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.]

[Update 11/22/2024: Looking over my old records, I saw something I had done with the juniper berries that might have been successful but that I hadn't retried. I retried it for the past two days, and the following two mornings, I saw my weight go down 1 pound each morning. Here's what I did differently: 

1) I microwaved juniper berries, a pinch of roasted banana leaf powder, beer salt (for the silicon dioxide), and just-grated cinnamon bark for 60 seconds in an IKEA plastic cup; I stirred it afterwards with a cheap white plastic disposable fork.

2) I microwaved juniper berries, beer salt, and cream of tartar (probably helpful because of the potassium ions) 60 seconds in a light colored mug and then stirred with a silver fork handle and a Thai bronze spoon handle.

3) I pressed the juniper berries from both containers into salted butter onto the blades of a small blender. I think this allows both nonpolar and polar compounds to have a medium in which they can be combined. I used distilled water to puree the salted butter and the junipers together.

I then continued with my experiments as usual. The big difference was how I prepared the juniper berries.]

[Update 11/25/2024: Step 2 in the update from 11/22/2024 appears to be necessary. It appears to be required that I use both the silver fork handle and the Thai bronze spoon handle together. I wonder what metals are in those utensils from different hemispheres that could be working together...silver and tin? Silver and gallium? Silver and germanium? There are so many elements that could be in that Thai bronze spoon. (Whatever the special ingredient(s) in the Thai bronze spoon, I think it or they are also in white eggshells, because that, based on the yellow-highlighted section at the top of this post, was the item that would have been the correlating item for the bronze spoon. I wonder if the recent changes in egg production and the increase in cost have something to do with what trace elements egg-laying hens are or are not fed.)

Putting some butter puree into the dill/cocoa/tomato jar before mixing it into the red raspberry seed/roasted banana leaf/onion powder/cocoa/butter puree mug seems to also be helpful.

I'm down another pound. Only two more to go, and I will stop low-carbing lunch all the time! I'm kind of a fan of carbohydrates. :) ]

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.

[Update 12/6/2025: I think I discovered another Broadway musical "Easter egg." Remember the animated movie Anastasia? It was turned into a wonderful Broadway musical in 2017. Instead of Rasputin as the villain, they introduced an ambivalent opponent to Anastasia in the person of Gleb Vaganov, a Russian secret service officer who chases Anastasia from St. Petersburg to Paris and nearly shoots her before changing his mind.

In the musical, they add a few songs, including two that keep repeating the word "still" and two that reference a Russian con man having gotten fat. A "still" is often used to distill alcoholic beverages, and depending on how it is made, the result will have molecules of different weights. Stills are thus very useful for selecting specific small molecules for inclusion in a finished beverage. I keep noticing weight loss benefits from the occasional alcohol-containing Korean food that slips through my Mormon policy of alcohol avoidance. I think that high-end distilleries and alcohol-makers have taken advantage of that usefulness of still machinery to include weight-loss related molecules in whiskeys and other alcoholic beverages over the years, but only some producers have known how to do so.

It is interesting to note in Slavic languages that because the "b" in Gleb is at the end of the word, his name is actually pronounced "Glep." Have you noticed what is in the news constantly when it comes to weight loss? GLP-1 drugs. "GLP" can be read as "Glep." I think whatever weight-loss molecules used to be contained in select distilled beverages are being moved over to GLP-1 weight loss drugs in order to phase out their use in foods/drinks. Why do this? To hide sneaky behavior over the past 100 years by food and drink manufacturers. As AI use spreads, such behavior in the food supply will get easier to identify and trace to the sneaky parties, and everyone is pretty much going to boycott every processed food company for hiding important health-aiding information and being a critical cause of harm to everyone's health for decades. 

One of the most impassioned lines that Gleb sings to Anastasia is, "We have a past to bury, Anya!"

PS: I think Gleb's name was "vague enough" (a play on Gleb Vaganov). I've been singing along with the Anastasia musical for several years, and I just realized the possibility of an intentional Easter egg in Gleb's name recently.]

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.]

1828 dictionary entry for "Europe" given as "white face" in Aramaic

I was just visiting a sister who has a reprint of an 1828 American dictionary (https://www.amazon.com/American-Dictionary-English-Language-Facsimile/dp/091249803X, partially-available at https://archive.org/details/noah-websters-1828-dictionary-ellen-g-white-estate). I love looking through old dictionaries, so of course I thumbed through hers...repeatedly. 

