Spookiest Years, Part 16: The Years 1879 -1880

In previous posts in this intermittently appearing "Spookiest Years" series on this blog (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  here, here, here and here), I had looked at some very spooky events reported between 1848 and 1878. Let me pick up the thread and discuss some spooky events reported in the years 1879 to 1880. 

On page 65 of the February 7, 1879 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an interesting account of an apparition of the living. We read this:

" I have myself had an exceedingly interesting experience of the apparition of the living, viz., my own appearance at the supposed death-bed of my sister, when we were three thousand miles apart. She was attended on this particular night by another sister, who distinctly saw me go into the room, and lean over my darling young sister. The latter was too ill to speak, but she whispered, 'Mary is here, now I’m happy.’ I ought to mention that my elder sister is not given to visions, and is indeed a very practical, matter-of-fact person; but she has always since declared that she saw me from my knees up, and the very dress was plain to her too. At this time I was just recovering after my confinement with my son, who is nearly seventeen. He was between four and five weeks old, when one night I fell asleep, thinking how much I wished to see this sister. I knew of her illness, and that she was not expected to recover, and of her intense desire to see me. Between us the most tender attachment had always existed, and it was thought that her illness had been much increased through her grief at our separation. The previous summer, when we came from the United States to this country, I had purposely kept from her and my mother the knowledge of my expected confinement, and they were only informed after the birth of the child in a letter from my husband. I mention all this to show how impossible it was for me to go to her, as she intensely desired. On the night referred to I had a most vivid dream of seeing her, in a bed not in her own room, and of seeing my other sister in attendance. I leaned over her and said, as I thought,  'Emma, you will recover.’ I told my husband I had been home when I woke, and my impression that she would recover. This dream comforted me very much, and from this night there was a change for the better with my sister, and she gradually recovered from what was supposed to be an incurable illness. When we came to compare dates, we found that my dream and my appearance to my two sisters occurred at as nearly as possible the same time. I was so lifelike to my younger sister that she thought I had really arrived on a visit; but, as I said before, to my elder sister I was shadowy below my knees, but perfectly natural in appearance. She afterwards remembered that I did not notice her as I passed into the inner room, although in my dream I saw her, nor did I seem to see anything but the one object of my love.”

Although reports such as this are very rare, there are other similar cases in the literature of parapsychology. See my post here for other examples of people reporting apparitions of the living. 

On page 86 of the February 21, 1879 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account of a child who seemed to experience spontaneous clairvoyance alerting her of the death of her father. We read this:

"A party of children, sons and daughters of the officers of artillery stationed at Woolwich, were playing in the garden. Suddenly a little girl screamed, and stood staring with an aspect of terror at a willow tree there. Her companions gathered round, asking what ailed her. 'Oh !' she said, ' there—there. Don’t you see ? There’s papa lying on the ground, and the blood running from a big wound.'  All assured her that they could see nothing of the kind. But she persisted, describing the wound and the position of the body, still expressing her surprise that they did not see what she saw so plainly. Two of her companions were daughters of my informant (one of the surgeons of the regiment), whose house adjoined the garden. They called their father, who at once came to the spot. He found the child in a state of extreme terror and agony, took her into his house, assuring her that it was only ' a fancy,' and having given her restoratives, sent her home. The incident was treated by all as being what the doctor had called it, and no more was thought of it. News from India, where the child’s father was stationed, was in those days slow in coming. But the arrival of the mail in due course brought the information that the father of the child had been killed by a shot, and died under a tree. Making allowance for difference in the counting of time, it was found to have been about the moment when the daughter had the vision at Woolwich."

On page 6 of the March 15, 1879 edition of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, we have a letter by William Pinnock describing a spooky event involving the death of his daughter.  Her husband was five hundred miles away, and after the daughter died, he was summoned by telegraph. The father states this:

"On the arrival of her husband, he, with three relatives, went into the room to see the remains of his wife, and while standing viewing the body, with his head resting on the shoulder of his brother, tears were seen to gush from her eyes, and upon being wiped away, came again and again, and the eyelashes had the wet appearance of those of a living person, who had been weeping. This occurred five days after death, and when the body was frozen for preservation."

You could probably write a small book entitled "Paranormal Tears" that would describe all similar reports, many of which would involve people reporting weeping statues, with many witnesses reporting such an effect occurring from the same statue.

On page 6 of the April 12, 1879 edition of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, we have this account of what seems like an early near-death experience:

"A curious incident is related by the Mineral Point (Wis.)  Tribune. It appears from that paper, that Mrs. Ellen Ryan, of Ridgeway, died recently in her first confinement. She had been married but a year when her babe was born dead, and buried. A short time after the mother, to all appearance, died also; she was straightened out, and the mourners were busy making preparations for arraying the corpse in the habiliments of the grave, when in half an hour after her death, or supposed death, to the consternation of all, she opened her eyes, and in a loud, clear tone called for her husband. He came, when she told him that she had been to another world—to heaven; that she had passed through a dark alley to get there, and had recognized there her mother, (who has been dead some time) and her babe; and described in glowing language the place as being exceedingly beautiful, and that at half-past twelve she would again depart, and wished to be buried in her bridal clothes, and that her babe should be taken up, dressed in its best clothes, and laid on her arm, with her bridal veil thrown over their faces. At half-past twelve, precisely, she died, and all her directions were implicitly followed."

The claim by the woman to have "passed through a dark alley" to get to heaven where she saw deceased relatives reminds me of the claim so often made in recent decades by people having near-death experiences: the claim that they passed through a kind of dark tunnel before reaching some otherworldly realm in which deceased relatives were encountered. 

