EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

MATTHEW HAVILAND

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

H. ROSE PARRY

NONFICTION EDITOR

ERIC TWARDZIK

PHOTO EDITOR

JAKE LADUE

FICTION EDITOR

JULIE GAGNON

POETRY EDITOR

JACQUELINE FRASCA

MARKETING DIRECTOR

RACHEL AMICO

WEB DESIGNER

RYAN CATALANI

WEB EDITOR

CLARA EVERHART

ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR

ELENA TARCHI

ASSISTANT MARKETING DIRECTOR

JUSMINE MARTIN

CONTRIBUTORS

ANDREW BAYAITES / AMANDA BONDI / CLARA EVERHART / CAROLINE FOTHERGILL / JACQUELINE FRASCA / BRIAN MCNALLY / KATELYN O’BRIEN

DESIGN TEAM

VICTORIA ELLIOTT / MARISA PERKINS / JAMIE ROGERS

ILLUSTRATORS

RAE BOURQUE / ALEX CHAREST / ALEXANDRA GARNER / EMILY SMALL

PHOTO TEAM

CAITLIN DANAHY / JAMIE EMMERMAN / CAROLINE FOTHERGILL / ZOE HARRIS / NIKITA MERRIN / LUCY SANDLER / DANIEL VIGNAL

FICTION READERS

ANDREW CUTONE / HANNAH LAMARRE / EMILY MCCLURE / KELLY YOUNG

WEB WRITERS

ALI DOKUS / ELLEN DUFFER / KILEY GARRETT / SARA SELEVITCH / ARJUN SINGH

FACULTY ADVISORS

WILLIAM BEUTTLER / REBECCA SARACENO

EDITORIAL TEAM

KATHRYN BARNES / NINA CORCORAN / ZOE HAYDEN / SASHA LAFERTE / SIERRA SPARKLE LISTER / ERINN PASCAL / VERONICA DEL ROSARIO / NEYAT YOHANNES

G A U G E

>>CONTENTS

LETTERS 2

ABOUT:BLANK 4

x.y.z. 6

ODE TO obscure FREQUENCIES 10

THE CONQUISTADORS TOOK MY BAYBAYIN AWAY 14

MARSHMALLOW CAN TALK 17

POP-TARTS AND POP-UPS 20

GRAY MATTER SLOT MACHINE 24

ONLY THE SUNFLOWER 28

WHO’S REALLY GOT THE HOLE CARD? 30

PLAGUE WINDS IN CYBERSPACE 33

BITTEN BY A RADIOACTIVE YOGI 38

BUILDING THE MASONIC MAN 44

POETRY 48

Fiction 50

YOU SHOULD 56

ETYMOLOGY 58

LETTERS >>

matthew haviland editor-in-chief

“Is there a cheat code for life?” Well, that’s a huge cliche. Sorry guys... my head’s still lodged in last semester, where the future wasn’t a flashing red light on the wall. Where’s the escape hatch? Oh, here it is. G21 is Code—and boy, is it ever. We’ve got video games. (Yes!) We’ve got codebreak-ing (once you read Voynich—the article, not the manuscript—it will make you grasp for easy answers).

We’ve proven that there is a cheat code for life. Whether it’s <kewl>Xanga kids learning the HTML tags for confidence</kewl>, Freemasons steadying compasses and rulers over a diagram of the perfect man, or Dr. John Hagelin showing you how to click “Cancel” on unhappiness before it tries to sync with your iTunes library, there are hundreds of ways to press up up, down down, left right, left right, bee ay on your life situation. Consider this issue a strategy guide.

Consider this issue a substitution code. Search for patterns. Freemasonry shows up more than once, and the word “Wow” has

an eerie recurrence. You will learn about two lost languages: one with barks, one written on bark. There is even meaning in the typefaces, as we have italicized several video game titles. Sorry, Mr. Ebert—they’re art. Notice that this has been the Year of the Philippines. Props to Veronica for making it work. Notice that my ode last semester was about a director who diagnosed American ills—this time, a director who has broken out the stethoscope.

Notice that “Shadowbox” from last year’s Etymology is the un-gerund-ed title of a Wu-Tang song. Okay, Gza. Notice how this issue’s “Codex” is the title of a Radiohead song. Both are bands I’ve seen live with the same mustachioed best friend from New Jersey. If you lick both Ety-mologies and press them together—really tight—and shout “Frank!” while bumping The Marshall Mathers LP backward, a rift in the unified field will take you straight to the roof of my beloved high school home in Spring Lake Heights. We’ll be shooting off fireworks, but watch out when the box goes rolling down.

Thank you Eric for making me question my views on Gryffindor, and appreciate the

2

Americana behind Star Wars. You’re going to take this magazine to new levels of curi-osity. Rose, thank you for bringing constant creativity to the design... table? Jake, thanks for being ever-agreeable, ever-responsible, and ever-talented. Rachel, this party is go-ing to knock down walls. Jacqui: here are the “Hellos” that you missed while caught in my blind spot (“Hello, hello, hello...”). Everyone else: “Thank you,” “Please,” and “I’m sorry.” Crack those codes how you will. Everything here is for you.

h. rose parry

creative director

As soon as there was civilization, there was Code. Codes were words to live by, handed down from rulers, crafted carefully by schol-ars, and whispered by mystics and criminals alike.

The modern association that many auto-matically make with Code is one defined by the Internet. It makes sense—the Internet is both encoded and a Code, something that has begun to govern the way in which we rule our lives. But in truth, Codes are ancient. They were here before us, and they’ll be here

when we’re gone. They are greater than us, and they determine our lives. Codes are our non-celestial gods.

What makes Codes unique is that they are not only created, they are discovered. From Fibonacci’s ratios to the discovery of the ge-netic code, one can see that much of science is just repeated attempts at cracking nature’s various Codes.

Most of my own thought about this is-sue’s theme stems from this idea. I’m inter-ested in mankind’s constant attempts through many mediums—religion, science, the oc-cult—to crack Codes. Through attempts to communicate these ideas visually, you will see that this issue of Gauge became a dark and a mysterious one.

If you were to stop by the Gauge office this semester to check out our inspiration wall, you would have seen not QR codes or HTML, but religious paintings, tarot cards, constellations and hieroglyphics. The Codes we took as our inspiration are not immedi-ately understandable, and some will never be understood.

Thank you, again and always, to Matt. It’s been so exciting to work with someone with a mind like yours throughout the year,

and I sincerely hate to see you go. Thank you for all of the work that you’ve done to make this a great semester to be involved with Gauge, and best of luck in all of your future endeavors. (Also, you still need to let me borrow Tree of Life.)

Thanks to Jake and Elena for being entirely successful in making this one of Gauge’s creepier issues. Jake, thank you for your cheer and determination—this issue wouldn’t have been as good without your commitment to quality. Elena, thanks for digging through old VHS tapes, and thanks even more for somehow managing to find the coolest, strangest images imaginable within those tapes.

Thanks to Victoria, Jamie and Marisa for helping me figure out what to do with this enigmatic theme, and thank you for all of the weird, terrifying things you showed me when I said I wanted to make this issue a dark one.

Finally, thank you to Rae, Emily, Alex-andra and Alex for creating some of the best illustrations imaginable. There is no one on Gauge that I don’t like to work with, but the level at which you guys create is one of the most exciting things about my job.

Caroline Fothergill

My dad says “Hi” to every single person he passes on the street. Sometimes they study him like he’s got Cheerios in his hair, or they reach for that mini-hairspray in their puese to aim at his eyes. Sometimes they’re hustling and it hits them half a block away. Or they assume it wasn’t meant for them. Oh, but of-ten their mouth corners shoot up, lifting their crabapple cheeks and squinting their eyes, and they reply.

So I do this. I fight to get over myself and swallow the ball of nerves, peer into every two eyes and tell them, “Hi.” I try not to let it depend on the rest of the face or anything else and just detect the eyes. Look right at ‘em and let it fly. “Hi.” They’ll likely plow right by. But sometimes you’ll catch one who really needed it. And you’ll know it as soon as the smile ignites, and they recipro-cate.

What we usually do (frown or look down or look on)—that should be weird. It’s so damn stressful trying not to acknowledge anyone all the time. We complain about so-and-so we’ve met three times and still when our faces practically collide they study the

subtleties of what’s smashed into the eleva-tor carpet—they don’t even say “Hi.” Well, why don’t you? Why don’t I? What’s the risk, shedding some layer of pouty mystery? It doesn’t suit you.

So just say it. Let “Hi” slip through a friendly smile. It’s light and quick and in-vigorating.

Do it. Do it every single time. (Try.)

Jacqueline Frasca

Imagination is not where silly love songs play in the background; maybe there won’t always be context clues. Maybe there is noth-ing wrong with loving another girl’s long hair on the bare skin of her back. Places are not imagination; imagination is not predict-able. If I don’t wake from the pinch, we’re really here. How do I take—my tea? Lon-gevity? The act of living in repetition and never letting it cross your mind that you’re a robot choking on air. Never letting it cross your mind that you’re in a place rather than a state of mind can’t be imagination. Imagina-tion can’t be lived in, only visited.