To my surprise, this was the entry for "Europe":

The current dictionaries don't show a Hebrew/Aramaic etymology for Europe. Here's the entry from my enormous 1971 dictionary:

When I "Google" the etymology of Europe, I get a lot of supposition, references to Greek myths, etc. But the Aramaic word for face is "appa," and the Aramaic word for white is "howwar"--"howwar-appa" spoken quickly sounds pretty much like the same pronunciation for when most Europeans say the name of their landmass, i.e., Europa (English drops the vowel at the end of Europa). (See https://ids.clld.org/valuesets/15-640-215 ("white" = " and "χewwār") and https://ids.clld.org/valuesets/4-204-215 ("face" = "appa").)

Aramaic and Hebrew have been in use by Jewish scholars continuously throughout the last two millennia and more (see https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1051040/jewish/Aramaic-the-Yiddish-of-the-Middle-East.htm). An Aramaic etymology for "Europa" makes sense, for the Aramaic languages is nearly three thousand years old and is thought to have originated in northern Mesopotamia.

Why did the writers of dictionaries and etymologies discard a logical, supported-by-the-evidence etymology for Europe from Aramaic words? And without any mention of why the elimination was made?

How secret-keeping can be used to turn movements against their own interests

Military and political secret-keeping are not foreign to me. I recognize the usefulness of secret troop movements and societies in winning wars and overthrowing monarchies, especially in the past. However, in our information age where information is available in avalanche proportions, we need to re-evaluate how much we rely on secrecy and whether we should continue to value it highly as a social tool. I think that secrecy by those who are well-intentioned is now much less valuable and often detrimental to the very causes they are hoping to promote via secrecy.

First, there are corners of the internet and whole other computer networks where people trade secrets. Much that is assumed to be secret really isn't, but the criminals and sneaky people are getting their hands on that information while the well-intentioned are mostly kept from it.

Second, the saying that "politics makes for strange bedfellows" is even more true when it comes to protecting secrecy. When secrecy becomes a goal in and of itself, police fraternities can unknowingly end up working alongside the mafia to target people who expose their common secrets. It's not something that has to happen intentionally, for it flows naturally from different organizations subjecting themselves to secrecy considerations. Let me show this in diagrams; grammar syntax concepts are quite useful for demonstrating this:

(copied from image online at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/C-command.png, Author: Ioscius)

People think of organizations in terms of hierarchies. People are controlled by those who are upstream of them in a chain of command: D dominates F and G, C dominates E, B dominates C, D, E, F, and G, M dominates B, C, D, E, F, and G. But B doesn't dominate A, D doesn't dominate C or E, and C doesn't dominate D, F, or G.

Syntax research reveals the concept of "c-command" where reference to a common concept/object results in "c-command" by objects that otherwise don't dominate and so can't command each other. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-command). Using the diagram,

• M does not c-command any node because it dominates all other nodes.
• A c-commands B, C, D, E, F, and G.
• B c-commands A.
• C c-commands D, F, and G.
• D c-commands C and E.
• E does not c-command any node because it does not have a sister node or any daughter nodes.
• F c-commands G.
• G c-commands F.

(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-command)

Substitute "secrecy-command" for "C-command" and you'll get the gist of what I'm getting at here. Secrecy is the common referent. Organizations with otherwise no hierarchical connection get drafted by circumstances into helping each other preserve the common cause of secrecy. 

Treating secrecy of supreme importance makes different groups easy to manipulate and even turns allies against each other even when in many ways their interests and aims are the same because 1) everyone has become a guardian of secrecy ("no man can serve two masters"), and 2) that secrecy keeps the different groups from talking and comparing notes and realizing in what specific ways they are being used against each other.

What to do when secrecy has been contractually agreed to? When the penalty for disclosure could be loss of employment, position, security, etc.? Whistleblowers often take big risks (and are heroes, in my book).

Because such extreme protection of secrecy does not promote the public welfare, it is subject to legal attack under the spirit of the preamble to the US Constitution. Because people would not have agreed to maintain secrecy at the expense of the very goals for which they initially entered into an agreement, that secrecy portion of the agreement is subject to rescission under principles of equity (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescission_(contract_law)).

Technology changes society and reshapes the tools we use to get things done. Secrecy is a tool that needs to be examined openly for its usefulness or harmfulness...kind of hard to do given that it's about not being open, but it still needs to be done.

