Braaaiiinnsss

Freezing brains!  Now that's my kind of science!

What they really need to do is remove the brains first, then keep them floating at various levels in one giant vat with a big glass wall so you can see them all.  I'm thinking supercooled liquid, maybe pale green, although that's awfully traditional.  I suppose they could go with something more daring like yellow or sky blue.  It also depends on what kind of lights you have flashing on your gigantic instrument panels.  And the uniforms your henchmen wear, of course.

Once they've got the color scheme down, all these brains need to be wired together so they can be turned into processor components for a super-computer that tells the future.  Or at least one that can beat that damn chicken at checkers.

Darpa: Freeze Soldiers to Save Injured Brains
By Katie Drummond, November 13, 2009

The Pentagon's mad science division has a new way to deal with the 70,000+ troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injury: freeze 'em.

Darpa, the military's far-out research arm, is looking for research projects that would create a "therapeutic hypothermia device" to prevent traumatic brain injuries from causing permanent molecular damage to the brain. The idea is based on successful studies that used cortical cooling to treat survivors of strokes and cardiac arrest. According to Darpa's solicitation, cooling down the brain after trauma can offer "dramatic neuroprotection" that will prevent long-term harm to cognition and motor skills...

Click here for the rest of the article.

Too Too Solid Flesh?

Maybe we're not so solid after all:

... there's a growing consensus among scientists that the relationship between us and our microbes is much more of a two-way street. With new technologies that allow scientists to better identify and study the organisms that live in and on us, we've become aware that bacteria, though tiny, are powerful chemical factories that fundamentally affect how the human body functions. They are not simply random squatters, but organized communities that evolve with us and are passed down from generation to generation. Through research that has blurred the boundary between medical and environmental microbiology, we're beginning to understand that because the human body constitutes their environment, these microbial communities have been forced to adapt to changes in our diets, health, and lifestyle choices. Yet they, in turn, are also part of our environments, and our bodies have adapted to them. Our dinner guests, it seems, have shaped the very path of human evolution...

Equally challenging, though in a different respect, will be changing long-held ideas about ourselves as independent individuals. How do we make sense of this suddenly crowded self? David Relman suggests that how well you come to terms with symbiosis "depends on how comfortable you are with not being alone." A body that is a habitat and a continuously evolving system is not something most of us consider; the sense of a singular, continuous self is a prerequisite for sanity, at least in Western psychology. A symbiotic perspective depends on a willingness to see yourself as the product of evolutionary timescales. After all, our cells carry an ancient stamp of symbiosis in the form of mitochondria. These energy-producing organelles are the vestiges of symbiotic bacteria that migrated into cells long ago. Even those parts of us we consider human are part bacterial. "In some ways, we're an amalgam and a continuously evolving collective," Relman says...

The rest of the article:
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_body_politic/

Read the whole thing.  It's a good one.

Psycho-Genic

I was daydreaming the other day about all those cool books they used to have back at the DH that drive people insane (or plays, in the case of The King in Yellow). If you wanted to write one of those, how would you go about it? Here are some of my ideas.

1. Meter - Use a hidden but consistent meter, varied in places to create emphasis or alter mood.
2. Patterns - Create themes that loop in ways that almost create a pattern, but don't quite work. Create a sense of wrongness.
3. Ambiguity - Write sentences with multiple meanings laced into whole paragraphs of the same, so the possibilities multiply.
4. Mystery - Give it a feeling of otherworldliness, like an esoteric religion. Create the impression that the careful reader is getting some kind of secret enlightenment to encourage contemplation.
   

Okay, those are my thoughts. Granted, implementing them is much easier said than done. What do you think?

Jet Pack

A Swiss man has become the first person to fly solo across the English Channel using a single jet-propelled wing.
BBC News, Friday, 26 September 2008 14:25 UK

Yves Rossy landed safely after the 22-mile (35.4 km) flight from Calais to Dover, which had been twice postponed this week because of bad weather. The former military pilot took less than 10 minutes to complete the crossing and parachute to the ground. The 49-year-old flew on a plane to more than 8,200ft (2,500m), ignited jets on a wing on his back, and jumped out...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7637327.stm

Chocolate Engineering

Mu-hu-hu-ha-ha-ha-haaaa! Soon the secrets of chocolate splicing will be mine!

