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ACONITINE A poisoner’s potion of choice.

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Paul May
University of Bristol

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Also available: JMol version.

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aconitine.gif monkshood.jpgDon’t you mean nicotine?

No, although it is a poisonous plant extract just like nicotine, except without the addictive problems. Aconitine is extracted from the devil’s helmet or monkshood plant (photo, right), whose Latin name, Aconitum, provided the name for the drug.

It’s Poisonous?

Yes, in many countries it’s quite notorious as a poison. For example, in Iran it’s called Halahel, which is apparently also a insult used to describe a spiteful, venomous person. Toxins extracted from Aconitum plants were historically used to kill wolves, hence its the other name - Wolf's bane. This unfortunate name, plus the plant’s potency, probably led to Wolf’s bane being used by storytellers (e.g. Bram Stoker’s Dracula), TV scriptwriters (The Vampire Diaries, Grimm) and movie writers (Harry Potter, The Wolf Man (1941), Ginger Snaps), as a link to werewolves and vampires, either killing the fantasy creatures or helping them, depending on the plot requirements.

Despite its dubious links to fiction and fantasy, Aconitum is actually so toxic that poisoning may even occur if the leaves of the plant are picked without wearing gloves. This is because the toxin is absorbed easily through the skin. If this happens, tingling and then unpleasant numbness start at the point of absorption and then extend up the arm to the shoulder, and then on to affect the heart.

pope-clement-6.jpgBecause of this potency, in the 14th century Pope Clement VII (pictured left), worried about being assassinated (as his father had been), asked his physician Matthiolus to find an antidote to various poisons, including Aconitum. Using criminals that had been sentenced to death, Matthiolus divided the prisoners into two groups. He gave the poison to both, but the suspected antidote to only one group. He never found a true antidote, but after lots of unsuccessful tests he discovered that the best treatment was to administer oil and water. This emetic mixture would make the prisoners vomit out the poison, which would (sometimes) save them. Ironically, Pope Clement did eventually die of poisoning, but not assassination. In 1534 he accidentally ate a death-cap mushroom!

But like many poisons, in low doses it can treat various diseases. Aconitine has been known for centuries in China as a traditional herbal medicine that helps alleviate pain and fever. The problem is that the difference between dosages that help the patient and those that kill them are quite small – so it’s very easy for a lethal overdoes to be given, either accidentally, or on purpose.

You mean, deliberate poisonings?

Yes, in fact that’s what aconitine is most infamous for, as a poison of choice by many murderers, especially in the 1800-1900s. Before the advent of modern painkillers like aspirin and paracetamol (acetaminophen), a herbal medicine like aconitine was one of the few analgesics readily available in pharmacies. So many Victorian households might have a bottle of aconitine in the medicine cabinet, which made it easy to use - and abuse.

So just how poisonous is it?

The LD50 (the dosage at which 50% of subjects die) has been reported as being only 30 μg per kg when eaten. That means a 60 kg person would need to ingest only 1.8 mg to die –about the same amount as 10 crystals of table sugar. Victims of aconite poisoning suffer severe vomiting, and often become paralysed. Their organs eventually stop working and they die from asphyxiation, but they remain conscious throughout. It’s a particularly slow and agonising death. It works by binding to a receptor in cells which control sodium channels which are vital for the functioning of many cells, including neurons. Aconitine effectively jams the channel open, so the neurons are constantly on, and cannot refresh themselves. Until they’re refreshed, no new signals can travel along the nerve cell, resulting in paralysis.

Wow, no wonder poisoners like it!

Yes, and there were some quite notorious cases over the years.

dundee-cake.jpgSuch as?

George Henry Lamson was an American doctor who came to work in England in 1881. But he became addicted to morphine, and fell into financial debt. His one hope was if he could get hold of the inheritance due to him when his 18-year-old brother-in-law Percy John died. Even though John was paralysed down one side of his body, he was otherwise healthy and not likely to expire soon. So Lamson decided to poison him with aconitine, hidden inside a piece of Dundee cake. This poison was chosen because Lamson had been told during his medical training many years before that aconitine was undetectable. The plan nearly succeeded, and John died. But forensic science had moved on in the intervening years since medical school, and the Victorian ‘CSIs’ were now able to detect the poison in the remnants of the cake. Lamson went on trial at the Old Bailey, was found guilty, and hanged in 1882.