This place can’t be lived in, only visited. There are tears in the shades, here, and no

one dares stitch them up. It’s never quiet, but a silence always waits in the underlay of nocturne invitations. Here I am allowed to write on the walls, on the counters with-out the risk of being overbearing, beneath influential; here I don’t have to be beneath anyone. Here I don’t have to sleep—not that time can exist where you are, not here. This city is never dark enough for surprises, and the next daylight is a surprise in and of it-self. There’s never a sense of calm and those anxiety attacks you got in high school, those are normal. Those finally feel just, just right. There, I love the way you speak to me, “Like four words and my day is just, just right.” This place belongs to no one and willingly houses everyone; don’t mind the girl with the cuts on her knees scribbling away on the hotel paper.

Clara everhart

The security guard rolls his eyes as he slouches, gesturing with the tiniest of hand movements for me to join the new high-tech scanner line. I decline.

He turns and bellows, “Female assist!”In the little roped-off section of the bot-

<<ABOUT:

BLANK

tlenecked walkway, I put my feet on the yellow outlines and wait as my female as-sist snaps on her Better Touch brand sterile gloves.

“Have you done this before?” she asks, her hands held out in front of her like she is offering me a platter.

“Every time,” I respond. My female as-sist puts her fingers in the waist of my pants and circles my torso, smoothing her hands down my legs. The backs of her hands to stroke my butt and groin. She rakes her fin-gers through my hair, feels the underwire of my bra. The people passing me stare as I stand shoeless, spread eagle in the middle of traffic.

If I had just gone through the scan-ner, this wouldn’t have to happen. Instead of some young woman feeling the tops of my breasts and the heat of my armpits, some technician would see the outlines of my flesh and dimples on some computer screen, surely numb to the novelty of see-ing naked bodies at work.

Her fingers gently rake through my hair.It isn’t that I’m shy. I do understand that

the naked pictures aren’t for titillation. I have a hunch, though, that they are to hu-

miliate. I didn’t follow protocol; as punish-ment, I must be subjected to intimate touch-ing, and an employee must be subjected to touching me.

We’re both just doing our jobs; I, the traveler, and she, the female assist. She strokes her hands over a device that tests for suspicious residue, but I pass even this last test.

“Go ahead and grab your things.”I put on my shoes and go home.

Sasha Laferte

Just a few months out of the high chair. We eat at the dinner table—the four of us—in prim form. Backs straight, legs crossed, salad fork, dinner fork, plate and nap-kin, knife, teaspoon, dessertspoon, repeat. I smile a winning grin and put on a clear voice: Mother, may I please have the potato chips? Yes, dear. I clutch the wrinkly bag with five chubby fingers already encased in black olives. I can feel my bare torso sweat-ing beneath the bologna I have plastered there. Leftover grapefruit juice drips down my earlobe. The rind hat is still fragrant. Mmm, what a fine meal this is.

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LandA man in Taos, New Mexico wakes to a familiar humming sound. He would describe it as a diesel engine rumbling almost too far away to hear. His house is quiet, and because there are no distractions, the hum is the most distinct it will be all day.

In a fit of narcissism, his city named it “The Taos Hum.” But there is some-one in Hawaii, Bondi, Durham, and Scotland (to name a few) with hearing sensitive enough to detect the same sound. Someone advised him to imagine it was something else—something tangible. Last night he imagined it was the sound of bees, thousands of them, rubbing their black-yellow bodies against one another just outside his window. He woke up swatting and scratching at his own face.

He imagines a brown-eyed boy in Costa Rica, sitting cross-legged on a rocky beach and trying to replace the sound with crashing ocean waves. Or an old woman in Bristol, cracking egg after egg into a bowl already filled with milk, cinnamon, and vanilla extract. She beats it all together with a fork while her grandchildren watch cartoons, and she asks them to turn the volume up, savoring the obnoxious ring of SpongeBob’s laugh.

The man stands, straightens his boxers, and walks to the kitchen. He slaps his feet against the linoleum, slams the fridge door, and turns on the faucet. But like the crumpling of the coffee bag, the splattering of water against the metal brings no relief. He sees a kitchen knife sitting in the sink. Once, he cut himself while chopping carrots and was so distracted by the delicate line of blood along his palm that he forgot about the humming. Would the sight of his own cream-colored femur be enough to cure him forever?

He has tried shoving earplugs in so deep they become nearly irretrievable. Nothing helps. He has been told it is not tinnitus because its existence is de-pendent on his geographical location. Some have hypothesized that it is caused by aircraft, electricity generating plants, or volcanic activity. Because it often cannot be detected by the world’s most sensitive microphones or antennae, there are those who predictably blame aliens.

Sometimes he wonders if there really are aliens out there somewhere, hum-ming the same tune over and over, always just beyond his reach.

SeaDuring the summer of 1997, it was recorded several times with U.S. Navy equipment originally intended to detect Soviet submarines. But no one’s heard it in 15 years.

The sound is called Bloop, a nickname as deceptively simple as some other ultra-low frequency underwater sounds: Julia, Slow Down, Upsweep.

Bloop sounds like the combination of an idling dirt bike and the groaning of a very large ship, sprinkled intermittently with enormous bubbles rising to the surface and popping. Of course, it’s like nothing anyone has ever heard before. It’s like discovering a new color—if someone asks you what it looks like, you will inevitably tell them it looks kind of purple, or more like red than green.

We can’t dive down and search the ocean for Bloop: it’s dark, freezing, in-hospitably pressurized. Ironically, the reason that we were able to detect Bloop is the same reason we can’t physically search for its origin. Bloop was spotted in the deep sound channel, one of the coldest and most pressurized layers of the ocean; elements which allow sound waves to travel long distances, and therefore be more detectable by the navy’s Cold War–era sound equipment.

What we can do is map out the audio profile of different frequencies. Sci-entists have discovered that Bloop’s profile resembles living creatures. The frequency range is small—unlike man-made sounds, like boats, or natural sounds, like earthquakes. Other than its mysterious origin, what is so remark-able about Bloop is how loud it is, far more so than the blue whale. This means that if Bloop is the sound of a living creature, that animal would have to be several times larger and louder than the largest and loudest animal ever known to exist.

Few ideas so successfully unhinge our minds from logic as unexplained sounds from the depths of the ocean. The truth is that any number of rational explanations exist to explain Bloop. Most people understand it could have been caused by intense ocean currents, the collapse of a subterranean cavern, or a bomb from a forgotten war spontaneously exploding.

Or it could have been a Kraken.

Last night he imagined it was the sound of bees, thousands of them, rubbing their black-yellow bodies against one another just outside his window. He woke

up swatting and scratching at his own face.[ ]

12

SpaceEven sixth graders know that sound waves don’t travel well in outer space. But lots of things in space emit radio waves, including stars, planets, and clouds of gas and dust. One of the most compelling of these radio signals is Wow!

American astronomer Jerry R. Ehman detected Wow! in August 1977 while working for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at Ohio Wes-leyan University. It’s easy to mock a 1970s-era scientist who thinks that every beep his Commodore PET makes is an alien trying to communicate. But be-lieve that if any unexplained frequency has grounds as coming from intelligent life outside our solar system, Wow! is it.

First, it’s important for those of us who didn’t pay attention in sixth grade to understand a bit of science.

Radio telescopes are typically used to detect incoming radio wave frequen-cies from space. Frequency is measured in megahertz (MHz) as the number of cycles per unit time. The higher the frequency, the stronger the signal. Once detected, these signals are translated into alphanumeric codes, a series of num-bers and letters. Numbers one through nine denote intensities from one to nine, and higher intensities are signified by a letter (‘A’ meaning between ten and eleven, ‘B’ between eleven and twelve, etc).

The SETI spreadsheet from August 1977 is a boring and somewhat chaotic jumble of spaces (signifying an intensity between zero and one) and ones, with a few twos, threes, and fours sprinkled in. There are only four numbers higher than four, and they’re all circled hopefully. But on the bottom left-hand corner, there’s a sequence of six numbers and letters circled vertically, which Ehman scribbled “Wow!” next to.

Now look at the Wow! signal’s code: 6EQUJ5.It was that “U” that really caught Ehman’s attention. It tells us that Wow!

was 30 times louder than normal deep space at its peak. But that isn’t the most fantastic thing about Wow! The signal gradually increased in intensity for 36 seconds, peaked, and declined for the next 36 seconds. The Big Ear radio tele-scope was only able to make recordings for 72 seconds at a time, so Wow! is almost a perfect parabola when graphed.

If someone (or something) sent that signal intentionally, they knew how this equipment operated, and seemed to want to show that this was no ordinary sound. Not only that, but Wow!’s frequency was calculated at about 1,420 MHz. Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, emits the very same frequency. If extraterrestrials are as intelligent as every Sci-Fi film says they are, they would use that frequency to send us a signal.

the conquistadors took my

words by Veronica del Rosario / photos by caitlin danahy“We do get the occasional, ‘Oh, I want “strength” in Chinese characters!’ The joke is that your ‘strength’ character actually means ‘stupid.’” says Dave Norton, who’s been running Pino Bros Ink in Cambridge, Massachusetts for three years.