Also on page 6 of the April 12, 1879 edition of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, we have this account by Elizabeth Bull:

"Suddenly I noticed in a corner of the room a small oval mass of misty whiteness....It rapidly increased in size until several feet in height; growing gradually dense and more opaque, and slowly opening, it revealed the glorified form of my dear sister. I say glorified, since language utterly fails to convey any idea of that lovely wondrous vision. She had died in her twenty third year of lingering consumption, ten years before; and had borne great suffering with Christian fortitude, joyfully looking for speedy release. Unselfish and lovable, a beautiful soul fitly clothed, she gradually wasted under the fell disease, and died at length in my arms. But now I saw her again—all traces of lingering disease had vanished, she looked radiantly beautiful as, holding back the surrounding envelope, she leaned towards me, the dear sweet eyes gazing into mine with a look of unutterable love. She wore a long, loose robe of dazzling whiteness, hanging about her in graceful folds, and there emanated from her a mellow, soft light, making the encrusting shell glitter like crystal. So gloriously beautiful was the appearance that I could not gaze upon It without pain, nor do I think that natural eyes could have seen it; but so soon as I had thoroughly realized this angelic presence she gradually drew the encircling mass about her, and ever steadfastly regarding me, was gradually hidden from view, the luminous envelope clouded, darkened slowly, shrank, and disappeared."

On page 186 of the April 18, 1879 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account by six signed witnesses that they saw on March 31, 1879 the materialization (the mysterious appearance) of a spirit named Lillie, at a seance of a medium identified as "Miss Cook." This seems to have been Kate Cook, the sister of the famous medium Florence Cook. The account includes a description that seems to rule out any possibility of fraud, if you assume the truthfulness of the account.  Similar accounts involving the same Kate Cook and the same mysterious Lillie are given on page 157-159 of the October 3, 1879 edition of The Spiritualist (with the very detailed account being of observations made a few weeks earlier),  on page 226 of the November 7, 1879 edition of The Spiritualist, on page 62 of the February 6, 1880 edition of The Spiritualist, and on page 18 of the July 19, 1880 edition of The Spiritualist. 

On page 6 of the May 10, 1879 edition of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, we have an account by a doctor who experienced a type of event that Raymond Moody has called a shared-death experience.  We read this account:

"Early one morning I was called to attend a man who had attained some prominence as a speculator and operator in real estate. He had been discovered lying upon the floor of his lodgings in a dying condition from his knife wounds, the horrible instrument of his death still remaining where it had  been thrust into his body to the hilt, penetrating through the right lung. There were evidences of  desperate struggle haying occurred before the unfortunate man yielded to his fate. He was entirely unconscious in the spasmodic grips of death, and he breathed his last in a very few moments after I reached the spot. As his last breath went out I became conscious of a new and mysterious presence, and my mind seemed to pass under the control of a superior mental power. I yielded a passive obedience to the influence, and immediately the scene of a death struggle passed before my mental view. It seemed for an instant as if I was myself endeavoring to ward off a murderous attack. With one hand my assailant held a suffocating grip upon my throat, while with the other he plunged the deadly knife again and again into my body. I saw his clenched teeth, and his fierce, cruel eyes gleaming into mine with the malignancy of a demon. Such was the force and horror of the impression that I staggered and fell as if in a faint. The by-standers, who were inured to sanguinary scenes, supposed that I had been overcome by the spectacle of the murdered man, and their comments were anything but complimentary to my nerve and experience as a physician. But the cool and careful manner In which I subsequently performed the autopsy dissipated what might have been a fatal suspicion cast upon my professional capacity. I found the marks of clenched fingers upon the throat of the murdered man. I knew that I had beheld and experienced the incidents of his death-struggle precisely m they were impressed upon his own mind."

On page 82 of the August 15, 1879 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account of a near-death experience, one made long before that term was commonly used. First we hear of how dire was the condition of the patient:

"On the 1st of August, 1876,  a premature labour induced the disease which culminated  in what was supposed to be death . At one time, Dr.  Thorne, supposing his patient would soon die, remained with her. .. The spasms of the neck and  hands now relaxed, the head dropped forward upon the  breast, the eyelids opened, the eyeballs resumed their normal position, the pupils were dilated, and the film gathered upon the eyes. The woman was dead. A current of electricity passed from the base of the brain  to the lower portion of the back failed to revive her. She did, however, finally revive, only to pass through  another change called death, finally reviving again."

The woman (Diana Powellson) gives this account:

"On the night of my first dying, the more I died the less pain I felt. I was so happy at going (oh ! sir, I  suffered so much); felt no misery of any kind ; pain in the head all gone ; it seemed that I lost all consciousness  but for a moment; when I came to my senses again I  knew I was dead, but everything was very dark to me.  I thought I was still blind. I became filled with terror, anticipating the worst. My husband (who died in 1866)  soon, however, took hold of me. He told me I was on the wrong road. Others of my departed friends and my family did the same. The darkness suddenly vanished. I saw all my friends and millions of others, I saw hills and valleys, trees and flowers, rivers, seas, lakes, and birds, and heard such music as I cannot describe. The people were not what I expected to see. They were ordinary men and women. Some were bright and beautiful, and others were lean and miserable-looking. I saw their homes. They lived in communities. All were much more beautiful than any we have, but some were not so beautiful as others. I saw many bright spirits, but was very much surprised that they had no wings. My friends led me from the dark place into the light. I did not come through this dark place any more, either in coming back or returning at any time. I saw many meetings or congregations, but did not learn what they were doing. I thought I was at home, but was told that I must return to my body again. My husband told me this. I cried and was very much angered at him, and still am for sending me back. I long to be in that beautiful home that they told me was mine."

The account is several paragraphs longer. We have here several elements that are common in near-death experiences reported after 1975, including going to some mysterious realm, encountering deceased relatives, being told that the person having the experience must return to the body again, a feeling that the mysterious realm was in some sense "home," and the person having the experience being upset about having to return back to an earthly body. The account here and the Ellen Ryan account given earlier in this post are only two of quite a few pre-1975 near-death experiences I have documented. By using the link here and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right, you can view all of them. Below is a 1972 story on near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences that preceded Raymond Moody's 1975 book Life After Life. Use the link here to read the original document. 

On page 224 of the November 7, 1879 edition of The Spiritualist, we have this account which sounds impressive but which is not backed up by any specific details:

"Our correspondent informs us that his patient, on recovering from a prolonged state of coma, insisted most strenuously in the assurance that he had visited a scene and noted every detail of an event many miles away. He appeared to be so thoroughly convinced this was no mental delusion that careful inquiries were instituted, which led to a surprising corroboration of all the circumstantial minutiae. Utterly astonished at such an unexpected manifestation of mental faculties beyond the limits of any abnormal power of the ordinary senses, our correspondent was induced to repeat the experiment, selecting another patient unacquainted with the marvellous occurrence related. On returning to sensibility this patient also described events he had mentally witnessed, all which proved to be accurate in every particular."

