Death by Sleeplessness

A rare form of fatal insomnia has no cure

 

Life tip #271: remember to sleep. Sleep's good for you, kids. If you don't sleep, you're going to die. 

After about a year, that is. That's how long a human can stay awake before permanently shutting down. For what it's worth, most people don't make it that long without conking out for at least a little while. The body needs sleep to complete essential cell processes and the brain needs it to keep you from going completely off the rails. While sleep's purpose and functions are still in many ways mysterious to us, it's proven to be an indispensable biological function. And like food or water, people die without it.

Most insomniacs suffer an increased difficulty in falling asleep. Most clock only a few hours of unconsciousness per night, and some experience whole nights completely awake. It's rare for an individual to go multiple nights without any sleep at all, though; even if you're under extreme stress, the body tends to knock itself out for a bit if just to stay alive. While chronic insomniacs can experience unpleasant symptoms like hallucinations, blurring, and double vision, they rarely die from their condition. Their brains allow them at least the bare minimum of sleep needed for survival. 

Then there are those who find themselves actually, biologically incapable of sleep. They have a special and very rare type of sleep disorder known as fatal familial insomnia. It's a hereditary condition usually caused by a genetic mutation that leads to a specific protein being built incorrectly. FFI has only ever affected about 100 people throughout the world, but each and every one of them has died from it. 

People born with the disorder won't even know it until they reach middle age. The average age of onset is 50,  but people can experience symptoms as early as 35 or as late as 60. It begins like any other case of insomnia: you start to have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, you experience extreme tiredness during the day, your levels of anxiety rise. Maybe you confuse cause and symptom, figuring your newly acquired insomnia has resulted from increased levels of stress at work or at home. You pop some Valerian root and try to get on with your life. It doesn't work. You start getting panic attacks. You develop phobias you've never had before. Maybe you go to a psychiatrist, maybe they send you home with meds. They don't work. Nothing works. You've suddenly, without warning, lost your ability to sleep well. 

That's only stage one of the disorder. It tends to last for about four months before progressing into stage two, wherein your panic attacks become more extreme and you begin experiencing hallucinations. You're probably a nonfunctional mess at this point. Maybe the doctors have figured out what's going on, maybe not. They might try prescribing sleeping pills, not knowing that sedatives and barbiturates only accelerate the condition. After five months of panicked trips, you completely, irreversibly lose your ability to sleep. Not one minute is spent in unconsciousness. You experience rapid weight loss. You might enter an early menopause if you're a woman. After three months of no sleep whatsoever, you enter a state of catatonic dementia and ultimately die. 

There's no known cure or treatment for the condition. Scientists have no idea how to reverse it. If you've got it, you're going to have to spend up to 18 months in a state of sleepless psychological torture before finally going insane and checking out. The good news is that you probably don't have FFI. The bad news is that if you did, you wouldn't even know until it spontaneously appeared in middle age. Sleep tight!

Appalachian "Wifi Shelter"

The BBC News has a great article up about what they term "wifi refugees," people who believe that they suffer from sensitivity to wifi and other electronic signals. Luckily for a select few, there is an area in the Appalachian mountains where wireless is banned.
The town of Green Bank, West Virginia (population 143) lies in the heart of the US Radio Quiet Zone. This is a 13,000 square mile area of the Allegheny Mountains which is kept wireless-free by the US Government, in order to prevent interference with their radio telescopes and other electronic monitoring systems.
(Question: do these massive telescope installations emit EMF? I would think that a device which is sensitive to wireless signals might be giving off a lot of them on its own, and would thus be counter-indicated for someone suffering from wifi sensitivity. Just wondering.)
People have been reporting wifi sensitivity since the earliest days of cell phones. As the cell phone and wireless infrastructure proliferates, the stories of sensitivity are, as well. Many people associate their illness with the wireless signals which are present in their workplace, which brings to mind the rise in "sick building syndrome" during the mid 1990's.
"Sick building syndrome" began when people started noticing that they felt unwell at their place of business. But as soon as they left the office, be it for the night or for the weekend, they felt fine. Industrial scientists were called in to investigate, and in some cases buildings were found to be harboring toxic mold. Once they found the mold they were beholden to remove it. Although I always wondered about the follow-up; did the removal of the mold cure the "sick building syndrome"? Or was its removal simply a placebo?
Certainly the symptoms of wireless sensitivity and "sick building syndrome" share many factors in common with the symptoms of anxiety and panic attacks: stomach problems, headaches, difficulty breathing, dizziness, sweating, and so forth.
But if these people can find peace in the Allegheny Mountains, then more power to them. I wonder if this is going to start a new fad of "wireless tourism," special wifi-free cruise ships that take people out to the middle of the ocean. Or start a housing boom in the Allegheny Mountains. It would have to be off-grid, and therefore extremely eco-friendly, so that's a plus! I'm sure it's a beautiful place to live, and the local economy could definitely use the boost.
 