Some ways literate people covertly share their anti-religion/political beliefs and send each other messages with basic letter codes

The recent Paris Olympics opening ceremonies featured a tableau that mocked the "last supper" of Jesus Christ, but the choreographer claimed it was unintended. I don't think anyone who has really looked at the images believes him, and I don't think he meant people to believe his denial was honest. The performance was quite the overt mockery.

Not all mockery or self-marking of one's self as being against Christ, and by extension Christianity, is as obvious as what we just saw in Paris. People have been getting tattoos of "666" (the number of anti-Christ, per the Bible's Revelation Chapter 13) for some time. Various graphical representations of 666 (vav-vav-vav from vav, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet) can all mean that someone is marking themselves as against Christianity: 666, 111, VVV, WWW, UUU, eee, 999, ggg, GGG, bbb, FFF (because F is the sixth letter of the English alphabet), etc. are ways to play around with the underlying vav-vav-vav pattern.

Similar Bible-based labels of rebellion against the God of the Bible include:

• 42 (the number of months a blasphemous beast exercises authority in Revelation Chapter 13)
• Cain (the first murderer)
• beast (a blasphemer, per Revelation Chapter 13) (this can also be "brute")
• den (as in a "den of thieves," per the Bible's Matthew 21:13)
• serpents (see Exodus 7:12 and Matthew 12:34)
• wolves (see Matthew 7:15)
• Ammonites (see Judges in the Old Testament)

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have some extra labels of rebellions that they can apply to themselves that they pull from the Book of Mormon:

• Amalickiah/Amalickiahites (see the book of Alma in the Book of Mormon)
• Korihor (a teacher who was anti-Christ; see Alma 30)

The Book of Mormon teaches that people who rebel against God often mark themselves with signs for each other to recognize. I grew up hearing a lot of discussions wondering how people would be forced to "take the mark of the beast" as discussed in Revelation, but as I look around me now I see that no one is having to be forced into it. They are happily volunteering because of antipathy towards chastity and a lack of understanding about how important the teachings of Christ (especially his Parable of the Good Samaritan, with its command to actively love and serve one's neighbor) are to a happy society.

As I've continued to notice people's subtle messages, I've realized that some in publishing have been sending each other covert messages for over a century. The codes are pretty basic and messages often fall out easily once one knows the steps:

• First, cancel out letters that are doubled. For instance "petticoat government" would become "picagvrme." (It has no deeper meaning; I just use it because it's in my blog's name.)
• Second, look for words. Because more vowels are often needed, V can be read as a U, W can be read as an O, and H can be treated as an A.
• Apply various ring ciphers (circle the alphabet around on itself or twist it back around halfway through).
• As far as I have seen, the most commonly used of these ring ciphers in older documents is the one that matches O and L together (the words awl, all, and ol' are often used to signify that this ring cipher should be used on a segment of the coded message):
• A B C D E F G H I J K L M
• Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N
• Doubled letters can be substituted with the letter that is 13 letters afterward:
• A B C D E F G H I J K L M
• N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
• "X" (or "KS") can be used to reverse the order of the segment either before or after it.

You know you've likely hit on a decoded message if there are two closely-related possibilities, one of which looks like a mockery of someone and the other which looks like a clue to something important. Sometimes the mockery is in Spanish. Sometimes the entire message has to be shifted 1, 2, or even 8 letters forward or backward before the other steps bear fruit. It's a fun intellectual exercise.

This approach has been fruitful in decoding messages hidden in dissertation titles, schoolbook chapter headings, article titles, and scripture chapter headings (spoiler: some of the people writing the chapter headings don't appear to hold genuine faith in the scriptures they are presuming to interpret).

You could argue that I'm just finding these messages because I'm looking for them. I would answer that you never find what you don't look for if it's hidden just out of sight. Go ahead and look. Don't take my word for it. I think you'll find a good place to start is PhD dissertations written before the internet was available to the general public (I don't think academics realized just how accessible their dissertation titles would become to everyone after the 1990s).

[Update: 10/6/2024. One may ask, why bother to hide messages in texts like this? To recognize fellow subversive thinkers, I think. But once someone engages in sending covert messages, they have implicitly signaled that they can be deemed to receive messages sent to them in the same way. A dangerous game to get involved in....For instance, there might an encoded NTO "notice to owner" declaring a lien asserted by an IT subcontractor/middleman which might be treated as valid even though a person never actually realized they were being given an NTO.]