Project to reveal choc's DNA code
By Pallab Ghosh, BBC science correspondent

The chocolate company Mars has announced that it is to decode the genetic structure of the cacao tree. The research project, which is to be done in collaboration with the US Department of Agriculture and IT firm IBM, aims to improve cocoa production. Scientists hope the Chocolate Genome Project can assist breeding programmes...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7474278.stm

The Fall of the House of Dunwich

I write these words with trembling hands, looking over my shoulder repeatedly for fear that someone, some thing, might be behind me. I mean, something other than the college kids drinking lattes and pretending to read Goethe while they update their MySpace profiles. Something from a darkness far deeper than the dim twilight of this coffee house and convenient wi-fi hot spot. A creature of monstrous countenance, inhuman vitality, and smug literary self-importance. Something dead, but unwilling or unable to shut the hell up.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before you can understand where I am, you must learn where I've been, oh so many years ago. And since the server that once hosted the Dunwich Herald seems to have been destroyed by marauding grotesqueries, I guess I'll have to explain it myself.

No, screw that. I hate explaining. How about I just paste in my old lab notes? That'll cover it for now.

Witness the beginning, and the end...

Okay, not really the end. Just an end.

Really, it's starting now. Be quiet.

14 November 2004

I got a long lecture from Edgar Allen Lovecraft today about how I need to keep him apprised of my progress when I'm using his labs here at the Dunwich Herald. Personally, I think he just got scared after the INS showed up last week. He really should calm down. While it's true that some of our staff were illegal aliens in life, they're just walking corpses now. Imported fertilizer has no citizenship status as far as I know. For some reason Ed still thinks he needs to keep an eye on me, though. Maybe it's just that he's looking for another feature so he can spend less time writing for the Herald and more time doing obscene things with his wife's troll dolls.

Today I finally solved a problem that has been plaguing me for some time: odor. Zombies don't smell good, and they leave chunks behind that smell just as bad. It doesn't help that all the mechanical equipment I've installed generates heat. My first thought was to install those plug-in air freshener things on their backs. It was quickly determined that the smell of rotting flesh and jasmine is not much better than the smell of rotting flesh. Next I tried sewing quicklime pockets all over their uniforms. Lime worked in the old days, right? This led to some problems though. For instance, although the electronic systems in my hydraulic zombies are not waterproof and the creatures have been programmed to avoid the stuff, some of them still seem drawn to the swimming pool. It was a particularly bad day when I lost two typesetting zombies and a carrier to the pool, and then one of our (living) interns emerged with second-degree burns all over his body. It seems that lime is rather caustic when mixed with water. Who knew?

Finally, I got my hands on a unique vinyl-based embalming fluid. They say it's the same stuff used by the creators of Val Kilmer. After some tinkering with the formula (I don't know what Barker has been saying, but he volunteered and I'm not the one who "melted" his ear) I managed to adapt it to my needs. Now I just drop my new acquisitions in the tub and let them soak. A few hours later, I have a corpse with clean, odor-locked flesh and a dense, rubbery consistency. The pool is still a problem, though.

12 January 2005

My plan to create the next Superman is well underway! I have obtained the body of George Reeves and he is soaking in Kilmer fluid while I work on the structural supports necessary to animate his highly decomposed flesh. My boss hired some damn consultant because he insists that my technique is too dependent on mechanisms. He's always going on about how thaumaturgical necromancy is so much better than necrohydraulic engineering, but I've never seen one of his unholy monsters on the cover of Scientific American. My unholy monsters, on the other hand, have been featured twice there and once in Popular Mechanics.

14 January 2005

Met with Ed's consultant today and slipped some blowfish toxin into his Sam Adams at lunch. Maybe when that stuffed-shirt corpse comes shambling back to Ernst & Young, they'll get a chance to see just how little I need their help. Amateurs. Still, he made one interesting point. My approach has always been to use a standard electronic CPU. Attempts to stimulate necrotic brain tissue have so far been disappointing, so I usually just scrape all that stuff out and feed it to the strays. While this is fine if all we need is traditional zombie work, it does not bring back any of the original personality, so I have to just make that part up.

So I started thinking - maybe I can encode a few necromantic incantations onto a silicon chip - maybe something that would enable the CPU to get in touch with the appropriate soul. It would still be a scientific reanimation; there would just be that one download from the netherworld to bring back some personality. Reeves needs a lot of work, but my assistants can handle the cosmetic stuff. I, on the other hand, have a big stack of unhallowed texts from the office library and a dead consultant to experiment with!

29 January 2005

It appears that some of my previous entries were lost in the fire. Let me say that my work with the consultant was quite a success, although he initially had some trouble mastering his electronic nervous system. He is still unable to speak, but he can groan loudly and write his name in blood on the walls. I sent him back to E&Y last week, with an apology note from Ed.

