Is reality being controlled by "machine elves?"

Terence McKenna's DMT hallucinations live on

DMT is a psychedelic tryptamine found in ayahuasca, as well as inside most mammalian bodies. (Intriguingly, one researcher believes that near-death experiences are triggered by a flood of DMT being released from the pineal gland at the time of death.) Many people who take DMT report similar experiences with alien and/or magical entities, which noted psychedelic fancier and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna dubbed "machine elves."

McKenna believed that taking DMT allowed the user to punch through our reality, into the place where our reality is made. "There's a whole bunch of entities waiting on the other side," McKenna said. And everything is being created by the machine elves: tiny, self-reproducing, fractal beings who can sing matter into shape. Their "marvelous singing makes intricate toys out of the air and their own continually transforming body geometries."
 
Machine elves also pass their knowledge directly to any traveler who enters their realm. Very directly; McKenna said that they "jump into your body and then they jump back out again," and this is how they communicate ideas and thoughts to the visitor. 

The theory of machine elves has captured many aspects of the popular imagination. Some people have made the connection to similar legends in other cultures. The concept of small powerful beings is a nearly universal one, from the eponymous elves and pixies of fairytale England to the songlines of aboriginal cultures in Australia.
 
Others - including most notably Alex Jones - have latched on to the machine elves as an explanation for all conspiracy theories. The conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories, in other words, and the true source of the Illuminati. Jones apparently believes that the machine elves are the ones silently whispering into the ears of those in power, telling them what to do (and whom to kill).
 
From an external perspective, it seems likely that this phenomena is due to a combination of priming (where the user sees what they have been coached to see) and pareidolia (the brain's overwhelming urge to find pattern in noise, particularly in spotting human faces in  collections of random shapes).
 
Even McKenna, in his original report about the machine elves, mentions their similarity to the Munchkins in the film version of the Wizard of Oz. People describing the machine elves tend to use psychedelic mandalas with fractal elements and bright colors, like the image at the top of this post. It seems likely that the machine elves are just an artifact of a common psychedelic hallucination, but who can really say for sure?
 

A neurosurgeon visits Heaven - so what?

His medical credentials shouldn't bear on the story.

The latest Newsweek cover story is causing quite a stir: it features a hand reaching up to the sun, with the headline "HEAVEN IS REAL: A DOCTOR'S EXPERIENCE OF THE AFTERLIFE."

Here is my first reaction to this story: just because the dude is a neurosurgeon, that doesn't mean he knows any more about Heaven than the rest of us. This story is hitting the "neurosurgeon" angle pretty hard, as well it might. Can you think of anyone more respected than a neurosurgeon? What a reporter's dream.
 
This is a logical fallacy, that the source of the information is as important - even more important - than the information itself. You usually see it happening in the other direction, when people try to discredit the source of the information. But the reverse is just as true.
 
Should we value the opinion of a neurosurgeon more than some random person off the street? When it comes to cerebrospinal surgery: yes. But that expertise doesn't translate across all fields. Are all neurosurgeons master-level painters? Expert-level guitarists? Accomplished architects? Race car drivers? Gardeners? Knitters? City planners?

Once you think about it for a minute, it becomes clear that a neurosurgeon is no more credible on the topic of Heaven than anyone else. You might think "Well, a homeless guy could be having a schizophrenic episode or something." But let me assure you, neurosurgeons suffer from schizophrenia, too. 

Neurosurgeons are only human. And as human, they are qualified to comment on the human condition and the human experience. But so are you and I. And yet, you and I are not getting Newsweek covers.
 
I'm not saying that Dr. Eben Alexander, who describes himself as "a faithful Christian," did or didn't see Heaven. I'm not qualified to make that call. But guess what? Neither is he. 
 
Heaven is the great unknowable. It's tempting to search for evidence of its existence. But that's the entire point of Heaven. If it was proven to exist, then you wouldn't need faith in order to get there. 
 
Dr. Alexander's story makes for an interesting and engrossing read. You will have to decide for yourself what you think about it. But as you decide, I urge you to set aside the red herring that is his credentials. In the third sentence the dude points out that he teaches at Harvard Medical Center. Anyone who puts his unrelated credentials that far forward is - if you ask me - trying a little too hard to convince you that he knows the answer just because he's smart.
 