[Update 6/24/2025: The 2022 book How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain, by Ryan North, has an interesting piece of information on page 270:

"LO"....hmm...I think this could be a reference to the U-shaped "OL" cipher I have repeatedly found fruitful in older books. It would be a pointless bit of trivia to put into this book on supervillainy if it didn't have a hidden significance.]

Hypothesis: Fracking-associated earthquakes could be connected to silver

The recent hydrothermal explosion at Yellowstone National Park (see online article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/yellowstone-update-hydrothermal-explosions-cause-explained/ar-BB1qxK9i) caused me to start wondering what humans do that might increase movement of magma and result in seismic effects like earthquakes and eruptions. Here in Colorado, we experienced some possibly fracking-linked earthquakes in southeast Colorado about eight years ago.

I came across an interesting study titled "Nano-volcanic Eruption of Silver" (online at https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34769):

Here we report a novel phenomenon of Ag nano-volcanic eruption that is caused by interactions between Ag and oxygen (O). It involves grain boundary liquation, the ejection of transient Ag-O fluids through grain boundaries, and the decomposition of Ag-O fluids into O2 gas and suspended Ag and Ag2O clusters. 

It looks like interactions between silver and oxygen can cause mini-eruptions, and that those can occur at relatively low temperatures (geologically speaking) if the silver can't crystallize out (nucleate) as Ag2O. 

However, if the Ag2O phase could not nucleate, then the meta-stable melting points of fcc-(Ag), which are the meta-stable equilibria between the fcc-(Ag) and liquid phases, would fall drastically to low temperatures.

 (online at https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34769)

I think, per this chemistry article on silver nanoplates -

(online at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja2080345)

- that hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) can prevent Ag2O from crystallizing because it keeps the silver dissolved.

Perhaps in the process of returning fracking wastewater underground into disposal wells--the disposal wells have already been linked to earthquakes (see https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/07/12/more-on-the-science-linking-fracking-disposal-wells-to-earthquakes/)--hydrogen peroxide is sometimes being injected into areas with silver and causing a chain reaction that results in seismic events. If southeastern Colorado, a state with an important silver mining history, had any significant magma near the surface, maybe we might have even seen a little volcanic activity eight years ago!

Maybe we don't even need a lot of hydrogen peroxide present in the fracking wastewater. Perhaps there is sometimes something else in fracking wastewater that increases the amount of hydrogen peroxide later down at the bottom of the wastewater wells. Hydrogen peroxide can be made from just air, water, and electricity* given the right carrier molecule:

In this new process, scientists used electricity to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the hydrogen then reacts with a “carrier” molecule. This molecule — a compound called anthroquinone, in these initial experiments — is then introduced into a separate reaction chamber where it meets with oxygen taken from the outside air, and a pair of hydrogen atoms binds to an oxygen molecule (O2) to form the hydrogen peroxide. In the process, the carrier molecule is restored to its original state and returns to carry out the cycle all over again, so none of this material is consumed.

(see "Producing hydrogen peroxide continuously from just air, water, and electricity," 2019, online athttps://www.techexplorist.com/producing-hydrogen-peroxide-continuously-just-air-water-electricity/27255/)

Anthroquinone is a small molecule:

While it is hard to dissolve anthroquinone into water, it is soluble in hot organic solvents; fracking wastewater contains a lot of organic molecules (see https://new.nsf.gov/news/recent-research-analyzes-chemical-composition). 

I hypothesize that anthroquinone or a similar H2O2-producing carrier molecule might be present in some fracking wastewater and so contributing to seismic activity when introduced into silver-containing rocks deep underground via disposal wells.

* Electricity is presumably present deep underground: "In the mantle, the voltage difference is likely caused by movement of melts and fluids with high electrical conductivity, as well as other redox reactions – although little is known about how strong these electric fields might be." See "Electric fields deep in Earth’s mantle helps diamond crystallise," 2021, online at https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/electric-fields-deep-in-earths-mantle-helps-diamond-crystallise/4013130.article.

Hypothesis: Sequestering cobalt in the intestines to reduce colon cancer

Many studies have found an association between cobalt levels in the body and colon cancer. For instance this 2021 study from Iran found such an assocation:

The highest concentrations of heavy metals were found in the central part of the province and particularly counties with higher amount of cobalt were shown to be associated with higher ASR of men with colon cancer. In contrast, selenium concentrations were higher in areas with lower ASR of colon cancer in men. A significant regression equation for men with colon cancer was found (F(4,137) = 38.304, P < .000) with an adjusted R2 of 0.77. 