On page 38 of the January 23, 1880 edition of The Spiritualist we hear of an apparition sighting:

"Mr. Shakespeare, one of the members, suddenly looked up, exclaiming, ' Good God, there is my father ! ' The whole Council then saw a figure of an unknown person glide through the chamber into another room which had no outlet, and disappear."

It was later determined that the man's father had died at a distant location. The report of the apparition gliding is a common feature of apparition reports. 

On page 135 of the March 19, 1880 edition of The Spiritualist we have an account of apparitions at the Knock village of Ireland, interpreted as involving the Virgin Mary.  On page 139 there is a long list of people claiming extraordinary cures from visiting the village, without being treated by doctors. 

On page 73 of the August 13, 1880 edition of The Spiritualist we have this account:

"Mr. Berks T. Hutchinson, surgeon dentist, Cape Town, South Africa, writes:—'I have seen Mr. Eglinton float about in my seance room, just like a balloon; he was in a deep trance condition. There were ten others present who can vouch for what I say.' " 

On page 4 of the July 31, 1880 edition of The Banner of Light we have this account by John Wetherbee of events at a July 23 seance:  

"The room was light enough to consider it a light circle, and so many things were done and at once for the space of half-an-hour that no one could question but invisible spirits were the actors, even if the mediums had had their hands free, but being held by the two sitting with them made the matter doubly sure. To me the most interesting part of the manifestations was the writing by spirit hands, perfectly visible, while the paper was held by the friends in the room. During the manifestations, from the start, the sitters in front of the curtain were manipulated by spirit hands, and all saw them and knew they did not belong to the mediums; and the hands being disposed to write, some of the friends present put pencils into the grasp of these hands, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, where they happened to be, and holding a sheet of paper the hands wrote with the pencil intelligent messages on the sheets of paper so presented ; all could see this done and know that it was accomplished by spirit hands, which belonged to no visible human body, yet every human personage in the room was visible. I have never seen anything more satisfactory than this writing was; they were spirit hands, and no mistake, materialised for the purpose."

Cellular Reprogramming: Fountain of Youth or Snake Oil Scam?

It was a bad day recently for a Harvard genetics professor. The Daily Mail ran a story with the headline "Top Harvard professor Dr David Sinclair accused of 'selling snake oil' after pushing 'unscientific' pill said to reverse aging in dogs - and resigns from prestigious academy over backlash."  We read this:

"Dr David Sinclair, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, has been hit with allegations of pushing bogus antiaging drugs over the last decade - including one he was paid $720 million to develop by pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline. The 54 year-old renowned scientist has made previous claims that he 'reversed' his own age by a decade using unconventional lifestyle 'hacks,' and most recently promoted an 'unscientific' supplement developed by his company that claimed to reverse aging in dogs. But the pill is said to 'not be supported by data,' according to University of Washington aging professor Matt Kaeberlein."

We read this about a study involving dogs:

"The dogs were tracked for six months, with 51 completing the study. Animals in the full-dose group showed slight improvements in cognition as reported by their owners after three months, but the effect was not maintained through six months. However, there was no difference between groups in changes in activity level, gait speed or cognitive tests performed by the researchers.

Dr Sinclair revealed the results on X alongside a promotional image for Leap Year, claiming: 'First-of-its-kind supplement clinically proven to slow effects of aging in dogs. Available at LeapYears.com.'

He shared a hyperlink that took his 441,000 followers to a landing page where they could buy the supplement for $70 to $130 for a one-month supply."

Scientists objected, saying that there was no evidence that the supplement reversed aging. Dr. Matt Kaeberlein was quoted as saying this:

"Dr Kaeberlein, a longevity biologist, wrote on X: 'I find it deeply distressing that we've gotten to a point where dishonesty in science is normalized to an extent that nobody is shocked when a tenured Harvard professor falsely proclaims in a press release that a product he is selling to pet owners has 'reversed aging in dogs.' To me, this is the textbook definition of a snake oil salesman."

Dan Eton, a data scientist at Mass General says, "David Sinclair consistently exaggerates the claims of research that he has a financial stake in. It makes me sick to my stomach."

The study is here. The study group sizes were not 51, but only about 16 per study group. We should not take very seriously any reported evidence of modest cognitive benefits, given the difficulty of measuring cognition in dogs, and the failure of this study to provide convincing experimental tests of dog cognition. 

Schematic depiction of next year's anti-aging supplement

The Harvard scientist criticized above (David Sinclair) is co-author (with Yang and others) of a 2023 paper "Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging."  The paper makes the very dubious claim that "loss of epigenetic information accelerates the hallmarks of aging," that "these changes are reversible by epigenetic reprogramming," and that "by manipulating the epigenome, aging can be driven forward and backward."  These claims are sharply criticized by a critique of the paper, a paper entitled "Matters Arising: the information theory of aging has not been tested."  The authors are James A. Timmons and Charles Brenner. 

Referring to Yang and Sinclair's paper, Timmons and Brenner say "Extraordinary claims in the paper are unsupported by evidence," and that "no significant conclusion of Yang was demonstrated."  They say, "Despite statements in the summary, highlights and discussion and depiction in the graphical abstract, there was also no reversal of aging in the article and indeed, the corresponding author retracted such claims after publication (Supplementary Material 2)."  Referring to the journal Cell that the paper of Yang and Sinclair was published in, and recommending that the paper be retracted, Timmons and Brenner say this: 

"Cell publishes papers that provide 'significant conceptual advances'  on 'an interesting and important biological question.'  The journal is not supposed to publish misleading papers that fail to disclose citations and related manuscripts, obfuscate mechanisms, provide poorly controlled experiments, and grandiosely overstate results."

But the truth is that when publishing experimental neuroscience results, the journal Cell very often publishes poorly designed research following Questionable Research Practices, and such papers very frequently "grandiosely overstate results." The "Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging" paper is one with ridiculously small study group sizes such as 2 mice, 3 mice and 4 mice.  