Blue honey mystery solved

Blame the M&M sludge being turned into biofuel nearby

Beekeepers in France faced a bizarre sight recently: in places, their bees had created beautiful blue honey. The blues ranged from brilliant turquoise to a darker royal blue. All of the shades contrasted very nicely with the normal colored honey surrounding them. It seemed quite artistic, but no less disturbing for being so visually attractive. Other beekeepers found brilliant green honey when they cracked open their hives. 

Beekeepers throughout the area of Alsace centering around the town of Ribeauville collaborated on investigating this mystery. Soon they discovered the culprit: a nearby biogas plant which had been processing industrial waste from a Mars plant which had been making M&Ms in the traditional brilliant shades of blue and green, as well as red, brown, and yellow.

When bees discover a nearby source of nectar, they are famously indifferent to its source. Whether it comes from the flowers of an almond tree, blackberry bushes, or a giant industrial vat of spoiled candy: to a bee, it is all just calories to be stored away for the winter (in the form of honey). And of course, when one bee finds a good source, she returns to the hive and tells all of her sisters exactly how to get there, communicating specific flying directions with the "waggle dance."
 
Soon, the entire hive is industriously zipping back and forth between the chemical plant and their hive. And the next thing you know, you have an entire comb of prettily colored but unsalable honey. Although it's pretty, and people would probably be willing to buy it as a novelty, because it stems from non-food grade industrial waste it cannot be sold. Furthermore, many have found that this kind of tainted honey tastes very bad.
 
A similar problem happened in New York City recently, with bees creating brilliant red honey from a nearby candy factory. Although in this case, the honey came from food grade vats and could theoretically be sold, the beekeepers found that it tasted bitter and metallic, with strong chemical overtones.
 
No surprise, perhaps, to honey connoisseurs. There is a distinct taste difference between honey made from clover flowers versus honey made from blackberry flowers (and all the other forms of honey available). It makes sense that honey from a chemical factory, no matter how pretty, would taste pretty badly of chemicals.
 
Worse still, the honey is probably not good for the bees, given its chemical composition. Bees make honey to tide them through the winter, but the beekeepers will have to discard this colored honey and feed their bees an artificial blend of sugar water instead. Meaning that the bees' summer labors were all in vain.

New leads on massive maple syrup theft

A quarter of Quebec's strategic maple syrup reserves stolen

Last August, Canadian authorities discovered that more than 10 million pounds of maple syrup had gone missing from a Quebec warehouse. The syrup theft was valued at over $30 million dollars, and represented a full quarter of the provincial maple syrup reserves.

One of the strangest things to come to light in the wake of this story is the fact that Canada maintains a strategic maple syrup reserve. All countries maintain some sort of strategic reserve, of course. For most countries, the reserve will be warehoused supplies of fuel or basic foodstuffs like grain. But many non-Canadians were surprised to learn that since 2000, Quebec has been maintaining a vast hoard of maple syrup.
 
Maple syrup is considered a quaint (though delicious) industry in America. But in Canada, maple syrup is big business, comparable to any other form of agricultural production. Canada has been the world leader in maple syrup production for the last 80 years, and Quebec alone provides 75 percent of the world's supply of syrup. 

Quebec's syrup reserve serves as a buffer against bad syrup years. You can't predict the weather, and some years the trees just don't give much sap. Luckily, syrup stores well, so the province can store away surplus syrup in good years, and deploy it on the market in bad years, thus ensuring a steady economic base.
 
It's no surprise, then, that the RCMP took this theft extremely seriously. And over a month later, they finally tracked down the goods. 
 
The thieves delayed discovery of the theft by removing the syrup from the barrels, leaving behind a warehouse full of empty syrup barrels. To a quick visual inspection, everything was fine. This clever ruse no doubt bought them some time to fence the stolen syrup, but not enough: 400,000 pounds of the stolen syrup was recovered from an export business in New Brunswick.
 
The exporters, naturally, claim that they bought the syrup unaware of its illegal provenance. S.K. Export has turned over the name of their regular suppliers, who they claim are the ones really responsible for buying the hot syrup. 
 