So the poison was hidden in Dundee cake? Was that common?

It was quite common to hide the aconitine in a drink, cake, or even a curry!

singh.jpgA curry?

Yes, and the killer, Mrs Lakhvir Kaur Singh (photo, left), became known as the ‘Curry Killer’. The crime occurred in London in 2010, almost 130 years after the Lamson case. This was a murder of jealousy and revenge, after Singh’s lover, Lakhvinder Cheema, left her for another woman. Because aconitine was no longer commonly available in pharmacies, Singh had travelled to India specially to collect the poison, which showed a callous degree of premeditation. She put the poison into a curry in the victims’ refrigerator, and when Cheema and his new fiancée ate it the next day they both became seriously ill. During the call to the emergency services, Cheema alleged he’d been poisoned by his ex-girlfriend, but died within an hour. His new fiancée was treated and survived. Singh was found guilty of murder and grievous bodily harm at trial and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

nicholson.jpgAny more?

Yes, staying on the Indian theme, in 1857 during the Indian rebellion against British rule, some Indian regimental chefs tried to poison a British Army detachment by adding aconitine to their meal. Somehow the word of this attempted poisoning had reached the attention of the East India Company officer John Nicholson (picture, right), who confronted the chefs and demanded they prove their innocence by eating their own curry. When they refused, he force-fed the curry to a monkey, which died immediately. The story goes that Nicholson then strode into the British mess tent and said "I am sorry, gentlemen, to have kept you waiting for your dinner, but I have been hanging your cooks."

f-and-f.jpgSo it was nearly used as a weapon of war?

Nearly. And in the 1950s the Soviets were researching into using aconitine as a poison weapon. It is rumoured that Soviet biochemist Grigory Mairanovsky used aconitine in experiments with prisoners in the secret NKVD laboratory in Moscow. In an interview with the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta in 2010 he admitted killing around 10 people using the poison.

But still, as a poison it’s not as infamous as arsenic…

That’s true, arsenic was used for murder very frequently during the Victorian times because it was both commonly available, and undetectable. Eventually, of course, forensic science established a way to detect arsenic, so aconitine then became the poison of choice…until it, too, became detectable. Nevertheless, there have been a number of occasions when aconitine has made it into the popular media. Oscar Wilde's 1891 story Lord Arthur Savile's Crime made aconitine famous when it was used by the main character in an (unsuccessful) attempt to kill his elderly Aunt Clementina. This story was later made into a 1943 film called Flesh and Fantasy. Also in James Joyce's Ulysses, the protagonist Leopold Bloom's father committed suicide using pastilles of aconitine. And recent TV series, such as Dexter, Midsomer Murders, the pilot episode of Forever and American Horror Story: Coven, have all featured poisonings with aconitine.

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References

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and to answer the q about what is this molecule HO

Holmium
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Holmium, 67Ho 220px-Holmium2.jpg General properties Name, symbol holmium, Ho Appearance silvery white Pronunciation /ˈhlmiəm/
HOHL-mee-əm Holmium in the periodic table
Transparent.gif
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that's fucken fantastic waterboy!!! medals for the person who put that into being. I might have to use that!

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The vibe has well and truly sunk in. I know what I have to do. its militarized now. tactical is the name of the game.

EDIT- This is nothing to do with cacti and/or this website, this is an entirely separate affair. the stars have aligned (so to speak). things shall start happening.

Edited by pinegapcontrol

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fuck I love my northern irish 1 year in person but sporadic email buddy. slingin shit all over the place. fucken teg

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i've acquired a new fondness for new zealand accents,

you remind me of rhys darby which is pretty cool

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I bought an electric guitar today yay. My partner's going to teach me how to play now :P been a long time since I had a few lessons. A squier strat. Always thought my first would be a Gibson or gretsch but the clarity of the strat is just so nice; I want to actually hear the notes I'm playing. WAsn't too worried about it not being actual fender, squiers are a lot better these days.

