While I often focus on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (Octopus paxarbolis) due to its importance to the Cascadian ecosystem and the sheer tragedy of its plight, it is not the only octopus in the world with an affinity for trees. Some other species -- such as the phytosuccivorous New England Sugar Octopus; the Australian Tree-ringed Octopus; and the furry, blue Thujoctopus pilosa -- are mentioned on the tree octopus sightings page.

Susan Scott has just written in Hawaii's Star Bulletin about two other tree (or at least semiarboreal) octopuses that I was unaware of in her article "Tale of octopi climbing trees has long legs".

According to Words of the Lagoon by R.E. Johannes (in the chapter titled "The Arboreal Octopus"), on the islands of Palau, female octopuses have been seen to climb out of the water and into the mangrove trees to rear their young -- an inversion of the reproductive strategy of O. paxarbolis. However, there's some controversy surrounding this claim since the octopuses are reputed to give birth in the trees, not lay eggs like all other octopuses. Perhaps they carry a clutch of eggs to the trees hidden in their arms just prior to hatching?

In Halieutica, a poetic treatise on the nature of fishes and fishing practices of the ancients, the 2nd century poet Oppian of Corycus tells how octopuses ("preke") would come out of the water and climb up olive trees to get at the delicious fruit. These semiarboreal octopuses so dearly loved olives that fishermen would drag olive branches behind their boats to lure them out of hiding to catch them. (Could this be the source of the Wiltonism: "olives are deadly, so they say, depending on where you find them"?) Here's an 18th century translation of the relevant passage:

In Some the strange Caprice of Love inspires
Not Home-bred Joys, or Sea confin'd Desires:
The Quiver'd God to rolling Waves below
From verdant Shores directs the pointed Blow,
And Fishes Breasts with Earth-sprung Passions glow.
Rock-haunting Sargo's, and the crawling Preke
Extraneous Objects to their Pleasures seek.
With all the Transports of an eager Spouse
Th' enamour'd Preke galants Minerva's Boughs.
Surprising Singularity of Love!
That brutal Souls a leafy Fair should move,
And Fishes court the Daughter of the Grove.

Where near the shore a thriving Olive grows,
With swelling Berries and luxuriant Boughs,
The Preke ascends, as o'er the Mountain Dews
The Cretan Hound his flying Game persues,
With low-hung Nose explores the scented Ways,
Picks ev'ry Footstep, and unwinds the Maze,
Attacks the panting Wand'rer where he lies,
And loads his Master with the bloody Prize.
Thus He the scented Olives Charms obeys,
Springs from the Deep, and tries aerial Ways.
With eager Welcome first he clasps the Root,
And wreaths luxuriant in the kind Salute.
As when his long-expected Nurse he spies,
With open Arms the smiling Infant flies,
Hangs on her Knees with violent Embrace,
And lifts his grappling Fingers to her Face,
In softer Joys aspiring to be blest,
To grasp her Neck, and fondle on her Breast;
Thus round the Trunk at first the Wanton twines,
But soon his Passion to the Boughs resigns.
Born by Desire the leafy Height attains,
Knits round his Legs, and melts in am'rous Chains.
To ev'ry Branch transfers th' alternate Kiss,
Lost in the copious Latitude of Bliss.

The Trav'ller thus, whom safe from foreign Shores,
To native Fields th' auspicious Gale restores,
His thronging Friends in kind Embraces holds,
And hands successive in th' endearing Folds.

As round the stately Firr in humid Rings
Th' uxorious Stalk of creeping Ivy clings;
Stretcht from the Root th' aspiring Volumes flow,
Climb round the Trunk, and curl on ev'ry Bough;
Thus o'er Minerva's Tree the Sea-born roves,
And wreaths successive in the balmy Loves.
But when remiss exhausted Nature lies,
Back to the Sea the languid Crawler hies,
Satiate with Love, and Vegetable Joys.

His strange Amour experienc'd Fishers know,
And send the verdant Fraud to Seas below.
The Boughs that spread superior to the rest
Behind the Boat they drag with Lead deprest.
With no indiff'rent Look, or tardy Pace,
The Preke beholds, and courts the green Embrace;
Drawn to the Boat the Bands of Love retains,
Contemns his Freedom, and asserts his Chains.
Lockt in the riveted Enjoyment twines,
Nor ev'n in Death his lovely Tree resigns.