I previously mocked the way-too-small study group sizes typically used in neuroscience cognitive research, noting that typically the total number of mice used is only about as big as the number of paper authors, saying that it was if these people were following  the ridiculous rule of only using one mouse per scientist. We have that type of situation in this "Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging" paper, which has 58 authors, but sounds like it used a total number of mice much fewer than that. The paper has no mention of a detailed blinding protocol, mentioning blinding only in passing when referring to two tiny fractions of the total work going on.  Why do big rich biotech companies work on papers with such ridiculously small numbers of mice and without decent blinding protocols? It sure isn't because they can't afford to test with 100 times more mice. The answer is probably: because it's so vastly easier to get false alarms when you use tiny study group sizes and don't use a decent blinding protocol. And the right type of false alarm can do wonders for the stock price of a biotech company. 

Sinclair has got very rich partially by writing a book entitled "Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To," a book selling millions of copies. A critical review of the book by a scientist (Charles Brenner) states this: 

"According to the book, Sinclair discovered genes called sirtuins that extend lifespan in organisms from yeasts to humans and he found sirtuin activators in red wine and elsewhere. Why do we age? Sinclair’s theory is poor information transmission that can be fixed by greater sirtuin function. Why we don’t have to age? He says that we can take sirtuin activators every morning and soon, we’ll take chemicals that will safely reprogram our genes to restore youthful vigor.....Do sirtuins extend lifespan in yeast, invertebrates and vertebrates? Has Sinclair discovered sirtuin activators? Based on 25 years of work by academic and industrial investigators, the clear answer to both questions is no (Brenner, 2022b).....In the accompanying Lifespan podcast, Sinclair makes innumerable non-evidence based statements about benefits of time-restricted eating, statements about age-reversal as evidenced only by changing biomarkers (Fahy et al., 2019), and even potential immortality by repeatable drug treatments. The latter statements were particularly shocking because one of the drugs used to lower biomarkers of aging was growth hormone, which is clearly defined by genetics as a pro-aging molecule (Bartke, 2021).....Sinclair’s attempts to commercialize scientific discoveries have an abysmal track record—these include the multibillion dollar investment of GSK in his sirtuin story (Schmidt, 2010) and Ovascience, whose work in female fertility could not be replicated (Powell, 2006; Weintraub, 2016). For scientific discoveries to be developed they need to be real but for books to sell, the stories just have to be good. The reach of Lifespan is a problem for the world precisely because a Harvard scientist is telling fictitious stories about aging that go nowhere other than continuing hype as legendary as anything in Herodotus."

Who's right and who's wrong here? I'll let the reader judge that. I do know from a long and very careful study of DNA that the idea that DNA or its genes are a "program" for either making or maintaining cells is a great big lie. DNA and its genes contain only low-level chemical information. DNA and its genes have no information on human anatomy, and do not even specify how to make or maintain any cell or any of the organelles that are the building components of a cell. So the idea that cells can be rejuvenated by medicine-induced "cellular reprogramming" seems pretty fishy. Scientists cannot even currently explain how a cell is able to reproduce. How there occurs the reproduction of something as enormously complex and organized as a human cell is a mystery very far over the heads of scientists. So what confidence can we have in scientists talking about "cellular reprogramming"? 

Biologists frequently underestimate the vast hierarchical complexity of human bodies, and very frequently speak as if they were trying to prevent the public from learning about such exquisite complexity, possibly because they may realize that the credibility of their claims of accidental biological origins is inversely proportional to the amount of fine-tuned organization and functional complexity of large organisms such as humans.  The more we properly understand the stratospheric levels of fine-tuned organization and hard-to-achieve complexity of human bodies, the less confidence we will have that scientists are anywhere near to being able to roll back aging by fiddling with so-called "cellular reprogramming."

An MIT Technology Review article in 2022 says this about claims that the lifespan of some mice have been extended by cellular reprogramming:

"So far, many of these individual rejuvenation claims for live mice haven’t been widely replicated by other labs, and some people are skeptical they ever will be. Measuring the relative health of animals or their tissues isn’t necessarily a precise science. And in unblinded studies (where the researchers know which animals were treated), wishful thinking can play a role, perhaps especially if billions in venture capital dollars ride on the result. 'Frankly, I doubt the reproducibility of these papers,” says Hiro Nakauchi, a professor of genetics at Stanford University. Nakauchi says he also created mice with Yamanaka factors, but he never saw any sign they got younger. He suspects that some of the most dramatic claims are 'timely and catchy' but that the science that went into them is 'not very accurate.'  "

From my careful study over many years of flaws in rodent studies wrongly claiming evidence of neural memory storage, I know some of the pathways of errors that can occur here:

(1) Scientists with very large funding are free to do innumerable studies, and may file away all negative results, not even submitting them for publication. Research practices for rodent studies tend to be  poor, with a very common occurrence of Questionable Research Practices. 

(2) The number of mice used in such studies is typically very small, creating a significant chance (maybe 1 in 20) of "statistically significant" results in any one study, even if no real effect is involved. 

(3) With so many studies being done, it's easy to get something like a study showing some mice with higher lifespan. You can just get chance results, file away in your file cabinet the unsuccessful results, and submit for publication the luckiest results.  

Consequently, it means very little that some 3 billion dollar biotech company has a few studies showing a few mice lived longer than average when given some treatment. How many negative studies does it have filed away in its file cabinets, using the same methods?

There is still the possibility that there might be treatments that partially reverse aging. Part of aging is relatively uncomplicated stuff like the plaque that builds up in your arteries, like the gunk that slowly builds up in your kitchen drainpipe.  Reversing that may be  relatively simple. But something like that is totally different (and vastly simpler) than "cellular reprogramming."

Someone as old as me is old enough to remember that for 50 years scientists have been making claims that reversing or stopping aging was "right around the corner."  It seemed that for twenty years we were told that the key to stopping aging was just to shorten something called telomeres that are found on the ends of chromosomes. For decades we were told that there would soon be some medicine that would shorten telomeres to halt or stop aging. 

You don't hear too much about telomeres these days. 