The recovered syrup was whisked back to Quebec under police escort. 16 trailer loads of syrup "accompanied by a squad of provincial police cars" must have, to the RCMP, seemed like too rich a target for highway thieves. And how heartbreaking it would have been, to recover some of the stolen syrup only to lose it all over again. 
 

Teenage girl produces four pound hairball

Kids, don't chew your hair.

A 19-year-old-girl in Indore, India went to the hospital last month complaining that she "hadn't been able to eat or drink for a few days." Doctors performed an examination and discovered a massive blockage filling her stomach and small intestine.

The girl was rushed into surgery, and doctors removed a four pound hairball from her GI tract. The girl reportedly "had a bad habit of eating her hair and chalk while in class," and the resulting impaction created a truly stunning mass.
 
Formally known as a "bezoar," these impacted masses have been removed from people and animals for centuries. Bezoars can be formed from either organic or inorganic materials. In people they are often caused by pica (a psychological or medical condition which compels the sufferer to eat non-food items, such as hair or chalk). A bezoar composed mainly of hair is called a Trichobezoar. Premature babies fed formula will often form bezoars made from dried up lumps of formula powder, called a Lactobezoar.

Bezoars can also result from impacted masses of seeds, pits, or unripe pomegranates. In fact, the problem with unripe pomegranates causing a bezoar is so common that it has its own scientific name (Diospyrobezoar) and folk remedy (Coca-Cola). 
 
Other animals form bezoars based on their specific biology. In some cases they are lumps of things the animal has eaten (the hairball of the house cat is a prime example of this). In other cases they may precipitate out as a chemical process.
 
In many cultures and eras, bezoars have been thought to possess magical and/or medical properties. In fact, the name itself comes from the ancient Persian word for "antidote," due to the belief that a bezoar served as a universal antidote against all poisons.
 
In Europe, the belief in the power of the bezoar was so strong that it wasn't until the mid 1500s that the belief was effectively debunked. Surgeon Ambroise Pare (widely considered "one of the fathers of surgery and modern forensic pathology") took a man who was sentenced to death by hanging, and gave him the option to risk "poison with a bezoar chaser" instead. The man chose poison, and died horribly, even with the application of a bezoar.
 
In Chinese herbal medicine, bezoars from an ox are still considered to have the ability to remove toxins from the body. Called calculus bovi, these bezoars are harvested from the gall bladder of cattle after slaughter. These small gall stones are somewhat rare, and are thus quite valuable. This has also given rise to a brisk trade in artificial calculus bovi which are made from cholic acid.
 

China's "fake eggs" problem

It sounds silly, but this is becoming a major health concern

I guess I'm pretty spoiled, since I have three pet chickens who lay eggs for me, and I barely have to do anything. It never occurred to me that people would bother to make fake eggs by hand, much less that this could be profitable. Much less that it could become such a huge issue that people throughout China would have to study news articles to tell the difference, or that it would be so prevalent as to pose a serious health risk.

 
Literally everything about this story is amazing to me. But I have to say, aside from the small point that the fake eggs have zero nutrition or caloric value and can sometimes be toxic, fake eggs might be considered an improvement over the battery cage conditions that prevail in America's large scale factory farms.
 
Apparently once you learn the technique for making a fake egg, a person can make one in about five minutes. One former "fake egg" producer claimed that he could make 1,000 fake eggs a day, which earned him over 100 Yuan per day, the equivalent of $15 USD, or what the man called "a fortune." 
 
To make a fake egg, you start with the yolk and white. These are both made from the same material: a gel comprised of gelatin, alginate, and who knows what else. You pour some into an egg yolk form, add food coloring, and there's your yolk. Add a dollop of uncolored gel for the white, then dip it all in a calcium chloride solution to set it somewhat. It is then gently rolled through a solution of beeswax and calcium carbonate to make the shell, and finally sprayed with a coating of paint to make the shell color.
 
These fake eggs are nearly indistinguishable from real eggs. The cues to tell one from the other are extremely subtle. Buyers are urged to shake the eggs in a cup to see how they jiggle, and to sniff the eggs (real eggs smell "something like raw meat"). The better fake eggs also behave much like real eggs, and even fry up well in a pan. Fake eggs made with poorer craftsmanship are easier to spot; one man suspected trouble when he cooked up an egg only to discover that it turned into a rubbery ball that bounced like a ping pong ball.
 
