issue 68

We've got a new electronic organizer here at Hierogamous Enterprises (We need all the help organizing that we can get!) that has a backslash key, unlike our word processer which only has the oldfashioned slash (now retronymed into the "frontslash"). Naturally we wondered what other uses (specifically mathematical) the backslash might have besides merely "a character used to indicate the root directory and to separate subdirectories" [Dictionary of Computer Words].

Using the frontslash in the ordinary way we have ordinary equations like 10/2 = 5 and 2/10 = 0.2, finite and rational numbers, approximately equivalent however to the continuing surreal decimals, 4.99... and 0.199.... If we reverse the expressions therefore we get the extraordinary 10\2 = ...991 (OO - 8) and 2\10 = ...99.4 (OO - 0.6, numbers that seem to be partly finite and partly infinite, partly rational and partly irrational. Analogously to the intermediate mpossible, both (or between) impossible and possible, we'll call them "nfinite" [pronounced en-fie-night] and "rrational [are-rash-shun-all]".

10\p approximately = ...3,562,951,413 and p\10 approximately = ...9,890.381.3 (almost ...3,562,951,412.9... and ...9,890,381.29...) We could call the "nverted" [en-ver-ted] version of pi "ip" = p\1 = ...,356,295,141.3.

even the infinite set (..., ...,398,100,000, ...793,497,962, ...934,700,348.101, ...631,624,140.22291, ...5,563,573.4008263, ...87,917.293657486, ...) from i^i [i-to-the-ith] [# 57, # 40],

We have also noted the creative use of other characters as "emoticons" -- for example, in Interloc. Reading ;-) sideways we see a winking face. Others are

O:-) [angelic], :-b [Bronx cheering], @:-[) [Elvis], 8-) [eyeglassed], 8-`] [FDR], [8-] [Frankenstein], :-! [foot-in-mouth], :-I [grinning], :-D [laughing], :-X [mute], P-)

[piratical], :-/ [perplexed], (:-)=]+ [Papal], :-* [puckering], 7:-) [Reagan], [:-|] [robotic], :-( [sad], :-O [shocked], :-) [smiling], :-| [so-so], ;-) [teary-eyed happy], ;-( [teary-eyed sad], :-^) [tongue-in-cheek], :-& [tongue-tied], =|:-)= [Uncle Sam], &:)-3X= [woman with bow in hair]

In the Johnson Smith Company Christmas catalogue, Gifts You Never Knew Existed ... and other items you can't POSSIBLY live without are listed several fortean books and videos.

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold of the Lucidity Institute promises to make you "free to embark on unlimited adventures", to "transcend reality".

"An Unknown Encounter: Actual Footage of a True Haunting" has "scenes so terrifying you have to see them to believe them", like one of the paranormal researchers found hung in the attic!

"America's Most Haunted" from the Adventures Beyond-Supernatural Headhunters series features a seance in "the oldest haunted site in America".

Some of the lost science revealed in the 304-page Lost Science Revealed includes: anti-gravity, controlled fusion, earth batteries, geoaetheric engines, gravitational warps by Nikola Tesla, Nathan Stubblefield, T. Henry Moray, Philo Farnsworth, etal.

The 342-page The Fantastic Investions of Nikola Tesla by Nickola Tesla with additional material by David Hatcher Chaldress focuses on him alone -- on his death ray, free energy generator, mindreading machine, radio-controlled anti-gravity airship, time machine.

blurb, "Nothing in this video is true, but it's exactly how things are", explained perhaps because it's based on a witness from the 13th dimension.

And last but not least -- "Image of an Assassination: a new look at the Zapruder Film" which, they say, "may provide grist for those critical of the one-gunman theory" with six computer enhanced versions.

In Loompanics Unlimited's catalog (P. O. Box 1197. Port Townsend, WA 96368, loompanx@olympus.net, www.loompanics.com) are more strange offerings.

Black Helicopters II by Jim Keith supposedly answers the questions "Are the black helicopters connected to UFOs? Cattle mutilations?"

Lost Science by Gerry Vassilatos goes back to Baron Karl von Reichenbach (auras), Antonio Meucci (physiophone), Royal Rife (death ray), T. T. Brown (gravitational warping) as well as Farnsworth, Moray, Stubblefield and Tesla.

Bizarre Beliefs by Simon Boggart and Mike Hutchinson covers astrology, crop the Bermuda triangle, Bigfoot, circles, dowsing, ESP, firewalking, fortunetelling, ghosts, graphology, King Tut's curse, necromancy, Nessie, Nostradamus' prophesies, psychic detection, synchronicity, UFOs and more.

