Digging into indices of older books (includes Excel VBA macros to facilitate decoding)

Based on my research using older books, some people in the printing industry have been encoding messages for a very long time in places where others wouldn't think to look. The index of a book is a good place to do such encoding because the typesetters can control how many characters are on a given line and what letter/number combinations each line ends with. 

Using the example of Stepping Stones to an Abundant Life, a 1971 book by David O. McKay, the president of the LDS Church who died in 1970 before the book was printed, I can show you some of what I find when I search in an index. Typos are often a tip-off of where to start in order to find what encoding patterns are being used.

The index has only two entries that start with the letter combination "smo," and one of those has a glaring typo:

Smokers lack respect for others, 283.

Smoking cigarets, warns against 281;

     overcoming habit of, 113.

The typesetter can influence what is on the first line easily but not the entire entry. So I applied doubles cancellation* to just the first line of each entry:

Smokers lack respect for others, 283.

Smoking cigarets, warns against 281;

Minus the punctuation, I get "lpfh3kcewgain1" and then, after substituting the numbers for the corresponding letters of the alphabet and capitalizing it all, I get LPFHCKCEWGAINA.

CKC actually equals "X" because the second C is before an "e" and so makes an "s" sound. This string is therefore LPFHXEWGAINA. Applying the OL cipher** to LPFHXEWGAINA in the two possible ways (one of which doesn't require any transformation since there are no other O's or L's in the string) gives me the following: 

PFHXEWGAINA

KUSCVDTZRMZ

Starting with PFHXEWGAINA, apply the X to first reverse the fragment before X and then the fragment after X, which gives the following:

HFPEWGAINA - H.F. Pew GA in A, which looks to me like a reference to the custom upholstery company HF Custom (https://www.hfcustomfurniture.com/ouramericanstory.inc), which has been in business since about 1940 and makes chairs that look like the ones in LDS Church buildings. I think the GA is supposed to mean "Gaea" (i.e., "the world," a term Jesus used to refer critically to those who sought material gain instead of being generous and good) and A is for "America."

 

PFHANIAGWE - P. F. Han Iagwe, which to me looks like P. F. Hon. Iago, or Prince Philip Honorable Iago. Iago is the villain in Othello, and he causes Othello to commit suicide. A little internet research turns up recent news articles on how the now-deceased husband of Queen Elizabeth II might have been involved with the major players in a scandal that brought down the UK government in the 1960s and resulted in one man committing suicide. Look into the Profumo affair, Stephen Ward, and Christine Keeler; also see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prince-phillip-profumo-affair-scandal-fbi-hoover-b2583748.html. I doubt Prince Philip himself was involved in causing the suicide of Stephen Ward, for there would have been several government functionaries surrounding him who had their own reasons to keep Philip's reputation intact.

Going back to KUSCVDTZRMZ, I first apply the V to pull together its two neighboring fragments in an alternating way starting from the inside:

CDSTUZKRMZ

I then use the first Z in CDSTUZKRMZ to pull together its two neighboring fragments in an alternating way starting from the outside:

CZDMSRTKU

I then use the remaining Z in CZDMSRTKU to pull together its two neighboring fragments, again in an alternating way starting from the outside:

CUKTRSMD - CUK TRS MD, which to me looks like kook-taurus (i.e., bull)-medical doctor, which appears to be saying that a bull was involved in revealing medical knowledge. (I've seen several clues where people who are revealing secrets are called crazy or loony.) Interestingly, there was a BBC TV show called The Doctors produced by a Donald Bull that ran from 1969-1972; quoting from IMDB, "Most of the episodes produced are missing from the archives; 139 of the 160 shows are thought to be lost." (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163933/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl)

Decades after these messages and clues get encoded, we can now often deduce what they were referring to. Why encode them in book indices in the first place? Blackmail purposes? Bragging? A quiet marketplace of secrets being run by those in the archive and publishing fields? A combination of all three? I think digging into these older indices is an intriguing exercise that could also be of good in shedding light on any similar modern practices being carried out with newer technology.

I have also found that a cipher that turns Ds into Xs (from in-D-X, I think) to be productive in decoding messages and clues in indices. Below is a macro*** to aid in turning Ds into Xs and so forth.

* Here is a macro in Microsoft Excel to do cancellation of double letters:

Function RemoveDuplicates1(pWorkRng As Range) As String

'Updateby Extendoffice found online and modified

Dim xValue As String

Dim xChar As String

Dim xOutValue As String

Dim result As String

Set xDic = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")

xValue = pWorkRng.Value

xValue = LCase(xValue)

For i = 1 To VBA.Len(xValue)

    xChar = VBA.Mid(xValue, i, 1)

    If xDic.Exists(xChar) Then

        result = Replace(xOutValue, xChar, "")

        xDic.Remove xChar

        xOutValue = result

    Else

        xDic(xChar) = ""

        xOutValue = xOutValue & xChar

    End If

Next

RemoveDuplicates1 = xOutValue

End Function

** Here is a macro in Microsoft Excel to do the cipher that turns Os into Ls and so forth:

Function OLCipher(pWorkRng1 As Range) As String

'Turn O to L and so forth (U-shaped cipher)

Dim xOLValue As String

Dim xOLChar As String

Dim xtempChar As String

Dim xOutOLValue As String

xOLValue = pWorkRng1.Value

xOLValue = LCase(xOLValue)

For i = 1 To VBA.Len(xOLValue)

    xOLChar = VBA.Mid(xOLValue, i, 1)

    xtempChar = xOLChar

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "a", "Z")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "b", "Y")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "c", "X")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "d", "W")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "e", "V")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "f", "U")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "g", "T")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "h", "S")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "i", "R")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "j", "Q")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "k", "P")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "l", "O")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "m", "N")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "n", "M")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "o", "L")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "p", "K")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "q", "J")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "r", "I")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "s", "H")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "t", "G")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "u", "F")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "v", "E")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "w", "D")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "x", "C")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "y", "B")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "z", "A")

xOutOLValue = xOutOLValue & xtempChar

Next

OLCipher = xOutOLValue

End Function

*** Here is a macro to turn Ds into Xs (and As into Ns and so forth):

Function DXCipher(pWorkRng2 As Range) As String

'Turn A to N, D to X, and so forth (O-shaped cipher)

Dim xDXValue As String

Dim xDXChar As String

Dim xtChar As String

Dim xOutDXValue As String

xDXValue = pWorkRng2.Value

xDXValue = LCase(xDXValue)

For i = 1 To VBA.Len(xDXValue)

    xDXChar = VBA.Mid(xDXValue, i, 1)

    xtChar = xDXChar

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "a", "N")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "b", "Z")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "c", "Y")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "d", "X")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "e", "W")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "f", "V")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "g", "U")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "h", "T")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "i", "S")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "j", "R")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "k", "Q")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "l", "P")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "m", "O")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "n", "A")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "o", "M")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "p", "L")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "q", "K")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "r", "J")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "s", "I")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "t", "H")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "u", "G")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "v", "F")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "w", "E")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "x", "D")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "y", "C")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "z", "B")

xOutDXValue = xOutDXValue & xtChar

Next

DXCipher = xOutDXValue

End Function

Scripture and coded messages

A few years ago, I started noticing that there was a significance attached to the use of some people's mentions of the wedding of Cana, site of Jesus' first miracle of turning water into wine, and wine generally. There is Tara Westover, for instance, the author of Educated, saying she started to lose her faith in Jesus when she began drinking wine while studying at Oxford. Then there is the whole premise of The Da Vinci Code, that Jesus used specially-fermented vinegar (wine quickly becomes vinegar with the right bacteria in it) to fake his death and then went off to Europe afterward. For reasons inexplicable to me at the time, The Alchemist became a much-lauded book. 

I think some people have been convinced in our modern times that Jesus was an ancient alchemist who used his skills to do what his disciples viewed as miracles because of their not knowing how he did them. References to alchemy and Cana appear to be their justifications and nods to each other that they "are in on the secret" and know Jesus wasn't really the son of God.

I worry that anyone who has fallen for this line of thinking is mistakenly accepting that modern understandings of how to do some biological feats--such as pull off "living death" or making food/drinks/salves with impressive biological effects--would have been available 2000 years ago when life was relatively primitive and drab and too often short and brutish. We only just figured out the structure of atoms and how they come together to form molecules within the last two centuries.

