issue 74

Fortean Mysteries SIG recent history issue 74 Newsletter of the Fortean Mysteries SIG of American Mensa

only 200,000 millicents per 3 issues Published irregularly since Undecember 1658 AC

"All things are possible ..." (Mt 19:26)

We discovered this at NASA's astronomy picture of the day site (antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod). Our Tables of Minor Planets gives it's diameter as 96 km (150 miles), but that obviously highly variable. It's more like 55x170 km (88x270). If it were a phalange -- it looks most likely a toe bone (1x3cm) -- the whole body'd be 10,000 km. That's only about one-quarter of the size of a humanoid implied by Peter Mangan's moon-skull theory (Mpossibilities 47:4), though it might be a tail bone of our hypothetical 64000-km space worm.

Kleopatra was discovered in 1880 and has a 4.6676-year "year". NASA says it's highly radioreflective and so likely iron-nickle but with a loose rubble surface. Perhaps it was one of Fort's ancient spacebattles between a spaceworm and a spacebot -- and both lost.

Since J. H. Conway discovered surreal numbers (Mpossibilities 31:4) mathematics has changed. Making use of the computerese 00 (double zero) for the older "lazy eight" designation for Cantor's basic transfinite number, aleph-null, and (backslash) for ciscendentals, nfinities, nrationals, rrationals (Mpossibilities

68:1) seems to make surreal mathematics easier by an aleph-nullth [That's a word you probably don't see every day.]

Here's others anglicized from Transfini Math‚matiques pur Surreel

Amateurs de R“les Muet by Andr‚ Joyce using the operation

complimentary to dividing, conquering:

...99001 = 1000 - 999 = 3000 3003 = oogol-im

...99501 = 1000 - 499 = 3000 318 = oogol-id

...9901 = 1000 - 99 = 3000 303 = oogol-ic

...9951 = 1000 - 49 = 3000 48 = oogol-il

...991 = 1000 - 9 = 30 6 = oogol-ix

...996 = 1000 - 4 = 300 15 = oogol-iv

...998 = 1000 - 2 = 30 9 = oogol-ij

...99 = 1000 - 1 = 3 3 = oogol-i [pronounced "ooh-gaul-ee"]

100...00 = 1000 = 1 1 = oogol [from its similarity to googol]

100...001 = 1000 + 1 = 10 1 = oogoli [pronounced "ooh-golly"]

100...002 = 1000 + 2 = 5 1 = oogolij

100...004 = 1000 + 4 = 5 2 = oogoliv

100...009 = 1000 + 9 = 10 9 = oogolix

100...0049 = 1000 + 49 = 50 47 = oogolil

100...0099 = 1000 + 99 = 100 99 = oogolic

100...00499 = 1000 + 499 = 500 497 = oogolid

100...00999 = 1000 + 999 = 1000 999 = oogolim

199...99001 = 2(1000) - 999 = 6000 6006 = twogol-im

199...99501 = 2(1000) - 499 = 6000 636 = twogol-id

199...9901 = 2(1000) - 99 = 6000 606 = twogol-ic

199...9951 = 2(1000) - 49 = 6000 96 = twogol-il

199...991 = 2(1000) - 9 = 60 12 = twogol-ix

199...996 = 2(1000 - 2) = 600 30 = twogol-iv

199...998 = 2(1000) - 1) = 60 18 = twogol-ij

199...99 = 2(1000) - 1 = 6 6 = twogol-i

200...00 = 2(1000) = 2 2 = twogol [pronounced "to-gaul"]

200...001 = 2(1000) + 1 = 20 2 = twogoli

200...002 = 2(1000 + 1) = 10 2 = twogolij

200...004 = 2(1000 + 2) = 10 4 = twogoliv

200...009 = 2(1000) + 9 = 20 18 = twogolix

200 ..0049 = 2(1000) + 49 = 100 94 = twogolil

200...0099 = 2(1000) + 99 = 200 198 = twogolic

200...00499 = 2(1000) + 499 = 1000 994 = twogolid

200...00999 = 2(1000) + 999 = 2000 1998 = twogolim

10100...00 = oogolplex

10200...00 = twogolplex

0010 = goloo [spoonerism of oogol, 1000]

0000 = 000 = aleph-one

Dr. Otto Wolfe has reportdly donated his three-year-old genetic

engineering experiment to the Dresden Zoo, Hans-Herman, a two headed

zebra. What makes this two-head zebra more remarkable than the

everyday two-headed zebra is that Dr. Wolfe and his team grew Hans'

head on Herman's rear. "People don't appreciate the research and

technology that went into the creation of an animal like this. What

we learn about the manipulation of genes can lead to many new

discoveries, not the least of which will be cures for diseases like

arthritis and cancer."