"Fairy Tale: A True Story"

A true and "true" story

I remembered watching a movie when I was a little kid when I oddly got onto the topic of fairies the other day. The film I remembered depicted tiny fairies, dressed in pinks and yellows and backlit with shining light. I looked up the movie this morning and found out that it was called Fairy Tale: A True Story and depicts the true story of two British girls who commune with fairies and take their pictures. In real life, these fairy photographs were sent to the press and became an international phenomenon. Also, in real, these photographs were not real, but were spurred by the want for people to believe in magic.

Fairy Tale the movie tells the story of Sir Arthur Conan (yes, the author of Sherlock Holmes) who believes that the current belief system in England was flawed. During the earliest 20th century in England, people believed that scientific innovations like electric light and photograph could shed light on mystical happenings. The movie also brings Harry Houdini back to life, a man who, ironically, believes that it’s all fraud.

Outside of the famous realm, we follow the lives of Arthur and Polly Wright and their daughter Elsie. Elsie is twelve and her father dotes on her, building her little model fairy furniture and model fairy houses. Her cousin Frances comes to stay with them in the house, waiting for her father, who is missing in World War I, to return.

Polly’s son has just died and she wants to decide for herself whether or not there is an afterlife. Polly starts attending meetings at the local Theosophical Society and brings pictures that her daughter and niece have taken. The photographs apparently contain images of fairies. The Theosophist lecturer, E.L. Gardner takes the photographs to a professional who says that they were produced without photographic tricks. They are doubly deemed truthful because the men couldn’t see how children could perform tricks of this kind. Conan-Doyle and Houdini come to visit the girls. Conan-Doyle writes and prints a story about the fairies in a newspaper. The story starts bringing in hundreds of people to their village. The fairies leave and the movie ends with Houdini telling the girls that people really don’t want to know the truth.  

The real story followed a similar pattern with a different ending. In the 1980’s, the girls admitted that the photographs were faked using cardboard cutouts from a popular children’s book, Princess Mary’s Gift Book.. However, both girls said that although the photographs were faked, they had really seen fairies. Frances, however, claimed that the final photograph was real. Both girls claimed that they had taken the photograph, but Frances says that she snapped it when the fairies weren’t looking and the girls were out in the forest. Both girls were embarrassed that they had tricked so many people, especially the famous detective writer Conan-Doyle, so they hid their secret for many years.

Do you think with modern technology that somebody could pull off this kind of supernatural hoax or are people more skeptical now than they were then?

Why Do Ghosts Wear Clothes?