News of the Weird: Over 500 Bizarre-But-True Stories That Reveal Weirdness, Weirdness Everywhere! by Chuck Shepherd, John J. Kohut and Roland Sweet is mostly weird behavior, but definitely weird. There's the husband who gave the excuse after shooting a woman as she came out of church, "I meant to kill my wife but forgot my glasses," the ambulance driver and medics who waited for their pizza while in route to the hospital with a head injury victim, get-poor-quick schemes.

There's also a whole book devoted to those weird tourist attracts, Offbeat Museums:The Collections and Curators of America's Most Unusual Museums by Saul Rubin. Did you even know there were such places as: the Cockroach Hall

The Odd Index: The Ultimate Compendium of Bizarre and Unusual Facts by Stephen J. Spignesi includes: 6 odd ways of dying on a farm, 11 plagued places, 11 signs of demonic possession, 20 secret subliminal messages on records, 31 weird

The most fortean offerings would be William R. Corliss', a name that should be familiar to forteans. His Scientific Frontiers: Some Anomalies and Curiosities of Nature includes "over 1500 new items, 417 illustrations, and 1663 references" 1976-1993 from archeology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, mathematics,

Biological Anomalies: Mammals I & II add another 622 pages of data, Biological Anomalies: Humans III 212 and Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts 786! That's things like: fossilized human footprints, giant hominids, Great Wall of Peru, hominid devolution, human-fish phenomenon, human-Gaia interface, limb

regeneration, male lactation, mammalian engineering, art and music, mummified Arctic seals, North American hominids, Pleistocene dwarfism, sea-serpents, stone alignments and circles, surviving Steller's sea cow, zebra stripe reversals.

Walter Kafton-Minkel concentrates on just one subject in Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 years of dragons, dwarves, the dead, lost races & UFOs from inside the Earth and Strange Days #1 from Fortean Times on just one year, 1995. (How soon #2 and #3?)

John Horgan in his The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age claims it's threatened [by memetic virus victims] such as: technophobes, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, politicians. Since the Omniscient has assured us that His ways are beyond us, we can be sure that knowledge is limitless. Perhaps it's the end of Science that Horgan means, as

Richard Milton does in Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment. Therein he describes the "paradigm police" who ridicule and reject important new discoveries for unscientific reasons.

In Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge Paul Feyerabend even looks forward to the "withering away of reason" claiming "the only principle which does not inhibit progress is anything goes." This new third edition includes new material on the trial of Galileo (i.e., his subterfuge, rhetoric and propaganda) and on the comparative reality of gods and atoms.

I Am Right -- You Are Wrong: From This to the New Renaissance: From Rock Logic to Water Logic by Edward de Bono advocates a new logic based on perception to "provide the constructive energies that we are going to need in order to solve problems and create a better future as we move towards [sic] the year 2000". [We prefer the pataphysical axiom, KuNu, you and not-you are both right -- or is it KNuNNu, not-you and not not-you are both right, you and not-you are both not right.]

Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Mind by Richard Brodie is however not new, except perhaps compared with the old sciences of say astronomy or mathematics. It's warning label is interesting though:

WARNING! This book contains a live mind virus. Do not read this book unless you are willing to be infected. The infection may affect the way you think in subtle or not-so-subtle ways, or even turn your current world view inside-out."

We advocate our own new science, beyond the observation of physics, beyond the speculation of metaphysics, beyond the imagination of pataphysics: papaphysics, the science of the unobservable, of the unthinkable, of the unimaginable.