Nowadays scientific papers have a very inadequate listing of the vested interests of the authors. After the end of the main text of the 2023 paper "Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging" in fine print we have a "Declaration of Interests" statement that refers to the massive vested interests of David A. Sinclair, noting "D.A.S. is a consultant, inventor, board member, and in some cases an investor in Life Biosciences (developing reprogramming medicines), InsideTracker, Zymo, EdenRoc Sciences/Cantata/Dovetail/Metrobiotech, Caudalie, Galilei, Immetas, Animal Biosciences, Tally Health, and more."  What is with the initials, which makes it hard for people to realize the conflict of interest involved? What should occur is that at the very beginning of a paper written by an author with vested interests, we should have a large-type  boldface plain English statement such as this:

"NOTE: One of the chief authors of this paper (John F. Schmitzenholzer)  has major stock investments in a company (XYZ Products, Inc.) that will financially benefit very much from the claims made in this paper, and that person receives large sums of money from that company. The same thing is true for most of the authors of this paper."

I can describe one big piece of statistical funny business that commonly occurs in scientific papers on so-called cellular reprogramming. It is what you can call the "remaining lifespan" trick. It works like this: you try some treatment on a small group of some very old mice, and even if the treatment has no benefit, there will be about 1 chance in 10  that you will be able to report that the treated mice had a significantly larger "remaining lifespan" than the untreated mice.  In captivity mice can have lifespans range from 6 to 18 months, or in some cases as long as 3 years. So if you start testing with very old mice, you can easily get variations in "remaining lifespan" of up to 200%, merely by chance. 

Consequently, we should not be impressed at all by the results in the paper here, which claims that some treatment on mice "extends the median remaining lifespan by 109% over wild-type controls."  The study started out with a treatment group of about 19 very old mice that were 124 weeks old, and a control group of about the same size and age (Figure 1C).  The mice lived on for between 3 weeks and 40 weeks, with the average remaining lifetime being about 15 weeks.  About 13 out of 19 of the treated mice had a remaining lifespan  greater than the average.  By using a binomial probability calculator such as the one at Stat Trek, you can see that this is a result that you might expect by chance (using a completely ineffective treatment) in about 8% of experiments like this:

 We should regard the reported result as being unimpressive when we consider that scientists are free to try experiments such as this mouse study many times, placing in their file drawers unsuccessful results, and submitting for publication results that reach about this level of success.  So given many biotech companies funding experiments of this type, we would expect to have multiple published results about as impressive as this one, even if the treatments have no effectiveness. 

We can get the real story here by considering not the tending-to-fool-you statistic of "increase in remaining lifespan" but the statistic of total lifespan.  The treated mice had a total lifespan of about 144 weeks, and the untreated mice had a total lifespan of about 136 weeks. The treated group of mice therefore had a total lifespan that was only about 6% greater than the untreated mice. But rather than reporting this statistic (which gives us the real story on how slight are the results), the paper has used the "remaining lifespan" trick to tell us the technically correct but very "give you the wrong idea" statistic that the "remaining lifespan" was 109% greater in the treated mice.  

But perhaps I am being too pessimistic about such cellular reprogramming.  I cannot claim to be a careful scholar of anti-aging research. I have spent many years very carefully studying the evidence that the human mind is not the product of the human brain, and evidence for psychical phenomena and paranormal phenomena that suggest humans are souls that will survive death (as you can see in my 198 posts here). Such evidence leaves me thinking that aging and death are nothing to fear. 

Postscript: See my earlier post "The Lesson of the Telomere Myth" for more about how scientists specializing in anti-aging methods misled us for a long time about telomeres. Two of them predicted in 2011 that aging would be cured by about that year.  The Wall Street Journal has a post about Sinclair's claims here, one entitled "Star Scientist’s Claim of ‘Reverse Aging’ Draws Hail of Criticism." 

Was That Science Speaking, Or Mainly Just Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money?

A fundamental principle of realistic socioeconomics is: Big Money controls narratives.  We see a fictional example of how that works in the popular TV show Succession.  The show is about an old father (Logan Roy) who is a billionaire in control of a vast media empire. The father has four adult children, most of them eager to gain control of his media empire when the father dies. The character of Logan Roy may have been suggested by the example of the media baron Rupert Murdoch, who had a vast influence on the narratives of US elections. In episode 26 of Succession,  "What It Takes," the father and his adult children sit around and talk about whether they will pretty much decide who is going to be the next President of the United States, by throwing their media empire's support behind some longshot candidate. Logan Roy decides to back the candidate (Jeryd Mencken), who much later in the series is elected as the US President. 

The fictional series suggests that the Roy family's billions are in control of narratives that pretty much control the results of the US election. The show is fiction, but it sounds fairly realistic. Big Money controls narratives.  Such a principle holds true not merely in the world of politics, but in the world of science. 

We tend to think of the narratives we read in science articles and science books as being controlled by professors. But another way to look at the matter is to look at the money that fuels such professors and their books and articles and research. Earlier I published a pyramid diagram showing how science-related narratives are controlled by a tiny elite. The diagram is below:

It now dawns on me that this diagram is incomplete, because it fails to point out how much of an effect Big Money has on the narratives. Below is an enhanced version of the diagram mentioning the influence of such Big Money:

The huge pool of money controlling the narratives about human origins and the human mind and human brain and countless other topics consists of several huge concentrations of capital and cash flow:

(1) University endowments.  According to the wikipedia.org article here, the total endowments of US universities and colleges has been estimated at 807 billion dollars.  Harvard has an endowment of 49 billion dollars, and Yale has an endowment of 41 billion dollars, with several other Ivy League universities each having endowments of more than 20 billion dollars.  Science departments are only part of the business of universities, so we can't count all of this money as Darwin Dollars or Materialist Money. But we can count a significant fraction of this money as Darwin Dollars or Materialist Money. 

(2) Tuition payments.  Colleges and universities do not fund themselves purely by using up their endowments.  Such institutions are also funded by student tuition payments. A significant fraction of tuition payments effectively act as Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money.  Ironically, many who disagree with the teachings of Darwinism and materialism are forced to fund the propagation of such teachings, because they have to contribute high tuition payments that are used to fund such teachings. 

(3) Biotech and pharmaceutical corporate capital. To account for all of the Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money, we must also count the market capitalization of biotech companies and pharmaceutical companies. This is an amount even greater than the total endowments of US universities and colleges. The page here states, "The Biotechnology industry has a total of 693 stocks, with a combined market cap of $1,346.99 billion and total revenue of $119.86 billion."  Why should we count a significant fraction of such money as part of the Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money? Because companies such as pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies have a huge financial stake in people believing in erroneous notions such as the idea that the brain is the source of the human mind and the storage place of human memories, so that they can sell pills and devices based on such ideas.