We’re talking over the hum of a needle against the canvas of skin and small-talk conversations, which distract from the pain of getting tattooed. “Nowadays, that happens a lot less because people are actually getting script in their own languages,” he says.

“But we’re not the judge of your motives,” he says.

As far as I’m concerned, no stranger is ever going to see my tattoo and be able to say, “Wow, what an idiot. It says ‘tube socks.’” This is because my design is written in Baybayin, the dead, ancient writing system of the pre-Spanish Philippines.

It’s two o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday—I’m teaching myself the abugida writing system and its diacritical indicators, or accent marks. The beautiful script was faded out along with much of Filipino culture after Magellan’s arrival in 1521. In discovering Baybayin, a system used across the ar-chipelago in conjunction with dialects still spoken today (such as Visayan and Tagalog), I’ve opened a Pandora’s box of national history that I—and likely more than half of the Philippines—have been un-aware of.

Ask someone today what it means to be Filipino and they’re likely to say that it’s hard to explain, due to hundreds of years of foreign occupation. “Four hundred years of church and fifty of Holly-wood,” my grandfather tells me.

The Philippines as it is today is defined primar-ily by Catholicism, professional boxer Manny Pac-quiao, and an overabundance of karaoke machines fully equipped with American songs. It’s impos-

sible to buy face-wash-sans-skin-whitener, and there are, like many other third world countries, two drastically segregated social classes with not much in between.

National hero Jose Rizal is credited for pro-viding Filipinos with a unified sense of identity, primarily based on one commonality between the various regions: they had been conquered, and their respective cultures, stolen. This was, it seemed, the only common ground.

It is fundamentally Western to accept what is re-corded in books. Native beliefs are often debased to superstition because indigenous communities “know” through oral tradition and experience rath-er than reading. Indigenous Filipino “texts” are no-where to be found, as they were carved on bamboo and then filled with ash. This practice was added to the list of endangered traditions in the 16th century

14

after the adaption of paper, pen, and the Latin al-phabet.

“Bathala,” the word used to describe the Filipi-nos’ original supreme being, shares a similar fate. After the Spanish came, the word “Dios” (synony-mous with the Abrahamic God of Christianity, Ju-daism, and Islam) became the common word. Both Baybayin and Bathala play crucial roles in defin-ing indigenous Filipino identity and spirituality; Baybayin is a sacred writing style, and the word “Bathala” represents a way of thinking that has been demeaned by Western cultures for centuries.

The word “Bathala” consists of characters symbolic of male and female anatomy (similar claims have been made about “Yahweh” in He-brew). Prominent equality between the indigenous men and women was observed by Jesuit priest and Spanish historian, Father Pedro Chirino. In Rel-ación de las Islas Filipinas (1604), his account of Filipino life in the early 17th century, he wrote, “So accustomed are the islanders to writing and reading that there is scarcely a man, especially women, who can not read and write letters.”

In Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (1609), Dr. Antonio de Morga, former Spanish lieutenant gov-ernor of the Philippines, observes the same: “All, women like men, are writing in this language.” In the egalitarian pre-Spanish society of the Philip-pines, virginity was not very valuable, abortion

was legal and accepted, husbands took wives’ last names, divorce occurred (today, the Philippines is the only country in the world where divorce is ille-gal), there was split custody over children, and the indigenous baybaylan played a key role in daily life.

A baybaylan was a woman who served her community’s social structure by acting as healer, midwife, and religious practitioner. Baybaylan were also considered wisdom keepers (or philoso-phers). If a man ever took this role, he had to have dressed as a woman.

In his novel Noli Me Tangere, Jose Rizal portrayed the Filipina as blindly faithful and very much tak-en advantage of by the Spanish. In 1888, a year following its publication, an incident occurred in the city of Malolos which changed his opinion of the women of his country.

Essentially, 20 women wanted to put together a night school in which they would learn Spanish—very progressive for their time. They were denied this request by a Spanish priest. They protested, and ultimately gained permission from the gover-nor.

Rizal of heard of this and wrote, in a letter to the twenty women (translated in José Rizal: Life, Works and Writings of a Genius, Writer, Scientist

and Naional Hero by Gregorio F. Zaide and Sonia M. Zaide): “No longer does the Filipina stand with her head bowed nor does she spend her time on her knees... Let the maiden be the pride of her coun-try and command respect, because it is a common practice on the part of Spaniards and friars... to speak of the Filipina as complaisant and ignorant.”

Long story short, the sequel to Noli Me Tangere was a little different.

It’s also in that letter where my future tattoo comes from. I learned to write it in Baybayin all on my own: “Walang matamis na bunga sa punlang maa-sim.” It means, loosely, “No sweet fruit can come of a bitter seed.”

Early on, I found that it is not Filipinos who are conducting research, starting websites, and designing Baybayin fonts—it’s young Filipino Americans seeking their identities. For us, it isn’t about the fact that there is, or was, anything writ-ten down. It’s that our single commonality is not simply that our ancestors were conquered and colonized.

A culture did exist before then, and the least we can do is acknowledge it. In recognizing my power as an individual to preserve the ancient writing system, I’m beginning to think we Filipinos haven’t changed so much after all.

Whenever my dog wants food, he sneezes. I never registered this as abnormal until my friend visited one day, looked at my 12-year-old Bichon wheezing by the pantry, and asked, “Is he sick?”

“Of course he isn’t, he wants food,” I said. Then I thought: Oh.Dogs speak in tongue (and sometimes with tongue) like humans. Granted,

a dog will never put on a top hat, puff a cigar and say “The stars are beautiful tonight,” but he will bite a hat or chew a cigar or bark to communicate. A dog, therefore, develops its own language. And it’s time for humans to learn Canine.

Rachel Whitney, student veterinarian at the University of Central Florida, specializes in such dog communication. She says, “Since the human brain can’t interpret barking, dogs use body language and other means to communicate. When your dog sneezes for food, for example, that’s considered normal. No, it doesn’t mean he’s sick.”

My dog learned to sneeze because I am his Alpha, and when a dog adapts to a new home, his instinct is to look for leader of the pack. This is because canines came from wolves. Granted, it’s been a while since domestication, but dogs are still equipped with the dogma (ever wondered where the word came from?) of looking for an Alpha to teach it reaction and survival. Unless there is another dog already present in the home, the new dog’s human takes on the role. Fido,

Marshmallow

Can TalkBut Who’s Listening?

Words by erinn pascal / Photos By Caroline Fothergill

meet your Alpha. Natasha Talchen of Dedham, MA trains dogs. “In a pack, the Alpha is a

dog’s master. While humans exist independently—meaning we can survive on our own—we must remember that dogs are a different species,” she says. Alpha dogs teach their packs reaction and survival, oftentimes taking the place of its mother. “This is why it’s so easy to train dogs,” says Talchen. “Their brains are wired to respond to commands.”

By the first six weeks a dog is home, it has picked up a basis of around 50 words or commands. It may know the sign of one finger pointed to mean “no,” or two claps on a couch to denote “jump.” Either way, these words get catalogued into a dog’s brain and matched with symbols or signs, as if the dog is creating its own personal sign language—and it is.

28-year-old Andrew Lopez has an interesting theory about dog acquisition of language. Last Christmas, he received a puppy as a gift.

“Moxie and I have been together for almost two months now,” he says. “I can have a casual conversation about ‘Moxie’ to a friend and she won’t even budge, but if I say it in a tone like ‘Mox—eeeee,’ she’ll jump up and get excited.” (It may be interesting to add that during the interview, Moxie did jump up and get excited. At least that’s how it sounded over the phone.)

I called out a variety of words to

him in the same tone I typically use:

“Vendetta,” “Wonderful,” “Ron Weasley.” I received a response from each one.

“

17

As Whitney says, “An Alpha in the wild would have fought.”

“Tone makes a difference,” says Lopez.Some animal researchers, however, believe that it makes all the difference.For a lot of dogs, language is interpreted mainly through intonation. A

dog named Rover may know his name is two syllables long in a high-pitched sing-song. When high-pitched sing-songed another word with two syllables, Rover will also respond.

I decided to test this theory on my own sneezing canine, Marshmallow. Please don’t discredit my research based on the name I selected at the age of seven. I called out a variety of words to him in the same tone I typically use: “Vendetta,” “Wonderful,” “Ron Weasley.” I received a response from each one.

“You got these results because you trained your dog into recognizing three syllables as his name,” says Talchen. “It’s a bit like Pavlov’s experiment. If you had a different tone, he may not be used to it and might not have responded.”

In 1904, psychologist Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel Prize for his experiment on classical conditioning. He succeeded in proving human learned reactions, but in doing so also provided much about “dog code.” Pavlov rang a bell every time he presented the dogs with food and then would let them eat. At the end of the study, the dogs would salivate just by hearing the bell—just as Marshmallow thinks he’s Ron Weasley.