Let's hope that this is the least of the new discoveries.

=================================================================

"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."

==================================================================

Dr. Frank Chavis claims to have lived for nine days with a Bigfoot

family last May in Wenatchee National Forst, Wash. Actually they

found him. The two youngsters rubbed leaves on his sprained ankle to

relieve the pain and fed him until he recovered. He managed to

record their monosyllabic language, but he says "The most important

thing I learned from living with a Bigfoot family is that it's

possible to be happy and peaceful without the hectic complications

of cars, TV, and the other trappings of madern society.

Dr. Duane Gorand says of the specimen found by Les and Linda

Tinardi near Holbrook, Ariz., "We have a lot more tests to run, but

at this point we have every reason to believe it is a genuine

angel's wing." Duh! Has he ever examined a genuine angels' wing

before. We think not. An angel appeared and saved their son who'd

been bitten by a diamondback. Les says, "I was never a religious

man. I only prayed out of desperation, because my son was so sick.

But I no longer have any doubts. Heaven exists and God sends angels

to Earth to intervene in human affairs."

Angels leave memorable calling cards too!

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³ "That extra-geographic conditions may be spiritual, ³

³ or of highly attenuated matter, is not my present ³

³ notion, though that, too, may be some day accepted."³

³ -- Charles Fort ³

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Yet another killer disease for us: Aurally Transmitted Syndrome,

ATS. Symptoms include fever, diarrhea, nausea, head and body aches,

swollen lymph glands. That's what Dr. Leo Gatelman has identified it

as. He's also discovered that all that all 37 cases he's studied

have in common is that the victims were either 900 sex line workers

or frequent customers and had been exposed to large amounts of bad

language, what memeticists would call dysmemes.

This sounds very similar to the 168 cases of people dying from

extensive computer use studied by Gary Purmon. Its symptoms are

however a slow, months-long eating away of the skin and then muscles

and then internal organs. All spend 13 or more hours a day in front

of a computer screen, but he says "Quite frankly, we don't have any

idea how this is happening." This one though could just be radiation

poisoning or information overload.

In recent Discovers we enjoyed most the "Bogglers" section by

Scott Kim. He's had anagrammic chemistry: (gold + indium =

gadolinium), hiroimono ["things picked up"] (the Japanese game which

can easily be extrapolated to hiroipoly), the Iltozian orthography

(based on tetrominoes, combinations of four squares), Iltozian

astronomy, (ditto), and negative place holders. The last would give

jootsy calculus (Mpossibilities 72:11) even more mpossibilities.

In his Boggler the place holders 5 to 9 in base 10 are replaced by

ones between -1 and -5, so that dates such as Christmas this year,

12-25-00, could mean something quite extraordinary: 12,000 - 200 +

50 - 00, which oogologically would be -00 + 12,150 = -5121 100000.

Nicolae Maramures was reported losing -- in fourth place in fact

-- in his bid for mayor of Craiova, Romania. Although he promised to

bring "all the wisdom I have gathered over the centuries", 11 he

claims, to the office, perhaps the Romanians were wise enough to

pass on someone foolish enough to let himself become a vampire in

We hear that the extrasolar planet count is now up to over 50 and

the latest is orbiting epsilon Eridani at a reasonable distance.

From the rest it seem planetary systems are not as stable as they

had thought. Giants can lose enough momentum to move in closer than

our Mercury or be thrown completely out of a stars gravity well.

Maybe Velikovsky was more right than wrong about planetary

If you remember, or even if you don't, epsilon Eridani ("Ee-ee"),

only 10.8 light-years away, was where the message in "The Message

from Space" by Fred Heeren came from -- the Jewish scripture in

microwave Morse-coded Hebrew. When Earth responded with "?" they

answered with the Christian scriptures in Greek. Yes, it's only a

parable but one with the point that there are ansers, there is one

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³ "I mistrust laboratory methods because what happens ³

³ in a laboratory is contrived and dictated. If the ³

³ evidence is unexpected or unaccountable it is ³

³ re-manufactured until it proves what the laboratory ³

³ controller wants it to prove." (George Bernard Shaw)³

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Fr. Gabriele Amorth unselfconsciously recounts in his An Exorcist

Recounts how her expelled the demon from a swineherd to his pig only

to have the angry demon maul its former residence to death. The

exorcism was a complete success, but the patient died.