(4) Government contributions.  Darwinist claims and materialist claims are part of the curriculum taught in the biology classes and  psychology classes taught in public high schools in the United States, which are government funded. Public high schools in the US get hundreds of billions of dollars in government funding, mostly through local governments. A significant fraction of that money may be counted as Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money.  There is also the huge amount of money that state governments and the US federal government gives to universities and colleges, both in the form of direct grants and research grants. A significant fraction of this may be considered Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money.  A large fraction of universities these days have requirements that students must earn a certain fraction of their credits by taking science classes. Because it is well-known that college physics courses and college chemistry courses are some of the hardest courses to take, such a requirement effectively amounts to a requirement that every student take a biology course or a psychology course in which he is indoctrinated in the tenets of Darwinism and materialism. 

(5) Media corporations capital and contributions.  Nowadays information flows labeled as "science news" are part of a huge publication industry centered around clickbait. Very many web sites contain headlines with sensational-sounding headlines, often headlines boasting about some "epic breakthrough" or "stunning new insight" or "great leap forward." Clicking on the headline will take you to a page with ads, and whoever is running the website will profit from such ads.  Media companies contribute much money to run such sites, that tend to uncritically pass on the most dubious claims of Darwinism and materialism. Similarly, the publication of scientific papers (often involving shoddy irreproducible research dealing with brains and fossils) is a big for-profit industry. Very many corporate outflows and various types of media corporate capital may be considered as part of the Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money. 

The next time you hear the implausible claims of Darwinism and materialism being made (such as claims that you are just an accumulation of random mutations, and that your mind is just some by-product of chemical reactions in your brain) ask yourself: was that science facts speaking, or mainly just Big Money talking? In our society Big Money has almost unlimited power to control narratives.  

All those Harvard billions don't guarantee quality, because in today's news we have an article in which people are accusing a Harvard professor of being a "snake oil salesman" by claiming without good evidence that some supplement sold by some company he co-owns will reverse aging.  It seems that multiple Harvard professors have long been involved in hyping and overselling dubious products they have a financial stake in.  The diagram below illustrates some of the financial conflicts of interest that cast a great question mark on the objectivity of claims by neuroscientists, psychologists and geneticists. Read here for an explanation of some of the squares. 

Naked Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 6)

Below are some posts I have published about people reporting they saw mysterious orbs with the naked eye:

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 1 of 4)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 2 of 4)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 3 of 4)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 4 of 4)

Naked Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 5)

Let us look at some more cases of this type. 

At the interesting thread here at www.citi-data.com, a user starts the thread with this comment

"My ex boyfriend passed away a little over four years ago. Four months after, I saw a gold/red colored orb in my bedroom. Without going into details, I just want to ask how many of you have received 'signs' after your loved one passed away?"

There are some very interesting answers in the nine pages of the thread.  For example, one user says, "My sister's broken grandfather clock started to chime when my grandmother passed away."

A user tells this interesting account:

"After my grandma died, she visited me in a dream, in her younger, healthier self, took me to this beautiful place that I remember describing as heaven (bright, pearly, just a lot of light and light feelings) and played games with me. She introduced me to her older brother who died when he was 7 (he still looked like a kid my age at the time) and we all played and she just made me feel...safe. She always had that ability. Anyways I woke up and my aunt who slept with me that night to comfort me told me that in my sleep I jumped up, raised my hands in the air and yelled, 'OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PLACE THIS IS!!!!!!!!!' And then laid back down. So I told her the dream. I told her about the little boy and my family looked shocked because they couldn't understand how I knew her older brother."

On another page of the thread a user says this:

"I smelled peonies in the dead of winter in my bedroom when my dads mom passed. It was her favorite flower and she grew them."

On another page a user reports asking his father for a sign after death, specifically mentioning playing the piano. He says that a while later his own son reported the piano in the house playing by itself. 

On another page a user says that soon after his mother died, "I did see an orange orb in my windowless dark basement." He says, "I then called my sister who explained that on her way home, she saw a ball of light in her SUV."  He also reports "a light shining up from the floor to the ceiling" in a house he had lived in for 20 years without seeing such a thing. 

When I was visiting the first of these pages, I got a spooky effect. The web page flickered like mad, very noticeably, on and on and on.

 The long and very fascinating work Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World by former US congressman Robert Dale Owen (which can be read online for free here) is a classic of literature about the paranormal. The 1872 book The Debatable Land Between This World and the Next by the same author is a worthy successor volume of equal length.  In that book on page 468 Owen reports on what we saw at a seance on October 26, 1860. To prevent any trickery, Owen was careful to make sure all the doors to the room were locked, and also made sure that throughout the session all of the four persons present joined each other's hands in the center of the table where they sat. Under such conditions, Owen reported seeing this: 

"After a few minutes, there appeared a luminous body of an irregularly circular form, about four inches in diameter, floating between us and the door which was back of Mrs. Underhill. It was somewhat brighter than when it first appeared on the previous occasion ; that is, on the twenty-first of October."

On the next page, Owen reports that at this session there appeared an illuminated mysterious figure, a kind of grayish cloud that eventually stated "God bless you." On the next page after that, Owen said he saw an outline of a head and face.

Owen recalls seeing in 1867 a luminous female apparition:

"It was a female figure, of medium height, veiled and draped, from head to foot, in white. The drapery did not resemble, in material, anything I have ever seen worn. It gave me, as on a previous occasion, the exact feeling of the Scriptural expression, 'shining raiment.' Its brilliancy was a good deal like that of new-fallen snow, in the sunshine ; recalling the text which declares the garments of Christ, during his transfiguration, to have been ' exceeding white as snow ; ' or, again, it was not unlike the finest and freshest Parian marble with a bright light on it, only more brilliant. It had not at all the glitter of spangles or any shining ornament ; the tone being as uniform as that of a newly-sculptured statue. It stood upright, in a graceful attitude, motionless."