Recently, I looked at the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible and its short account of the wedding of Cana in John 2:1-11. I took the four passages that are framed by the word "wine" and did double-cancellation on them before applying possible ring ciphers. I was surprised to see that there was a pattern emerging in what resulted in recognizable terms/references. The ring cipher that pairs "L" with "Y" ("lie") and "S" with "E" ("sea") turned up letter combinations that look like amen, Louie, pounds, needy, and juvie ("youth"). The ring cipher that pairs "P" with "J" and "O" with "K" turned up letter combinations that look like lox (or locks?), egg, jar, axon, bow, fad (or fade?), and HTP (or HTTP?).* Even without doing a ring cipher on one passage, I got a result from double cancellation that looked like "G-D Ra," an apparent reference to an Egyptian "little-g" god.

Language changes a lot over time. I think our language has been "nudged" over the centuries since the KJV was written in such a way as to create meaning in what would otherwise be random letter combinations. I've seen enough in the way of intentional publishing "typos" with significant meanings now to realize that some people in the publishing and typesetting industries are not the innocent technicians they are widely considered to be (when people in other careers even consciously think about them, which is rare...). Today, those industries include those in information technology who write our word processing software and who can, via algorithms, influence which stories and articles get more exposure.

If you're a BBC Sherlock fan, you probably remember the episode where Watson and Sherlock spend a few hours going through a library looking for a book that was used in sending coded messages. I think the Bible has been being used as a source of codes. Thanks to the Gideons and other Christian movements, the KJV of the Bible is probably the most widely-found English book on the planet. The very first book anyone in the English-speaking world should expect to find being used for coded messages is the KJV Bible.

That raises an interesting question: What other scriptures are being used for sending coded messages? The Torah? The Koran? And, if so, who is using them that way and for how long have they been doing it? Those books are much older than the KJV Bible.

* (Interestingly, I didn't find the ring cipher that pairs "P" and "D" to result in recognizable terms; I wonder if that might be because P.D. now means police department and there's been an intentional steering of our common language usage away from revealing to law enforcement how the KJV is being used.)

Myristoylation, HID-1, nutmeg, and colon cancer

I recently came across a possible encoded message that was about an "apo-HID." "Apo" in biology means a molecule that is missing an important subpart such that it no longer does what it is usually supposed to do.

There is an enzyme called "HID-1." It looks like an "apo" version of it exists when myristoylation fails to occur:

Finally, we verified that a conserved N-terminal myristoylation site was required for HID-1 binding to the Golgi apparatus.

"HID-1 is a peripheral membrane protein primarily associated with the medial- and trans- Golgi apparatus," 2011, online at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4875289/

In eukaryotes, most proteins must undergo alternative splicing and extensive modifications, such as protein glycosylation, phosphorylation, or lipidation, after synthesis to reach their active and functional forms. Indeed, attachment of lipid groups is vital for proteins to achieve their final native structure and to allow intracellular transport for them to reach the appropriate cellular localization. Protein lipidation can be divided into four major types: N-myristoylation, S-palmitoylation, prenylation, and glycosylphosphatidylinositol anchor conjugation.

N-myristoylation is a ubiquitous protein lipid modification that occurs cotranslationally in eukaryotes and involves attachment of myristic acid to the N-terminal glycine (Gly) of a wide range of substrate proteins.

"Protein N-myristoylation: functions and mechanisms in control of innate immunity," 2021, online at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7966921/

What is myristic acid? It's a saturated fatty acid. (See https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C544638.) It's found in butter, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, and especially in nutmeg oil:

Nutmeg butter has 75% trimyristin, the triglyceride of myristic acid and a source from which it can be synthesised. Besides nutmeg, myristic acid is found in palm kernel oil, coconut oil, butterfat, 8–14% of bovine milk, and 8.6% of breast milk as well as being a minor component of many other animal fats. It is found in spermaceti, the crystallized fraction of oil from the sperm whale. It is also found in the rhizomes of the Iris, including Orris root.

Downloaded from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myristic_acid on October 8, 2024.

Myristic acid appears to have an anti-tumor effect in the human body. 

Myristic acid has been widely confirmed to have strong antitumour effects, which induce apoptosis of many kinds of tumor cell[s], such as breast cancer cells, prostate cancer cells, stomach cancer cells, liver cells, and other.

"Antimicrobial potential of myristic acid against Listeria monocytogenes in milk," 2019, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-019-0152-5. 

Nutmeg itself in mice has been demonstrated to help prevent the formation of colon cancer tumors. See "Modulation of Colon Cancer by Nutmeg," 2015, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6334305/.

HID-1 is more highly expressed in cancers generally. See https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000167861-HID1/pathology. Perhaps I found a valid message pointing to a need to increase the N-myristoylation of HID-1 to help prevent cancer tumors. It would be interesting to look at whether the myristic acid content of milk has been decreasing at the same time as there has been an increase in colon cancers in young adults.

[Update: Because milk has myristic acid and milk/dairy consumption is very high globally, I think there is something even more complicated going on than just the presence or absence of myristic acid. The process of N-myristoylation apparently uses the compound CoA-HS:

Downloaded from https://alchetron.com/Myristoylation on October 8, 2024.

What if our dairy processing nowadays is making it so there is either too much or too little CoA-HS and so affecting N-myristoylation? It would be interesting to see what other small molecules nutmeg contains in conjunction with HID-1 and myristic acid. Is there a lithium version of this myristoylation ingredient (e.g., CoA-LiS) that causes myristoylation to happen differently? Is there a -1 sulfur anion that messes with the process? Or, what would happen if there were two-proton hydrogen in place of the usual H+ ion? How I wish I had better technology to see what is in my food!]

New technology and its possible uses and misuses for covert influencing

As I peruse older books and realize that some people in the publishing world have apparently been sending messages via unusual marks, font aberrations, overly-early line breaks, careful wording, and similar details for over a hundred years, I can't help but think that newer technology has to have been put to use by the same kind of people.

What newer technology would they use? 

First, they couldn't abandon the old methods of underground messaging immediately, or lower-level people "in the know" would realize that something big had changed. So we could expect the newer technologies to be used side-by-side with the older covert techniques.

Second, it would almost certainly take advantage of the connectedness we now all share in thanks to cell, wireless, and satellite communication inventions of the past few decades.

Third, it would have as a primary objective the concealment of its own existence. It would need to be very subtle, like the odd-but-not-obvious printing choices of last century.

I think, after decades of fMRI tests--the kind that figure out what brain wave patterns correlate to what thoughts and emotions--we should all be asking, "What has been done with that accumulated data?" Has it been reverse-engineered yet so as to allow us, from externally, to induce certain emotions and thoughts in people? I find the absence of any public discussion of this even as a possibility to be a fairly good indicator that such reverse engineering has already been done to some extent. Can you imagine that ability quietly being sold off to the highest bidders? I think this would explain a lot of our current societal contention and confusion.

Graphic design used to comment on global issues (and perhaps indicate future events)

Two or three years ago, I was looking through a German translation of a children's picture atlas when I noticed something on the pages about Japan. This atlas includes photos of stamps from some of the countries it covers. In the section on Japan, the authors picked a stamp that was worth 50 yen. From my studies, 50 is sometimes used as a symbol of the United States because we have 50 states. Right under the 50 is a postmark where the date is cut off so that the legible part reads 7-12-18. In the date-writing system used in most of the world besides the USA, "7-12" is December 7, which is the date of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by the Japanese military. Here's a photo of the stamp:

It could be coincidence, but it's an attention-getting coincidence.

That brings me to my next find in this atlas. On the pages about the eastern United States, they show a skyline of Manhattan. This is a 1987/1989 publication, so the skyline features the twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. 

Just above one of the WTC towers is an arrow from the photo's caption, above which is a stamp and a text box. I'll translate the German text here since I don't have the English version of the atlas.

Plan of better cities [or "a better city"]

Turn the book clockwise and you will see courtyards, parks, and gardens between the skyscrapers.