See "Association between heavy metals and colon cancer: an ecological study based on geographical information systems in North-Eastern Iran," 2021, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33858386/.

Cobalt is highly reactive in some forms and can cause cancer.

Cobalt and cobalt compounds that release cobalt ions in vivo are reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens based on sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in experimental animals and supporting data from studies on mechanisms of carcinogenesis. Mechanistic data indicate that the release of cobalt ions in vivo is a key event for cobalt-induced carcinogenicity. The available data show that cobalt metal and cobalt compounds that release cobalt ions in vivo (regardless of their solubility in water) act via similar modes of action to cause similar types of effects, including cell death, DNA damage, and cancer, and that the cobalt ion is largely responsible for the toxicity and carcinogenicity (IARC 2006b; NTP 1998; 2014).

(Online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK590837/)

Some forms of cobalt are highly stable, though. Cobalt manganese oxide (CoMnO) for example is typically insoluble in water and very stable. I think it could be helpful to periodically drink water that has the right compounds of manganese oxide to bind (i.e., sequester) cobalt in the intestines and thus lower its carcinogenicity. Perhaps dedicated drinking fountains could be utilized for this purpose and help turn the tide in the rising wave of colon cancer cases. Manganese is already present in tiny amounts in our tap water.

I wonder whether selenium tends to sequester cobalt, too, given that it was slightly protective against colon cancer in the Iran study above.

Hypothesis: Decreasing SO2 gas in the ear could reduce hearing loss resulting from loud noise

Two people known to me were exposed to very loud environments and had significant hearing loss while still quite young. So I wondered what contribution trace minerals and small atoms/molecules might make towards causing sudden hearing loss. Pertinent studies indicate that cobalt, lead, and tin tend to correlate with hearing loss, while iron could be protective against hearing loss.

"Individuals with the level of cobalt at third quartile had 49% higher risks of hearing loss than those at lowest quartile. And participants with highest quartile of tin had 1.75-folds risks of hearing loss than those with lowest quartile of tin." 

"Association between trace metals exposure and hearing loss," 2022, online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9428401/

"Blood lead concentrations were significantly and substantially associated with hearing loss (mean difference (MD) = 1.14; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.03, 2.26; P = 0.04; I2 = 81%), and iron deficiency was significantly related to hearing loss (MD = −0.42; 95% CI = −0.66, −0.18; P = 0.12; I2 = 60%)."

"Association of blood heavy metal concentrations with hearing loss: a systematic review and meta-analysis," 2024, online at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350623003876

Lead in nature tends to be found mostly as Pb, PbO2, and PbSO4. When I look at the standard reduction potential table (at 25 degrees Celsius, which is 77 degrees Fahrenheit) for various molecules and ions, I see that cobalt, when exposed to heat/electrical current, frees up sulfate (SO4(2-)) ions from lead sulfate (PbSO4). Tin, when exposed to heat/electrical current, turns sulfate ions in the presence of a abundant H+ ions into sulfur dioxide gas (SO2). Iron solids reduce levels of H+ ions by turning them into hydrogen gas (H2). To sum up, it looks like these four trace minerals are pointing to sulfur dioxide gas (SO2) as a culprit in helping cause hearing loss.

I looked at sulfur dioxide gas in 2016 when I was writing about molybdenum and its role in converting sulfite to sulfate. Sulfur dioxide and the sulfite that results from it in the human body appear to me to have causative role in migraines. Interestingly, migraines are correlated with sudden hearing loss:

"However, in male cohort studies, the migraine had a higher risk of [sudden sensorineural hearing loss] than no migraine (HR = 1.50; 95% CI: 1.17‐1.83; P < .001). The pooled HR of migraine with the risk of [sudden sensorineural hearing loss] was 1.37 (95% CI: 1.16‐1.58, P < .001) in people with <40 years old and 1.39 (95% CI: 1.17‐1.60; P < .001) in people >40 years old....Individuals with migraine patients are at a higher risk of developing [sudden sensorineural hearing loss]."

"Migraine and risk of sudden sensorineural hearing loss: A systematic review and meta‐analysis," 2020, online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7752063/.

I think this points to a potential protective benefit from including sulfur dioxide-absorbing/adsorbing materials in earplugs intended for use in high noise environments such a factories, firing ranges, etc.