I suppose this would be a good time to warn everyone that the latest spate of Elvis sightings are not, in fact, Elvis. If you see what appears to be Elvis at any time, or anyone wearing an unusual amount of rhinestones and roaring at the thunder, RUN. This creature is easily my most hateful and destructive creation - dangerously insane, inhumanly strong, and definitely not the King. And he's not George Reeves, either.

The thing is, I got a little carried away. Excited by my initial success, I decided to test a number of other ideas out on the restored George Reeves corpse. In addition to the spell chips, I added some new psycho-motor programming to improve his martial arts aptitude. I also used much more powerful hydraulic systems. I wanted George to be able to work as his own stunt man, a real super-zombie. Finally, I digitally encoded all of George's old Superman shows and downloaded them into his CPU.

I really don't know if it was the new programming, the lightning storm, or the ironically premature peasant uprising that sparked his first rampage. He seemed calm enough at first. Oh, they all scream and try to kill you when they wake up, but after that he mostly seemed interested in updating his wardrobe. I was just about to take him shopping when the mob showed up with their torches and pitchforks, getting all worked up over nothing, as usual. The flames seemed to frighten George, and he bellowed something that sounded like "vlahd-zooooo" as he tore through the crowd and disappeared into the night.

It was only after he came back in his new regalia that I realized what had happened. The rhinestones, the rings, the powdered wig, the candelabra... My worthless assistants brought me the wrong body. I haven't re-created George Reeves at all. I've awakened Liberace.

3 February 2005

There's something stuck up in the chimney. So I hear, anyway. All the time.

I should never have told Liberace about those Internet file sharing services. Now he's got that damn Christmas parody song on my computer and he plays it over and over and over. Sometimes he even sings along. Well, he tries to, anyway. I'm actually rather proud of how far he's gotten, considering that the speech center of his electronic brain was based on a "Speak 'N Spell" circuit board from the early 80's.

The Internet can be kind as well as cruel, however. I've got a good solid lead on the grave site of Wesley Willis, and I snagged the remains of C.S. Lewis for only £147 on Ebay! These discoveries came just in time, because the promise of more show-biz playmates has been the only thing that stops Liberace from mauling interns. It's already hard enough to get good help around here, what with that eel-grafting fiasco going public.

5 February 2005

My C.S. Lewis corpse shipped today and I'm so excited! Can't wait to cut into him. Not even that ungodly din from the basement can get me down right now!

14 February 2005

Got back into town with Willis today and found a package waiting from England. It was kind of small to be Lewis, so I thought maybe they shipped the head separately. Turns out that it was the whole thing, after all. Essential salts, it says. The PayPal of necromancers, it says. What it doesn't say is how the hell I'm supposed to rig a vial of iridescent powder with hydraulic pumps! Damn it!

On top of that, my boyfriend cleaned out his stuff and left me a note saying that it's over. ON VALENTINE'S DAY! It was the usual, "I'm afraid one of your blasphemous creations will tear my other arm off" crap. No mention of the fact that I replaced the first one with a magnificent hydraulic prosthesis which is only a little bit oversized. Ingrate.

I tried to work through my frustrations by raiding Ed's liquor cabinet and prepping Wesley Willis, but I just made a mess. First I broke him all to pieces (Wesley, not Ed) trying to cram him into the Kilmer fluid. While I was doing that, I slipped and knocked my C.S. Lewis bath crystals off the shelf. The damn vial hit right on the edge of the vat and shattered, throwing C.S. Lewis dust all over the room. I strained what I could out of the tub and swept the rest off the floor. It's in one of those Chinese take-out boxes in the fridge now.

Screw it. I'm going home.

16 February 2005

I had a particularly nasty hangover after that last drinking binge, and I can't help but wonder if I inhaled toxic levels of C.S. Lewis the other day. Whoever sewed Wesley back up for me, thanks. I don't know why you won't take credit for it. Heck of a job, too. Almost looks like he grew back together, and I could swear there's a wicked gleam in his eye sockets now.

The work on Wesley was fairly routine, and even Liberace has been tolerably well-behaved, although he did scream at some accountants. While I was throwing out the shipping box for my C.S. Lewis seasoning, I found some papers that I had missed before. These papers detailed the ritual for resurrecting the dead from essential salts. I'm taking them home for study tonight. Maybe this wasn't such a bad deal after all!