It's one of those oddball, unanswerable questions that pop up from time to time. When people report seeing a full-bodied apparition, it is almost always wearing clothes. (With the notable exception of some ghosts who appear naked.)
One thing I have noticed about ghost reports is that they are often said to have been dressed in gauzy white clothes, like a wedding dress or dressing gown. I wonder if this isn't just the observer's mind trying to make visual sense out of a big swirl of white. They could just be seeing ectoplasm or fog, but their mind sees a woman in a wedding dress.
The fact that ghosts appear in clothing can be explained two ways:
1. The Recording
One theory of ghosts is that they are simply energy recordings, left behind by their owners who lived or worked on the property years ago. This type of haunting is usually not intelligent, and may walk through a wall where there was once a door, or always do the same thing in the same order (e.g. a ghost which is always seen walking up a staircase, never down the stairs or elsewhere in the home).
This is the theory that homes and buildings can somehow be imprinted with the energy of their owners. Odd that the energy would include clothes. But this energy includes the appearance of the person, and that appearance includes the clothing.
2. The Haunting
This is the theory that the actual spirit of the dead person has remained. It may be attempting to communicate, or it may just be hanging out in its favorite spot (or the spot where it was killed). It's not so surprising that this kind of ghost would appear in clothes.
If I ask you to imagine yourself standing in the middle of the shopping mall, I'm going to guess that you imagine yourself wearing clothing. Our clothing is so tied into our personalities, into who we are, that it is natural to include clothing with our projections of ourselves.
An interesting question is, why aren't there more ghosts wearing modern clothing? It seems like ghosts are always reported wearing very historical clothing, like stovepipe hats and bustle skirts. Where are the modern ghosts, in Doc Martens and jeans?
Maybe it takes time for a ghost to really develop. Maybe our children or our grandchildren will be seeing ghosts in contemporary clothing when they grow up!
 

Why Are Playing Cards Being Left On The Street?

I was recently alerted to the existence of an interesting phenomena happening in our cities: playing cards. Apparently once you start looking, playing cards are scattered throughout our nation's cities, some apparently discarded, but many seemingly placed with great care and deliberation.
What do these playing cards mean? Who left them, and why?
No one knows the answer, and it is likely that there isn't a single answer that explains all of them. Some of the proposed explanations include:
1. Kids
Kids play with cards all the time, and they are often careless. There are a lot of ways a playing card can become detached from its kid owner: it can fly out of the kid's bicycle spokes, get lost while building a house of cards or playing a game of "52 Pick-Up," or just get dropped out of an overstuffed backpack.
2. Interrupted Gamblers
Playing cards are often used for street gambling, from informal games of Blackjack to the classic "3 Card Monte" dealers. Gambling in the streets is illegal, of course. When a cop is spotted, the players scatter - sometimes leaving their cards behind them.
3. Poker Runs
A "Poker Run" is an event where you stop at five stations, and draw a card at each one. The person at the end who has the best poker hand wins. Traditional Poker Runs have been played by motorcycle riders, but the game has expanded to running clubs, skateboarders, bike riders, etc.
4. Code
Playing cards have been used as code ever since the invention of playing cards. Cards are commonplace and easily overlooked, which makes them excellent for use as temporary markers. Be it Irish Travelers marking a path, or gang members marking their territory.
5. Magic
Playing cards are often involved in magic. (I can't even think of playing cards without thinking of the novel Last Call by Tim Powers.) You have your diviners, who could be laying out a spread on the sidewalk or too close to a window. And then you have the Vodun practitioners, who sometimes use regular playing cards in their rituals and offerings.
6. Magicians
Many cities also suffer the plague of street magicians, who urge you to pick a card. These modern-day versions of the "annoying mime" can often cause lost or abandoned cards, when their marks walk away in annoyance. (The same is true of kids practicing magic acts as a hobby.)
 

