Author Archive for boris kislitsin

Zodiac killer code: mapping the way to Sirius

 I have an avid interest in cyphers and codes stretching back to my childhood. I guess it started when a teacher in our school read us, 8 year old second graders, a story about how Lenin tricked intelligence agents from “okhranka” (tsarist secret service).  Yep, this was a story from Russian language textbooks for the 2 grade. I know it sounds insane and weird, but we had many stories in our books about Great patriotic war, communist revolution and Lenin: how he liked kids, or made a friend with illiterate bricklayer, who didn’t know whom he spoke to, etc. It was in the beginning of 80’s in the Soviet Union, and school education was a part of global brainwashing program, I believe. I have no regrets though, as we had great time at school, education was free and very good and that stories in the textbooks were interesting.Back to the cyphers. That story about Lenin and okhranka agents contained some references to the simple way of coding, by book, and the way to do so. Apparently if you use milk instead of ink for writing, nobody can see what there’s something written.  To see the message you should hold the page above heat for a while, and transparent lines will become visible. So while in prison Lenin could communicate in this way: he’d shape some bread as ink-pot, pour milk in there and write with it; after he’d finish he’d eat his “inkpot” (milkpot?) and “ink” left; having a nice meal of milk and bread. Secret agents never could catch him; moreover, in such a manner he wrote a couple of books in between lines of some French novels he was allowed to read.I loved this story. Soon I started to research and develop cyphers and ways of communication with my friends, our neighbours kids myself. To omit details, I even took a course on structural linguistics/cracking cyphers at university later. It was very exciting indeed, and I was happy to learn from one of the students of prof. Yuri Knorozov, who amongst other things decyphered Mayan script and later on his life “located” mythical place of origin of Meso-American people, known as Chichomoztoc, which is slightly out of scope of this post, though a very fascinating subject. So I’ll put a picture here, but won’t tell you why at this point:

ToltecaChichimeca_Chicomostoc

 The seven caves of Chicomoztoc, from Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca.

Continue reading ‘Zodiac killer code: mapping the way to Sirius’

Other posts by boris kislitsin

Requiem for a dream, or Quantum future of Humankind in Infinite Universe

Right, I know it’s not exactly a memory. It’s not even a dream, but rather a requiem for one. I used to think that we live in infinite Universe. I do not have any scientific background to come up with theories or statements, but as a human being I reserve my rights for beliefs. Be it belief in Jesus Christ the Savour, spirit of improvisation, Santa Claus, infinity of space and time, or belief in myself, belief is an integral part of any sentient self-reflecting being.

This belief in infinite Universe was simply based on the fact that we can’t measure it.

Of course, we have data that our Universe is 13,73 billion years old (as of the last week :) ). So we can imagine a ball 13,73 billion years in radius (given the speed of light 299 792 458 m/s and length of 1 year as 31 556 926 seconds it will give us approx. radius of 13 730 000 000 x 299 792 458 x 31 556 926 = 129893055103132202840000000 meters… so you know). But, as it took me about 2 min. to come up with this calculation, this radius became roughly 3597509496 m bigger.

We reached the point there I got bored myself. The numbers are just too big too mean anything. If you go shopping and see something cost 3 pounds 99 pence you’ll think it’s 4 pounds, right? This is what called approximation. So 129893055103132202840000000 + 3597509496 and counting… is a number I can’t imagine. It’s something like Bill Gate’s fortune, numbers beyond my grasp. I think that approximation of 129893055103132202840000000 + 3597509496 is infinity. There’s no need for me to operate with such numbers. I remember reading some anthropological reports about some aboriginal tribes in Papua New Guinea. They had numbers 1 to 5, and then groups: 1 to 5 too, so everything could be shown on 2 hands.

20 would be 4 times 5; 25 - 5 times 5 . Everything that was over 25 was “many-many”, uncountable, infinity.

Continue reading ‘Requiem for a dream, or Quantum future of Humankind in Infinite Universe’

Other posts by boris kislitsin

Planting fake memories in permafrost of my brain

Do you remember that old movie “Total recall” with Arnold Schwarzenegger? Thinking about self-hypnosis and our abilities to induce memories, I decided to “create” fake memories inside my head. If you ask me why, I would tell you, probably just for fun. Actually, I believe our memories are mapped. None of them exists on its own, but rather refer to each other and interlinked with each other… our brain representing a big search engine, kind of biochemical based Google employing a random search. Try to refer to any memory you have: to make things easier, strong memory, or a memory of big importance for you.

An example. I have a memory of trying to climb up Everest.  It’s not the case of being megalomaniac, but rather accidentally. As long as I was there, you know.  I actually posted this memory here, on September 11th… :) , … nope, the date is just a coincidence. This memory opens up like a Russian matreshka doll: containing yet another one nested inside another etc. Thinking about that day brings back other memories: of finding a fossil near Milarepa’s cave, of fluorescent dog, of friendship, of moments while waiting for our friend we collected some stones and arranged them into a message “FREE TIBET”, of dying from thirst and cold. Whatever. This memory is also nested in others: of my long journey across Siberian plains, Mongolia, China, Nepal and India, of places I visited and people I met etc. OK, you have the picture.

Now imagine, you plant a fake memory inside your brain. Something completely out of sane mind and context, like planting a rare orchid somewhere in Siberian permafrost. If it will live, your brain would have to rewire it with some other facts, blending “reality” and “imagination”. So, what I’m interested in, is this “shadow zone”, border area in between, this vegetation between orchid and permafrost which my brain has to create to “index” this fake memory.

To make things even more interesting, I decided to experiment with planting fake memories in different contexts. For instance, I always wanted to visit Peru. So I thought  about planting a fake memory of this trip. But this task is way too grand, and the real trip would have too many details, so probably I wouldn’t succeed. Nevermind. I am writing a story at the moment. The best and easiest way to write is to write about something you know. It also gives the story some credibility, and makes it more captivating to read.

This story plot, to put it short,  goes partly in the future-past loop excluding present, partly in the parallel universes and most of it inside the black hole , with 3 main characters - creators of those parallel universes embedded without their acknowledgement in the mind of one character, whose consciousness is being badly split in 3 parts, meaning he is a schizophrenic (schizophrenia, actually literally means “split mind”, schizos phrenos in Greek, if I’m not mistaken). Moreover, these multiple “fake personalities” are being split in their own turn, forking further as the story develops… so it’s a kind of fractal consciousness in senses of being fractal and being fractured.

Continue reading ‘Planting fake memories in permafrost of my brain’

Other posts by boris kislitsin

A hole in the head: the most wonderful entertainment in the whole Wide Wonderful World

I recently published a post here, called “My life as a tiger”. Since then I have received few e-mails from different people and a phone call from my friend, surprisingly all of them referring to skull trepanation. As it started to look rather like a heated debate, I decided to explain myself a little bit more on this topic. So here I scrambled together whatever I feel like or want to say about it. It’s relevant to me anyway, so why not put it here?

So, I want to make a hole in my skull. I had this dream for a long time, maybe for 5 years or so. It started probably from my early interest in anthropology. There were many references across different cultures to skull trepanation: mainly in Mesoamerica, but also in Pre-Christian Europe, India, Egypt. It is the oldest surgical procedure known to man, as some of the trepanned skulls dated back to 2500 BC. Which is weird, indeed. Why would people just about everywhere, where civilizations flourished, would want to make a hole in their heads?

Trepanation: how does it work?

Continue reading ‘A hole in the head: the most wonderful entertainment in the whole Wide Wonderful World’

Other posts by boris kislitsin