in response ...

Interesting developments and postulations indeed. Tell me more about calabi yau. I haven't heard of this discipline.

Where are you situated at present? Where are these boxes being delivered to? (I would also ask where are they being delivered from, but assume that isn't yet known.) Are you on campus in UK or have you returned to the US? If a similar operation is being begun this side of the atlantic, this could be the beginnings of a second round of soft cells. Either a single replication of experiment 31, or else one of many second generation repeat projects. We must keep alert.
As for locating Dan, I suggest you look underground. In the cellar, or on the ground floor at least.

I await Epstein's opinions on using softness to access other dimensions.

Multi-dimensional crochet & campus deliveries

hmmm.... The crochet/yoga angle is an interesting one. Perhaps the yogic prep is key to the outcomes of the hook. Maybe the exercise is no mere pre-stitch warm up, this flexing could be flexing fibres, not muscles, a la don genaro, allowing the practitioners to tap into other realms/dimensions [possibly one of the curled up dimension thought to be universally hidden in calabi-yau shapes], which allows them to execute crochet manouveres otherwise impossible. in short, they may be knitting in more than 3 dimensions, but we 3-D dwellers may not be able to see it. Perhaps this is why you struggled to understand the finely woven structures of your dutch associate.



For my part here, I have been trying to find and/or contact Dan Stairs. I feel he may hold information which may help unravel this whole mystery. Campus-based investigations have led me to discover the daily deliveries of large cardboard boxes, which seem suspiciously light for their size when one observes the delivery men carrying them. Enquiries with the receptionist allowed me to learn that such deliveries are 'for the Knitting Society'. I did not possess sufficient front to begin opening the boxes there and then, so cannot confirm their specific content, but the lightness of the boxes suggest woollen thread [or perhaps pre-knitted structures , possibly to be joined together into yet larger structures] and the amount of them being delivered daily implies a large-scale operation. I shall keep my eyes and ears peeled for possible evidence of their purpose.



The thought now occurs to me that the point of the softness could be exactly that - it is not rigid, but flexible; possibly flexible enough to be bent into space dimensions beyond our familiar 3. Perhaps the soft michigan group are attempting to [or even successfullly] building a new softer world in a new dimension which the average joe is not aware of. I must confer with Epstein on this matter. I am sure Stairs could also shed light on this were he to be found, but would he be willing?



Mr. Marbles

Clarity ...

Eggwhite, egg shells, or gelatine.
Finings?? I wouldn’t use nothing where I didn’t know what the word even meant. Well maybe I would if the word was smoof. Or yurve. Or hoomsmeed. They’d go in the mix.

Get onto Epstein. I’ll contact the MIT crew. I think we could soon have this case opened right up. Micro to macro. Damn on.

Super-strung out on a car seat

Quite so. I was reading up on superstring theory last night and it struck me that it seemed applicable to the case - alternate realities, strings, fibres and loops. It's all there in the text, in the theory. I now strongly believe that the soft michigan group are trying to create a new reality, a new american dream, by stitching it together with their own bare hands. No need for large particle accelerators etc. Make the microscopic macroscopic and you have your new world. S string theory is the foremost likely leap in our understanding of the universe, it seems the logical one to base a new method of reality on. The fact the terminology is transferable to sewing techniques and woven matter is highly fortuitous. These cats are knitting a new, softer american dream, all we need to do is find the right thread and we are in there, part of the Pattern.

I must speak with epstein asap.

New wine sounds good. Have been tucking into first batch of parsnip - my first brew. Is good, but a bit earthy. Missing elderflowers, I imagine. Plan to get some more cherry wine on once I get round to clearing space in most recent apartment base.

Any idea on how to clear a cloudy/earthy one? Wine finings failed to help much.

origins of phenomena

I think the origins of all phenomena actually date back to before the fifties. Perhaps actually the beginning of time, if the universe emanated from a point source temporally. But I grasp the nub of your point.

I think Epstein is onto something. I am mid geosemiotic research following the shape patterns of the UK which repeat at different scales, mainly along the south-west to north east axis as featuring in the US side of the case. I currently live roughly in the location of Lampeter in the NW UK version of Wales, and have located the nearby version of Lundy Island, which is supposedly the location hinted at by the right angle triangle formed with Stonehenge and the Mountain Source of Stonehenge stones.

I’m not sure what I’m hoping to find. Perhaps a hidden miniature henge or beacon in a key location. But the land-mass as beacon angle is new to me and sounds plausible.

Turbulence

Your last missive gives me the impression that things are beginning to unravel. Are you working from a new base now? A change in situation often allows things to be seen viewpoints hitherto unviewed. Maybe your move will provide you with a different view of the case.Thunder and lightning is filling the sky as I type. Low pressure. Electricity. Turbulence. eight young tomato plants are currently being rained on.

So, the beards are coming to town. It seems our guitar-slinging cowboys are will be active in the UK at a similar time to Costa's Broken Social Scene hitting the Candian road. Is this coincidence? Not if Bob Palindrome's maxim is anything to go by; 'there's no such thing as coincidences; there's only incidences, and they all go in the casefile'. He also used to say 'a casefile is like a good stew; you chuck everything in there, keep a low heat on it and see what rises to the surface'. I always took this as a good metaphor but once I got to know the man I realised that he also meant it literally.