Could this explain the evolution of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus? Did it first crawl out of the Puget Sound seeking delicious land fruit -- perhaps salal berries or Indian plums -- and became so enamored with the "green Embrace" of the forests that it took up permanent residence? Certainly as plausible an explanation as any put forward thus far.

Speaking of menacing pods, the Monorailists have a new scheme to get us all traveling on dangerous monorails -- the Podcar:

The Podcar: teetering over your home town soon?

It's a "podcar," also called "personal rapid transit" -- a system of vehicles that provide on-demand, private, nonstop travel. These vehicles can carry people or light freight. They ride on small, overhead guideways -- like a monorail or people mover -- above existing roads, and are powered entirely by electricity. Picture the car as an elevated, driverless taxi. It's under computer control, so there would be no accidents, thereby saving lives and lowering insurance costs.

Podcars operate on demand, waiting at off-line stations; they can be summoned if one is not available when you arrive at the station. Each vehicle can hold four people, yet the system can be cost-effective even with a single rider for each trip.

Benefits that monorail podcars have over traditional monorail trains are that when one bursts into flames, only four people will be roasted alive, and you won't be able to fit a frightened elephant inside one. Also, when they stall (and they will), you can get out and push.

Podcars are a poor mimicry of the superior Inteli-Tube pneumatic transportation system* and were designed to confuse the car-obsessed public into building more dangerous monorails. But the sinister ambitions of the Monorailists don't stop with preying on automobilophiles, they also want to replace bicycles with a monorailular version! Will the monorail madness never end?

* The ITPTS was developed by Lyle Zapato & ZPi Laboratories.

As readers of my site know, Belgian "citizens" are really kidnap victims who have been brought to a chamber under Euro-Disneyland in France, where they're hooked up to a computer simulation of "Belgium" (a country that does not exist) and brain-formatted to believe they are "Belgians". The interfacing of the "citizens" with the Belgian construct takes place through a Citizen Pod, a cocoon-like device that keeps a physical body alive and immobile while cybernetic probes inserted into the brain replace all sensory input with Belgian lies.

The Belgian Conspiracy has been planning to decentralize its Citizen Pod collection currently held in that single chamber, where rapidly diminishing pod-space is kept in check only by a black mold infestation that has been ravaging the physically moribund pod prisoners. The original plan was for a second chamber under a new Disneyland in Shanghai, but that plan has been proceeding slower than expected.

Now the Conspiracy has come up with a disturbing new solution to their pod-housing problems: they are marketing a Citizen Pod for use in public spaces around the world. The Immersive Cocoon (or, excuse my iRoll, the "iCocoon") isn't as advanced as the true Belgian Citizen Pods since it only projects images on the inside walls, not through a brain-computer interface. This is intentional as the true purpose of the iCocoon is to slowly acclimatize society to accept the existence of, and submission to, Citizen Pods.

Coming soon to your home.
Soon to be your home.

When complete, the Immersive Cocoon will be a sleek and shiny human-sized dome. Step inside and you'll be enveloped by a 360° display screen and full surround sound.

When the software boots up, instead of using a joystick or mouse to navigate the screens, motion-tracking cameras will follow the movement of your arms, legs and face, and a motion-sensitive platform will detect if you're walking or jumping.

"You've got display, sound and interaction all combined to create this fully immersed digital experience," explains Tino Schaedler, the architect-turned-film designer who is one third of NAU.

"It is completely different from me sitting in front of a screen, looking at a little picture and typing something in -- almost like the experience is reduced to my brain and my fingers. In the Cocoon we have the whole body immersed inside."

NAU, the front company marketing the device on behalf of the Belgian Conspiracy, happily notes that the iCocoon tracks the physical movements of the user with the same technology used by the oppressive, all-knowing government in the film Minority Report. If that doesn't sound alarms, the technology is based on the work of John Underkoffler of MIT's Media Lab, where they research mind-reading devices and spread FUD against personal mind-control protection.

According to NAU's timetable, a working prototype will be shown next year, with commercial models available in 2014. While they will first appear in public spaces, such as museums or malls, eventually NAU will introduce a special "consumer model" more like the ones found under Euro-Disneyland, allowing Belgian Citizen Pods to be distributed throughout the world in people's homes. Once the goal of total home market saturation is achieved, only then will the hidden brain-probe spikes shoot out of the iCocoon's walls into the base of the user's skull to immobilize them, forcefully reprogram their sense of identity, and immerse them in the inescapable fictitious land of Belgium. Soon enough, everyone will be a Belgian "citizen".