Edited by FancyPants
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to be truthful i initially thought this passage would be an alright read for trundles in his "is doth conscious thread but......meh, you remember things when your brain alklows you to

Introduction

This is one of four essays that I wrote for my M Phil degree in History and Philosophy of Science at Clare College, Cambridge, in 1990-91 (the others, on the transmission of science from the Greeks to the Arabs, Richard of Wallingford and Sir Robert Ball, are also on this site as is my dissertation and a 1992 lecture based on some of the same material). (Added January 2006: see also my review of John North's God's Clockmaker.) I think it is the best of the four. I notice also that it draws by far the most visitors of the history of science pages on this site. The two improvements I would make now are to better define and reference the "orthodox view" which I am attacking, and to better integrate the literary quotations into the argument. If I ever have time I may try and polish it into publishable form. In the meantime, I hope it is useful to passing researchers. If you do find it useful,

Nicholas Whyte, Sint-Genesius-Rode/Rhode-St-Génèse, 23 July 1999; last modified 15 September 200

Hours and Unequal Hours

In the fourteenth century the ownership of time, the control of time-keeping, passed from the Church to the merchant classes. [2] It is usually thought that this transition is linked to the change from measuring time in unequal hours, also called seasonal or temporal hours, which divided both day and night into twelve, to the practice of dividing the whole day and night into twenty-four equal parts (or two sets of twelve equal parts). This essay will argue that the introduction of equal hours in the 13th-14th centuries was not so much a replacement of unequal hours as a reflection of the new importance of the measurement of time."Gooth now youre wey", quod he, "al stille and softe,
And lat us dyne as soone as that ye may,
For by my chilyndre it is pryme of day
Gooth now, and beeth as trewe as I shal be" [1]

Although it is certain that the unequal hour system as outlined above was used in the Roman empire (according to a disputed fragment of Herodotus, it was adopted by the Greeks from the Babylonians), the evidence for the popular use of unequal hours as the basis of time-keeping in the early to mid-mediæval period is unconvincing; it seems much more probable that time was measured with reference to the nearest canonical 'hour' of prayer. Although some of these were named for the unequal hours for which they had been originally intended, by the period in question (13th-14th centuries) this correspondence had partly broken down.

I shall start by looking at the instruments most closely associated with the "measurement" of unequal hours, the astrolabe, the old quadrant or quadrans vetus, and of course the sundial, and then consider the literary evidence from the period in question.

Many astrolabes are equipped with two means of measuring the time in unequal hours, the hour-lines on the latitude plates and the diagram of unequal hours on the back of the instrument. The diagram of unequal hours is not in fact all that common 3 and is in any case identical to that on the quadrans vetus, which will be discussed later. The hour-lines on each plate are meant to divide the arc travelled by any celestial object between setting and rising into twelve equal parts, and are always drawn as arcs of circles (although this is only a good approximation). It is usually only the hour-lines below the horizon which are drawn because the part of the plate representing the sky above the horizon is taken up with almucantars (lines of equal altitude) and azimuth lines (which join the zenith to the horizon).

Chaucer's Tretise of the Astrelabie, perhaps the first scientific treatise written in the English language, deals with many uses of the instrument including finding the time. [4] He first explains how to calculate the angular length of "the arch of the day, that some folk callen the day artificiall, fro sonne arisyng tyl it go to reste" (Conclusioun 7) and then moves onto "the day vulgar, that is to seyn fro spryng of the day unto verrey night" (Conclusioun 9). To work out the length of the relevant hours in degrees, one divides the "arch of the day" by twelve. Then he moves on to his favoured method of counting hours:

Conclusioun 11: To know the quantite of houres equales.

 

 

The quantite of houres equales, that is to seyn the houres of the clokke, ben departed [divided] by 15 degrees alredy in the bordure of thin Astrelaby, as wel by night as by day, generaly for evere. What nedith more declaracioun?