Once I had visted his apartment I soon realised that he would destroy old closed casfiles by boiling them up in a pan of water in his kitchen. This explained the scald marks on his hands I'd previously wondered about. The man, resourceful as ever, used this method of data erasion as it provided him with the raw material for his hobby of making lifesize paper mache sculptures of his favourite birds of prey. The man had these things, hand painted, all over his house. A bald eagle hung above the main doorway, neck craned down and beak out so as to almost peck your left eye out while you waited for the door to open. A pereguin falcon, wings hunched back in a dive pose sat on his bureau acting as a mail holder, envelopes stuffed between the two raised wings. I digress...

Although the dates of BSS and the beard troupe's performance are not the same, they are only a couple of weeks apart. There is the possibility of using winds, possibly the trade winds one of our investigators mentioned earlier, to allow the sound to travel over large distances. This obviously takes time. I am consulting Dr. Epstein on this and am waiting for confirmation, but rough calculations show that it is fairly likely the soundwaves from both touring circuits will collide and interact at some point around the start of august. Perhaps there is some underlying plan for the two soundwaves to mesh in a certain area, interfering with one another in a way similiar to that you tried to achieve with the dual spin sources.

This could be another Black Cat style experiment, done in reverse fashion to the dual particle example. This time, they are starting with two sources, which are intended to meet up in one location. causing some kind of effect or outcome.Due to the butterfly effect, turbulence, it is hard to predict with certainty the when and where or even if of what may happen, but Epstein did say 'it could be possible'. Of course, I may be looking in the wrong direction and this could just be nothing. If, on the other hand, it is the case, then we are dealing with some advanced Obfuscation techniques.

Down In The Basement

Did you ask the woman where she learnt the stitching technique? If you see her again, I suggest you try to glean if she ever spent any time in the vicinity of Droitwich. I take it that this is a wholly different lady to the old laughing elk you met in the road last week (the image of such a scene in my head makes me think of 'Grandma Death' from the film Donnie Darko). Old ladies are often wise beyond expectation and the insights possible from such sources should never be underestimated. Allow me now to recount what was gleaned from another Old Hand from the labs...

The evening with Dr. Epstein (in which he explained to me the guilt-free method of donut theft) yielded the following unexpected discovery of sorts. As the jazz music filtered through the post-dinner chat, there had been metion of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes and the mistaken belief was held that they were redcorded in 1968. An hour or so later, a copy of Thelonious Monk's Underground was noticed on the table, copyright information showing an original relase date of 1968.

The artwork on Monk's record depicts the artist in an underground bunker, a basement of sorts. In this basement, Monk is at his piano surrounded by assorted objects thus: cheese, grapes, guns, a haybucket, several wine bottles and glasses and a gestapo officer tied to a wooden chair. In the background (the image has a strong sense of depth) is a woman holding a rifle, staring at the viewer from a distance. Monk also sports a gun, strapped to his back out the way of his hands for freedom on the keyboard yet in easy reach should he decide he requires it's use. A detonator connected to a string of explosives lies at his feet in the foreground and Viva La France is grafittied on one of the walls [above the nazi]. The image is rendered in dark earthy hues and has a natural textural quality to it.

Now, i happen to know the Dylan record fairly well and am familiar with its sleeve art. The two are very similar. The artist is also situated in a basement with his instrument of choice (in Dylan's case a mandolin, being played in the manner of a fiddle). Earthy tones, seemingly random objects and characters abound. There is also a man in military dress similar to Monk's Gestapo prisoner. A woman also stares at the viewer from the back of the picture.

Working on the assumption that both records were recorded and released in the same year, it struck me that these two pieces of work were a further example of two people having the same idea, separately, but at the same time. However, upon returning home and checking my copy of the Dylan record, I discovered that it was in fact released in 1975 and so would not seem to be the evidence I initially supposed. One further thing did strike me about the two covers - both artists are wearing wool - Monk a fine suit and Dylan in a striped cardigan reminiscent of South American patterns and colouring.

Now, I am not for a 16th note suggesting that these two seminal musicians were involved in the beginnings of the soft-core group, but I have a hunch that there may be some significance in all this similarity and mistaken belief. If the softcore group have been in hiding for the last 3 years, where have they been? Based on the insights gained from these record sleeves, I have a strong suspicion that when the group went 'underground' they did so literally and have been living subterraneously since 2005. Given their suspected plan of trying to submerge a city, or even a state, it seems likely that they would possess the means to hide themselves underground also, something mentioned as a possiblity with regard to the stateline existence you hypothesized recently.

Of course this theory would have so much more weight to it if the two records in question had been released in the same year.