(With this and the danger from mind-controlling iPods, one might begin to be suspect of all podular forms of consumer gadgetry. However, rest assured that the Inteli-Tube Personal Pneumatic Tube Pod will not subvert your senses or mind. In fact, its psychotronically deflective aluminum shell will make it the perfect escape vehicle for paranoids once the Belgian Conspiracy moves to take over cities depopulated through Belgian Citizen Podification.)

The gradual acclimation of the public to the coming swarms of black helicopters observing and policing society continues apace. We are now told to accept that helicopters are teaching themselves to fly:

"Oh look, it's flying upside down! Isn't that so cute? Let's not protect ourselves with swatters!"

A new artificial intelligence system allows a robotic helicopter to teach itself how to fly and even do challenging stunts, just by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers.

The result is an autonomous helicopter than can perform a complete airshow of complex tricks on its own, its inventors say.

It's all for entertainment in airshows, of course! We will, no doubt, learn to enjoy watching the charming antics of the protosentient helicopters as they frolic about during government-sanctioned Patriotic Events, and won't be the least fazed when they start buzzing through our neighborhoods on behalf of law enforcement. In fact, we'll welcome the little scamps! "Isn't that adorable how it follows us around constantly, mimicking our every move? It thinks it's people!"

The helicopter is being trained for eventual release by the Stanford University Autonomous Helicopter project, led by Professor Andrew Y. Ng. Their work follows in the contrails of the black helicopter swarming technology leaked from MIT a couple of years ago.

For a preview of what you'll soon be seeing in the sky over your house at all hours of the day, click below for a video showing JUVENILE BLACK HELICOPTER CHAOS!

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Lesson A.

This lesson shows how a weak person could stop an opponent who is about to clinch, by putting the first and index fingers to the eyes.* This method was used by the Japanese at Port Authur in the hand-to-hand battle with the Russians.

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In 1887, Lord Kelvin, in a paper titled "On the Division of Space with Minimum Partitional Area", sought a way of partitioning space using a foam of equal-sized cells with a minimum surface area. His solution, known as the Kelvin structure, consisted of repeating tetrakaidecahedra with slightly curved faces.

Stereoscopic photo of a tetrakaidecahedron, constructed out of soldered wire, from Kelvin's 1894 "On Homogeneous Division of Space". (Cross eyes to view in 3D.) Also, I have a paper model approximation of a Kelvin cell available for download [PDF].

It wasn't until 106 years later that Denis Weaire and Robert Phelan discovered (aided by advanced computer software that would have taken millions of years of run time on a standard Victorian era difference engine,) a solution that had 0.3 percent less surface area than the Kelvin structure. However, their solution, the Weaire-Phelan structure, uses two different shaped cells instead of Kelvin's simpler single cell solution.

As the New York Times reports, the wall and roof structure of the new Beijing National Aquatics Center, also known as the Water Cube, is based on the Weaire-Phelan solution to the Kelvin Problem. The building's designer, Tristram Carfrae, tilted the structure 60° to give the surface an almost random look (although it does repeat its pattern). According to this 2004 article, it was for this pseudo-irregular "organic quality" that the Weaire-Phelan structure was chosen over the Kelvin structure, which was originally considered.

The Water Cube during construction.

In his 1899 speech given after Sir George Stokes read his paper "On the Perception of Colour" at the Victoria Institute, Lord Kelvin casually predicted the future:

Now I spoke of scientific men. There are scientific ladies also—and ladies who are not scientific—and I am sure they will all thoroughly sympathise with scientific men in their appreciation of this beautiful theory.

Sir George Stokes told us that every variety of colour may be produced by the mixture of red, green and violet, and in Maxwell's practical work on the subject of which he spoke, white and black are added in the mixture, white to dilute the intensity of the colour; and black to diminish the total light emitted by a body exposed to sunlight.

Now in these times when ladies are so well occupied with important work that they scarcely have time for shopping, it would be a great comfort to them, if when they wanted a beautiful blue ribbon, they could simply write down on a piece of paper 2.5.7.3.4. and put it in an envelope and send it to the shop; or 3.4.0.2.0 a brilliant yellow, no black in it—3 of red, 4 of green, 0 of violet, 2 of white to brighten it up a little and dilute some of the colour. Do not imagine that you will get green by mixing yellow and blue—on the contrary, you get yellow by mixing red and green, as was first taught by Young, enforced by Helmholtz, and splendidly put in practice by Maxwell.