	Fortean Mysteries SIG recent history issue 68 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." (Matthew 19:26) AN INFINITY OF NFINITIES We've got a new electronic organizer here at Hierogamous Enterprises (We need all the help organizing that we can get!) that has a backslash key, unlike our word processer which only has the oldfashioned slash (now retronymed into the "frontslash"). Naturally we wondered what other uses (specifically mathematical) the backslash might have besides merely "a character used to indicate the root directory and to separate subdirectories" [Dictionary of Computer Words]. Using the frontslash in the ordinary way we have ordinary equations like 10/2 = 5 and 2/10 = 0.2, finite and rational numbers, approximately equivalent however to the continuing surreal decimals, 4.99... and 0.199.... If we reverse the expressions therefore we get the extraordinary 10\2 = ...991 (OO - 8) and 2\10 = ...99.4 (OO - 0.6, numbers that seem to be partly finite and partly infinite, partly rational and partly irrational. Analogously to the intermediate mpossible, both (or between) impossible and possible, we'll call them "nfinite" [pronounced en-fie-night] and "rrational [are-rash-shun-all]". 10\p approximately = ...3,562,951,413 and p\10 approximately = ...9,890.381.3 (almost ...3,562,951,412.9... and ...9,890,381.29...) We could call the "nverted" [en-ver-ted] version of pi "ip" = p\1 = ...,356,295,141.3. Then there's what we could call the "ciscendentals" based on the transcendentals described previously -- ...795,359,511.3 from evenless pi, ...985,629,511.3 from fourless pi, ...238,556,254 from luckyless pi, ...428,288,624 from oddless pi, ...853,562,954.3 from oneless pi, [the mperfectly-formed] 17\25 = ...86 from the perfectly-formed 17/25, [ihhp, ((f^2)/p)\1] ...001,643,338 from phhi, ...264,828,624 from primeless pi, the repunit ...1 from 1/9, [the nrational, en-rash-shun-all] ...734,687,580 from the unrational, (3/2 - 2^(1/2)) [see Mpossibilities 64], ...875,631,098,765,432 from the s-ain'tly number, ...753,197,531 from the oddly-formed number, ...655,682,731 from the weirdly-formed number [# 62], even the infinite set (..., ...,398,100,000, ...793,497,962, ...934,700,348.101, ...631,624,140.22291, ...5,563,573.4008263, ...87,917.293657486, ...) from i^i [i-to-the-ith] [# 57, # 40], ...763,137,554.5831 from piplex or ten-to-the-pith [# 40], [ihp, f\1 ]...,889,330,816.1 from phi [# 37], ...575,978,637.2 from (e + 1/e) [# 19]. ===================================================================== NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION We have also noted the creative use of other characters as "emoticons" -- for example, in Interloc. Reading ;-) sideways we see a winking face. Others are O:-) [angelic], :-b [Bronx cheering], @:-[) [Elvis], 8-) [eyeglassed], 8-`] [FDR], [8-] [Frankenstein], :-! [foot-in-mouth], :-I [grinning], :-D [laughing], :-X [mute], P-) [piratical], :-/ [perplexed], (:-)=]+ [Papal], :-* [puckering], 7:-) [Reagan], [:-\|] [robotic], :-( [sad], :-O [shocked], :-) [smiling], :-\| [so-so], ;-) [teary-eyed happy], ;-( [teary-eyed sad], :-^) [tongue-in-cheek], :-& [tongue-tied], =\|:-)= [Uncle Sam], &:)-3X= [woman with bow in hair] :-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-) BOOKS In the Johnson Smith Company Christmas catalogue, Gifts You Never Knew Existed ... and other items you can't POSSIBLY live without are listed several fortean books and videos. Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold of the Lucidity Institute promises to make you "free to embark on unlimited adventures", to "transcend reality". "An Unknown Encounter: Actual Footage of a True Haunting" has "scenes so terrifying you have to see them to believe them", like one of the paranormal researchers found hung in the attic! "America's Most Haunted" from the Adventures Beyond-Supernatural Headhunters series features a seance in "the oldest haunted site in America". Some of the lost science revealed in the 304-page Lost Science Revealed includes: anti-gravity, controlled fusion, earth batteries, geoaetheric engines, gravitational warps by Nikola Tesla, Nathan Stubblefield, T. Henry Moray, Philo Farnsworth, etal. The 342-page The Fantastic Investions of Nikola Tesla by Nickola Tesla with additional material by David Hatcher Chaldress focuses on him alone -- on his death ray, free energy generator, mindreading machine, radio-controlled anti-gravity airship, time machine. "Nothing to Something" is a video based on the book by Bob Frissell with the blurb, "Nothing in this video is true, but it's exactly how things are", explained perhaps because it's based on a witness from the 13th dimension. And last but not least -- "Image of an Assassination: a new look at the Zapruder Film" which, they say, "may provide grist for those critical of the one-gunman theory" with six computer enhanced versions. (((((((((((((((((((((((((((O))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) LOOMPANICS In Loompanics Unlimited's catalog (P. O. Box 1197. Port Townsend, WA 96368, loompanx@olympus.net, www.loompanics.com) are more strange offerings. Black Helicopters II by Jim Keith supposedly answers the questions "Are the black helicopters connected to