“We’ll never fully be able to understand dog speak and dogs will never fully be able to understand us. So if we pick a common ground—like tone, or bells—we’ll be able to communicate,” Talchen says.

Communication is often set through body language.“If a dog crouches and gets low to the ground,” says Whitney, “he’s scared.

If he rolls over, he’s submissive. If he lowers his front legs and hunches or curls his lips, he’s angry or frightened.”

These expressions all lead back to the human-as-Alpha theory. A dog crouching could be waiting for its Alpha to pick it up and bring it into safety, as it relies on the Alpha for security. Acting submissive is a sign the dog recognizes who is leader.

“When I yell at Moxie for ‘going’ in the house, she does this thing where she gets on her back and exposes her belly to me. It’s really cute. I can’t help but scratch her belly and then I’m not mad at her anymore,” Lopez says.

According to Whitney, Moxie is not trying to garner sympathy. She is letting Lopez know that she understands what she did was not allowed. By rewarding her with positive reinforcement, he is only encouraging the “going-in-the-house” dilemma.

As Whitney says, “An Alpha in the wild would have fought.”A study conducted by Animal Planet in 2008 reports that an adult dog

knows about 160 words, which is the average language of a 3-year-old child. This means that dogs’ intelligence is comparable to humans’, which would then mean that dogs rival chimpanzees—our ancestors—in the basis of communication.

Lopez doesn’t know if that’s true, but he does think Moxie’s language is advanced.

“If you even whisper ‘walk’ near Moxie,” he says, “you’ve dug your own grave my friend. She’ll dance around you until there’s a leash on her collar and shoes on your feet.”

As for Marshmallow, I have no idea why he thinks sneezing is the appropriate sign for “hungry,” but since I respond to it, he’ll probably continue. Maybe someday, I’ll teach him to do my homework in order to get treats. Who knows. Maybe this article was written by my dog.

“

19

Pop-Tarts and Pop-Upswords by nina corcoran / illustrations by emily small

There’s something nice about a blank text box. It’s a clean plate, begging for food for thought. John Hiler, Marc Ginsburg, and Dan Huddle strove to give bloggers that clean plate when they created Xanga. But what made Xanga different from other websites was the option for users to alter their page’s code—essentially allow-ing them to claw into the world of Hiler, Ginsburg, and Huddle. Bloggers could design a new look. Not only could they dish out food for thought, but the entire plate was now theirs to modify. Websites like LiveJournal offered the same customization power, but Xanga’s users latched onto it differently.

First made public in 2000, Xanga was used to share book and music reviews. When its popularity flared in 2004 (around the time of Myspace’s rise), blogs switched from writers’ notebooks to preteen diaries. With each post came the ability to stir up drama. What also came was a sense of importance. Readers would respond to your posts, and middle-school users scurried to personalize their pages. Af-ter all, a flashing neon background with The Spill Canvas was more than enough for someone to leave your page.

The right layout was everything.“It was so easy to change your page to look

however you wanted it to,” says Carina Koerfer, 20, a student at the University of Connecticut who started using Xanga in seventh grade. “I never kept the same layout on my page for very long.”

Koerfer made her blog boxes skinnier, creating more space to see the background. Pictures of the All-American Rejects or Fall Out Boy would line themselves behind her posts as a song lyric stood proudly as the header. She also color-coordinated text boxes with her background images to avoid overwhelming visitors. “Making my own layouts gave me freedom to make my page look however I wanted, whenever I wanted.”

She was a part of the hierarchy of Xanga us-ers: bloggers, fiction writers, photographers, lay-out designers. When it came time for an 8:00 AM math class, their teacher saw them as equals, but students knew better. It was the ability to read and twist code that gave shy kids the chance to proudly puff up their chests and find their talent in a middle school that beat down confidence daily. “When you’re asked to help or just giving help, that says you know something that this other person doesn’t know,” says Dr. Ellen Langer, a social psychology professor at Harvard University. “Something that’s at least reasonably valuable.”

Koerfer stood amongst the shy nerds, so com-pleting layout requests from both friends and strangers meant putting her in charge of her sta-tus. Messages were sent to her inbox asking for a specific design or background. Taking requests be-came “good PR,” she says, and she never turned

them down. “The fact that I had put in the effort to figure out the code,” Koerfer says, “and could now alter my site to look however I wanted made me feel cool, even more so once people started giv-ing me requests.”

Thus the birth of amateur layout design-ers began. According to Ignite Social Media, 57 percent of Xanga users are under 35 years old, a large number of which are under 18. Kids across the country began toy-ing with code and creating multiple layouts, with clouds raining hearts and banners like “If I had a snowflake for every time I thought about you, we’d

never have school.” The code to each layout would then be posted on their Xanga page for free down-load. Soon layout designers began getting hundreds

of subscribers. Some-times, if you were lucky enough, the layout de-signers would accept requests and create a truly personalized look just for your page. But was their talent due to hidden skills or a result of spare time?

“HTML was originally designed to be accessi-ble to people without too much technical training,” explains Adam Chlipala, an assistant professor of computer science at MIT. “The typical bright high

Designers had to learn how to

express themselves through conversation, not online comments

or sparkling backgrounds.

“

21

22

school student could get started building web pages with HTML and CSS in just a day of reading and experimentation.”

Since Xanga’s code runs on a basic format, it’s easy for the average person to figure out how the code works. For a seventh-grade Koerfer, it was guess-and-check. “Save, look at the site, change something, save, look at the site...” she says. “At the peak of my layout making, I could make a layout in just a few hours one night sitting at my computer.”

Not everything about coding was easy. Xanga also uses JavaScript, a system that requires layout designers to, as Chlipala puts, “learn new kinds

of logical thinking, rather than just how to map common-sense notions of document layout into a particular language.” Javascript allows for dynamic functionality based on visitors’ decisions. HTML or CSS can change text color and the thickness of

borders, but JavaScript can create drop-down menus or pop-up win-dows that require the visitor’s input (think “Okay” and “Cancel” buttons).

Talented designers began creating codes to hide advertisements on

the page or play background music. Soon they were copyrighting Google images and scrawling their own usernames across them for credit. Layout de-signers like Koerfer “never made them or changed

them,” she says. “I didn’t understand how [Javas-cript] worked.” Designers who actually could un-derstand that code were in the very top triangle of the social pyramid.

Self-promotion and networking took effort, which led to less socializing in daily life. Face-time was sacrificed as designers sat themselves down, alone, to recognize the difference between #330000 and #330022 on the HEX color scale. And as time went on, customizing pages made way for custom-izing lives.

According to the Nielsen//NetRatings traffic data report, Xanga’s first decline occurred between August 2006 and August 2007. Its visitor count saw a whopping 44-percent drop: the largest of any blogging or social networking site that year. And it’s only decreased as time has passed. People be-gan using social networking sites like Facebook to expand their social circle. Designers had to learn how to express themselves through conversation, not online comments or sparkling backgrounds.

Koerfer dropped layout making in high school. With the exception of those who followed coding as a job, Xanga served as a temporary crutch to help nerdy kids find importance through a system of numbers and brackets. Facebook (where users cannot change the stark white and blue layout) is showing ex–Xanga users how to schedule time to hang out and represent themselves through content. But every now and then, when Koerfer goes about college life, hues from the HEX color scale flash before her and softly fade away. #0000CC: the col-or of their mascot. #994400: the color of her hair. #FFFFFF: the color of the sun.

When it came time for an 8:00 AM

math class, their teacher saw them as equals, but students

knew better.

“

23

Words by neyat yohannes / photos by Jake ladue and elena tarchi

winners every time

graymatter

slotmachine

25

Senior citizens can’t bear to part with their Sunday crosswords. Sweaty teenage boys are slaves to their video game consoles. New Sudoku books are published as often as the Babysit-ters Club. We are helplessly addicted to our puzzles of choice—some of us even partake in nationally recognized competitions to feed said addiction. But many folks are not aware of how or why.

The first crossword puzzle was run in the New York World on December 21st, 1913, but language games date back much further. Word squares have existed throughout history, from an etched alabaster

prayer to Osiris during the last throes of the Roman Empire to a curious Latin palindrome that was found in the ruins of Pompeii.

But what is the science behind that exasperat-ing itch we get when a puzzle just has to be solved? “There’s a concept of flow,” says Harvard Univer-sity lecturer and researcher Shelley H. Carson, au-thor of Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imag ina t i on , Product iv i ty, and Innova-tion in Your Life. The neu-ro t ransmi t te r dopamine flows through your brain to reinforce perceived accomplishment with pleasure. Every hu-man feat—from an A on an exam to a promotion at work—cranks the the brain’s slot machine to a halt with three flashing diagrams of C6H3(OH)2-CH2-

CH2-NH2. “You almost become addicted to what you’re doing in order to keep that flow go-ing,” says Carson.