Wherfore whan thou list to knowe hou many houres of the clokke ben passed, or eny part of eny of these houres that ben passed, or ellis how many houres or parties of houres ben to come fro such a tyme by day or by night, know the degre of thy sonne, and ley thy label [alidade] on it. Turne thy ryet [rete] aboute jointly with thy label, and with the poynt of it rekne in the bordure fro the sonne arise unto that same place there thou desirest, by day as by night.

 

Chaucer does not include the necessary next step, to divide the angular distance travelled by the sun since its rising or setting by the length in degrees of the hours one wishes to measure. The method is cumbersome unless one is using equal hours, which are always 15 degrees long. Chaucer cannot have been at all serious about counting time by unequal hours, since they can easily be read off directly from the astrolabe itself by simply setting the rete ("know the degre of thy sonne") and then checking where the Sun (or its nadir) is with respect to the unequal hour lines.

By 1390, when Chaucer was probably writing, it is generally agreed that unequal hours were on their way out. The unequal hour lines had been included on astrolabes in use in Arabic countries (which did use the seasonal hours, much less unequal in lower latitudes), and continued to be used on astrolabes manufactured in Europe until the modern period, by which time equal hours were in general use. However, Chaucer was drawing from a corpus of earlier writings attributed to Messahala. [5] It seems probable that the major use of the unequal hour lines was not in fact to find the time (particularly if most people without astrolabes were measuring time from morning twilight to evening twilight rather than from sunrise to sunset, but to calculate the boundaries of the twelve mundane houses for astrological purposes.

The astrological houses (not to be confused with the twelve signs of the zodiac) were twelve sections of the ecliptic associated with particular matters of interest to the subject of the horoscope. Since astrology first developed there has been debate over the 'correct' method for dividing the ecliptic for this purpose. [6] Almost all astrologers agreed that the first house should start with the ascendent, the degree of the ecliptic rising at the moment of interest. Most agreed that the start of the tenth house should be the mid-heaven, the point of the ecliptic directly south of the event at the moment of interest. The seventh and tenth houses then start opposite the first and tenth.

The astrolabe can be used for the 'equation' of the houses; many later versions of the instrument carry lines corresponding to the method made popular by Regiomontanus. But Chaucer recommends using the hour-lines, in what is called the 'Standard Method' by North 7 because it is so widespread in treatises and in actual horoscopes of the early middle ages. The longitudes of the first, fourth, seventh and tenth houses are easily seen to coincide with the intersection of the ecliptic on the rete with the meridian line and horizon on the astrolabe plate; the four arcs between them (the 'cardinal arcs') are divided into three sections of equal right ascension, giving the twelve houses. The ascendent is rotated back two hours, and the third and ninth houses appear on the meridian line; another two, and the second and eighth can be read off. Similarly the descendent (opposite the ascendent) is rotated forward two hours at a time for the other houses.

The diagram of unequal hours on the back of the astrolabe, also found on the quadrans vetus or old quadrant, [8] has been subjected to a certain amount of mathematical analysis by various authors. [9] The construction of the diagram itself was simple: the quadrant OAB was marked off with six arcs of circles whose intersections with the arc AB divided it into six equal parts, all passing through O and with centres lying on the line OA or its projection.

The old quadrant would be 'set' for a particular latitude by first finding the Sun's altitude at midday (most quadrants had a cursor showing the declination of the sun through the year which could then be combined with the observer's colatitude), stretching the thread from the corner of the quadrant to the point on the edge representing this angle, and placing a bead on the thread to mark its intersection with the midday hour line.

Much has been made of the 'inaccuracy' of the old quadrant, based on the assumption that the 'real' unequal hours were those measured off astrolabe plates, the equal division of day and night into twelve parts each, and the fact that these are not the same as the hours measured by the horary quadrant (which were not even equal to each other). Archinard shows that the difference (which she calls an 'error') between the two instruments at latitude 48 degrees was never more than 17 (equal) minutes or a fifth of an (unequal) hour. This would certainly be a matter for concern if the time in unequal hours needed to be measured precisely. However, it did not. The extent of use of the diagram of unequal hours is a matter for considerable speculation; although the manuscript tradition is well attested, it is not clear that it was more than a cunning Arab geometrical device (a view Archinard seems inclined to support). The other purpose of the quadrant, to measure solar altitude for navigation purposes, is not affected by the system of hours being measured.