Renzo Allegri's Reporter in Hell actually reports hellish

visitants. Fr. Gino took a year to exorcise "Anna" from a polt that

bloodied and tore her clothes. Fr. Candido Amantiniis told of Sr.

Francesa's apparently benevolent gifts of levitation and locution

being replaced by the transformation of spaghetti to worms, the

vomiting up of stones and pins for several years. Fr. Germano Venura

also told of seeing walnut-sized stones vomited up.

The recent chronicle of Charles Wykoff's life-long quest for the

monster of Loch Ness on PBS was interesting. It noted the alleged

proof that R. Kenneth Wilson's 1979 photo was a hoax but also

Richard Smith's proof that the hoax was hoaxed. It mentioned Sir

Peter Scott's plesiosaur theory and his later abandonment of it

under pressure and the three unidentified blips found by Operation

It quoted Alastair Boyd's typical Nessie hunter response: "It was

the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen. If I could afford to

spend the rest of my life for another glimpse, I would."

Davis Welk's study of all reported cases of spontaneous human

combustion in 1998 revealed the interesting observation that 69% of

the 17,307 victims were plumbers. That's nearly 12,000 of them! The

next "largest" occupational category was elementary school teachers

(7.2%), followed by cabdrivers, data processing clerks (both 5.2%),

then dentists (4.5%), clergy (2.7%), psychiatrists (2%), police

(1.3%), actor/actress (1.1%).

As we mentioned in Mpossibilities 72:4, there was a Feb. 29th,

1900 in Greece and Russia who had not yet changed from Old Style

(Julian calender) to New Style (Gregorian calendar), now in a book

of urban legnds we read of the confusion caused by a

misunderstanding of the nature of that change. O. S. had a Feb. 29th

every fourth year, N. S. every fourth year excepting years not

divisible by 400. O. S. would now differ from N. S. by the 11 days

it did in 1752 when most nations switched plus the missed 1800 and

1900 leapdays, 13 days. Some densans actually were worrying about

the computer that would not accept the date Feb. 30, 2000.

The author, who shall remain nameless -- not because we don't want

embarrass him, but because we can't find our notes at the moment --

said that there has never been a February 30th. Well, that's as not

true as that there wasn't a Feb. 29th 1900. You do have to remember

back to before Old Style was new though, before Julius Caesar had

the calendar changed in 45 B. C., the Year of Confusion.

Before Julius became caesar and stole a day from Februarius and

added it to Quinctilis to make the first 31-day month, our July,

February had 30 days just like all the others in the year, all that

is except Mercedonius, a leapmonth that failed to keep the previous

calendar in accurate.

Thinking on such things got us wiffing: "What if Julius'

correction calendar had continued in use? What if we stopped trying

to fight the confusion and enjoyed it? What if the Fortean Mysteries

SIG revived it as our own official calendar (not to be outdone by

the Fortean Society and the OuLiPo? (Mpossibilities 72:3)" It's

quite forteanly mysterious with 450 days and 15 months with one

So here's the corrsponding Anno Domini dates for the year 1660

Apr. 14, 2000 = Januarius 1; May 7 = Mercedonius 1; May 30 =

Februarius 25; June 4 = Martius 1; July 4 = Aprilis 1; August 3

[your editor's birthday] = Maius 1; Sept. 2 = Iunius; Oct. 2 =

Julius 1; Nov. 2 = Sextilis 1; Dec. 2 = September 1; Jan. 3, 2001 =

October 1; Feb. 2 = November 1; Mar. 3 = December 1; Apr. 2 =

Undecember 1; May 5 = Duodecember 1; June 7 = Duodecember 34.

Anyone who had adopted it wouldn't have had to deal with Y2K until

Feb. 5, 2419 A. D. and won't have to deal with Y10K until June 5,

We've, somewhat relatedly, also been pondering the expression "a

month of Sundays". If a month can vary between 28 days and 31 "a

month of Sundays could be anywhere from 27 weeks 1 day (190 days) to

31 weeks 6 days (223 days). If, as in the A.C. calendar, they vary