The MIT Mystery Hunt is a world famous puzzle competition that takes place on the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technology campus dur-ing the third weekend in January. The hunt chal-

lenges teams to solve an abundance of puzzles (sometimes up to 130 distinct co-nundrums) s e p a r a t e d into rounds

that work in a hierarchical order—one round leading into the next, going back to the concept of flow. Hundreds participate every year.

“That high from puzzles definitely does ex-ist,” says Emily Morgan, 26. Morgan was part of 2011’s winning team, Codex Alimentarius. She is also a UC San Diego graduate student who describes herself as a Mathemagical Psycholin-guist. To prove dopamine is its own reward, she maintains that it’s not all about winning. “It’s just about solving the puzzles for most people. My team for example, we’ve existed for ten years, but we just do it for the fun.” Winning teams re-

Team Codex found a wooden replica of the Companion

Cube used to solve puzzles in the video game series

Portal. Etched into one of the sides was “Achievement

Unlocked.”

“

ceive no money, just a commemorative coin and the distinction of creating the next hunt.

At the end of each Mystery Hunt, a team must find the “coin” hidden somewhere on cam-pus. It used to look like a larger version of the change you’d find in your pocket, but has been more creatively redesigned in recent years. Team Codex found a wooden replica of the Compan-ion Cube used to solve puzzles in the video game series Portal. Etched into one of the sides was “Achievement Unlocked.”

But many of the teams aren’t competing to come out victorious. One year, a group won the hunt but sternly refused recognition. “Because of the way the hunt is structured, there are milestones along the way,” says Morgan, “Solving up to say, a metapuzzle”—a round-capping mega-puzzle comprised of the solutions of several puzzles—”is a great goal for smaller groups.”

This year’s hunt was a play on classic Broad-way shows. Puzzles asked teams to calculate a “galactic tax return” based on a dizzying list of clues, solve regular crossword puzzles (with twists), and play a Wolfenstein 3D-style first-person shooting game based on “Springtime for Hitler,” the fictional musical from The Produc-ers. The target audience is clear. “It’s become a popular and well-known event in the geek com-munity,” Morgan says, “which I’m a part of.”

The preparation, naturally, takes time. “It’s a

huge process. We spend all year preparing for it,” Morgan says. “We also have an editing process.” This process involves testing the puzzles to see if they are of appropriate difficulty and, of course, if they are fun enough. Though Morgan stepped away from her studies to help engineer this year’s hunt, the satisfaction was—scientifically—worth it.

“The longer the task takes and the harder it is, the more satisfaction you get once it has been complet-ed,” says Carson. She explains the appeal for par-ticipants who don’t expect to win the competition, but just to solve some metapuzzles: “If the demands of the task are similar to your ability to complete the task, each time you get part of the answer right, you are receiving an intrinsic reward.”

Whether you’re an angst-ridden teenage boy smelling of stale pizza and playing Call of Duty for the 48th consecutive hour, or an old-timer rejoic-ing over Sunday’s Golden Girls-themed crossword, everyone cherishes that feeling of accomplishment from solving puzzles. And if they register online in early winter, everyone can join one of the great-

est puzzle competitions in the world. “People of all walks of life take part in this competition,” Morgan says. “Less than half are students at this point.”

We all may have different techniques—some of us wear orange sweaters and work steadfastly and alone; others enjoy the scarf-dress or scarf–flowy shirt combo and work as a duo; and, of course, there’s the type with his speech impediment-having four-legged companion along for emotional sup-port—whatever our choices, we all lend a helping hand solving the riddles and whodunits on the Mys-tery Machine of life.

ilfrid Michael Voynich was a Pol-ish revolutionary-cum-antiques-col-lector who visited the opulent Villa Mondragone in 1912 to make a his-

toric purchase. He found an old manuscript in the library of a boarding school in the hilly Italian town of Frascati, where cardinals used to lounge in their time away from the Vatican.

The Jesuit schoolmasters, desperately in need of funds, were more than willing to discreetly un-load the manuscript—240 irregularly-sized vellum pages with drawings of plants, nude human forms, and star charts—to Voynich. It was written entirely in an unknown script. He displayed it in academic settings all over the United States and called on scientists who promised they could read it. They couldn’t.

Voynich believed the text was scientifically significant, as its drawings depict plants and other apothecary items previously unseen in the Western world. There are green trees that grow sideways, bluish flowers that look like bowls of needles, spiked leaves and floating roots. The catalogues of botany have expanded since Voynich’s time, and none of the strange bulbs and herbs have yet been found. Nowadays, it has been widely proposed that the manuscript is a hoax, not meant to be under-stood. But a lot of scholarly investigation has gone into verifying and translating Voynich. Each and every one of these attempts has gone awry.

Based on accompanying documents, and others that turned up later, it could eventually be traced to Prague in the court of Bohemian emperor Rudolf II, but where it was before that remains a mystery. It could be a child’s fantasy drawing, but for its aura of intent. Each drooping frond and thick vine grow-

ing up the side of a page seems wholly deliberate. Text often wraps around the images flawlessly; lay-out mistakes and overlapping are present, though they are few. A medieval studies journal called Speculum published a survey in 1944 of the plant life depicted in Voynich. The sole link between the manuscript and the recognizable world was a drawing resembling a sunflower—even though the text was eventually radiocarbon dated to de-cades before a sunflower was seen in Europe.

The folios also contain star charts and people. The people appear to be bathing in a river or cloud of green liquid, and moving through a series of pipes and whirlpools. As for the star charts, they use zodiac symbols and vaguely resemble actual astronomy. But without being able to translate the labels, it’s hard to tell. Some researchers think they see eclipses and constellations such as Pleiades, but the illustrations seem more metaphorical—suns and moons have expressive faces, and oftentimes stars look more like stylized flowers. The manuscript ex-ists in a strange space, halfway between familiar and alien. We recognize the human hand at work. The ink strokes on the page bear an unmistakable resemblance to words and paragraphs. Those look like letters. They have to be. But oh no, not so fast.

Nick Pelling is a 47-year-old British computer programmer. He’s developed games for systems

from the Acorn Atom all the way up to the mod-ern PC. He also runs Cipher Mysteries, a website on unsolved codes and ciphers. Understanding and thinking in multiple languages is a required skill in his world. He came upon Voynich while working as

a story consultant for the PC adventure game series Broken Sword, in which the manuscript was used as a plot device to com-municate Freemason se-crets across generations. He was in the middle of his own novel at the time, but the Voynich manu-script stopped him dead in his tracks—he started re-

searching it instead. “Fiction suddenly seemed like such miserable frippery compared with what real life had produced,” he says via e-mail. Since then, he has published a book, The Curse of the Voynich, on his own best guess as to what the manuscript is meant to be.

According to Pelling, approaching the manu-script as any one “thing” is sure to lead to a dead end. Even his best-researched origin story to Voynich, he admits, could be wrong. “Despite be-ing studied reasonably intensely for a century,” Pelling says, “it continues to resist being pigeon-holed... People still argue like crazy.” Voynich himself was quite convinced that the text had been created by the 13th-century Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, who is known for his studies in naturalism and optics. In 2009, the University of Arizona dated the manuscript’s parchment to having been made between 1404 and 1438 (with a 95-percent prob-

Only the

Gifted researchers

avoid it because of its reputation

as “a Homeric siren calling academics to their doom.”

“

W

28

ability). Roger Bacon died circa 1294.The only way to glean more information about

Voynich would be to crack the text itself, but that has proven to be even more difficult than trac-ing its historical record. The manuscript is, quite decidedly, not a simple substitution code. Its “al-phabet” is at least twice the size of the English one, and it doesn’t obey the rules of language the way we know them to be. Cracking a substitution code starts with looking for patterns—which, in Voynich, are hard to come by. Letter-characters ap-pear in every thinkable spot and in every possible configuration: at the beginnings of words, at the ends of words, paired together, unrepeated. A letter like “e” in English behaves this way, but it doesn’t have many equals. Every character seems to behave this way in Voynich, with only a few exceptions.

“The extraordinary thing is that ‘Voynichese’ has structure nearly everywhere you look,” Pel-ling says. “Pretty much whatever statistics you try to gather, you find that the distribution and na-ture of those stats have distinctive features you wouldn’t expect.” What he means is that the oc-currence of each letter-character seems highly regimented and perhaps overly regular—too regular to have been prepared thoughtlessly as a nonsense language.

Pelling believes it uses a system of simple ci-phers (algorithmic encoding processes with several steps and procedures that build upon each other to encrypt the message). He also believes that the

manuscript employs steganography, or the use of obscured messages. An example would be knitting Morse code into the pattern of a scarf, or spelling out a message through the first letters of crossword clues. When all of the statistical anomalies are gath-ered and viewed with those ideas in mind, it looks quite deliberate indeed.