Outside the community of scholars, the most common instrument for telling the time by the sun was the sundial. Early mediæval sundials had vertical, semi-circular, south-facing 'dials' and horizontal gnomons; the days of Vitruvius' sixteen different elaborate designs had long passed. These dials started to appear in northern Europe from the eighth and ninth centuries, and usually only marked the times when particular offices should be said; Green found it very difficult to evaluate any of the church dials in his exhaustive survey [10] as indicators of the time in hours.

Closely related to the sundial was the chilindrum of Chaucer's monk, a portable cylindrical dial with a rotating cap from which a stylus projected, and a barrel with graduated lines for the unequal (or equal) hours. Different positions of the cap were needed for different times of year; the length of the stylus' shadow corresponded to the time. Like the quadrant, the cylinder and the pillar sundial measure time from the Sun's altitude; unlike the quadrant, they are only useful at one latitude, so the name 'traveller's cylinder' is not entirely appropriate.

The earliest treatise on the astrolabe, quadrant and chilindrum in Latin was written by Hermann the Lame, a monk of Reichenau in Germany in the middle of the 11th century. Timekeeping was important to any monastic community where the canonical hours of prayer, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline and Matins were observed. These were originally intended to be said at the first hour of the day, then at the third, sixth, ninth and eleventh hours, with Compline after dark and Matins just before dawn. The daytime offices correspond to the times when the owner of the vineyard in Matthew's gospel, ch.20,.went in search of labourers, though this probably only reflects the fact that the start of the day, mid-morning, midday, mid-afternoon, and the end of the day are obvious times to which a significance can be attached, and may even have been conventional points for the division of the daylight hours in first-century Palestine.

The monastic community would be summoned by bells for the recitation of prayers; easy enough to judge the time in the daylight hours, and to watch until it was dark enough for Compline; but staying awake to determine the right time for Matins presented problems. Gregory of Tours, writing in the 570's, included another night-time office, Nocturns, recited just after midnight, and gave detailed instructions for time-keeping including watching for the rising of certain stars and measuring the passage of time by chanting psalms. [11]

Although the canonical hours were originally based on the twelve hours of the day, as used during Roman times, they themselves had become the main reference point for popular time measurement by the middle mediæval period. One of the effects of this change was to enable None to be displaced from its original place at the ninth hour of the day (3 pm in modern terms) to midday, and the disappearance of Sext as an office. Bilfinger [12] convincingly demonstrates this process in action in his selection of descriptions of a solar eclipse on 3 June 1239, described in the records of some Italian monasteries as happening at Sext and by others as happening at None.

Not every monastery did move None to midday; the beginning and end of the working day at Florence were signalled in Dante's time (first decades of the 14th century) by the bell of the 11th century Badia sounding for Terce and None respectively. [13] But the practice seems to have been almost universal in Northern Europe, giving the English language the word noon. Bilfinger [14] attributes 'das Verschiebung der Non' to the hunger of monks, fasting until after it had been said. Le Goff 15 is more doubtful, and suggests that the economic need to introduce the practice of working half-days, perhaps from Terce to None, was an important pressure for change. He does not make it clear why half-days from Terce to Sext would not have served equally well.

None of the extensive contemporary literature quoted by Bilfinger supports the idea that time was measured in the early mediæval period by unequal hours rather than by reference to the hours of prayer. Indeed, he makes a very good case for a time system widespread across Western Europe in which Terce (also called undren or undernoon in English) was equivalent to mid-morning, None midday and Vespers mid-afternoon, with expressions such as mezza terza or haute tierce, meaning 'about halfway between Terce and Noon'.

Equal hours had of course been known to astronomers for centuries. Al-Marrakushi had designed sundials measuring time in equal hours; even earlier, Claudius Ptolemy had expressed the length of day and night at different latitudes in equal hours, a practice copied by the manufacturers of astrolabe plates. Abbot Hildemar of Basle, [16] commenting in about 850 on St Benedict's Rule that monks should rise for Nocturns at the eighth hour of the night, noted that in winter the night was eighteen hours long (a slight exaggeration for the latitude of Basle). He seems not to have been familiar with the concept of unequal hours, which is usually supposed to have been widespread at that time, and reinvented them to suit his own local conditions.