The Mysterious Udumbara Flower

Udumbara flowers are part of Buddhist legend, and are said to only flower once every 3,000 years. They are considered an "auspicious sign," particularly in cases where they bloom somewhere significant. Udumbara flowers are most often observed in rather ordinary circumstances, as in 2007 when they were spotted on an oleander bush. But then you have the rare cases, as in 2005 when ten of them were found attached to a gold Bodhisattva statue, when they seem somehow more significant.
These tiny structures have a thin, thread-like "stalk" which is only about an inch long. At the end of the stalk is the "flower," a tiny white blob shaped like a droplet or tear. Many people say they have the scent of sandalwood.
According to Buddhist scripture, Udumbara flowers indicate "Chakravartin ("He who turns the Wheel") descending into the world." They are considered celestial, fragile, delicate, and magical.
The Udumbara is the fig tree, which seems to pose a mystery: how can it produce fruit, without having any visible flowers? As you no doubt learned in early science classes, the flower is the plant's equivalent of a uterus. Pollination fertilizes the flower, causing a fruit (baby) to grow. A tree which produces fruit without flowers seems almost like a miraculous Virgin Birth!
The truth is that all fig trees flower from inside the fruit itself. Figs are not true fruits, but a collective inflorescence. It's complicated and kind of inside-out, but it obviously works for the fig tree.
The Buddhist answer to the mystery of the fig tree was to create a legend: the fig tree DOES flower, but it blooms only once every 3,000 years, and it can bloom anywhere in the world. The blossoms of the fig tree also symbolize a very rare occurrence, equivalent to the English phrase "once in a blue moon."
Only the most churlish naturalist would point out that what is actually being observed in these cases is the eggs of the lacewing. Green lacewings are beneficial insects, pale green with four delicately transparent wings that give them their name. Lacewings voraciously consume pest insects in both their adult and larval stage.
The green lacewing lays its eggs attached to a thread-like stalk in order to prevent the larvae from eating each other after they hatch. The eggs hatch in a few days, an event which causes the tiny drop to seem to blossom out into petals.

Phosphorescent Mushrooms

In 1840 a botanist in Brazil encountered a group of children "playing with a glowing object that turned out to be a luminescent mushroom." He sent samples back to Kew Gardens, where it was named after him: Agaricus gardneri. The glow-in-the-dark mushroom was then promptly lost to science, and not rediscovered until a recent intrepid midnight rainforest survey by a San Francisco State research team.
The Brazilian phosphorescent mushroom is locally known as "flor-de-coco," for its habit of growing at the roots of a particular species of dwarf palm. It is one of the world's brightest phosphorescent mushrooms, almost bright enough to read newspaper by, according to some accounts. But it is by no means the only phosphorescent mushroom.
In the United States, the jack-o-lantern fungus can be easily mistaken for chanterelles. Which is a pity, because chanterelles are delicious, while the jack-o-lantern mushroom is poisonous. However, if you correctly identify the orange fungus (which grows in clumps on wood, unlike chanterelles which grow singly on the ground) and return after dark, you may be lucky enough to see its underside glowing an unearthly green.
Another phosphorescent fungus is a family of honey mushrooms, which have glowing filaments (mycelium) and which colonize rotting wood. These phosphorescent fungi filaments make chunks of rotting wood seem to glow after dark, a phenomenon which has long been called "foxfire" in the Ozarks and elsewhere.
Fungi seem to produce phosphorescence by breaking down a substance called luciferin, the same way that fireflies do. But they burn it constantly, not in bursts the way that animals do. In fact, phosphorescent fungi apparently phosphoresce 24 hours a day - it's just that we can only see it after dark!
Mushroom researchers (mycologists) do not yet know why mushrooms phosphoresce in the first place. In the animal world, there are three typical ways that phosphorescence is used: to attract a mate (as with fireflies), to ward off or confuse predators (as with small fish and phosphorescent zooplankton), or to entice a meal closer (as with the glowing lures of many deep-sea fish).
None of these reasons pertain to mushrooms, which are simply the fruiting body of the underlying fungus. A mushroom's biological purpose is to build and then drop spores. Mushrooms don't "care" if they are eaten, the way that an apple cares (because that is how its seeds are dispersed). In fact, many mushrooms are poisonous specifically to prevent themselves being eaten.
Why would a mushroom want to call attention to itself in the middle of the night? Only the glowing mushroom knows!

Permanent Stranger Syndrome

Neurological disorder prevents people from recognizing friends and family

 

Most of the time, it takes the witnessing of a disability in order for us to realize the extent to which we take our own ability for granted. Those of us who have no trouble walking rarely think about how we're capable of our own automatic physical transportation--unless we meet someone who's incapable of just that. Physical disabilities manifest themselves in obvious ways that we can automatically relate to, but mental disabilities provide us with further insight as to how the mind works--by demonstrating what happens when it fails to. 