Unfortunately, fake eggs contain no protein or useful calories. And some fake eggs are made with toxic ingredients that have sickened people across China.

Ke$ha claims she had sex with a ghost

True, or just a dumb publicity stunt?

While doing publicity for her new single "Supernatural," pop star sensation Ke$ha told interviewer Ryan Seacrest that the song was inspired by a sexual encounter with a ghost. The single has yet to be released, but according to this snipped uploaded to YouTube, "Supernatural" sounds similar in tone and theme to Katy Perry's hit song "E.T." But instead of alien sex, it's ghost sex.

Many people both inside and outside the paranormal research community are skeptical of Ke$ha's claims, to say the least. First, she is not presenting them as sober fact. The way she presents it makes it sound like a light-hearted bit of gossip more than a deep, heart-felt confession. Which makes it sound more like a marketing move than a confession of an encounter with the paranormal. Her attitude trivializes the event to such an extent that it's hard to believe she even means for people to believe it. It ends up coming off as a bit of pop star posturing.
 
However, there is a body of literature regarding sex with the paranormal. The obvious connection is to the legend of the incubus (male) and succubus (female), evil spirits that specialize in raping their victims. 

The most telling thing about these legends is that they flourish most strongly in misogynist cultures where it is unacceptable for women to have sex or get pregnant outside of wedlock. Women who were raped, or who engaged in secret sexual activity which led to a pregnancy, might be tempted to claim that "a demon did this to me," in order to avoid punishment.
 
Another related phenomenon is sleep paralysis, known by various names including the "Night Hag." When you fall asleep, your brain disengages control over your body. This keeps you from thrashing around all night re-enacting your dreams. Ordinarily your brain de-paralyzes you before you wake up. But in some cases, the normal sleep paralysis remains after you wake up. Thus, terrified sufferers wake up to discover that they are held in place by an invisible force. 
 
Sleep paralysis is a terrifying (yet harmless) experience. It is often accompanied by auditory hallucinations and by a feeling of pressure on the chest. It can easily be interpreted by the still-groggy mind as being raped by an invisible force.
 
And finally, we have the obvious possibility, which is that it was simply a dream.

Is Hoffa's body buried in a Michigan back yard?

Police drill for evidence outside a suburban Detroit home

The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa is one of the country's great mysteries. The labor union leader was last seen in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, about 26 miles from Roseville where the current investigation is happening. Both towns are affluent suburbs of Detroit, where Hoffa was active as a labor leader, as well as tampering with juries, bribery, fraud, and possible embezzlement.

In the latest move, police have drilled for core soil samples, looking for trace evidence of a corpse. The drilling is happening beneath what is now a garden shed with a concrete pad in the back yard of a family which has reportedly been very cooperative with police requests. (Imagine learning that Hoffa might be buried in your own back yard! That's fodder for a lifetime's worth of Thanksgiving dinner conversations.)
 
Thanks to a new tip, police were led to the scene of an alleged body burial. Could it be Jimmy Hoffa? Is there a body buried in the location at all, much less that of the missing mobster?

The tipster apparently never claimed that the body in question was that of Jimmy Hoffa. However, the timing of the sighting, which happened at about the time the Teamsters boss went missing, in combination with the location - Roseville, Michigan - led police to suspect that it could be Hoffa. 
 
The tipster in question is described as a "former gambler" who used to do business with a man who had ties to a man who was supposed to meet Hoffa on the day of his death. (We're already three steps removed from Hoffa at this point.) 
 
Police and federal officials have dug for Hoffa's body before. In 2004, they pulled up the floorboards of a Detroit home to search for blood, in the wake of a biography in which the subject claimed to have shot Hoffa himself. In 2006 the FBI tore down a horse ban in response to "a fairly credible lead." The disappearance of Hoffa has galled the FBI for nearly 40 years at this point.
 