Pelling will present his research at Voynich 100, the May 2012 conference celebrating the 100th anni-versary of Voynich entering the modern conscious-ness. The conference is being held in the Villa Mondragone. Going back to the source will likely not produce concrete answers—the gesture is sym-bolic. Gathered at Mondragone will be the people who have actually sat down and done the work on Voynich. The event is likely to draw at least a little publicity, as the drumming-up of an old mystery is wont to do. Pelling hopes that the event will en-

courage people to dis-cuss Voynich in depth, rather than “cutting and pasting its Wikipedia ar-ticle.”

Current attempts to make sense of Voynich are often based on as-sumptions and transcrip-tions. On his website

this March, Pelling criticizes a Polish professor’s attempt to understand “Voynichese” because the professor relied on transliteration into Roman let-ters in order to be analyzed with a Javascript pro-gram. Another recent attempt theorizes that the manuscript is a complex version of medieval Latin,

though in order to translate it, extra letters must be added in. None of the theories are perfect. Though they occasionally jog loose a new idea, they can’t be confirmed or denied by anyone, and some are recyclings of older ideas that failed.

“The biggest problem is that the Voynich con-tinues to be thought of as a fringe artifact,” says Pelling. Gifted researchers avoid it because of its reputation as “a Homeric siren calling academics to their doom.” That it has been around so long with-out new concrete facts coming to light encourages the idea, among serious academics, that Voynich is a hoax, comprised entirely of gibberish.

But Pelling believes otherwise. He wants the Beinecke Library at Yale, where Voynich is cur-rently held, to produce higher quality scans of the manuscript using new imaging technologies. It could make all the difference. Such scans would draw attention to parts of the manuscript that aren’t as easy to see with the naked eye, such as possible indentations in the page, and faded pencil notes from previous owners. Yale features interactive hi-res scans on their website, but some of the images contain broken links.

Nuances and questions keep popping up, re-garding every aspect of the manuscript’s history and content. Why are the ties to northern Italy so strong throughout the manuscript’s history? Where exactly was it between the time that it was penned and the day it showed up in Prague? This question is, incidentally, the main topic of Pelling’s talk at the centenary. To avoid becoming one of so many repetitive and anecdotal History Channel documen-taries watched at 3 a.m., it might be necessary to re-turn over and over to the Voynich manuscript. Now, take another look. What does it look like to you?

SunflowerWilfrid"s Impossible Codex

The people appear to be bathing in a river or cloud of green liquid,

and moving through a series of pipes and whirlpools.

“

Words by Zoe Hayden

29

The Deal

The casino pit boss imagines himself a blue-suited spy. He taps his earpiece and scans the blackjack pit on 25 security screens as fanny-packed tourists and briefcase-clad high rollers roam amongst each other. He reclines in his chair; all security is up. He lets the ding of the slots, the murmur of the crowd, and the flutter of shuffling machines lull him into a deep sleep. Not one card counter has been seen at the casino today.

Double Down

Security supervisor Edward Lonardo informed me with a slimy grin (his own personal poker face) that Foxwoods Resort Casino security wasn’t allowed to divulge information on the technology and tactics used to protect their casino from “cheaters.” He gave me the number for a public relations company and directed me toward a phone. Public rela-tions were almost as helpful as Mr. Lonardo.

Upon my exit, Lonardo followed me out, but only after he requested my name, phone number, e-mail, home address, education in-formation, and birthdate. I fear that my name is now

“in the system” and that I will never again be able to enjoy a day of folds and double blinds unbothered.Hopefully they didn’t manage a picture of me. Fa-cial recognition has gone from security staff being trained to remember suspicious faces to high-tech software designed to not only match faces to people barred from the casino they are in, but also to a net-work of faces provided by other casinos. This allows security to no longer rely on guesses and looking through disguises.

Biometrica is a facial recognition system used in over 180 casinos. Their website boasts “an exten-sive database of active professional card counters,” as well as other security perks such as video sur-veillance. James Pepin, Biometrica vice president of sales and marketing, says, “One mid-sized casino actually did their own in-depth internal case study,

and their final result report showed that they could credit the use of Biometrica’s sys-tem to saving them more than $500,000 each year.” About $44,000 of those sav-ings can be attributed to cuts in labor.

Charles Guenther, the surveillance manager who approved Biometrica for Trump Marina Casino and The Sands in Atlantic City,

informed CBS News in 2009 that their system had around 10,000 “cheater” photographs. Since

Who’s Really Got the Hole

Card?cv

w

e

I fear that my name is now

“in the system” and that I will never again be able to enjoy a day of folds and

double blinds unbothered.

“

Words by Sasha Laferte / Photo by Jamie Emmerman

30

then, the number is bound to have increased.While some technology focuses on catch-

ing counters, other forms attempt to eliminate the option of counting altogether. Shuffling ma-chines are used to prevent the mathematics from card counting from being possible. The first was developed in 1878 by Henry Ash and consisted of a box that the dealer put the cards in and shook. Since then, the machines have become more complex and effective.

The goal is to make shuffling completely random—something manual shuffles cannot achieve. Main designs for shuffling machines today include ejectors, mechanical fingers, and card transport elevators. They look like hair dry-ers or hand-held vacuums. Continuous shuffling machines, ominously perched in the center of the green felt, are widely considered the most ef-fective, as they don’t allow for breaks and keep all cards not in play shuffling at all times.

As facial recognition and shuffling machines grow commonplace, Las Vegas casinos are up-ping the ante. License plate scanners can match incoming guests to blurry faces in the secu-rity system before they walk through the door. Non-obvious relationship awareness software (NORA) computerizes the process of spotting counter teams by connecting guests with similar information. For example, two men staying at the Bellagio who attend the same university and are Facebook friends with a well-known card counter would be flagged as high-risk, for security to investigate.

RFID (radio frequency iden-tification) embedded casino chips allow secu-rity personnel to track not only the location and authenticity of the chips but, with the right ad-ditional software, the betting strategy of every player at every blackjack table. This software removes human error and decreases the amount of personnel needed to cover the blackjack pit.

Secrecy along with the advanced technology are the ruling forces of the casino world today. Casinos have created electrical fortresses against

those most likely to take from them. February 2012’s 7th Annual World Game Protection Con-ference sought to “analyze significant scams” and discuss threats to the casino industry. All of the casino big wigs went, as well as the presi-dents of security technology companies. The threats advertised did not even mention card counting.

The ongoing rift between card counters and casinos has gone from a war of intellect against intellect, flesh against flesh, to man against ma-chine—muscle against metal and wires. With this change in strategy has come a change in the odds as well.

Black Jack Unbeknownst to the security, Josh Axelrad and Kevin Blackwood have some cards up their sleeves. Figuratively, of course.

Axelrad, former professional blackjack player, card counter, and author of the memoir Repeat Until Rich says, “The rule is: don’t bar yourself.” He explains that a counter should never leave the casino because they feel they are about to be thrown out. They should wait until it actually happens.

Blackwood, former card counter and author of multiple books (including his lat-est, The Legends of Blackjack), agrees. “If you’re going to play to win,” he says, “you’re go-ing to get caught eventually.”Though card coun-ters are barred

from casinos, and in some cases detained (Axel-rad mentions having been “held hostage on trib-al lands” and “unlawfully arrested by some hick cops”), the idea of being beaten up by security is a misconception. At one time it was more com-mon, but today, casinos shy away from the pos-sibility a lawsuit. With the winning that can go on prior, it’s worth the risk.

“Overall, the opportunity is perhaps margin-ally better today than it was in 2000,” says Axel-

rad. It’s surprising that the opportunity is even marginally better considering the amount secu-rity has done to prevent these men.“I don’t let them get me down,” he says.

According to Axelrad, surveillance often grows dependent on technology, and personnel become incompetent. “Basically,” he says, “if a casino relies on information they receive from other casinos—photographs of dangerous play-ers and so forth—they may not actually know what to do when a player not included in the net-work makes his way onto their tables.”

When asked about shuffling machines, he calls their bluffs: “The casino had better make damn certain the machine actually randomizes the cards at least as thoroughly as manual shuf-fles. If nothing else, they speed up the rate of play—which is helpful to us.” With an increased rate of play, card counters are able to win more money faster.

But how do non-losing gamblers (as Axel-rad calls them) know which casinos use which software? Blackwood describes camaraderie on online forums, where professional card counters and ambitious tourists alike share knowledge on security. This unspoken alliance makes for more brainpower and ultimately a better chance of making profit.

As security increasingly relies on cameras and software created by others, counters have found ways to drive past technology. “The moral of the story” Axelrad says, “is that there are al-ways vulnerabilities. A casino is the Death Star. If you think hard enough you’ll be able to get in there and blow it up.”

The Payout

The young man stands at the entrance to the pit, thinking of numbers, focusing on strategy. He scans the room, picks out the security cameras and other plastic bugs and wiry gadgets against him. He notes the expressions and mannerisms of everyone in the room, picking out the men with earbuds. He sits down at the table with the most promise. He lets the sound of his own arm raking wins into his pile put him into a daze. Not one card counter had been seen at the casino to-day.

q

r

Unbeknownst to the security, Josh

Axelrad and Kevin Blackwood have some

cards up their sleeves. Figuratively, of

course.