So I turned it clockwise. (A silly thing to do since it doesn't actually change the text or images on the stamp, but, hey, I followed the instruction.)

That light blue coastline isn't just any city. This is meant to be lower Manhattan with Battery Park represented by the open space in the corner. Now note the "X" building next to the open space. To my knowledge there was no X-shaped skyscraper in lower Manhattan in the late 1980s. But there is now.

Due to its tapering, angled walls, from above One World Trade Center, which appears to be built on the site of the northernmost of the two towers destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, looks like a 4-pointed star oriented like an X on the city block as is drawn on the stamp.

The 2001 September 11 attacks weren't the first time the World Trade Center was targeted. In 1993, a van bomb detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex. Twice that tower was targeted, and when it was successfully brought down, it was replaced with a building that resembles the one on this stamp in this atlas, an atlas printed before either of the attacks were even begun to be planned by the al Qaeda terrorist who carried out both attacks.

Is the inclusion of this prescient stamp a coincidence? I don't know, but it seems improbable that it is merely by chance.

Possible terrorism connection decoded together with a reference to a type of lesser known ion channels formed by a fungal molecule

Because of messages I've been decoding in my chemistry book captions, I started learning recently about alamethicin (ALA), a voltage-gated, ion channel-forming peptide. First, to clarify what ion channels are: "Ion channels are protein assemblies that transport ions across cell membranes." (See "Multi-oligomeric states of alamethicin ion channel: Assemblies and conductance," 2023, https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00304-1.)

Ion channels are located within the membrane of all excitable cells,[3] and of many intracellular organelles. They are often described as narrow, water-filled tunnels that allow only ions of a certain size and/or charge to pass through. This characteristic is called selective permeability. The archetypal channel pore is just one or two atoms wide at its narrowest point and is selective for specific species of ion, such as sodium or potassium. However, some channels may be permeable to the passage of more than one type of ion, typically sharing a common charge: positive (cations) or negative (anions). Ions often move through the segments of the channel pore in a single file nearly as quickly as the ions move through the free solution. In many ion channels, passage through the pore is governed by a "gate", which may be opened or closed in response to chemical or electrical signals, temperature, or mechanical force.

(Excerpt from 9/16/2024 Wikipedia article online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_channel)

And why should we care about ion channels? In this time of so many mental issues, especially in our teenagers and young adults, they are very important:

The cyclic activation of these channels influences neurotransmitter release, neuron excitability, gene transcription, and plasticity, providing distinct brain areas with unique physiological and pharmacological response. A growing body of data has implicated ion channels in the susceptibility or pathogenesis of psychiatric diseases. Indeed, population studies support the association of polymorphisms in calcium and potassium channels with the genetic risk for bipolar disorders (BPDs) or schizophrenia. Moreover, point mutations in calcium, sodium, and potassium channel genes have been identified in some childhood developmental disorders. Finally, antibodies against potassium channel complexes occur in a series of autoimmune psychiatric diseases.

("Major channels involved in neuropsychiatric disorders and therapeutic perspectives," 2013, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3646240/) 

Alamethicin is a protein from fungi that forms channels in the presence of electric field." (See https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00304-1.) Alamethicin is a very small clump of a few amino acids that comes from fungi. It is abbreviated as "ALM." This is attention-grabbing to me because it means that it or similar compounds can be present in anything made with yeast. That means in bread, fermented food/drink, and anything flavored with yeast extract. 

Peptaibols, a family of nongenomically synthesized antimicrobial peptides extracted from fungi, mediate ion transport through permeabilization of membranes. Permeabilization mechanism via formation of ion channels was proposed for several of them, such as antiamoebin (1), trichotoxin (2), and alamethicin (ALM) (3). Peptaibols consist of 5–20 residues, most of them hydrophobic, that assemble into simple bundles of α helices surrounding a water-filled pore, which acts as a conduit for ions. Assembly usually takes place in the presence of an applied transmembrane voltage. In contrast to large, genomic ion channels, peptaibols are not endowed with complex features, such as selectivity filters, gating, or activating mechanisms. 

("Multi-oligomeric states of alamethicin ion channel: Assemblies and conductance," 2023, https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00304-1.)

I think in a time when we have electronic devices constantly near and/or on our bodies, we should be paying close attention to anything that can affect ion channels in our neurons. Instead, I just recently discovered the existence of these nonselective ion channels that can be formed by millivolts of electric charge.

Last night I was quite concerned when I decoded a caption that had to be decoded in a tricky way. When I did what the picture--which showed ion channels in a neuron--indicated I should do to decode its caption, I got "ALMOUNLHNHEKPLJAJNHMO" as a result. The only word I could pull out of that is "ALM" (as in, giving alms to the poor). That left me with this string of letters: "OUNLHNHEKPLJAJNHMO" Doing doubles-cancellation on it, I got "UEKPANHM." That appears to be "UK-PanAm." Which, to anyone who has learned about the global war on terror, sets alarm bells going off. In 1988, a Pan Am airplane blew up mid-air, killing 259 people.

Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAA103) was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. The transatlantic leg of the route was operated by Clipper Maid of the Seas, a Boeing 747 registered N739PA. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while the aircraft was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed in a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 fatalities, it is the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom.

(Excerpt from 9/16/2024 Wikipedia article online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103.)

The Lockerbie bombing is not only tragic, but it's not "in the past." One of the alleged bombers is set for trial next year in May 2025. Why would there be a reference to the Lockerbie bombing together with a reference to a little-known type of ion channel creator and neuron ion channels? Is there a terrorism connection? What official agency would I bring this to the attention of? The FBI?

[Update 9/17/2024: Here's a scan of the neuron photo and its caption so you can see what I'm talking about. 

The "trick" in decoding is, at about the halfway point in the caption, to shift the letters -7 and then right before the end instead to shift by +3 as indicated by the numbers in the caption. The book is Conceptual Chemistry, Fourth Edition by John Suchocki. I don't think Suchocki encoded the information. I think something or someone associated with the publisher or the publishing software is responsible for doing that. Computer programs--and information technology generally--have lots of layers where people can insert coded information.]

An overlooked role of manganese (II) ions in blood clotting disorders

A couple days ago, I was doing some caption-decoding in my chemistry book, and I got a possible coded message that said, ""TEA-(read backwards, as was the pattern for possible messages in this particular caption)DRTZVWB." To me, this looked like "tea dirt 's VWB," so I looked up possible meanings for VWB. I got a hit that made sense in "Von Willebrand" (VWB) disease.

"Von Willebrand disease is a bleeding disorder caused by the qualitative or quantitative deficiency of the pro-von Willebrand factor. Affected people may complain of excessive bruising, prolonged bleeding from mucosal surfaces, and prolonged bleeding after minor trauma....The pro-von Willebrand factor propeptide then undergoes cleavage, and then both the propeptide and mature von Willebrand factor are secreted into the vessel lumen. It functions as a carrier for factor VIII to maintain its levels and help in platelet adhesion and binding to endothelial components after a vascular injury. Any qualitative or quantitative deficiency of pro-von Willebrand factor will lead to an increased bleeding tendency, and this syndrome is called Von Willebrand disease....Low von Willebrand factor is quite common in the general population, but not all patients have clinically significant bleeding issues. Therefore, a significant proportion of the patient population goes undiagnosed. 

"Von Willebrand Disease," Ayan Sabih; Hani M. Babiker, online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459222/.

In other words, Von Willebrand disease is where the blood doesn't coagulate, or clot, as well, and so there is excessive bleeding from nosebleeds, period bleeding, etc.

Why does this look like a coded message? Because compared to western Europe and the USA, Von Willebrand disease is relatively uncommon in China (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24968688/) and other southeast Asian countries that are also high tea (Camellia sinensis) consuming countries. But VWB disease prevalence is comparatively higher in Japan than in those other Asian countries (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hae.14804), and in Japan they tend to focus more on green tea varieties than on black tea. The two types of tea differ in that green tea is not allowed to darken from the activity of the enzyme polyphenol oxidase in the tea leaves while black tea is. (See https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/polyphenol-oxidase for information on this enzyme.) Tea leaves are a good source of manganese if the tea plants are grown in dirt that contains manganese:

Tea drinking is a major source of dietary Mn and intakes commonly exceed proposed adequate intake values of 1.8–2.3 mg Mn/day and, on occasion, exceed upper limits of 10–11 mg/day. Dietary Mn intake has little influence on markers of Mn status or expression of Mn-dependent enzymes. Fasting whole blood Mn levels and leucocyte expression of MnSOD could, together, be further investigated as markers of Mn status.