On the next page Owen says, "Then it slowly receded, still facing us, to the center of the opposite wall... gradually diminishing in brightness ; and finally it vanished before my eyes."  Owen later says, "Certain it is, that I beheld the gradual formation of the figure ; that I witnessed its movements ; that I received from its hand an actual flower ;  that I saw the figure disappear."

On page 484 we have this account, mentioning Estelle, Mr. Livermore's late wife:

"Mr. L. sealed the windows, sealed and locked the doors, and placed heavy furniture against them ; then searched the room thoroughly and extinguished the gas. Soon came the words : ' I am here in form.' Then a globular light appeared, with crackling sounds. After a time it became a head, veiled : then, but for a single instant only, Mr. L. recognized the features of Estelle. Then a figure was seen : all this being visible by phosphorescent or electrical lights in various parts of the room. During all this time Mr. L. held both of the medium's hands. Then the mode of producing raps was shown : an orange-shaped luminous ball, with blunt point attached, bounding up and down on the table, and the sound, of each rap coinciding with the approach of the ball to the tabletop."

Mr. Livermore reported that a few months later there occurred an equally astonishing appearance of his late wife Estelle:

"The form remained in sight fully half an hour and each movement was distinctly visible. Then came the message : ' Now see me rise. '  And immediately, in full brightness, the figure rose to the ceiling, remained there a few moments suspended ; then gently descending, disappeared.  Afterward she showed herself between us and a mirror. The reflection of the figure in the glass was distinctly visible, the light being so bright as to show the veins in a marble slab beneath.  Here a heavy shower of rain fell, and there was spelled out: ' The atmosphere has changed. I cannot remain in form : ' whereupon both light and figure finally disappeared."

Later Mr. Livermore reports this:

" At last a luminous globe which had remained stationary some six feet to my left floated in front, and came within two feet of me. It was violently agitated, crackling sounds were heard, and a figure became visible by its light. Then there was revealed the full head and face of Estelle, every feature and lineament in perfection, spiritualized in shadowy beauty, such as no imagination can conceive or pen describe. In her hair, above the left temple, was a single white rose ; the hair being apparently arranged with great care. The entire head and face faded and then became visible again, at least twenty times ; the perfection of recognition, in each case, being in proportion to the brilliancy of the light."

On the 68th page of the document here, showing page 182 on the printed page, we have an account from the March 25, 1922 edition of the publication Light.  The account is pretty good from an evidence standpoint. It is an account of what was seen two months earlier. The author (Dorothy Monk) is named, and she tells us that there were eight witnesses of one of the reported anomalies (a spooky mist at a deathbed).  We read this account by the author of seeing her mother's death. 

"The sister who first saw it about this time also saw a large blue globe-like light resting on mother's head, but none of the rest of us could see it. She explained that the  inside appeared all moving and gradually it turned to deep purple and faded out. About seven o’clock that evening mother’s lips parted and from that time we gradually saw a thick white mist collect above her head and spread across the head of the bed. It came from the top of her head, but collected more thickly to the opposite side of the bed to which she was lying. It hung like a cloud of white steam, sometimes so thick we could scarcely see the bed rails, but continually it was varying although it moved so slowly as to be scarcely perceptible. I and my five sisters were still with her all saw it distinctly, also my brother and one brother-in-law. The blue lights continued about the room, also tiny flashes of yellow, like sparks, appeared sometimes. All this time mother’s lower jaw gradually fell a little. For some hours we saw little difference except that a halo of pale yellow light rays came round her head; there were about seven in number; they varied in length from twelve to twenty inches at different times. By midnight every-thing had cleared off, but she did not die until 7.17 on the morning of January 2nd."

Charlton Templeman Speer claims to have witnessed a variety of paranormal phenomena at seances of William Stainton Moses, a 19th-century figure greatly admired for his scholarship and moral character. One thing he claims to have witnessed is something resembling teleportation. He states this:

"The passage of matter through matter was sometimes strikingly demonstrated by the bringing of various articles from other rooms, though the doors were closed and bolted. Photographs, picture-frames, books, and other objects were frequently so brought, both from  rooms on the same floor and from those above. How they came through the closed doors I cannot say, except by some process of de-materialisation, but come they certainly did, apparently none the worse for the process, whatever it might have been."

Besides also describing numerous inexplicable scents and mysterious music, Speer tells us that orbs were seen rising up from the ground and apparently passing through a heavy table.  We read this:

"These lights were of two different kinds— objective and subjective. The former usually resembled small illuminated globes, which shone brightly and steadily, often moved rapidly about the room, and were visible to all the sitters. A curious fact in connection with these lights always struck me, viz., that looking on to the top of the table one could see a light slowly ascending from the floor, and to all appearance passing out through the top of the table — the table itself apparently not affording any obstacle to one’s view of the light. It is a little difficult to explain my meaning exactly, but had the top of the table been composed of plain glass, the effect of the ascending light, as it appealed to one’s organs of vision, would have been pretty much the same as it was, seen through the solid mahogany. Even then, to make the parallel complete, it would be necessary to have a hole in the glass top of the table, through which the light could emerge. The subjective lights were described as being large masses of luminous vapour floating round the room and assuming a variety of shapes. Dr. Speer and myself, being of entirely unmediumistic temperaments, were only able to see the objective lights, but Mr. Stainton Moses, Mrs. Speer, and other occasional sitters frequently saw and described those which were merely subjective. Another curious point in relation to the objective lights was that, however brightly they might shine, they never, unlike an ordinary lamp, threw any radiance around them, or illuminated the smallest portion of the surrounding darkness — when it was dark — in the slightest degree."

A researcher named Simon Young has done a survey of people reporting sightings of fairies or anything looking like a fairy. He has produced a 353-long document you can read online at the link here. I am surprised that so many people have provided reports to his survey. Maybe I should revise my previous opinion that there only rarely occurs claims to have sighted something like a fairy.  The accounts were gathered from responses to an online survey form here.