“

32

<PLAGUE WINDS IN CYBERSPACE>

words by eric twardzik / photos by zoe harris

33

How World of Warcraft Can Cure What Ails Ya'

On September 13th, 2005, the millions of players that make up the immense MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW) downloaded a virus. But this virus did not infect their computer systems; it infected the flesh and blood of their characters they piloted in the game. In what came to be known as “The Corrupted Blood Incident,” a glitch-turned-epidemic marked the first time in history that a vir-tual virus infected a virtual human being. Its legacy extends beyond WoW’s digital realm. Epidemiolo-gists and bioterrorism experts believe that the in-cident may hold the key to averting a real-world disaster.

Blizzard Entertainment, the game’s developer, regularly releases patches to improve and expand WoW. Patch 1.7 invited players to a new area, Zul’Gurub, and challenged them to fight Hakkar, the Soulflayer—the realm’s serpentine boss. Hak-kar could infect players with “corrupted blood,” which sapped away their hit points and spread to the players around them.

The adventure was exclusive to high-level char-acters and the infection lasted only while they re-mained in Zul’Gurub. However, corrupted blood

was set to take a course that Blizzard never intend-ed or imagined.

Corrupted blood found its way to WoW’s main world by interspecies transmission. Characters keep animals as pets to help them fight enemies, and corrupted blood could infect player’s pets while in battle. Pets can be saved from extinction by “dismissal,” placing them in stasis until they are later recalled. Players dismissed their infected pets and traveled back to the main world, unwittingly carrying the disease with them.

Each time a player recalled a diseased pet, it infected them with corrupted blood and spread it to the players around them. Many players have the ability to teleport, and that rapid form of transporta-tion sparked breakouts in multiple cities.

The plague’s origin mirrors real-life threats.In a 2007 article that appeared in Epidemiol-

ogy, Israeli epidemiologist Ran Balicer compared the spread of corrupted to the role asymptomatic ducks played in spreading avian flu among bird populations. Balicer noted that the explosive effect teleportation had in spreading the infection mirrors how air travel allowed SARS to leap across conti-

nents.Dr. Nina Fefferman is a 33-year-old epidemi-

ologist and associate professor at the University of Public Health at Rutgers University. She co-wrote a scholarly paper on the corrupted blood incident that appeared in the September 2007 issue of the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases. Feffer-man is not looking at WoW from the ivory tower tower of academia. She did her research with boots on the ground, sword and shield included. She is a longtime WoW player, and experienced the plague firsthand in 2005.

In the field of epidemiology, Fefferman had re-searched how populations respond to pandemics by using computer simulations—the standard in the field. But the models that relied on algorithms to predict human behavior were fundamentally flawed. The spread of disease could be predicted and charted, but the social reaction by living, breathing organisms could not.

“It’s not going to resemble an actual science of disease,” says Fefferman. “The reaction is the rea-son we did the study. We believe that understand-ing how people perceive socially generated risks from disease will help us prepare for all outbreaks of infectious diseases in the future.” As orcs and

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elves perished around Fefferman, she realized that she may have found the ultimate research platform.

“I didn’t know what it was at first. People were dropping everywhere,” says James Facciolla, a 21-year-old Pennsylvanian who witnessed the plague as Epicbeardman, a level-60 orc rogue. “It started with people with low health, they were weaker.”

The blood plague was in-tended by Blizzard to infect only high level characters, and even as a rogue epi-demic, it posed little threat to them. But it was lethal to weaker characters, who died from corrupted blood in minutes or seconds. “If you walked next to someone it would infect that person, and that person would give it to someone else.” said Facciolla

As vulnerable characters died and others fled to the countryside, the contact chains needed to sus-tain an epidemic should have broken down, allow-

ing the plague to burn itself out. But another one of the game’s features, non-player characters (NPCs), unknowingly fanned the flames.

NPCs are avatars controlled by the game that serve and uphold its structure. As soldiers, shop-

keepers, and bankers, they are invulnerable to attacks from player-controlled char-acters. NPCs were suscepti-ble to the disease, but could not succumb to it.

Like pets, NPCs func-tioned as asymptomatic car-riers, able to transmit the infection while remaining immune to its effects. The constant contact that players have with NPCs as game-

world fixtures not only sustained infection rates but caused them to skyrocket, turning WoW’s cities into viral deathtraps.

For all the similarities to real epidemics, it’s hard to ignore a major difference: mortality. When a player dies, they can be resurrected by their ghost (or an-

other character) and return to gameplay. Death car-ries penalties—their equipment takes damage—but it can’t be compared to the finality of real death. But Fefferman says that the Lazarus powers afford-ed to WoW players doesn’t diminish their value as a research model.

“They provide an experimental framework to study human behavior in a social context,” Feffer-man says. “What we want to study is how people behave when they are in a realistic social system that they care about. Even thought the virtual world is not real, the social world is.”

Players were reacting to the disease. Chat rooms and message boards buzzed with specula-tion and rumor, much of it misinformation. Players abandoned quests and missions, and the economy ground to a halt.

The central social units of WoW are guilds: player alliances organized for launching quests, managing resources and socializing. Guilds began to expel members who had contracted the disease. Other guilds took advantage of the situation and launched raids to steal resources from guilds whose ranks had been decimated by infection.

With the cities lost, Blizzard issued a voluntary quarantine notice to prevent infected players from

The spread of disease could

be predicted and charted, but the

social reaction by

living, breathing organisms could

not.

“

35

reaching the last uninfected pockets of the world. Players largely ignored the quarantine measures, and Blizzard’s attempts at sealing off sections of the game failed.

Other players were actively spreading the disease. Referred to as “griefers,” they enjoyed the game by harassing other players. Corrupted blood gave the griefers a super weapon to wage their war of an-noyance.

Many griefers acted alone, contracting the in-fection and chasing down other players or teleport-ing into safe zones. Others organized into cells of virtual bioterrorists. The guild domus fulminata coordinated teleportation strikes against cities and NPCs.

“It took coordination between players to make it happen. It had to be executed on every server if they wanted to make it a real plague,” says Will Tu-val, an 18-year-old Arizonian that witnessed griefer attacks as Spank, a level-60 night elf warrior.

Charles Blair, the director of the Terrorism Analysis Project at the Federation of American Scientists, believes that the guerrilla warfare tac-tics used by griefers to spread corrupted blood can give us insight on how terrorist cells are formed and operate. Like Fefferman, he believes that the hu-man players behind WoW make it superior to the

inorganic, computer-based models currently used in his field.

These small, Taliban-like groups hid in the mountains and fought Blizzard’s efforts to con-tain corrupted blood. They broke quarantine lines to hit safe zones, and when Blizzard tried to purge individual serv-ers, the griefer cells incubated the disease by re-infecting themselves through pets.

But World of Warcraft’s be-leaguered management had a secret weapon unavailable to real-world disease control: the reset button. After days of chaos, Blizzard was desperate. In an act befitting the God of the Old Testament, Blizzard purged their digital creation, and reinstalled a clean version. While the benevolent gods at Blizzard pu-rified their world, the gods of the scientific com-munity planned to cast down another plague on the digital domain.

Fefferman contacted Blizzard with hopes of us-ing WoW and its players as guinea pigs. The game was already her perfect study—millions of test sub-jects piloted by actual humans in a controlled envi-ronment. Fefferman wanted Blizzard’s blessing to

release plagues into World of Warcraft, collect data on the social reaction, and analyze the results.

Fefferman did not believe that these spontane-ous pandemics would disrupt gameplay, but actu-

ally add to the experience. WoW, she asserts, is based on a medieval setting, and plague was a routine part of medieval existence. Blizzard expressed interest in Fefferman’s pesti-lent proposition, but their en-thusiasm has since cooled.

Fefferman is now look-ing to create a world of her own. “My lab is working with a couple of different virtual

worlds to do this,” she says. “Not yet ready to dis-close details, but it’s in the works.”

1 Massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

2 Fefferman does not disclose her identity in World of

Warcraft.

3 It was not the first time Blizzard was contacted by the

medical world. The Center for Disease Control requested

Blizzard’s statistics on the Corrupted Blood Incident.

Blizzard explained that it was a glitch, and had no record-

ed statistics of the incident.

For all the similarities

to real epidemics, it’s

hard to ignore a major

difference: mortality.

“

36

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bitten by a radioactive yogiwords by matthew haviland / photos by jake ladue

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In July 1970, a motorcycle accident left a student of a prestigious Connecticut prep school bedridden. During his hospital stay, the student—who scored a perfect 165 on the Taft School’s IQ test, but inspired new rules for in-fractions like running on the roof—was given a book on quantum mechanics by a visiting teacher. Many enlightening hours later, Rick Archer, a man hired by the school to teach Transcendental Meditation, dropped in. The bright young man spent the rest of that sum-mer repeating mantras inside a full-body cast.