"Influence of tea drinking on manganese intake, manganese status and leucocyte expression of MnSOD and cytosolic aminopeptidase P", 2005, https://www.nature.com/articles/1602260

A result of oxidizing manganese-containing molecules should be manganese oxide, or MnO, if I understand the chemistry correctly. That means there are manganese (II) (i.e., Mn2+) ions. (See also "Biosynthesis and antibacterial activity of manganese oxide nanoparticles prepared by green tea extract," 2022, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215017X22000285 for an intentional use of green tea to get manganese oxide particles.)

Mn2+ ions are effective at promoting blood coagulation activity by the above-highlighted Factor VIII:

Factor VIII-light chain (FVIII-LC) and Factor VIII-heavy chain (FVIII-HC) were isolated separately from human plasma and were without coagulation activity. When FVIII-LC and FVIII-HC preparations were mixed, coagulation activity was generated in the presence of Mn2+, Ca2+, or Co2+. Mn2+ was most effective and with Ca2+ maximal activity was first obtained after 8 days. 

"Generation of active coagulation factor VIII from isolated subunits," 1988, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3121624/, full .pdf online at https://www.jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(19)57273-8/pdf.

Thus "tea-dirt's-VWB" appears to be an encoded message saying that the manganese (II)--as Mn2+ ions-- in oxidized tea leaves can help blood clot quickly.* That is useful information. In bandages, we might want to put some Mn2+ ions on the cloth/paper sections that touch wounds in order to help encourage blood coagulation. On the other hand, to combat excessive internal blood clotting, we also might want to avoid ingesting or inhaling a lot of Mn2+ ions if we are worried about clotting ailments such as deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolisms.

* Today I decoded another message that also points to this helpfulness of manganese ions in blood clotting. It was KLUHAHOUWNMHAUW". Taking out the two words "KLUH" ("clue") and "HAU" ("haw"), I'm left with AHOUWNMW. Applying doubles-cancellation, I get AHOUNM. Applying the OL ring cipher, the last part becomes either AHFMN or ZSUNM. I think that "clue" is to indicate that a clue is hidden in this string of letters, and the "haw" references Chinese hawthorn, used in traditional medicine there. AHFMN looks like "anti-hemophilic factor" (AHF) and manganese (MN). ZSUNM looks like a reference to the sun and the letter M, which are two common motifs in encoded messages. As in a previous post, I admit the possibility that I might be reading too much into a string of letters, but it does start off with "KLUH" and the science behind using manganese for blood clotting is established by the 1988 "Generation of active coagulation factor VIII from isolated subunits" research article.

That uncomfortable moment when you realize that you bought something that might be causing big problems for bees

I was looking at bee collapse stories and statistics today. There are a lot of bees in the USA these days, but that is thanks to the energetic efforts of so many people to raise bees and keep pollination happening. Colony collapse hasn't gone away as a problem. Around half of hives don't make it according to a Washington Post article from earlier this year:

So the situation on the ground seems to confirm the census: We probably do have a record number of honeybees....Sadly, however, this does not mean we’ve defeated colony collapse. One major citizen-science project found that beekeepers lost almost half of their colonies in the year ending in April 2023, the second-highest loss rate on record.

"Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees?" by Andrew Van Dam, online at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/wait-does-america-suddenly-have-a-record-number-of-bees/ar-BB1kK5Rm

So why do so many hives fail? You have probably seen headlines in the past two decades about colony collapse disorder. "Colony Collapse Disorder is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees and the queen." (https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder)  

A molecule called "juvenile hormone" in honey bees is important to helping them stick around the hive. Removal of the glands that produce juvenile hormone makes it so the bees disappear around the time that they take their first "orientation flight." (see https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/206/13/2287/13497/Juvenile-hormone-and-division-of-labor-in-honey)

Juvenile hormone in insects is of crucial importance for mitochondrial protein synthesis and a necessary later increase in activity of an enzyme called "cytochrome oxidase" (also known as COX, Complex IV, and cytochrome c oxidase). (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0020179088900960)

Evidence suggests that flight metabolism and dispersal potential are tightly linked to COX function. For example, long-distance migratory butterfly species have higher COX content and activity than short-distance fliers. In this regard, the migratory butterfly Vanessa atalanta flight muscle mitochondrial area and cristae density were higher compared to the short-range butterfly Melitaea cinxia. Remarkably, the relationship between dispersal potential and COX activity can also be observed within the same flying insect species. Recently established populations of M. cinxia butterflies have higher dispersal potential than old ones, a phenotype that is mirrored in COX activity. This strongly indicates that COX represents a key metabolic mechanism for dispersal potential in flying insects.

"Cytochrome c Oxidase at Full Thrust: Regulation and Biological Consequences to Flying Insects," 2021, online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7931083/.

One disruptor of cytochrome oxidase is bifenthrin, a common pesticide. "Bifenthrin (BF), a synthetic pyrethroid is used worldwide for both agricultural and non-agricultural purposes due to its high insecticidal activity and low toxicity in mammals." (See "Bifenthrin disrupts cytochrome c oxidase activity and reduces mitochondrial DNA copy number through oxidative damage in pool barb (Puntius sophore)," 2023, online at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653523011153)

I don't think of myself a pesticide user. Sure, I kill wasps and spiders sometimes, as needed, but the real problem is all those big agricultural farms using all the dangerous pesticides, right? It turns out bifenthrin is the active ingredient in Scotts Turf Builder, which I think I used on my lawn recently. Am I helping cause bee colony collapse? Surely we can find pesticides for our yards that don't keep bees from flying back to their hives?

Question about an older drug that is no longer marketed in the USA and which might help combat aging-related inflammation

 As we age, a lot of inflammation-related ailments start to occur. A promising pathway to target to combat aging-related ills is inhibition of IKKβ activity. 

Constitutive NF-κB activation is associated with cellular senescence and stem cell dysfunction and rare variants in NF-κB family members are enriched in centenarians. We recently identified a novel small molecule (SR12343) that inhibits IKK/NF-κB activation by disrupting the association between IKKβ and NEMO....Taken together, these results demonstrate that IKK/NF-κB signaling pathway represents a promising target for reducing markers of cellular senescence, extending healthspan and treating age-related diseases."

"Novel small molecule inhibition of IKK/NF-κB activation reduces markers of senescence and improves healthspan in mouse models of aging," 2021, online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.13486.

Also see "Inhibition of IKKβ/NF-κB signaling facilitates tendinopathy healing by rejuvenating inflamm-aging induced tendon-derived stem/progenitor cell senescence," 2022, online at https://www.cell.com/molecular-therapy-family/nucleic-acids/fulltext/S2162-2531(21)00329-2

One inhibitor of  IKKβ that has been recently shown to be anti-inflammation is thioridazine, which used to be marketed in the USA for schizophrenia. 

"Nuclear factor-kB (NF-kB) is a crucial transcription factor in the signal transduction cascade of the inflammatory signaling. Activation of NF-κB depends on the phosphorylation of IκBα by IκB kinase (IKKβ) followed by subsequent ubiquitination and degradation....A computer-aided drug identification protocol was followed to identify novel IKKβ inhibitors from a database of over 1500 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drugs. The best scoring compounds were compared with the already known high-potency IKKβ inhibitors for their ability to bind and inhibit IKKβ by evaluating their docking energy. Finally, Thioridazinehydrochloride (TDZ), a potent antipsychotic drug against [s]chizophrenia was selected and its efficiency in inhibiting IκBα protein degradation and NF-κB activation was experimentally validated. Our study has demonstrated that TDZ blocks IκBα protein degradation and subsequent NF-κB activation to inhibit inflammation. Thus, it is a potential repurposed drug against inflammation."

"Repurposing Thioridazine (TDZ) as an anti-inflammatory agent," 2018, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30763-5.