22 February 2005

I've been getting Wesley Willis up to speed and studying the resurrection spell in my spare time. Wesley has been disturbingly easy to re-animate, and I think his singing is better now than when he was alive. I don't like the way he looks at me. Whatever's bothering me is clearly unimportant to Liberace, though. They're getting along famously.

This afternoon, I finally had time to set up the conjuring room and try that new spell out. I was a little concerned about the statement that the salts had to be totally pure. I mean, I could see little bits of broken glass, dust, dead bugs, and some gooey clusters where the crystals took on fluid from the Kilmer bath. Still, it was mostly pure, and usually the guys who write those warnings are trying to err on the side of caution.

I set up the arcane circles, poured out the salts, and read the incantation. I wish they had warned me about the thunder. My ears are still ringing from that. Anyway, what I got was indeed a resurrected C.S. Lewis. Mostly. The creature before me combined the most loathsome traits of British academician, floppy-eared bunny, moth, and kung pao shrimp. (I have no idea where the rabbit parts came from.) As Lewis staggered towards me, clacking his nightmarishly intricate mouthparts, I fumbled through my papers for the counter-spell. He keeled over before he took his third step. Lucky, since the instructions were translated into like eight languages, and I was still trying to read Portuguese when it happened.

So C.S. Lewis is dead again, but at least now I have a real corpse to work with. Cool how things work out, isn't it?

11 May 2005

I'm sorry I've been gone so long. C.S. Lewis has been a total freakin' pain in the ass. Finally got him Kilmerized and outfitted with a good set of hydraulic pumps and, right off the table, he attacks me. He bit me right on the shoulder with those fearsome mandibles of his before I could reach the cattle prod and he had tossed me through a window before my lazy-ass co-workers even thought of calling for help. So anyway, I've been in the hospital for a while. Lewis has gone into hiding now and is publishing some kind of mad sea monkey propaganda pamphlets. My boss is livid over the whole deal. Somehow he blames me because Lewis stole a bunch of Dunwich Herald stationary and has been using it for his manifestos.

What's worse is, when I got back, I found that my lab had totally gone to hell. All I ever wanted was a nice place where I could reanimate the dead and maybe enjoy a good trashy novel once in a while, you know? What I've got now is pandemonium. They've turned my office into some kind of bondage/shoe fetish lounge and they've been doing a bunch of stupid genetic engineering crap instead of reanimation. The place is crawling with mice that have human ears - among other things - grafted to their backs, disembodied noses that inch and tumble about under their own power, and some kind of sentient moss that spends most of its time lecturing people about indoor air quality. I have got some serious house cleaning to do.

One bright spot: Liberace tried to make me a bouquet for Mother's Day. It consisted mostly of dead snakes, broken bottles, and some strange bone fragments which I was unable to identify, but there was a daisy in it that still had most of its petals and it was obvious that he really tried. It was the sweetest thing a walking corpse has ever done for me.

13 May 2005

Normally, when I hear about grave robberies in the news, I feel a certain sense of satisfaction because I'm the one who did it. This time it's unsettling. It's not just unsettling because I don't know who did it, but also because it seems that a lot of my equipment is missing. I interrogated the staff in my office, which is now admirably suited to the task and, before he passed out, Howard Potter Derleth revealed something even more disturbing. It seems that, the night after I was hospitalized, he saw what appeared to be a large, floppy-eared crustacean in a tweed jacket carrying machinery across the lawn.

19 May 2005

Had a wonderful time at the movies tonight. I took Liberace and Wesley Willis out to see Star Wars and they were both quite moved by the tragedy of Darth Vader. You just haven't experienced drama until you've shared a good cry with what's left of Liberace, sobbing in a digital approximation of George Reeves's voice and leaking hydraulic fluid all over the place.

Unfortunately, the emotional overload did send poor Wesley into another self-mutilation frenzy. At least he didn't hurt anyone else this time. I guess I should stop bringing him to the movies. He always gets me into trouble.

23 May 2005

Hopefully you'll be able to find this note before they do. Whatever you do, don't go into the lab! You should probably get out of the building, for that matter. I'm leaving town. When I came to work this morning, I found that C.S. Lewis had taken over my lab. I should never have brought that madman back, but who knew he would master necro-hydraulic engineering so quickly? It must be the combination of Chinese takeout DNA with his electronic CPU that gave him his new facility with electronics. You should see what he's done to my other creations. Wesley Willis has been transformed into some kind of spider thing and he built rocket launchers into Rod Roddy's arms! The last thing I heard before having to flee in terror from my own lair was that undead megalomaniac seducing Liberace with the promise of wings!