After the invention of the clock, we even see the two systems in tandem; [17] the birth of the future Richard II of England is said variously to have occurred "à heure de tierche" and "sus le point de dix heures"; a battle takes place "à tierche toutte hautte. Bien estoit largement onze heures". The French and English counted their unequal hours from midnight; the Italians from the previous nightfall (not sunset but the onset of darkness), so that a Florentine army could set out on 21st June 1362, "sonato Terza, alla duodecima hora del dí" - after Terce had sounded, at the twelfth hour of the day.

The economic revival of the 12th century had brought a social pressure for more accurate time-keeping from both merchants and employees. Sundials in public places (such as those on the walls of churches) would have been a common means of keeping track of how much of the day was left; John of Garland in the early 13th century despised the rustics who could only tell the time by the sound of church bells. [18] As labour time in the cities and towns became more important to business, its regulation became ever more essential. All the clocks on Beeson's list [19] of those erected in England between 1280 and 1330 are dedicated to ecclesiastical timekeeping, but Le Goff's clocks and work-bells erected in Flanders and other parts of Northern Europe between 1320 and 1370 are all secular, and concerned with the start and end of the working day. The latter list includes a work bell set up to regulate work on York Minster in the 1350s, supplanting the function of the Church's bells. The regulation of time by the civil rather than the religious authorities demonstrated where the control over the lives of ordinary people now lay. In 1370, Charles IV of France decreed that all clocks in Paris should follow that of the Palais Royal.

The mechanical clock, invented in the 1270s, brought accurate large-scale time-keepers into the realms of possibility for every large town. The hours that it measured were equal hours; but the relationship between equal hours and the ancient Roman system of seasonal hours on which the ecclesiastical day had originally been based was no more than a matter of theoretical interest to astronomers. It may have been astronomers, whose convention was to count days from midnight to midnight, who were responsible for ensuring that this system was adopted in England and France; the famous astronomical clock of Richard of Wallingford was designed to strike the equal hours from 1 to 24. [20]

The importance of the introduction of equal hours and the invention of the mechanical clock was not so much that unequal hours went out of fashion - this essay has argued that they had been out of fashion in Western Europe since the collapse of the Roman Empire - but that a more precise framework for the measurement of time was introduced. This was of commercial benefit to those who lived in cities and needed to mark business arrangements accurately; but it was also the cause a shift in society's perception of the progression of time. The French poet and historian Froissart wrote: [21]

L'Orloge est, au vray considerer,
Un instrument tres bel et tres notable,
Et s'est aussy plaisant et pourfitable,
Car nuict et iour les heures nous aprent
Par la soubtilite qu'elle comprent
En l'absence meisme dou soleil. The clock is, when you think about it,
A very beautiful and remarkable instrument,
And it's also pleasant and useful,
Because night and day it tells us the hours
By the subtlety of its mechanism
Even when there is no sun.

Edited by etherealdrifter

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Can I just say how amazing the sunrises and sunsets have been the last two weeks.

It's a magical time.

And sitting in the garden with your best buddy, chatting away the hours, with a few sticks of nag champa and some cups of tea is pretty bloody good too.

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Fresh fish coated in salt & vinegar chips is fuckin delicious

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^^^ i will have to try that next

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Hearing/seeing the name Pat Smear makes me laugh every time I hear it. It NEVER gets old haha!

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did you ever notice that the things we need to sustain our lives, come from other living things?

 

we can't eat dirt, we can' eat rock

 

life begets life, so what now we have the technology to simulate nutrients?

 

does evolution end?

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i mean people have said for millenia that knowledge stagnates

 

but we're now entering an era of human devlopment which trancends biology, 

 

what will humans become in 1000000 years?

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happy birthday Planthelper.