UFOs? Cattle mutilations?" Lost Science by Gerry Vassilatos goes back to Baron Karl von Reichenbach (auras), Antonio Meucci (physiophone), Royal Rife (death ray), T. T. Brown (gravitational warping) as well as Farnsworth, Moray, Stubblefield and Tesla. Bizarre Beliefs by Simon Boggart and Mike Hutchinson covers astrology, crop the Bermuda triangle, Bigfoot, circles, dowsing, ESP, firewalking, fortunetelling, ghosts, graphology, King Tut's curse, necromancy, Nessie, Nostradamus' prophesies, psychic detection, synchronicity, UFOs and more. News of the Weird: Over 500 Bizarre-But-True Stories That Reveal Weirdness, Weirdness Everywhere! by Chuck Shepherd, John J. Kohut and Roland Sweet is mostly weird behavior, but definitely weird. There's the husband who gave the excuse after shooting a woman as she came out of church, "I meant to kill my wife but forgot my glasses," the ambulance driver and medics who waited for their pizza while in route to the hospital with a head injury victim, get-poor-quick schemes. spectacular suicide attempts, least competent criminals. There's also a whole book devoted to those weird tourist attracts, Offbeat Museums:The Collections and Curators of America's Most Unusual Museums by Saul Rubin. Did you even know there were such places as: the Cockroach Hall of Fame, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, the UFO Enigma Museum? The Odd Index: The Ultimate Compendium of Bizarre and Unusual Facts by Stephen J. Spignesi includes: 6 odd ways of dying on a farm, 11 plagued places, 11 signs of demonic possession, 20 secret subliminal messages on records, 31 weird tourist attractions, 39 mega-movie blunders, 73 initially rejected literary classics and 10,263 other factoids. The most fortean offerings would be William R. Corliss', a name that should be familiar to forteans. His Scientific Frontiers: Some Anomalies and Curiosities of Nature includes "over 1500 new items, 417 illustrations, and 1663 references" 1976-1993 from archeology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, mathematics, physics, psychology. Biological Anomalies: Mammals I & II add another 622 pages of data, Biological Anomalies: Humans III 212 and Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts 786! That's things like: fossilized human footprints, giant hominids, Great Wall of Peru, hominid devolution, human-fish phenomenon, human-Gaia interface, limb regeneration, male lactation, mammalian engineering, art and music, mummified Arctic seals, North American hominids, Pleistocene dwarfism, sea-serpents, stone alignments and circles, surviving Steller's sea cow, zebra stripe reversals. Walter Kafton-Minkel concentrates on just one subject in Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 years of dragons, dwarves, the dead, lost races & UFOs from inside the Earth and Strange Days #1 from Fortean Times on just one year, 1995. (How soon #2 and #3?) John Horgan in his The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age claims it's threatened [by memetic virus victims] such as: technophobes, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, politicians. Since the Omniscient has assured us that His ways are beyond us, we can be sure that knowledge is limitless. Perhaps it's the end of Science that Horgan means, as Richard Milton does in Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment. Therein he describes the "paradigm police" who ridicule and reject important new discoveries for unscientific reasons. In Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge Paul Feyerabend even looks forward to the "withering away of reason" claiming "the only principle which does not inhibit progress is anything goes." This new third edition includes new material on the trial of Galileo (i.e., his subterfuge, rhetoric and propaganda) and on the comparative reality of gods and atoms. I Am Right -- You Are Wrong: From This to the New Renaissance: From Rock Logic to Water Logic by Edward de Bono advocates a new logic based on perception to "provide the constructive energies that we are going to need in order to solve problems and create a better future as we move towards [sic] the year 2000". [We prefer the pataphysical axiom, KuNu, you and not-you are both right -- or is it KNuNNu, not-you and not not-you are both right, you and not-you are both not right.] Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Mind by Richard Brodie is however not new, except perhaps compared with the old sciences of say astronomy or mathematics. It's warning label is interesting though: WARNING! This book contains a live mind virus. Do not read this book unless you are willing to be infected. The infection may affect the way you think in subtle or not-so-subtle ways, or even turn your current world view inside-out." We advocate our own new science, beyond the observation of physics, beyond the speculation of metaphysics, beyond the imagination of pataphysics: papaphysics, the science of the unobservable, of the unthinkable, of the unimaginable. The physics of time, for example, would measure it:-) ; the metaphysics of time, would ponder it:-/; the pataphysics of time would travel through it:-O, while papaphysics would deal with time by trying to deal with timelessness, eternity:-*.