That's right, Lord Kelvin foresaw the common use of color codes on the Web! Kelvin's idea went even further though, to real world color specification via numerical strings. Unfortunately, the average consumer still can't purchase pretty ribbons or other such things custom dyed from an RGBLK string sent to the shop. (I smell a Web 2.0 business potential...)

My colleague frienemy in the fight against alien mind control, Michael Menkin -- the inventor of the thought screen helmet, a Velostat-based technology that blocks the non-psychotronic telepathic communication used by paraterrestrials from the Reticulum constellation -- has offered his help to beleaguered Wales, where UFO sightings have become commonplace. Menkin's thought screen helmets (instructions for which he offers for free on his site,) will prevent the Welsh from being abducted by the UFOs, a risk that is increasing daily:

Mr Menkin said given the level of UFO activity over Wales, people should make a thought screen. He said: "The people in Wales will benefit by making their own helmets.

"Everybody would be a lot safer if they had one in the house. There seems to have been more reports (of UFOs) lately in Wales and Scotland and the western half of the British Isles."

Unfortunately, it seems that Reticulan agents and/or mind-control victims have already infiltrated local ufological groups and are spreading FUD against thought screen technology:

But Margaret Fry, of the Welsh Fellowship of Ufologists, dismissed the thought screens as "ridiculous".

Mrs Fry, from Abergele, in North Wales, said: "I have seen UFOs, but I don't believe in crackpot ideas like this.

"It's ridiculous. People in the Welsh Federation have been investigating UFOs for 40 years and none of us subscribes to this nonsense."

Meanwhile, the local hominoid community has offered its support of Menkin's foreign aid work. "THE WELSH ARE MINE!!!" howled Brenin Llwyd, from Cader Idris, in North Wales. "IF SILLY HATS KEEP PUNY HAIRLESS GREY SKY-THIEVES AWAY, SILLY HATS THE WELSH SHALL HAVE!!!" Brenin Llwyd went on to announce that he will begin canvassing Snowdonia, handing out informative fliers explaining the UFO abduction risk, as well as the construction and use of thought screen helmets. He will also continue to abduct children for safe keeping until the Welsh can properly defend themselves.

The archetype of fractal appendages manifests in the cephalopodan realm...

...or perhaps it originated there? Could it be that the awakening of dactyl fractal consciousness is merely an atavism from an earlier form of existence shared by the common ancestors of humans and octopuses -- an existence where such stifling notions as a finite number of limbs had yet to encumber our ancestors' tactile perceptions of their reality? Could we already be past this vertex on the parabola of evolution, and are now heading back up toward the infinite reaches of body segmentation? What next shall we see? Elephants with bushy multitrunks? Snakes sprouting snakes sprouting snakes? Hydraferrets? Could this be what the Maya prophesized will happen on December 21, 2012? Could the Singularity be cut short by the Multiplicity?

While further researching Lord Kelvin, I came across an interesting quote. The Universe a Vast Electric Organism (George Woodward Warder, 1903) quotes Prof. Garrett P. Serviss -- the author of Edison's Conquest of Mars, which co-stars Lord Kelvin -- in the New York American, May 16, 1903 (bold mine):

"The undulatory theory of energy is carrying everything before it. It is not saying too much to aver that wave motion is concerned in nearly all the phenomena of physical life . . . Think for a moment of what is included in the science of waves. In the air all sounds, all musical harmonies are waves; in the solid globe, all earthquakes are waves; in the ether light, electricity and heat are waves. It is waves that make the stars visible, and yet more mysterious oscillations picture for us on photographic plates marvelous nebulous objects. Lord Kelvin has been credited with the statement that the fluttering of a butterfly's wing sets up vibrations that shake the universe." (p.288)

I've searched for the original quote by Kelvin but have come up empty. The only references to it I can find on the Internet are in Warder and a mention in passing in Science of the New Thought (Erastus Whitford Hopkins, 1904). If anyone can find what statement of Kelvin's Serviss was referring to, please contact me, as this would add chaos theory to the multitude of scientific fields that Kelvin influenced in some way.

According to the Wikipedia article on the "butterfly effect", the connection of butterflies to the idea of sensitive dependence on initial conditions came from Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story "A Sound of Thunder". Granted it's Wikipedia, so it might as well say John Seigenthaler Sr. first came up with the idea, but if that's the accepted wisdom on the metaphor's origin, what shall we make of Kelvin's use of it half a century earlier? Time travel?

Since I don't have Kelvin's original quote, I'll leave you instead with some entertaining figures from Hopkins' book above:

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