You certainly helped many find plants.

hope you are having a rip snorter.

love

 

 

 

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When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone
When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with
When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured
As by a shining brainless beacon
Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world
When you are calm and joyful
And finally entirely alone
Then in a great new darkness
You will finally execute your special plan

One needs to have a plan someone said who was turned away into the shadows
And who I had believed was sleeping or dead
Imagine he said all the flesh that is eaten
The teeth tearing into it
The tongue tasting it's savour
And the hunger for that taste
Now take away that flesh he said
Take away the teeth and the tongue
The taste and the hunger
Take away everything as it is
That was my plan
My own special plan for this world
I listened to these words and yet I did not wonder
If this creature whom I had thought sleeping or dead would ever approach his vision
Even in his deepest dreams
Or his most lasting death
Because I had heard of such plans such visions
And I knew they did not see far enough
But what was demanded in a way of a plan
Needed to go beyond tongue and teeth and hunger and flesh
Beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the dust away
And so I began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night
And a strangely shining light
That owed nothing to the light of day

That day may seem like other days
Once more we feel the tiny legged trepidations
Once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear
But that day will have no others after
No more worlds like this will follow
Because I have a plan
A very special plan
No more worlds like this
No more days like that

There are but four ways to die a sardonic spirit might have said to me
There is dying that occurs relatively suddenly
There is dying that occurs relatively gradually
There is dying that occurs relatively painlessly
There is the death that is full of pain
Thus by various means they are combined
The sudden and the gradual
The painless and the painful
To yield but four ways to die
And there are no others
Even after the voice stopped speaking
I listened for it to speak again
After hours and days and years have passed
I listened for some further words
Yet all I heard were the faintest echoes reminding me
There are no others
There are no others
Was it then that I began to conceive for this world
A special plan?

There are no means for escaping this world
It penetrates even into your sleep
And is his substance
You are caught in your own dreaming
Where there is no space
And a hell forever where there is no time
You can't do nothing you aren't told to do
There is no hope for escape from this dream
That was never yours
The very words you speak are only it's very words
And you talk like a traitor
Under it's incessant torture

There are many who have designs upon this world
And dream of wild and vast reformations
I have heard them talking in their sleep
Of elegant mutations
And cunning annihilations
I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses
And in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe
Which they with their new designs were made straight and sound
But each of these new and ill conceived designs
Is deranged in it's heart
For they see this world as if it were alone and original
And not as only one of count with others
Whose nightmares all precede
Like a hideous garden grown from a single seed
I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep
And I stand waiting for them
As at the top of a darkened flight of stairs
They know nothing of me
And none of the secrets of my special plan
While I know every crooked creaking step of theirs

It was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows
Who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner
And enter a narrow street
And stand with him in the dull glaze of moonlight
Then he said to me
He whispered
That my plan was misconceived
That my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake
Because, he said, there is nothing to do and there is no where to go
There is nothing to be and there is no one to know
Your plan is a mistake, he repeated
This world is a mistake, I replied

The children always followed him
When they saw him hopping by
A funny walk
A funny man
A funny, funny, funny man
He made them laugh sometimes
He made them laugh oh yes he did
He did he did he did he did
Oh how he made them roll
One day he took them to a place
He knew a special place
And told them things about this world
This funny, funny, funny world
Which made them laugh sometimes
He made them laugh oh yes he did
He did he did he did he did
Oh how he made them roll
Then the funny man who made them laugh
Sometimes he did
Revealed to them his special plan
His very special funny plan
Knowing they would understand
And maybe laugh sometimes
He made them laugh
Oh yes he did
He did he did he did he did
Their eyes grew wide beneath there lids
And how he made them roll

I first learned the facts from a lunatic
In a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time and space
There are no people
Nothing at all like that
The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion
Each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity
But there are persons of any kind
When all that can be is mindless mirrors
Laughing and screaming as they parade about
In an endless dream
But when I asked the lunatic what it was
It swore itself within these mirrors
As they marched endlessly in stale time and space
He only looked and smiled
Then he laughed and screamed
And in his black and empty eyes
I saw for a moment as in a mirror
A form the shade of divinity
In flight from its stale infinity
Of time and space and the worst of all
Of this world dreams
My special plan for the laughter
And the screams