RE: Donut Law

You ask if it would be theft to eat a donut while moving upwards to counter the motion of it falling into your stomach. Einstein does indeed claim all motion to be relative. A discussion with Dr. Epstein at dinner the other night (only now do I notice the similarity to the name Einstein) illustrated this idea to me further. Only a person in freefall (moving at the same speed as gravity) is truly motionless against the backdrop of spacetime. So, eating the donut while falling from a great height would be the only way I know of eating someone else's donut with a clear conscience. Of course, this could prove medically disasterous unless the eater-with-conscience was equipped with some sort of parachute-easque apparatus to aid the fall. I'm not sure where stealing one of your MIT boys' donuts in an anti-grav chamber stands in respect to the law.

Your non-linear defense has merit but such laws only apply to a single viewpoint. In Borges' The House of Asterion, the number 14 is used to signify infinity. In a courtroom you have twelve jourors along with the prosecution and defense, which totals 14. Perhaps this number is of cosmic significance - the first integer above some sort of cosmic threshold. [one number beyond the unlucky 13, which is perhaps the tipping point. Thought of as unlucky in folklore but actually just unpredicatable, giving results which fall either side of this cosmic threshold.] So, maybe with 14 viewpoints, we actually have infinite viewpoints, thus non-linear may be inapplicable as evidence.

I do not know if this helps with the case.

Eidolons

not sure if this is intra or extra investigations, but was synchronicitously sent the following link below, pertaining to the whole particles-connected-over-distance field of enquiry...

Subject: RE: viva la sangria
oh, watch this if you get a spare 10 minutes at work...is good stuff.
http://www.bbc5.tv/news/story/amazing-holographic-universe

[From this article:] “In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. […] Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. […] A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes. […] This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something. […] Such particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these "eidolons", the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.”

See the reference to 'eidolons' as a name for remotely connected particles (or different views of the same goldfish, in one theory). Eidolon - a false idol? A connection? I wonder if our colleague's chance summer evening conversation with Dr. Epstein was indeed more connected than we realise. Sometimes the agents of change and of enlightenment and of reconnection of the shards of the great self come along when we feel we are ready. During verdent wooded walks past hedgerows in the wolds; on patio edges with the smell of charcoal and sizzling fat and dry mown grass; in stuffy libraries to the sound of prolonged rainfall; in our dreams at 5am...

What, then, if it is true? Then we are free to re-believe; free to shape the great dream as we desire; to follow our pure folly and to quell suffering and spread joy in our own disparate pathways of awareness; free to believe in what magic we will.

In Reply

Ah, your inquistive nature serves you well, as does your skepticism. You were absolutely right to suspect that Epps and Epstein are corruptions of the same name - we are investigtors by nature and profession, after all. However, you were also right to conclude that they are in fact different people - a coincidence which would be far too canny, something from the realm of fiction, even. I can assure you that I have met Dr. Epstein in person on several occasions over recent years, him being an acquaintence of my wife from her Ph.D. days. He is a brilliant yet quiet man, a professor of theoretical physics who lectures at a noted British university - I forget its name - not one of the big three, but certainly a well respected red-brick. To my knowledge, he has no understanding of, nor interest in, photography, and has certainly never displayed any attention toward my Nikons when they have been lying around the home. In the interests of the profession, I am happy to casually raise the subject at our next acquaintence should you wish me to.

From Kojak 400asa

I assume ‘Dr Epstein’ and the mysterious photojournalist ‘Jacob Epps’ are not one and the same man? Coincidences do occur, especially with so many names floating about in investigations. To suppose that one must be a pseudonym or corruption of the other, in this investigator’s opinion, would be unprofessional, and amount to little more than an unfounded conspiracy theory. On this basis I will lay the similarity aside, and concentrate on digging up more on the case of Melissa Parrish and Belinda Erkhart living together in hiding under the assumed joint name of Melinda Packett while constructing with others a giant state replica from wool, with involvement in some form from the Peruvians.

In Reply

I RECALL a conversation with my wife's friend, Dr. Epstein, a professor in the fringes of quantum physics, towards the dusky end of a garden party last summer, where he explained to me the background of scientific research into recognised non-linear events. Epstein told of an experiment which registered simultaneous changes in two separate particles emitted from a shared source - some sort of particle gun (the finer details of such science have always escaped my comprehension). One particle would be somehow forced to split into two particles, which would travel in opposing directions - when any kind of characteristic was measured in one particle, the same could be found to be present in the other particle at the exact same time, even though the the two pieces of matter were geographically separate.

This, he reasoned, provided proof of an instantaneous non-linear connection between two particles of common origin. The how or why of this is not something I was able to grasp, but Epstein assured me that this experiment produced reliably observable, measurable and repeatable results. If this is so, it is easy to extend this logic to apply to simultaneous shared realisations by unconnected individuals.

Given that we all come from stardust, to put it in laymn's terms, it would seem common sense that unconnected individuals will from time to time hatch ideas, seemingly spontaneously, yet entirely in synch with one another - as the molecule fires across the synapse in one brain, creating the new thought, so must the connected molecule in the other brain, creating the same thought simultaneously.

As I have stated, my scientific understanding of this is slight, but it would seem to me that this could be a possible explanation as to how two identical thoughts could occur simultaneously in peoples unconnected.