired this year:

Chuck’s World O’ Wargames: LOL. Why do I still have this?

Small Island Nation: Moved to on-site Wiki, which was spam-botted into oblivion. No movement made since August.

The Wildcat Code: Hard to keep up with, due to the demands of college. Still haven’t gotten the December ad finished.

One bright spot: I now have a forum where I can voice my foreign policy opinions. I wrote a peice for the Roosevelt Institutue which made it to the front page, and there are many more to come.

I while back, I started work on a comprehensive May Day Mystery Timeline. It should be more than done by now, but various things got in the way, and the project grew in scope. As I combed through my notes to find my source material, I realized that my notes documents need some serious revision. That has made the project triple in size, and so take much longer to get through. I project that the project will be finished by the end of the month, but take that with a grain of salt.

In the interim, I’m going to post the addendum to the current note-set fairly soon.

[EDIT 13-September-2009 12:36am -- I uploaded the new notes documents to the index, and I submitted the following clues which can be found on the Contributions page.]

Letter [105]

The bottle cap ties into an ad from 2001.

“In Binary congruence with 3/8/89, Chemnitz has provided a zabra…for the initial transfer.” – ADW 17-January-2001

As Jessica Augustsson notes, Zabra could be a misspelling of “sabra,” which is both a type of boat or a Jew born in Palestine. In the context of the ad, it could either mean the furnishing of a small boat to transfer something that the Arbella is unable to, or the provision of a bottle of Sabra Chocolate Orange Liqueur as part of a transfer.

The question at the heart of this is: “Is this cap a clue to deciphering 17-January-2001, is it supposed to draw your interest back to that ad for some reason, or is the Orphanage just messing with you?”

Freaks 214

The “cancel” he is talking about is the cross-shaped marker-lines on this envelope (http://www.maydaymystery.org/mayday/offsite/delivery05202009/envelope.jpg) from ~20-May-2009 (the one with the bottlecap in it). While the Orphanage would point this out because it follows the cross shape they made with the stamps, it was probably the result of the cancellation machine being broken or something of that nature. Or, they could have a man on the inside at the Post Office.

Freaks 215

This email to you references a group called the Zion Rangers “walking through walls.” This could be a reference to ADW 1-May-2006, which includes a refernce to the book “Walking Through Walls: A Presentation of Tibetan Meditation” by Anne Carolyn Klein.

1-May-2009

To Anne,

I had the same reaction to that map that you did. However, I went to elementary school in Michigan, so I think the U.S. Map pattern must be fairly widespread, at least enough so that a cold-identification of the particular school in question will be all but impossible.

I finally got around to submitting my clues for May Day 2009. They go as follows:

Channel-rhodopsins are proteins that serve as photoreceptors. In experiments conducted on zebra-fish, it has been found that manipulation of zebra-fish neurons with ChR2 can enable researchers to manipulate zebra-fish behavior through the application of “brief pulses of blue light.” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18682213)

4-ethylguaiacol is a compound formed during alcoholic fermentation that can give a “bacon” flavor to wines. Presence of 4-ethylguaiacol in wine generally indicates that the batch has spoiled.

Rosumovi Univerzalni Roboti are Rossum’s Universal Robots, from a play by the same name by Karel Capek. His play represented the first appearance of the concept of “robot” in English. However, the robots in the story were not mechanical, but biological.

When these clues are taken together with these lines: “the first field tests…have demonstrated…that Pigs guzzling vin rouge of any grade, respond to the empirical exemplars. Their “will”—if they possessed such—is statistically immaterial when pitted against the repetitive imbibition coupled with THE ORPHANAGE’s imaginal archetypes”; suggest that the Orphanage are drugging the Pigs (the police?) and planning to use them to further their own ends.

The horizontal music is Azmon CM, alluded to in the bottom-right quadrant. That tune is used in the song UMH 057 “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” by Charles Wesley, who said that every man should sing it on the anniversary of his conversion (http://biographies.texasfasola.org/charleswesley.html). Sheet music here: (http://www.strictbaptist.com/YOUNG%20PEOPLE%27S%20HYMNAL/PDF/5%20Azmon.pdf).

The vertical music is the hymn UMH 110 “A Mighty Fortress is Our God (Ein Feste Burg),” written by Martin Luther, whose meter is 87.87.66.667 (also int he lower-right quadrant). Music here: (http://www.hymnsite.com/pdf/110piano.pdf).

The photo of the child playing over the map of the U.S. looks very very similar to the black-top at the elementary school I went to so long ago. I’m not sure it would be possible to get that perspective at at the school, as there is nothing very high at that point. Also, common sense would dictate that there is no way in hell that is my old elementary school. Right?

Clue also posted at the Wildcat Code.

As I may have mentioned before, the older version of WordPress I have installed on this server is playing havok with the new version I installed to be my new blog. The only sensible solution was to delete the old blog, but I didn’t want to lose the accumulated pellets of wisdom that I occasionally dropped there*. So, over the course of many months (from the launching of this blog until a few weeks ago) I converted not only Chuck-ese, but every blog I have ever maintained, into static HTML and put it all in one place: The Chucksphere Blog Archive. Launch was delayed because I was too lazy to figure out a simple bug stemming from the fact that the server flips out over differing capitalizations.

*As my good friend Steven said at the time: “Really, what is there to lose?” This is why he is no longer in the will.

For convenience’s sake, I have also copied my gaming articles to this page in Chuck’s World O’ Wargames and all of my May Day Mystery news to the Updates page at The Wildcat Code.

Yes, I know this is a good ways after 1-May, but I felt it appropriate to write an entry about it anyway. I became engrossed in the May Day Mystery when I was in my junior year of high school. I built my senior project around it. I planned on writing a book about it (which may or may not materialize). I still read the site and analyze clues, and I’ve been working on the clues for the past Mayday for over two weeks. This is an event I wait for religiously, and now I’m unable to muster the intellectual effort it takes to slog through the clues and provide a cogent analysis. I’m feeling lethargic and I don’t know why. I hope I can get over this slump and get to work before Hance actually updates the 1-May-2009 page with clues.