Merely using earplugs doesn't seem to actually protect hearing: 

"The use of earplugs had no observable effect on the prevalence of high-frequency hearing loss of the study participants (OR 0.964, 95% CI 0.925–1.005, p = 0.085). No significant relationship between the effectiveness offered by earplug use and high-frequency hearing thresholds at 3, 4, and 6 kHz was found (t = −1.54, p = 0.125). The mandatory requirement of earplug use without individualized training on how to wear HPDs correctly had no detectable effect on the prevention of hearing loss at the auto parts factory."

"Evaluating the Effectiveness of Earplugs in Preventing Noise-Induced Hearing Loss in an Auto Parts Factory in China," 2021, online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8297223/

When I do an internet search on "sulfur dioxide-absorbing materials in earplugs," I don't see any results specifically mentioning earplugs that decrease levels of sulfur dioxide in the ear. That indicates a probable unmet need to me.

We know that sulfur dioxide causes damaging acid rain on statues and buildings; it's logical that sulfur dioxide could also be causing damage to our inner ears.

[Update 7/10/24: It appears that magnesium (as Mg(2+) ions), through an unascertained pathway, can protect against hearing loss. 

"Because Mg2+ deficiency increases the susceptibility to [noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL)], several studies have been conducted in animals or in humans to point out the possible prophylactic efficacy of magnesium. Joachims et al., (1983) observed that guinea pigs with physiologically high Mg2+ levels, when exposed to a single shot impulse or a series of impulses, had significantly smaller threshold increases as compared to physiologically low Mg2+ animals. Scheibe et al., (2000b) showed that oral magnesium supplementation significantly reduces [temporary threshold shifts (TTS)] and [permanent (permanent threshold shifts (PTS)] in guinea pigs subjected to a series of impulses. The mean PTS was found to correlate negatively with the total Mg2+ concentration of perilymph and plasma. Conversely, they did not observe any significant effect on PTS following exposure to a gunshot noise. More recently, Attias et al., (2003) explored the activity of the outer hair cells in guinea pigs by means of otoacoustic emission after impulse noise exposure. In animals supplemented with Mg2+, the thresholds were less significantly affected by noise exposure and the audition recovery was faster. In humans, preventive administration of magnesium has also been shown to be effective in noise-related hearing loss. Attias et al., (1994) tested the prophylactic effect of magnesium in human subjects exposed to hazardous noise. The study was carried out in 300 young, normal-hearing recruits who underwent 2 months of basic military training. This training included repeated exposure to high levels of impulse noises while using earplugs. The subjects received an additional drink daily containing either 167 mg magnesium aspartate or a placebo. The NIHL was significantly more frequent and more severe in the placebo group (28.5%) than in the magnesium group (11.2%). Moreover, the severity of the NIHL was negatively correlated to the magnesium content of red and mononuclear cells. This prophylactic effect in humans was confirmed by Attias et al., (2004) for temporary threshold shifts. Subjects were exposed to a traumatizing noise over 10 min in order to produce TTS without PTS. Compared to a placebo, the preventive oral intake of magnesium (122 mg Mg2+ aspartate during 10 days) provided significant protection against TTS. A negative correlation between the blood magnesium levels and the TTS was also noted."

"Magnesium and hearing loss," 2011 (Isabelle Sendowski, Xavier Holy, Florent Raffin, Yves Cazals), online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507266/. 

Magnesium behaves similarly to calcium (magnesium is directly above calcium on the periodic table of elements), so I wonder whether magnesium helps sequester sulfur ions similarly to the way calcium is used to "scrub" sulfur dioxide gas from power plant emissions.]

When are "muttered threats" clear enough to be federal crimes?

My family recently finished watching the multi-season TV series Numbers ("NUMB3RS") which was about an FBI agent with the last name Eppes and his brother, who take on and arrest all kinds of criminals. 

I was surprised to see that a recent small plane crash in the East--https://troopers.ny.gov/news/nysp-investigating-plane-crash-delaware-county--took the lives of five people, including four people from a family with the last name of "VanEpps." They had taken off from an airport named after a man with the surname Nader. I don't know about you, but "Nader" to me immediately brings to mind Ralph Nader, a politician known for looking out for the "little guy" and fighting corruption. Moreover, VanEpps makes me think of FBI agents named Eppes working in stakeout vans.