And of course, those of us who are old enough remember the spectacle of the live televised dud that was Geraldo's much-hyped "Opening Jimmy Hoffa's Tomb" special. Not to mention the urban legend that Hoffa is buried in the end zone of the Giants stadium in New Jersey.
 
The FBI has sent samples to a lab for processing, and reportedly will be releasing the results on Monday. 
 

Missing finger found inside trout two months later

Quite a catch! Har har har.

Earlier this month, an angler named Nolan Calvin was fishing for trout in Priest Lake in Idaho. While he was cleaning one of the trout he had caught, he discovered a human finger inside the trout's stomach. 

Calvin did the sensible thing: he put the finger on ice and called the Bonner County sheriff's department. Officers collected the finger, took fingerprints from the severed digit, and located the owner: a wake boarder named Haans Galassi, who had lost four fingers in the lake last June. Galassi suffered an accident when his fingers were caught in a tow rope. The fingers obviously were never recovered.
 
When the Bonner County sheriff's department asked Galassi if he wanted his finger back, Galassi politely declined. 

My question is, how exactly did this happen? Clearly the finger was preserved well enough to have fingerprints taken from it. There are two possibilities that I can see: either the trout snapped at the finger as it floated down from the accident, or the trout ate the finger recently when it stumbled across it on the lake bed.
 
Both of these theories raise more questions than they answer. The first scenario seems more plausible, given what I know of trout - that they are more likely to strike at something floating in the water column than lying on the lake bed. 
 
But wouldn't you think that the trout's stomach would have dissolved the finger by this point? I could see it taking a very long time in winter, when cold temperatures slow down the digestive process in cold blooded creatures like fish. But at the height of summer, surely the trout would have been able to break down the finger.
 
The second scenario requires that the finger lay on the bottom of the lake for two months, essentially undisturbed and undamaged. Again, this is something that would seem more plausible in winter, as you would think it would require cold water (like refrigerator cold). And in summer you would think that the more active colonies of scavengers would have destroyed the finger within two months.
 
There is a long and active body of literature regarding things found inside fish. And this isn't the first record caught in Priest Lake, either: the largest Lake trout caught in the United States was pulled from Priest Lake. Although the average Lake trout weighs less than 10 pounds, the record fish clocked in at a whopping 57.5 pounds.
 

Fire tornadoes exist. Everybody run!

The world is stranger and more terrifying than you can imagine.

An Australian filmmaker named Chris Tangey recently caught one of the most frightening natural phenomena I can imagine: a tornado of fire, also known as a "fire devil." 

You have most likely heard of "dust devils." Those small localized whirlwinds that pick up dust and carry them along, Tasmanian Devil-style, sometimes for a great distance. These happen because the wind forms a circular eddy, similar to the vortex you might see in a river. You can create one yourself by scooping your hand through a basin of water. 
 
These vortexes can form anywhere, although they are most common (and most long-lived) in flat desert areas. The flat desert has two features which promote the creation and persistence of dust devils: first, they have the sun-heated soil which can send up a hot plume of air that kicks off the vertex of air currents. Second, they have fewer land forms and objects that can disrupt the air flow and thus "kill" the dust devil.
 
Turns out? Same thing can happen with fire.
 
WITH. FIRE.

Tangey was scouting film locations outside Alice Springs, Australia when he came across a brush fire. The fire apparently sent up a plume of superheated air which sucked the flames about a hundred feet into the air, whirling them into a tornado that moved across the Australian desert.
 
Very little is known about fire devils, mostly because they are so difficult to observe. Scientists speculate that they occur frequently inside large fires, but this puts them outside the reach of most people's powers of observation. For all we know, fire devils are marching along through forest fires all the time, but no one's there to see it.
 
(If a tree catches fire in the forest with no one around to hear it, does it still scream?)
 
Because of the physics of a fire devil, it is fairly unlikely that one would spring up, say, in the middle of a busy street, or right there in your front yard. Or BEHIND YOU, LOOK OUT. But I say, you can't be too careful. Obviously we should all be carrying fire extinguishers at all times.
 
Water spouts are a similar phenomenon which are often observed in the ocean and even over large lakes. It's like a terrifying game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors." The dust devil sucks up the water spout; water spout puts out flame devil; flame devil sets dust devil on fire.

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