Since thioridazine used to be marketed in the USA, perhaps there is some data in this country or in a neighboring country that could be analyzed to see if the diseases that fall under the category of "inflamm-aging" (see "Inflammation and aging: signaling pathways and intervention therapies, 2023, online at  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-023-01502-8) were less common in people who were taking thioridazine. There must be some long-range studies that tracked medications and health outcomes during the years that thioridazine was being used the most--perhaps the Framingham Heart Study in the USA or the SEDAP (Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population) in Canada.

Example of a decoding exercise that yielded a reference to Masonic handshakes and a possible botanical secret

On August 21, 2024, I posted a blog post about decoding chapter headings and photo/figure captions from books (especially textbooks). It is at https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2024/08/decoding-copybook-headings.html. 

Tonight, I decoded a very long photo caption (one for Ernest Rutherford in a chemistry textbook) that appears to have a Book of Mormon tie-in. The surrounding text pointed to the 25-letter French alphabet (leave out "w" as it was not in use in French centuries ago) as the one to use instead of the Hawaiian alphabet I discussed in my August 21 blog post. After counting letters in word pairs, dividing by 25, and adding the quotients to the remainders, as outlined in that same blog post, I got the following line of letters after shifting two letters ahead:

YIYTXOLDLEKSAKNAVKALSUIXVLTOKENVAOPTLNJBAUZUTOJBMLEAJE

The underlined words stood out to me:

YIYTXOLDLEKSAKNAVKALSUIXVLTOKENVAOPTLNJBAUZUTOJBMLEAJE

Y-it-X-old law-AK-knuckles-UIXVL-token-VA-opt-LNJ-boss-UTOJBM-liege

which separates to give: "it old law knuckles token opt boss liege" and YXAKUIXVLVALNJUTOJBM.

The first phrase appears to be a reference to Masonic handshakes and the like.

The second part, when interpreted with the X-reversals and the "ol" ring cipher I mentioned in my blog post of July 30, 2024 (https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2024/07/some-ways-literate-people-covertly.html), looks as follows:

YXAKUIXVLVALNJUTOJBM

YX-IUKA-VLVALNJUTOJBM (do one X-reversal)

Y-IUKA-VLVALNJUTOJBM (do a second X-reversal)

YIUKAVLVALNJUTOJBM (find the O's and L's to prepare to apply the "ol" ring cipher to some segments)

YIUKAV-EZ-NJUT-QYN

This to me looks like "yucca is N jute kin." Yucca (which is not cassava/manioc) species are New World plants with fibers used for textiles; jute species are old world plants with fibers used for textiles. The primary jute species used for fibers is "Jute mallow or Jew's mallow or Nalita jute (Corchorus olitorius)," per Wikipedia. When I look at photos of their seeds and seed cases, I can see how jute and yucca could indeed be kin, or related. Per their botanical classifications, yucca and jute don't appear to be related, but those classifications are subject to change and sometimes seem unreliable.

The Book of Mormon repeatedly talks about people in America making and wearing "fine-twined linen":

silks … and fine-twined linen, 1 Ne. 13:7 (Alma 1:29; 4:6; Ether 10:24).

women … did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen, Hel. 6:13.

See Scriptures|Study Helps|Topical Guide at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/tg/linen?lang=eng. Some have thought it meant flax, but that was apparently not a pre-Columbian crop. Looking at the distribution of jute species in the area of the Arabian peninsula, I think it makes more sense for the migrants in the Book of Mormon to have taken the seeds of a lesser-known jute species over to the Americas and used its descendants to make clothes. By selective breeding, they could have easily ended up with a plant that resembled some of the modern yucca species.

Three paths for technology to take as it seeks to obtain information about us

As I've thought about the possible uses of cell phones and similar technology to affect us and our children for good or ill, I've looked into different ways that the programs they run can become aware of what interests us and how we think or feel about something specific. There are at least three avenues that I can see:

• Speech recognition of what we say aloud--this can occur via 
• built-in microphones (obviously microphones are standard on cellphones so that we can use them as telephones),
• accelerometer-sensed vibration analysis (see how in this article: https://csl.illinois.edu/news-and-media/42303), and
• optical sensor-captured air vibration analysis (here's one way: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Guided-spatio-temporal-Filtering-for-Extracting-Tanigawa-Yatabe/dffdd0a4103ccba483aa8fa6a830d250dbad50be).

• Brain electromagnetic wave pattern recognition--our neural network extends from our brain throughout our body and into the skin, and our neurons send signals to each other using a combination of chemistry and electromagnetism. The anomalous Nernst effect, which involves using magnetism and heat to generate an electrical current, points to an ability to have tech device interaction with our neurons due to the magnetic fields in and around human beings (The article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41427-019-0116-z discusses how to induce a larger voltage than was previously thought possible for a given magnetization). Such currents could be used to sense and possibly interact with our neural network signals.

• Long-distance brain electromagnetic wave pattern recognition using quantum particles--the weak force appears to serve as a bridge between "quantum entanglement" (the so-called "spooky action at a distance" that has been experimentally proven to happen: https://scitechdaily.com/first-experimental-proof-that-quantum-entanglement-is-real/, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26234921-800-how-quantum-entanglement-really-works-and-why-we-accept-its-weirdness, and https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.076016) and the electromagnetic activity in our brains (see this summary of the electroweak interaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_interaction). While I don't know how one would actually establish the requisite quantum entanglement between our neurons and a sensor located in a distant location, once it is in place, the entanglement should enable what we consider "mind reading."

Finally! Repeated results on the weight loss experiments!

I'm trying not to be too excited here, for I have been working on this weight loss project for over four years now. But I just got three days of repeated results (down 1 pound each day, punctuated by two days of not doing the most recent change and not seeing the weight go down on those days, while drinking the celery leaf-roasted banana leaf water for breakfast; eating a low carb lunch of broccoli/egg/my weight maintenance beverage; eating a carb-rich/fruit/vegetable/white rice/peanut/my weight maintenance beverage dinner, and doing gentle cardo exercise for 40-60 minutes twice a day) by changing up the juniper berry experiment that I make and consume between breakfast and lunch.

Here is how I prepared the juniper berries and used them:

1) Microwave 60 seconds in a plastic-covered mug a mix of a small amount of raw juniper berries/cream of tartar/ground clean white eggshell with a little onion powder to prevent clumping during storage/"beer salt" (for the silicon dioxide)/roasted banana leaf ash. 

2) As soon as the 60 seconds is over, remove from microwave, uncover, and stir with the silver handle of an old silver fork.

3) Press the juniper berries while still a little warmish into plain salted butter. When that is cooled, blend with distilled water to make a puree. 

Then I proceed with the steps outlined back on March 19, 2024 on my blog:

4) Use a mug to microwave for 60 seconds layered cocoa powder topped by dried onion power, some more powdered toasted banana/plantain leaf, and lastly red raspberry seed powder. Mix some of the juniper berry puree into it afterwards. Stir with a plastic stirrer.

5) Use another mug to microwave cocoa powder topped by dill weed for 60 seconds in a glass jar then stir in some freshly sliced Roma tomato with a plastic stirrer.

\6) Pour the contents of the first mug mug into the second mug, stir with plastic stirrer, and consume about half of it. Then put in some freshly sliced green cabbage and some soaking water from a cup with dry soybeans and distilled water left for a while (not sure yet how long to soak it for best results), and then consume the rest along with the cabbage and tomato pieces.

Can I tell you how much I am looking forward to reducing the complexity of the above process?!?! But it works. At last based on the past week. I'll keep you updated!

[Update 9/7/2024: I haven't been able to replicate whatever I did that worked. Very frustrating. As always, I'll keep plugging away at it....]

[Update: 9/14/2024: I might have replicated the weight loss experiment successfully now. The key seems to be to microwave the juniper berries in two different mugs (for one minute each) and then press the juniper berries afterward into the salted butter. Apparently the butter acts as a solvent that allows whatever is on/in the juniper berries to mix when I puree that all up with some distilled water.

For the first mug, I microwave one mug of around 10-20 raw juniper berries together with some dried parsley (putting cocoa powder on the bottom of the mug doesn't seem to interfere, but using magnesium sulfate or cream of tartar in the mug does eliminate effectiveness for weight loss) for 60 seconds. I cover it with a plastic lid during microwaving, and I don't stir it with anything metallic. 