Ever since I learned about the threats/warnings that did or did not get delivered clearly to the USA and then to Japan at the start and end of World War II in the Pacific, I've been noticing that there seem to be a lot of "muttered threats" being made out there using people's surnames in headline-making events, court cases, etc.

I think this plane crash should be investigated more carefully than usual due to the way the names involved invoke images of FBI family members and fighting corruption in the government. Ever since Paul Wellstone's plane crash 22 years ago and the suspicions it raised, I've been more open to the idea that accidents aren't always as accidental as we hope or believe them to be.

If this plane crash turns out to be at all suspicious, it could have been meant as a threat to the families of FBI agents who stand up to corrupt people in the government....which threat-making has got to be a serious federal crime in and of itself.

A tale of two Sundays at church

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints often wear underwear with a special significance:

“The garment of the holy priesthood reminds us of the veil in the temple, and that veil is symbolic of Jesus Christ. When you put on your garment, you put on a sacred symbol of Jesus Christ. Wearing it is an outward expression of your inner commitment to follow Him. The garment is also a reminder of your temple covenants. You should wear the garment day and night throughout your life. When it must be removed for activities that cannot reasonably be done while wearing the garment, seek to restore it as soon as possible. As you keep your covenants, including the sacred privilege to wear the garment as instructed in the initiatory ordinances, you will have greater access to the Savior’s mercy, protection, strength and power.”

https://www.thechurchnews.com/leaders/2024/04/14/first-presidency-letter-garmet-of-the-holy-priesthood-temple-recommend-statement/

Two or three years ago, I used an ammeter to test one of my specially-produced undergarments and found that when slightly damp (such as would result from a person being a bit sweaty), the fabric carried an electric current.

Two Sundays ago, I noticed that when I was in our church building and wearing the garment, I kept feeling an unnatural feeling that everything was "normal" and "OK." I had to consciously strive to remember things I knew of a negative nature because of the strength of this normalcy bias, a feeling that appears to have been outwardly imposed on me. ("Normalcy bias is the tendency to underestimate the likelihood or impact of a negative event. Normalcy bias prevents us from understanding the possibility or the seriousness of a crisis or a natural disaster." https://www.scribbr.com/research-bias/normalcy-bias/)

Last Sunday, I decided to test whether my garment could be involved in creating that odd normalcy bias. The only way to reasonably test that hypothesis was to wear the garment inside-out to church for the duration of our two hours of worship meetings. I was surprised to notice the near-complete lack of the normalcy bias I had felt the previous Sunday. I felt like my thoughts were more my own and that my prayers were more genuine.

College fundraising help via undisclosed technology?

 A few months ago, I was on a local college campus during its homecoming weekend. I happened to be wearing one of their official college sweatshirts, a rather heavy sweatshirt.

While in the parking lot, I saw three young men greet each other happily and in high spirits, and I smiled at their happiness. Hours later back at home, I realized that I continued to feel very happy; in fact, I was euphoric. Nothing had happened in my life since being in the college parking lot that would account for the euphoria I was experiencing. 

As I've contemplated that experience and considered the difference in my mental state that came from ceasing to wear my habitual rings around three years ago, I have come to wonder whether there wasn't some sort of technology being quietly put to use on the college campus, technology used to promote the persistence of happy feelings in the student body and visiting alumni and parents during the homecoming weekend. Perhaps the unusual weight of my "school spirit" sweatshirt was because it contained something that enhanced the effectiveness of such a technology.

Colleges nowadays put a lot of effort into fundraising, and it seems that their fundraising would be more likely to be successful when visiting alumni and parents have strong, persistent happy feelings upon visiting a college in person.

I can hear people debating as they read this, "But surely such technology can't exist. We would know about it!" But such technology would be a lot more effective if not disclosed as no one likes to feel manipulated. If such technology exists and is in use, you can expect it to be a closely-held secret.

[Update 7/19/2024: I recently came across the "anomalous Nernst effect" (ANE) which might be a partial explanation for how magnetic fields could be used to affect our nervous system in an unnoticeable way. Basically, it says that an electric current can be induced in non-ferromagnetic materials (i.e., our axons in our neurons) where there is a perpendicular heat current (such as in our bodies with blood cooling in the extremities and warming in the torso) and a perpendicular magnetization. I don't understand all the details, for I never took quantum mechanics, and that is involved. But it looks like a promising research topic. Besides, I've always thought it would be good to understand quantum physics better, seeing as it help describes the world we live in.]