We went to see some little show
That was staged in an old shed
Past the edge of town
And in its beginnings all seemed well
The miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness
While those dolls bounced along on their strings before our eyes
And in its beginnings all seemed well
But then there came a subtle turning point which some have noticed
And I was one
Who quietly left the show
No I did not
Because I could see where things were going
As the antics of those dolls grew strange
And the fragile strings grew taut
With their tiny pullings, tiny limbs
The others around me became appalled
And turned away and abandoned the show
That was staged in an old shed
Past the edge of town
But I wanted to witness what could never be
I wanted to see what could not be seen
But the moment of consummate disaster
My puppets turned to face the puppet master

It was twilight and I stood in a greyish haze of the vast empty building
When the silence was enriched by a reverberant voice
All the things of this world it said
Are of but one essence
For which there are no words
This is the greater part which has no beginning or end
And the one essence of this world for which there can be no words
Is that all the things of this world
This is the lesser part which had a beginning and shall have an end
And for which words were conceived solely to speak of
The tiny broken beings of this world it said
The beginnings and endings of this world it said
For which words were conceived solely to speak of
Now remove these words and what remains it asks me
As I stood in the twilight of that vast empty building
But I did not answer
The question echoed over and over
But I remained silent until the echoes died
And as twilight passed into the evening I felt my
Special plan for which there are no words
Moving towards a greater darkness

There are some who have no voices
Or none that will ever speak
Because of the things they know about this world
And the things they feel about this world
Because the thoughts that fill a brain
That is a damaged brain
Because the pain that fills a body
That is a damaged body
Exists in other worlds
Countless other worlds
Each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness
For which no words are being conceived
And where no voices are able to speak
When a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts
When a damaged body is filled only with pain
And stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness
And exists in a world for which there is no special plan

When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone
When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with
When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured
As by a shining brainless beacon
Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world
When you are calm and joyful
And finally entirely alone
Then in a great new darkness
You will finally execute your special plan

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Life isn't perfect, I know I sure ain't. 

But sitting here in my own little space, it's hard to imagine it could be much better.

 

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If you can use your hand as a tool, to grab and make use of a hand held tool, is not the tool also your hand.. you are grabbing the potential of your hands use to use the tool which is giving you a hand..

Haha idek man im just talking shit i love doing that, like ive posted some crack head shit before.. man my fb friends must think im legit a crackhead..

But a crack head has a crack in his head, letting whats outside in.. or.. is his head the crack itself... cracking the code involves breaking the code apart and understanding the matrix both on a quantum and a unit(e)d (w)hole. Neo was the one.. but zero is closer to infinity... seeing as it transcends the nature of individuality beyond a concept.. yet infinity is individual in the sense that there is a set of something that is said to be infinite.. ain sof has been reduced (or rather increased) into a concept.. and emptiness is full of wisdom... Wisdom is full of lies, but from the perspective/perceived understanding of them, is where the spirit of wisdom comes. Lies can express more truth than the direct truth itself.. yet the direct truth is direct and cuts through.. the bull shit ^^ Haha im full of shit, but atleast im not empty, although sometimes i feel empty in many ways.. which isnt a single emptiness, so by its multiple nature.... It is a set of perceptions, individual yet connected.. the emptiness and the perception are both seperate and connected.. but its the way you look at it... The ultimate orgasm comes from enjoyment of pain.. because that intense pain squeezes a release.. violently.. of love and pleasure.. and you realize the pain pleasure love and suffering are together in harmony with the observer.. the perceiver, the perception, the state of being, the beings state.. and that state is a state that i needed to state because im just making some crack head statements.. cracking the code.. because the code is conscious and feels pain.. quantum feelits... 

M8.. yes please.. been needing one for a while. The dual nature of that statement actually transcends its own definition/nature in truth. But now its getting personal.. But that just reminds the observer that this is coming from something that feels. Did you forget? Mindfulness has many forms..
 

Edited by Meditator

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goodbye zinger stacker.......

n helllloooooo fiery angus 

 

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