Most of us, for example, take for granted our ability to recognize faces. When we meet somebody, we record the most subtle of their features in our minds so we can recognize them again. Their image is imprinted on our minds in a way that's deeper and more detailed than most images. You'd probably recognize a person you just met if asked to pick them out of a lineup of ten people of the same race and gender. You might not recognize a dog or a bird you just saw if asked to pick them out of a group, however. Human faces stick better because we're wired to recognize those within our "group"--family members, clan members, what have you. Animals don't inspire the same sort of memory because we don't recognize them as kin. 

But not everyone comes with the same wiring that allows for face recognition. A condition called prosopagnosia, more commonly known as "faceblindness", is the inability to remember specific faces. The condition may arise like amnesia after an incident of brain damage, but approximately 2.5% of people are born with the disorder. No one knows exactly why the congenital version of the disorder arises. It's not a condition that's easily linked to other early childhood developmental disorders, nor does it appear to be symptomatic of anything else. Some people simply see human faces the same way they see the faces of animals--all pretty much the same.

Faceblind individuals generally don't experience the same perceptive difficulties as those on the autism spectrum. They can distinguish emotions just fine, easily picking up on the difference between sadness, anger, or joy. They just don't remember the subtle differences between human faces. They might be able to tell their friends apart, but only by remembering dramatic physical differences, like height, hair color, or distinctive birthmarks. Beyond that, they might not be able to tell if they've known someone for five years or if they've never met.

Like certain other neurological abnormalities, faceblindness can yield some beautiful results when addressed in an artistic context. The famous painter Chuck Close is faceblind. You might recognize his work--he's the one who does enormous portraits of the faces of his friends. By rendering faces as landscapes, he explores the way people see the image of a given face. Up close, a Chuck Close painting appears as a series of small dots or other incomprehensible marks. From across the room, a huge, looming portrait of a face appears. He studies the details that most people recognize and memorize automatically, turning his unusual experience into a powerful artistic endeavor. 

You can hear more about the experiences of Chuck Close and faceblind neuroscientist Oliver Sacks on Radiolab's podcast about the disorder. 

Time Travelers Throughout History

Evidence of time travel or exaggerated archive footage?

 

If our science fiction is in any way indicative, we humans love the idea of time travel. From Jules Verne to Russell T. Davies, writers have embraced the notion of being able to hop in a vessel and plow through to a different age. But sometimes our stories stray from what's distinctively fiction, creeping over to the realm of conspiracy or cultish speculation. 

There have been a few rounds of images on the internet that inspire immediate and rampant conviction that time travel is, in fact, real in the future--that we've been visited by people who have figured out the technology necessary to hop between years somewhere down the line. One such example comes in the form of a photograph from 1941. Taken at the opening ceremony for a new bridge in Canada's South Fork, British Columbia, the photograph features one man who rather stands out from the rest. Most people in the photograph look the way we expect people to look--in suits and dapper hats, indicative of what we might consider to be a more dignified time. But then, in the middle of the crowd, one guy stands completely hatless. He's not even wearing a suit, as we imagine would be considered proper for the age. He's even wearing sunglasses. This dude looks a little like someone you might find lurking around your local Urban Outfitters or music joint: he's got a bit of stubble going on, he's wearing a logo t-shirt under a dorky v-neck sweater, and he's holding what appears to be a vintage camera. What's he doing in 1941?

Another, possibly more famous example of time-traveler spotting comes from one film buff's find on the extra features of a Charlie Chaplin DVD. Upon scanning the crowd in behind-the-scenes footage of one of Chaplin's films, the viewer discovered something particularly odd: what appears to be an old woman talking on a cell phone. She's holding a black rectangle about the size of an iPhone to her ear. She looks exactly like any number of people walking down the street mid-conversation today--only she's doing it in 1928. 