For the second mug, I microwave uncovered for 60 seconds raw juniper berries (10-20), "beer salt" (it's a source of silicon dioxide), powdered eggshell mixed with powdered onion, and cream of tartar for 60 seconds in an uncovered mug. After the 60 seconds, I put two pieces of pieces of grayish-white granite into the mix and stir it all up in the mug for 2-3 minutes with a silver fork handle. (The granite pieces are small ones that I hammered off granite samples given to my by a granite counter business.) Then I take out the granite pieces and swirl in some roasted banana leaf ash (roasted with my toaster, which quickly reaches a higher heat than my oven) and microwave the mug for another 60 seconds. Then I stir the results in the mug with the silver fork handle again.(no granite pieces used this time). 

I press some of the juniper berries from each mug into a little salted butter placed on the blender blades (I use a small, inexpensive bullet-type blender). After a few minutes, I pour some distilled water into the cup part, assemble the blender, and make a puree in about 15 seconds.

Since I started doing this bifurcated procedure to prepare the juniper berries, I've moved down off a weight plateau. Yesterday was the first day I included cocoa powder in the first mug, and last night I noticed that my biceps seem more prominent and larger. I don't know what to think of that, but I like it!]

[Update 9/28/2024: I've been sick this week, so I didn't do my usual experiments. However, I might have gotten a little fat burning (no exercise involved, since I've been sick) by having distilled water microwaved with Quaker old-fashioned rolled oats and then stirring in either banana leaf ash or a powder I made right before I got sick--here's how I made the powder: 1) microwave beer salt/fresh ground cinnamon/raw juniper berries 60 seconds in a mug and then stir for a while with a silver fork, 2) add banana leaf ash and microwave for 60 seconds more and then stir with a plastic utensil. I think silver chloride formation was possibly involved. I did smell chloride gas.]

[Update 10/18/2024: I might have gotten off a weight plateau finally. I think barium sulfide was involved (maybe that's what's in my broccoli/cacao nib/gelatin drink that I use for weight maintenance). Another possibility is that I've figured out a helpful catalyst in the form of gold infused (via electric current) with iodine, bismuth, or bromine that I then use in prepping the juniper berries.]

Cyberhygiene...an idea for which the time came when we were watching cat videos....

To be fair, cats can be very amusing to watch. :)

[Update 8/26/24: If you're wondering how your cellphone will "hear" you, read up on what is possible with the accelerometer, a sensor in nearly everyone's phones. See https://csl.illinois.edu/news-and-media/42303 and https://www.directdefense.com/is-this-thing-on-privacy-and-your-smartphone-microphone/.]

Down to two homeschool students

Three of my children have now moved on from being homeschoolers. Two are in a charter school that offers dual enrollment college classes, and one is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That leaves just two sleeping in and learning at their leisure. We will pick up the pace next week when their part-time program begins, but for now, we're mostly learning about the 1600s in Europe.

The story of the King James Version of the Bible was covered yesterday. Did you know that there were many other competing non-Latin Bibles at the time? The King James Version won out.

As I look at the harm that can be done by mistranslating even one word* in a book of scripture, I'm amazed that Christianity has survived translation and recopying by scribes and scholars making errors and pushing their own agendas for 1500+ years now. (* Unfortunately, the Spanish-language Book of Mormon translates "wilderness" as "desierto" in many places. This is a questionable choice, for wildernesses can be quite green and full of plants and trees; a wilderness just has to be "wild" and uncultivated land. There are LDS people who debate where in the Americas the events of the Book of Mormon take place, and this mistranslation adds to the confusion.) 

And then there are the shifts in meanings that have occurred in the past 400 years. Many words can now mean the opposite of what they used to mean. "Literally" is a good example of that. I see one of my jobs as a home-educating mother is to teach my children that language changes and they need to know where our words came from. 

Besides history, religion, language arts, and foreign languages (Greek for one, Welsh for the other this year....sorry, Latin), we'll be learning some chemistry (I plan to focus the experiments on kitchen chemistry and cooking) and doing music lessons, exercising (video game dancing is a favorite), and art. I don't have a planned art curriculum for them. For art, I provide supplies and let them go to it. Sketching is a huge favorite. I love that so many of their peers sketch for fun these days and that they share their drawings with each other online and in person.

Decoding the "copybook headings"

The author Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about the "gods of the copybook headings." That clue led me to work on decoding the chapter headings/photo captions/FYI side paragraphs/etc. in scriptures (yes, the 1980s version of the Book of Mormon has encoded messages in its chapter headings...sigh...no wonder publishing has a reputation as a "cut throat" industry...they're full of unpleasantries) and science textbooks.

Here's the algorithm that I've been using with a lot of success on copybook headings to find references to nutritional (and other types of) secrets that have become less secret since the books were written:

1) Count the numbers of digits in each word.

2) Pair the digits to get a larger number (not addition...just stick them next to each other.

Example: "The slow, pink elephant" is "34, 48."

3) Divide the results by 12. Add the result and its remainder.

Example: "34, 48" becomes "2 remainder 10" and "4 remainder 0." That then becomes "12, 4."

4) Further add digits together for results that were larger than 12.

Example: No change needed to "12, 4."  ("13, 4" would have become "4, 4.")

5) Use the Hawaiian 12-letter alphabet (A,E,I,O,U,H,K,L,M,N,P,W) on the numbers.

Example: "12, 4" becomes "W O." (You might have to shift the decoding by +/- 1, 2, 3, 4, or even 5.

6) Use a "clock" cipher (A-N, B-O, C-P, D-Q, E-R, F-S, G-T, H-U, I-V, J-W, K-X, L-Y, M-Z) to change doubled letters. 

For example: "4, 4" becomes "O O," which then becomes "B."

Have fun looking for significant words and hidden references to people who the author knows! If using the Hawaiian alphabet doesn't work, feel free to try Greek, Tongan, etc. alphabets. Just be sure to change the number you divide by in step 3 to fit the alphabet. Also remember that frequently H=A, W=O, and V=U (I guess it's hard to have enough vowels otherwise).

[Update 10/22/2024: X's, V's, and Z's get used sometimes to change up the letter order. V pairs letters in a zipper-like fashion going from inside to out, while Z does the same thing but going from outside to inside. X bifurcates the message into two possibilities where one possibility has a reversal of letter order in the letters before the X and the other possibility has a reversal of the letter order in the letters after X.

Also, I think I found an updated way of encoding messages that, instead of relying on "O" rings, uses "N" zigzags, with only 24 letters (no J or F). Here's an example of its use:

A          R S

B        Q  T

C       P    U

D      O    V

E     N      W

G   M      X

H  L         Y

I K           Z

Say I do double cancellation and get "DWXHLUTNRA." I would look at where letter pairs next to each other are in the same horizontal line and replace them with the third letter. That would be "DWX HL UTN RA" --> "DWX Y UTN S." Then I can apply the X, V, and Z order changes if needed. By starting the alphabet zigzag with different letters, I get different possibilities for encoding. (This is still a fairly new method to me, but it seems to work on recent news headlines. I got the idea from looking at Lois Lerner's name; she is the IRS employee who in 2013 was caught wrongly using the power of the IRS for political reasons and somehow escaped prosecution despite a lot of inappropriate political targeting. Since the names of people who make the news headlines for extended periods of time sometimes have interesting correlations with the subject matter they are famous for (apparently there was some selectiveness in choosing the plaintiff for Roe v. Wade, and roe means fish eggs), I applied double cancellation to Lois Lerner's name and got "O is N.")]

Possible nutrition "Easter egg" in the musical Wicked...and it's not funny

I had the opportunity to see the musical Wicked recently. It has catchy music and a good moral about not being unkind to people over having different skin colors. The protagonist, Elphaba, has green skin; she is also kind, smart, and brave, but she ends up being labeled as "wicked" for standing up for the rights of talking animals. 