It would be too much work to summarize the more interesting accounts, so I will limit myself to accounts in the survey in which people claimed to have seen orbs.  Some are below:

• Page 20: "They looked like brightly coloured orbs that changed size sometimes. They were always smaller than my hand and the colours varied e.g. blue, red, yellow, green etc."
• Page 22: "We [Mexican and Belgian nationals] saw golden yellow orbs in Tintagel."
• Page 54: "I saw bright green orbs hanging in the air in the bedroom." 
• Page 125: "The orbs swirled about as I sat in the middle of the mattress with sheets wrapped around my lower half,... I found myself in the immediate company of hundreds of floating orbs that were doing wonderful impressions of soap bubbles."
• Page 126: "Moving again the orb passed by my ear and I heard a soft whirring sound that solicited goose bumps to rise on top of my clammy skin. I smiled and giggled aloud with the realization that this was an intelligent, living being, and it was responding in kind to my thoughts."
• Page 128: "I was around eleven years old when a friend and myself saw an orb of light floating above the trees in the back woods where I grew up."
• Page 138: " ‘I saw it flying in a circle like loop on way [sic] and then another through the kitchen window. It was really windy outside after a rainstorm and it moved against the wind. It had an organic movement to it....I want to say if I’m being very objective it was an orb."
• Page 155: "I’ve seen orbs and UFO type things."
• Page 165: "‘Fell asleep, woke up to the sound of bells tinkling. Looked around my room to see a small blue orb floating around for one to two minutes then it faded out."
• Page 175: "It was orb-shaped and looked to be about like one foot in circumference, and its color was a really bright pink....It was like a bright pink orb almost as big as a basketball."
• Page 182 "I have however, now in the last three to five years, begun seeing and experiencing light orbs, light beings, and even capturing them on the security cameras inside my home."
• Page 187: "I also have seen little light orbs floating around at sunset/nighttime." 
• Page 193: "I saw a winged creature in a golden orb playing with my aunt’s cat." 
• Page 199: "In my peripheral vision, I saw this beautiful, adorable, pink orb. It looked like it was fluttering in place, as if it had large butterfly wings. I looked directly at it, and it disappeared. I quickly looked away and it popped back out of nowhere still with fluttering pink wings. I did not see any face or body; it did not let me look directly at it."
• Page 211: "I also saw light orbs twinkling close to the wall and on the ceiling."
• Page 215: "We were on our front lawn at night, and we saw a small orb of orange light moving around in the forest, leaving a trail. It then hovered in one spot, maybe two hundred feet from us, for hours..... Then, night four, I saw several of these orbs, now bluish white, appear from a tree, then they flew, lit up, about one-hundred-and-fifty feet, and stopped directly in front of my house... A closer one appeared to be about three- to four-inches tall, fluttering goldish wings within a bluish orb."
• Page 217: " I walked across the backyard and just had that feeling that something was there and when I turned around, just a few inches above the ground was an orb. It was golden and full of light but inside it you could see swirls of colors such as blues, pinks and purples."
• Page 226: "They were blue orbs. And then they disappeared."
• Page 252: "The children were surrounded by thousands upon thousands of little lights. My youngest daughter had an orb with a visible baby’s face at her feet."
• Page 270: "At the end of my bed and to the right there was an orb, but almost like a sparkle. I would say it was white and yellow."
• Page 276: "A skyblue light, orb-like but with indistinct, fading boundaries flew slowly from behind me into my field of vision, about a foot or two from my face."
• Page 298: "I looked at my closet door and I saw many colorful orbs moving over its surface. There were at least five of them, each one of a different color. I remember the colors green, yellow and pink (and maybe blue and white). " 
• Page 321: "In 2005, an orb of light about six inches in diameter floating about six inches above the floor in our hallway one afternoon. It floated beside me and disappeared before passing near my husband’s shin. We were stunned and I wish I said or greeted this white light ball which seemed to have brighter light planes within it. My husband saw it also, but he only saw it glowing and didn’t notice the planes of brighter or denser light moving within."
• Page 328: " Coming by her side we witnessed the formation of orb-shaped lights of warm colours (red, yellow and green) hovering above my street, quite above the highest building in my neighbourhood but below the clouds. Maybe a hundred metres or lower. It’s hard to tell how big they were from that distance, but probably more than one metre in orb radius...There were six orbs that slowly changed colours, flying in the sky in a manner different from drones, planes or birds. At they were gliding slowly forming a ring, then suddenly they broke the pattern into three pairs circling each other playfully, something like chasing one another....The orbs felt more like living entities than devices or machines, their way of moving and changing colour felt playful and deliberate, like dancing or playing a game."

In a Buddhist work quoted by two UFO researchers, we have the following account of a mysterious orb:

"At midnight one of Japan's greatest saints, Nichiren Shonin (1222-1282), was being escorted to the beach to be executed. Just before the fatal moment, a brilliant sphere as large as the moon flew over, illuminating the landscape. The authorities were so frightened by the apparition that they changed their minds about putting Shonin to death. Instead, they exiled him to Sado Island, though this did not prevent his teachings from spreading. A branch of his teachings, the Sokka-Gakkei, has millions of adherents throughout the world today."

On page 3 of the March 12, 1875 edition of a newspaper, we have an account by Prince Emile De Sayn-Wittgenstein, who seems to be the same person described on the autobiographical page here.  Emile says, "I had, about a year and a half ago, tried in vain to convert a young lady to the belief that, under special conditions, her soul might quit her body and act independently of it." Eventually the woman give Emile one of her gloves, which Emile thought might help facilitate some experiment in which the two of them would test an ability to make a psychic contact with each other even though they were far separated.  Emile says that for weeks he intensely concentrated while holding the glove, thinking of the woman far away.  He reports this:

"I afterwards ascertained that she had often dreamt of me very clearly, and that she even remembered having once seen me writing at my table. Her description of my dress and of the room I occupied answered exactly to the reality. She also confirmed several facts and episodes of her private life, the particulars of which I had obtained in the way described."

Strangely, Emile reports that during what seemed like psychic contact between the two people far separated, he would see what could be described as a mysterious orb: "Every time her spirit answered my call, I felt a pleasant sort of shiver running down my back, while a sort of dim circular light, about as big as a plate, and of a pale, yellowish hue, appeared moving, to and fro near the ceiling."

A yellow mysterious orb? I've photographed 182 of those, as you can see by using the link here, and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right. Below is one of 100 photos I have taken of mysterious orbs that seemed to be traveling so fast they exhibited a kind of "string of pearls" effect in which we seem to see multiple position states of a single object. The photo is from my 2015 post here.  

 A similar photo is this photo is from my 2017 post here.