Printing press marks in a Tom Clancy book

Tom Clancy's novels have a lot of swearing in them, so I have been editing them with a black pen before my children read them. As a result, I am very aware of what is printed on the pages of the books I am editing.

Two days ago, I was nearing the end of Debt of Honor, in which a Japan Airlines pilot dramatically crashes a large airplane into the US Capitol. The book was written in 1994, and I have a 1995 paperback version printed by Berkley Books in New York City. It was printed between the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, which did little to damage the World Trade Center, and the 2001 plane crashes, which resulted in complete destruction of the World Trade Center's twin towers.

The novel repeatedly referred to crane images on the tailfin of Japan Airlines airplanes, so I was primed to notice this little ink mark 32 pages before the end of the book:

It resembles a tiny silhouette of a crane in flight. Halfway down the page from it there is this little ink mark:

It looks like a slim horizontal tube angling down to hit a "t". I haven't been using blue pen in the book, so I don't think I made the mark. Then, at the bottom of the page, there are these words:

Goto is a character in the book. His name can be read as "Geo two", which means "world two" (from the Greek "geo"). The sentence says "Goto Falls." And it mentions Caucasian businessmen just below that. Does all this have any premeditated significance, or am I just reading meaning into it now due to the awful events of September 11, 2001? It's hard not to look for significance, given that Tom Clancy ended up with a reputation for being correct in his foreshadowing of real world events. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/10350806/Tom-Clancy-the-writer-who-predicted-911.html)

Here are a couple of ways to attempt to test whether these were meaningful marks by a printer or not. Twelve pages before the book's end, there is another odd printing press artifact:

I think it looks like an asteroid with a tiny satellite...or a cell with a small particle near it. The next page has a mostly straight vertical mark that could be a beam of some sort, but one that is less substantial at its ends:

Do other copies from this edition of Debt of Honor have the same marks? And, is there any catastrophe in the past 31 years that the second set of marks makes one think of? 

I remember reading that C.S. Lewis, while at Oxford, was part of a small group of scholars who called themselves "Inklings." Were they perhaps referencing symbolic ideas in written works that were conveyed with the aid of small printer marks? In addition to the usual language-contained symbolism that we are taught to focus on in literature classes? I wish the History Channel would look into these sorts of puzzles instead of going on about "aliens," especially now that the US military has admitted it fabricated "UFO evidence" in order to hide military secrets.

[Update March 18, 2026: A blog I used to read, Instapundit, used a phrase a lot: "Asteroids are nature's way of saying 'How's that space program coming?'" The page with the possible asteroid print recalled that saying to mind. I wonder what Glenn Reynolds (the founding Instapundit blogger) meant by it.]

Free files to make a customizable poster on cross multiplying

Too many students make it to high school math without really understanding certain arithmetic and algebra procedures. One such procedure is "cross multiplication."

Today I made six pages that can be printed out and quickly turned into a wall poster explaining how to cross multiply and showing why it works. The pages are plain and have lots of white space to draw and write in tips where a teacher/parent/tutor wants to customize the poster. 

Here are the files for free to use for educational purposes:

Page 1 - upper left

Page 2 - upper right

Page 3 - middle left

Page 4 middle right

Page 5 - lower left

Page 6 - lower right

Print out all six pages, then cut/glue/tape them together onto a posterboard. Decorate and draw connecting arrows as desired.

A glucosamine chondroitin supplement reaction with magnesium sulfate?

Because cartilage is in the lungs and trachea, I think it should be investigated in connection with respiratory illnesses. After reading studies and reports about pneumonia risk factors years ago, I came to the conclusion that cartilage damage can increase respiratory symptom severity. 

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), especially glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, are very important in rebuilding cartilage. My sister discovered a few years ago that a chondroitin sulfate supplement extended her vocal range. Now I typically take some glucosamine when I have a cold in order to support cartilage recovery in my respiratory tract. 

A week ago, I could tell I was coming down with a really unpleasant virus, one that had just put another household member in bed for three days. So I took some glucosamine (in the form of a "glucosamine chondroitin" supplement from Spring Valley), as well as some zinc and choline supplements. Then later that day, I heated some distilled water and put some roasted barley and magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) in it, stirring it with a bronze spoon. After drinking it, my cold symptoms stopped getting worse within an hour, and I was never super sick!

I've looked at the ingredients in the Spring Valley glucosamine chondroitin, and it contains chondroitin sulfate sodium. I wonder if the copper in the spoon (copper is quite reactive, which is why your mouth can react strongly to putting a copper penny in your mouth) caused some sort of rearrangement of the magnesium sulfate that permitted it to react with the chondroitin sulfate sodium in my stomach. I don't know exactly what reaction happened. But the results of swallowing the chondroitin sulfate sodium followed by the magnesium sulfate were apparently beneficial to me. 

My family's experiences with some chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine supplements provide evidence supporting the potential helpfulness of cartilage support in promoting optimal respiratory tract function.

Juniper berries sometimes given the same treatment as anise?

 As I've blogged about before, I've had store-bought juniper berries in the past that contained something that allowed me to lose weight. I have tried (and failed) many times to duplicate that effect with juniper berries from bushes in my community.

According to my records, I might have repeated the weight-loss effect when I used anise seed (again, store-bought) in a way similar to how I used the store-bought juniper berries. I have only noticed the plateau-breaking effect with anise three times now, and it is too soon to be certain. But it might be progress, so I'm blogging about it.

An interesting thing about anise seed is that it tastes like two other substances: licorice root and fennel. That means that whatever weight loss compounds that might be included in some packaged anise seeds could also be included in licorice candies and salad components that contain fennel. That would make figuring out the source of weight loss very difficult, if so. Breads, candies, and salads are three very different categories of food!

Another interesting thing about anise is that it is the name of the most famous villain of American cinema, Ani S., also known as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader (from the Star Wars films). Realizing that made me wonder if there was a parallel for juniper berries in Icelandic cinema. 

About the only Icelandic show known outside of Iceland is the children's show LazyTown (Icelandic: Latibær). The villain of LazyTown is Robbie Rotten (Icelandic: Glanni Glæpur), who wears a dark blue, maroon, and purple ensemble; those are coincidentally the colors of juniper berries. If one does a double cancellation of repeated sounds (not necessarily of letters, just sounds, for this is a kid's show and literacy is not a requirement to be its audience), one ends up with "anni aepur" which looks a lot like "einiber", the Icelandic word for juniper berry. From what I have read, the letter "b" in Icelandic often sounds more like our English "p" than our English "b", especially in the middle or at the end of a word.

So, two different herbs. Both that show up in their national cinema as primary villains. Both herbs that--when mixed with butter and then put on just-microwaved dill weed over dry cocoa powder, with the whole compound being eaten around the same time as cabbage--I have found to contribute to my going down from a weight loss plateau. But so far the herbs only work with selected store-bought versions.