A few visuals and lines stood out to me in the musical. I'm going to share them together with some of my nutrition research/experiments and invite you to draw your own conclusions about what other message Wicked might have been used to convey under its cape:

* [Elphaba:] What? What are you all looking at? Oh—do I have something in my teeth? Alright, fine—we might as well get this over with: No, I’m not seasick; yes, I’ve always been green; no, I didn’t eat grass as a child…

(Act 1, Scene 2; emphasis added)

* [Fiyero:] What?

[Elphaba:] I wish I could be beautiful for you. [She is referring to her green skin, thinking that is makes her unattractive.]

[Fiyero:] Elphaba—

[Elphaba:] Don’t tell me that I am. You don’t have to lie to me.

[Fiyero:] It’s not lying, it’s looking at things another way. 

(Act 2, Scene 4)

* (The Scarecrow (Fiyero) walks on stage. He bends down and knocks on a trap door in the floor.)

[Fiyero:] It worked!

(He opens the door and Elphaba climbs out.)

[Elphaba:] Fiyero! I thought you'd never get here.

(She touches his straw face.)

[Fiyero:] Go ahead, touch, I don't mind. Ah, you did the best you could. You saved my life.

[Elphaba:] You're still beautiful.

[Fiyero:] You don't have to lie to me.

[Elphaba:] It's not lying... Its’ looking at things another way.

(Act 2, Scene 9; emphasis added)

* (GLINDA, resplendent and beautiful in her gown and tiara, descends from the sky on a mechanical device that spews soap bubbles as the CELEBRANTS point and cheer.)

(Act 1, Scene 1; emphasis added)

* [Galinda, singing the song "Popular":] DON’T BE OFFENDED BY MY FRANK ANALYSIS

THINK OF IT AS PERSONALITY DIALYSIS

(Act 1, Scene 7; emphasis added)

* [Dillamond (A professor who is a talking goat):] Class! Class! Miss Elphaba has a point. Doubtless you’ve noticed I am the sole Animal on the faculty. The Token Goat as it were. But it wasn’t always this way. My dear students, how I wish you could have known this place as it once was. When one could walk these halls and hear an Antelope explicating a sonnet, a Snow Leopard solving a equation, a Wildebeest waxing philosophic! Can you see, dear students, what is being lost? How our dear Oz is becoming less and less… well, colorful. Now, who can tell me what set this into motion?....Well, perhaps these question that I’ve prepared—

(As he turns his chalkboard around to pose the question, he sees that, across the board, someone has painted: “Animals should be seen and not heard.” DILLAMOND is shocked.)

[Dillamond:] Who is responsible for this? I’m waiting for an answer. Very well, that will be all for today. You heard me, class dismissed!

(Act 1, Scene 4; emphasis added)

What in the world could I have seen in those scenes that made me think of nutrition issues?! Something quite important, actually. In August of 2017, I posted this blog post--https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2017/08/oxidative-stress-pancreas-diabetes.html--about the catalase enzyme, which turns hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen with lots of visible bubbles, and how catalase in fresh produce and dried organ meat looks like it could be very important to helping protect against developing diabetes. Diabetes often leads to kidney issues and eventually dialysis, a problem that affects Native Americans, blacks, and Hispanics disproportionately hard (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7935471/) .

After the blog post in 2017, I did a lot of experiments in my kitchen to see what was necessary to restore catalase enzyme activity after inactivating it with a highly-acidic environment like stomach acid. I found that adding baking soda and barley grass powder (a vivid green powder) were sufficient to restore catalase activity quite effectively. Baking soda (i.e., sodium bicarbonate) is an alkalizing molecule, similar to lye (i.e., sodium hydroxide) but not as strong. Barley grass powder contains many molecules; my current hypothesis is that the heme in the barley leaves is responsible for its part in reactivating catalase, for heme is an essential cofactor of catalase (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20506125/).

The desired combination of greenness and straw together, life-saving, eating green grass, ly-ing, bubbles, dialysis, persecution of minorities, silencing of those who have knowledge and are wild (i.e., untamed) animals...do you see where I'm going here? 

This very popular musical that people think is about standing up for minorities could be taunting everyone with an Easter egg about how to protect against diabetes and kidney issues. Could anyone be that sneaky? If so, why? If not, if I'm just overly suspicious, please, prove me wrong about catalase, hydrogen peroxide, and diabetes-caused kidney failure. Because I don't think the word "dialysis," with all the discomfort, vulnerability, and expense it involves, fits in a perky blond's song about helping a new friend become popular.

Rotavirus mutations that affect transcriptase activity (and a lesson on why you should carefully read an entire paper if you are going to rely on it)

Today I was looking at an article on the structure of the rotavirus. It has a roughly spherical structure like this:

Angel J, Franco MA, Greenberg HB. Rotavirus vaccines: recent developments and future considerations. Nat Rev Microbiol 2007;5(7):531; online at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17571094/

Rotavirus is most known for causing gastroenteritis in young children, but it can affect areas other than the gastrointestinal tract. A 2011 article from Japan reported the death of 2.5 year old girl who had rotavirus-caused gastroenteritis and also had rotavirus particles in her heart, brain, and liver. Her brain tissue showed evidence of the presence of the rotavirus VP6 protein. See Nakano ITaniguchi K, Ishibashi-Ueda H, Maeno Y, Yamamoto N, Yui A, Komoto S, Wakata Y, Matsubara T, Ozaki N. 2011. Sudden Death from Systemic Rotavirus Infection and Detection of Nonstructural Rotavirus Proteins . J Clin Microbiol 49; online at https://doi.org/10.1128/jcm.01303-11

VP6 forms part of the protein shell of rotavirus, as you can see in the interior of the rotavirus shell in the illustration above.

Researchers reported in a 2002 article that they created 13 different VP6 mutations to see what effects those mutations would have on the ability of VP6 to assemble correctly with the rotavirus VP2 protein, as well as on the ability of VP6 to restore the RNA transcriptase (RNA-dependent RNA polymerase) activity of the rotavirus VP1 protein. See Charpilienne A, Lepault J, Rey F, Cohen J. Identification of rotavirus VP6 residues located at the interface with VP2 that are essential for capsid assembly and transcriptase activity. Journal of Virology. 2002 Aug;76(15):7822-7831. DOI: 10.1128/jvi.76.15.7822-7831.2002; online at https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/136406.

In the discussion section, the authors stated, "An oversimplified summary of our data could indeed be stated as follows: VP6 single mutants assemble with VP2 but double mutants do not." They immediately afterwards note that one of their VP6 double mutants, one labeled "QAAL," does actually assemble like a VP6 single mutant:

"However, comparison of the QLAA, QALA, and QAAL mutants suggests that the last of these [i.e., QAAL] has the highest affinity for VP2, given that it was the only one of the three to give rise to a single band in CsCl density gradients (Table 1). This double mutant behaved effectively like the QLNL single mutant." https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.76.15.7822-7831.2002). 

But they neglected to name another VP6 double mutant that behaves like the QAAL mutant. Earlier in the paper, before the discussion section, they wrote: 

"Three VP6 single mutants (ELLL, QLNL, and QLLN), two VP6 double mutants (QANL and QAAL), and the D29A control mutant were able to assemble into particulate structures that could easily be visualized as a single band in CsCl density gradients at the same density as that of native VLP....Mutants in the first class, QLNL, QANL, QAAL, and the D29A control mutant, allowed a complete recovery of transcriptase activity when added in at least stoichiometric amounts....Most of the single (ELLL, QLNL, and QLLN) and two of the double (QAAL and QANL) mutants that have slightly more hydrophilic* residues than does the wild type at positions L65, L70, and/or L71 assembled well with VP2." https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.76.15.7822-7831.2002

* "The VP6 and VP2 layers interact through predominantly hydrophobic surfaces." https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.76.15.7822-7831.2002

Their own results clearly show that the VP6 double mutant labeled "QANL" assembled with VP2, but they omitted saying so in the discussion section of their article. This seems like a small error...after all, they looked at 13 VP6 mutants. However, the purpose of the paper is to correctly identify VP6 variations that affect rotavirus assembly and transcriptase activity.

I have learned that reading the short abstract or even the longer discussion part of a paper is not enough. There are important errors that even the authors miss and which you can only catch by looking at the data results.