Still losing weight healthily--definitely need to reduce the complexity of what I'm doing, though!

As mentioned in the post before this, I think I've figured out how to lose weight healthily without relying on iffy beverages and supplements. I'm down ten pounds in about ten weeks, and according to my records, the good results come from using juniper berries that I first microwave in plastic for 60 seconds with silicon dioxide (I use "beer salt" for this) and grated cinnamon bark, then stir in (again, with plastic) ground eggshell (my current eggshell powder also has some onion in it, but when it runs out I will try the experiment with plain ground eggshell) and roasted plantain/banana leaf (made by soaking frozen-thawed banana/plantain leaves in epsom salt water (MgSO4 and H2O) before toasting black and crushing into powder), then microwave again 30-60 seconds. While they are still warm, I place the juniper berries on plain salted butter and make a puree out of that and plain distilled H2O.

I then use that puree as described in preceding posts. I really want to reduce some steps now that I have something that works, for the current process is too complicated to be easily replicated. My teenage daughter is going to help me with that, which is fitting because she first showed me years ago that this sort of process could have good results when she microwaved silicon dioxide-containing stevia sweetener with cinnamon and stirred it into artificial vanilla, cocoa, and yogurt. That stevia sweetener has apparently since changed its formulation, but I think the inulin in it was a source of strontium or barium and that I am now finding that needed strontium or barium in the eggshell powder.

[Update 6/6/2024: I think I missed an important ingredient in all my different food preparation combinations. It might be consumption of erucic acid (in brassica seeds and peanut skins) in light of how consistently I see tiny downward trends when I consume it versus when I don't it.]

[Update 6/7/2024: I mixed some ground mustard seed, which I ground myself at home using a mortar and pestle, into my butter and chilled it before using it in the puree yesterday. Today I'm down a little over a pound. I'm looking forward to seeing if there's a continued downward trend tomorrow! If so, I'll have to learn a lot more about erucic acid and benhenic acid.]

[Update 6/19/2024: Never mind about the erucic acid. That didn't seem to work. What does seem to make a difference is how recently I have microwaved the juniper berries. 

When I microwave the juniper berries with just some dried parsley (which creates both ozone and fluorine gas in minute amounts), I think I am making a +3 cobalt ion which quickly degrades to a +2 cobalt ion if not trapped in something like a saturated fat triglyceride such as butter provides, and I am more likely to see a little weight loss occur. 

I now do two treatments on juniper berries and place the resulting juniper berries in butter right afterwards to make the puree. 

The second treatment I do is microwaving beer salt (for its silicon dioxide and chloride ions) with juniper berries and freshly ground cinnamon and then stirring the heated mix with a tarnished silver-plated fork. I think I am likely making a +3 ion of chromium when I do this.

I'm sorry this is all so complicated. For anyone thinking that science is easy..... :) ]

[Update 6/24/2024: I think it's helpful to microwave some powdered dried onion/eggshell on the dill/cocoa mix in the Mason jar. Perhaps I'm making strontium ions that can then pull rubidium or lithium ions out of the tomato when I stir it in....]

[Update 6/25/2024: I just saw a drop on the scale after doing versions of the above experiment in which I microwaved a little powdered eggshell under the layer of Hershey's cocoa in the cocoa/toasted banana leaf powder/powdered dried onion/red raspberry seed powder-layered mug into which I afterward pour the juniper berry/salted butter/distilled water puree. I think I'm making strontium oxide (SrO) or barium oxide (BaO). It'll will be interesting to see if that keeps being helpful.]

[Update 7/2/2024: I've been thinking about why microwaving just cocoa and letting it sit for a while seems to be helpful; perhaps it's because the layer of cocoa is acting as a lid to some sort of chemical process that needs to have a sealed container. I came across a cryptic mention of combining lithium, gold, and CN (carbon nitride) with what appears to be phospholipids, and I think that microwaving the cocoa might be making the carbon nitride. The tomato is a source of lithium. Gold is tricky to isolate in a reactive form but is likely present in my juniper berries in tiny amounts. Soy is a source of phospholipids. I'll have to do some more studying to understand the underlying chemistry, but this seems like a very interesting lead. Especially since I got it from looking more closely at D&C 89.]

[Update 7/3/2024: I tried applying the information in the 7/2/2024 and went down a pound on the scale this morning. Gold seems to be important to weight loss somehow. That would go far to explain its staying power as a precious metal even among people who don't wear much jewelry.]