Of course, despite the flickering of popular imagination, there are perfectly reasonable explanations for both of these images that don't involve time travel. The gentleman in the first photo may appear out of place, but actually wasn't dressed terribly abnormally for the time. After all, no one in the photograph seems alarmed by his appearance. His haircut is, in fact, period-correct. Decal shirts had been invented, as had sunglasses, and he's wearing a sweater jersey that was often worn by athletes. He's likely just a college athlete in sporting attire--not a time traveler. As for cell phone lady, hearing aids could look a lot like cell phones do now. She may appear to be talking, but it's also possible she's merely listening to what's happening around her. Besides, if she figured out how to travel from now all the way back to 1928, odds are she would have figured out how to construct a very small Bluetooth headset in order to pass more discreetly through period society. 

Recently, people have discovered that an actor living in the early 20th century bore a striking resemblance to Keanu Reeves--who himself never seems to age. Is he a time traveler, or maybe just immortal? Well, the actor, Paul Mounet, looks an awful lot like Keanu in one painting, but did in fact age and end up looking a lot more haggard by the time of his death in 1922. Still, an eternal Keanu Reeves is a concept I'm willing to give the benefit of a doubt, because what would the world be like without that deadpan stare? 

Gigantic Rat Killed With Pitchfork In Brooklyn

The legendary rodents of New York City become legendary-er.

The tales of tails in New York City are a trademark of the city's history, and top of the heap are the stories of the city's rats; enormous aggressive rodents the size of cats and dogs that inhabit the city's subterranean network of sewers, subways, and service tunnels. Legends of rats attack subway passengers, killing and eating domestic pets, even swarming in some of the city's many public housing projects. It's in one of the most famous of these projects, rapper Jay-Z's home at Marcy Houses in Brooklyn, that a 3-foot long rat was recently killed on the end of a pitchfork.

According to a recent report by BlackandBrownNews.com, Jose Rivera, an employee of the NYC Housing Authority, speared a giant rat as three of the monster rodents attempted to escape a rat hole he was clearing. Rivera speared it with a wide-flanged pitchfork, holding his trophy up for a cell-phone picture. The other two got away. The rat hole, one of several at the famous Marcy Houses, a famous sprawling public house project in Brooklyn with over 1,700 units. The rat was over 3 feet long with the tail and over two pounds, significantly larger than the standard wild rats, many of the Norway rats, that inhabit the city.

In interviews with BBN, residents declined to be named for fear of reprisals from property managers or NYCHA officials. However, they reported that the rat problem at Marcy Houses has been an ongoing battle for years, though the sightings of these mutant rats is relatively recent. Residents reported that, “In one day eight big size rats were killed." “They come out at night and the daytime,” said another. Yet another resident reported an instant in which an infestation of average-sized rats swarmed a playground in the middle of the afternoon. “Adults had to grab children and run because a lot of rats came on the playground," a resident reported, "The kids were screaming.”

Many of the residents blame poor management of the properties, but also blame specific residents that do not follow trash-disposal policies, leaving bags of garbage outside where rats feast on the contents rather than dropping them down designated garbage chutes. BBN contacted the local Wildlife Conservation Society, that said that the rat was likely a Gambian Pouched Rat, which were imported as pets, but have been banned for nearly ten years after an outbreak of monkey-pox sickened 100 New Yorkers. Another possibility, a veteran exterminator reported, was that it is simply a very large wild rat. Identifying it by its nose, tail, ears, and feet, the exterminator said it's possible for them to grow that large in areas where there are no predators and is not, "targeted and sustained extermination treatment." Rumors of these massive rats abounded during the excavation and construction at the Ground Zero site.

In addition to the many nuisances presented by rat infestations, there are major implications for public health, including a wide variety of disease carried by the vermin. The NYCHA released a statement in response to BBN's report, stating that an exterminator had been there to treat the property. "Our contractor treated the basements and grounds," the statement read, "at Marcy Houses for rodents during the period of June 10th through July 7th. NYCHA exterminators recently treated all basements and grounds at Marcy Houses on August 1st, 5th and 11th. When we treat our developments, notices are posted throughout the property.”

 

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