Jeffrey R. Holland 1966 masters thesis title deserves scrutiny and appears to indicate a lack of faith in the religion he now has a high position in

On July 30, 2024, I posted about how some academics appear to have been declaring their innermost thoughts on some controversial subjects via relatively simple alphabet-based codes in their academic publication titles. See https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2024/07/some-ways-literate-people-covertly.html.

Because of some suspicion-raising interactions (including a handshake that was out of place, if you know what I mean) I personally have had with relatives of Jeffrey R. Holland, who is currently the President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I looked at Holland's academic publications. Holland's 1966 masters thesis at Brigham Young University was on the numerous (but almost all tiny) changes made in the Book of Mormon since it was first published in 1830. It was entitled "An Analysis of Selected Changes in Major Editions of the Book of Mormon - 1830-1920." (https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4800/)

Doing the doubles-cancel algorithm on the letters of that thesis title, I ended up with:

y g a j s t B k f m o 

To me, this looks like  "Y GA JST Bk f Mo." Perhaps I have been primed to see it by my culture, but to me that looks like "Why Gaea (i.e., the world)? Joseph Smith Translation Book of Mormon." 

A scholarly criticism of the Book of Mormon is that Joseph Smith included Isaiah and Malachi passages in the Book of Mormon without changes from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, but that later, when studying the Bible and making inspired changes/clarifications/additions to it (we call this effort of Smith's the "JST"), he changed passages in the JST that he had earlier included without change in the Book of Mormon. (For an example of this criticism, which is easy to find on the internet, see https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/joseph-smiths-interpretation-of-isaiah-in-the-book-of-mormon/).

While I personally do not struggle with this issue--the Book of Mormon teaches that God gives people revelations in their own languages, and the KJV version of the Bible was the only scriptural language that the young and relatively uneducated Joseph Smith knew before 1830--the issue is often presented in a faith-destroying way. 

Also, as I have become aware of the importance of many of the details in the Isaiah passages that are included in the Book of Mormon and the watering down and even destruction of God's revelations to his prophets carried out by unbelieving scribes (something that I think Jesus repeatedly tried to warn of, per his many critical mentions of scribes in the Four Gospels), I have come to appreciate God's wisdom in not initially giving Joseph Smith changed versions of those texts. We are meant to study and dig into those Isaiah and Malachi prophecies. The King James Version of the Bible contains many older words that have had their meanings shift over the last four centuries. The Book of Mormon tells us that the prophecies of Isaiah are great, we should study them, and that we will understand them as they are being fulfilled.

But back to Elder Holland's thesis title. The "1830-1920" tacked on to the end of the thesis title also appears to have significance. Using alphabetical order, 1 = A, 8 = H, 30 = D, 1 = A, 9 = I, 20 = T, which turns "1830-1920" into "AHD -AIT," which to me looks like "Add negative eight." When I do that, "ygajstbkfmo" becomes "q y s b k l t c x e g." I think that looks like it has the words "keys," "be," "Celtics" and "eg" in it. Keys are very important symbols in Masonry (https://www.universalfreemasonry.org/en/encyclopedia/key), and much has been made of Joseph Smith's real and alleged ties to Masonic groups. Much has also been made of Joseph Smith's supposed practice of folk magic (https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/cunning-and-disorderly-early-nineteenth-century-witch-trials-of-joseph-smith/), and his mother was of Scottish (i.e., Celtic) heritage (https://eom.byu.edu/index.php?title=Smith,_Joseph). Finally, "eg" can be a reference to quartersawing a log, which results in an "X" shape:

"X." as we know from the Jolly Roger pirate flag and treasure maps, refers to pirates (i.e., thieves) and their treasures. In fact, "yegg" is a little-known word for "robber."

Apparent references to Masons, Celts, and pirates/robbers in a possible decoded message in Holland's thesis certainly raise my eyebrows. Are they unintentional and coincidental? Perhaps. My interactions with his relatives cause me to lean to the "intentional" side, though. I think at the least they deserve investigation, especially if the "y g a j s t b k f m o" is a quiet declaration of his choice of "the world" over the issue of scholarly criticisms of the Book of Mormon. Holland has been in high church leadership positions for several decades now.

The Book of Mormon warns that throughout society (and it doesn't exempt the churches that have the Book of Mormon), there will be people who are in high ecclesiastical places who don't do the Lord's will, even as they point to the beautiful buildings and works they have done in the Lord's name. We are under no scriptural obligation to "look no further" when we stumble across suspicion-raising things. To the contrary, the Book of Mormon clearly says that we are supposed to learn how to judge righteously between that which is of God and that which isn't.

[Update 8/13/2024: I've been thinking about what technology would help people hide messages in article titles, and I think they're most likely passing around macros that show them various possibilities using the key words they need to include in the article title. However, passing around macros from unknown sources is an unwise thing to do. A macro might have deeper functionality that also encodes other messages at "higher levels." An academic using such a macro might easily look like they are involved in things they are not involved in.]

[Update 10/29/2024: The index in a 1971 book by David O. McKay written for the LDS audience contained a clue that pointed to a "DLN O," which to me looks like a reference to Dallin H. Oaks, who has now risen to be second in line in the LDS Church leadership. Back in 1971, Oaks was already the president of Brigham Young University.

I pulled up the oldest publicly available article by Dallin H. Oaks: Oaks, Dallin H. (1905) "The "Original" Writ of Habeas Corpus in the Supreme Court," Supreme Court Review: Vol. 1962, Article 6. Online at  https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/supremecourtrev/vol1962/iss1/6 and  https://www.jstor.org/stable/3108795

Doing double cancellations on the title of the article and then applying the "OL" ring cipher yields two possibilities: TWFBAHS MEUR and GDUYZSHNVFI, which using the V yields NFHIS ZYUDG. The first possibility looks like it might have something to do with a sea ("mar"), while the second possibility could be a garbled reference to the account of Nephi's execution of Laban contained near the beginning of the Book of Mormon. But Nephi didn't take it upon himself to judge Laban; he did, in obedience to God, execute a man who was the equivalent of a corrupt sheriff who had twice committed capital crimes under Babylonian law (extant during that time) against Nephi and his brothers: (1) theft of a large amount of property and (2) a false accusation of having committed a crime that merited the death penalty. This looked like a halfway solution.

By doing a lot of decoding of similar titles and messages, I've noticed that punctuation can be used to omit parts of a title from the coded message. So I did a double cancellation on "The Writ of Habeas Corpus in the Supreme Court," leaving out "Original" because it was enclosed in quotation marks. Then I tried various ciphers on the resulting WFBNHSMEOU. The ring cipher that pairs "N" with "A" and "O" with "Z" yields RIMHSMET and WFBGVBJU. The first one looks to me like RIM-HS-MET, or rime-As-meat; that caught my eye because of the arsenic-phospholipid connection to weight loss I've been exploring, as well as the reference to a granular crust on food and meat (I'm pretty certain that some of the corned beef I've bought at the store has helped me to lose weight, based on my food journals.). Applying the V to the second string of letters gave GBBJFUW, which due to the doubled B is actually GOJFUW, did not yield anything meaningful.

However, some of the "deepest" messages of all require turning the letter strings upside down. For example, R (i.e. "r") becomes "j", "J" becomes "r", "t" stays "t", "o" stays "o", "W" becomes "M", "e" becomes "d", etc. Turning RIMHSMET and GOJFUW upside down yields "t-dw-suwij" and "M-[e]N FROG." That looks like a solid hit because it is a two-part message containing a mockery--"T do[es] sewage"--as one part of it; the other part is a reference to a scientific secret, which isn't such a secret anymore, which is that using electricity you can move humans the same way Italian physician and physicist Luigi Galvani moved frog limbs in the late 1700s.

Someone who has been leading the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in high positions for over 50 years published a 1962 law review article title that appears to refer to two science secrets and crudely mock a group called "T"....hmmm. The Book of Mormon does warn against "priestcraft," which it defines as when people "preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; but they seek not the Welfare of Zion." (2 Nephi 26:29) Even if you're not LDS, it should concern you that a man who 50 years ago might have been declaring himself part of an underground movement has been able to rise to the top in a church full of people who believe in being honest and avoiding priestcraft. If it can happen in the LDS church, I think it can happen to any organization.]