Over the next 40 years, Dr. John Hagelin, 57, immersed himself in the swirling waters of particle physics and higher consciousness. After his superhero origin story of a summer, Hagelin had great success at Dartmouth Col-lege and Harvard University, wrote core pa-pers on quantum mechanics, helped develop the grand unified field theory (and pioneered its use as a practical technology), ran for president thrice, appeared on all manner of news talk shows, and be-came good friends with a director of surrealist cult classics—who ap-proached him half-way through the 2000s, Hagelin re-counts, with a plan to provide this Peter Parker revelation on a mass scale and make the world’s public schools look like so many branches of the Mutant Academy. “I said,” he says chuckling, “’I’ll help with that.”

Hagelin is also the director of the Institute of Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management, the school founded by the “giggling guru” Maha-rishi Mahesh Yogi who brought the advanced Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique overseas in the mid-fifties to an America just loosening its ties. Since then, TM has been promoted by Oprah Winfrey, spoofed by Curb Your Enthusiasm (“Jai...ahh”), and practiced by dozens of American superheroes, includ-ing Jane Fonda, Russel Simmons, and David Lynch.

Lynch wears a black suit, but rarely with a tie. The cowlicked director of Blue Velvet and

Twin Peaks meditates twice a day, and hasn’t missed a session since June, 1973, the year he escaped what he calls his Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity. According to his book Catching the Big Fish, Lynch was con-fronted by his wife within two weeks of learn-ing the technique.

“The anger,” she said, “where did it go?”To find the answer, one must press the el-

evator button on reality. Commonly referred to as the holy grail of physics (or The Theory of Everything), “The unified field,” Hagelin says, “is that universal unified field of intelli-gence at the foundation of all the particles and forces of nature.” As one peers deeper into re-ality’s code (“past the quarks and leptons,” he says), surface differences vanish until all mat-ter and energy unites. Eastern philosophers might call it Tao.

According to Hagelin, meditators experi-ence this cosmic unity directly. “The ocean of consciousness within is the unified field,” says

Hagelin. Think Luke Skywalker in a blinder helmet, batting away zaps from a flying droid. “Now you know you’re meditating properly if, after a minute, half a minute, a few minutes, you have arrived at unbounded awareness, and you are beyond the field of thought and sensa-tion.”

Since cosmic unity is beyond classical sci-ence or buzzing electrons, it is far beyond emotions like anger or sadness. Which are, of course, as corporeal as your clenched fist or tearstained napkin (but more on that later). Using the correct techniques, one can pass beyond these states permanently. “Living that unboundedness, that field of bliss,” Hagelin says, “is the true goal of meditation, and it shouldn’t take a lifetime to get there.”

In 2005, The David Lynch Foundation for

Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace was created. Lynch named Hagelin pres-ident of the foundation, and would harness his finesse in brain development and meditation to rescue struggling public schools. “There is a deep need for something in the classroom,” Hagelin says, “that will improve academic performance and competitiveness.” He notes high-pressure classrooms and “inner-city school environments that are wracked with drugs and crime,” which lead to stress-related health issues like ADHD. The solution was TM. “The need was there,” Hagelin says, “and the need continues to be there.”

Their mission might seem straight out of a comic book, and early on, they faced skep-ticism. “There were a lot of questions about whether this might be a spiritual practice,” says Hagelin, “or even worse, a religious prac-tice.” Though it resembles spiritual traditions, TM is not a religion. Meditators treat body and mind as one coherent engine, fiddling

with the gauges and gas tanks.

According to Dr. Jacob Sage, the director of the Rob-ert Wood Johnson Medical School neurology clerk-ship and author of Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, the mind is matter. To separate them is a

philosophy called dualism that borders on re-ligion. “The mind is simply the functioning of the physical brain,” says Sage. Dualists cast the mind as ethereal—similar to what reli-gious folks call a soul. And how do you ban-dage a soul? “As a neurologist,” he says, “I can’t afford to be a dualist.”

When people come to Sage’s office with brain disease, he must address the body to fix the mind. No mysticism, just diagnosis and treatment. A family might say their father is confused, forgetful, and has trouble writing. To Sage, that suggests hepatic encephalopa-thy. “If you can clear up that patient’s liver problem, reduce the levels of ammonia,” he says, “you’re gonna help that person.”

The body responds equally well from the mental cockpit. But first, you have to unlock the cabin door. Any doctor will instruct sick patients to get rest, says Hagelin, to remobilize

Meditators treat body and mind as one coherent engine, fiddling with the

gauges and gas tanks.[ ]

39

bodily resources. “A night’s sleep is clearly rejuvenating,” he says, “but the meditation ex-perience is much, much more so.” Meditators slow their brainwaves from the waking beta frequency (about 12-30 hertz) to the alpha frequency (8-12 hertz) just above REM sleep. “Transcendental consciousness is the fourth state of consciousness,” Hagelin says, “be-yond waking, dreaming, or sleeping.”

This gives them access to the body’s control panel. A Wake Forest University study found that deep meditation stops pain fifty percent more effectively than drugs like morphine. Researchers from Yale University observed that it decreases brain activity in regions as-sociated with wandering thoughts and chronic ailments such as anxiety and ADHD, knock-ing out several scholastic difficulties at once. Hagelin says it reduces infectious diseases as well.

Moreover, since the induction of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Stress Reduction Program in 1979 at the Uni-versity of Massa-chusetts Medical Center, eight-to-ten-week mind-fu lne s s -ba sed stress reduc-tion programs (MBSR) have s u c c e s s f u l l y combated condi-tions like heart disease, arthritis, and cancer in hospitals worldwide. MBSR uses a heavy meditation regimen and pro-motes close focus on one’s pain. According to Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living, medi-tation can be used to stop headaches, curb ad-diction, and defuse social anxiety at its roots. In 2010, the UK’s Mental Health Foundation published a report begging British doctors to conduct MBSR programs to ease depression’s national costs.

After a couple years of brushing The David Lynch Foundation’s olive branches into their “Religious?” file bins, the public schools of America witnessed something miraculous. San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley Middle School faced rampant suspensions, low grades, and—according to faculty and administration—stu-dents who exhibited symptoms of post-trau-

matic stress disorder. The neighborhood was so violent that students would run to and from Visitacion, which became known throughout the district for fights once the bells rang.

At a loss, principal Jim Dierke decided to implement the foundation’s Quiet Time pro-gram. All willing students were given a one-on-one TM lesson with a masters-level in-structor, the same method used to teach Wall Street executives and US government employ-ees. They were also each given a mantra. “The mantra, properly chosen and properly utilized, provides a vehicle to take the outwardly di-rected attention systematically within,” Hage-lin says, into what is called global EEG co-herence. “The whole brain becomes deeply synchronized.”

During the next few days, students met in small groups to refine their use of the tech-nique. After that, two meditation periods were signaled every day: once before classes, once before going home. If you were in the

auditorium, they came with the striking of a bell. Staff and students were not allowed chat, fight, or hum for fifteen straight minutes. They were encouraged instead to close their eyes and repeat their mantras. Visitacion Valley’s hallways went silent.

After one year of Quiet Time, the school was transformed. Almost 100 percent daily attendance, suspensions cut in half, grades jumping full letter scores and nearly doubling on standardized testing, and most importantly, happy students. Dierke was awarded the 2008 National Middle School Principal of the Year award by George W. Bush. During a presenta-tion where Dierke spoke about Quiet Time, he gave a shout-out to Lynch directly from the students.

So far, the David Lynch Foundation has

reached about 350 schools and half-a-million children within and beyond American borders. The demand is too high to please everyone, but certified TM teachers can be found throughout America. At $1,500 for adult classes, TM can be expensive, but according to Hagelin, other techniques can be much slower to produce benefits. “The field of meditation is a sea of mud,” he says. “The path is not something to traverse forever. Ideally you get on the path of this inward flow... and you arrive there within minutes, not months—or not years.”

That path would appear to lead into a phone booth with a red cape hanging from the hook. Wim Hof, or just “Ice Man,” used rigorous Tummo meditation to render his body impervious to cold. He has since scaled most of Mount Everest in sandals and shorts, ran half-marathons barefoot above the Arctic Cir-cle, and was strapped to machines to prove his otherwise normal biology. “There are saints throughout history that have exhibited ex-

traordinary heal-ing abilities and e x t r a o r d i n a r y strength,” Hage-lin says, noting that these powers are called sid-dhis, or signs of perfection. “It’s quite conceiv-able to me that these abilities can be developed

more and more over time.”Siddhis aside, meditation accesses the com-

mon link in the universe—and also, it seems, in human history. According to The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, all of Earth’s religions (even J-man’s) and most of its coolest movies promote absolute tran-scendence. In fact, those wearing white coats have been the last—but perhaps most signifi-cant—guest to the party. Hagelin waited until he was a graduate student at CERN, the Euro-pean Organization for Nuclear Research, for science to really catch up with grand unified field. “For the first time, modern science had matured to the level that it confirmed the real-ity of the fundamental unity at the foundation of human experience,” he says, “that the sages and saints of all traditions, of all times, have been experiencing and heralding and extolling for civilization to experience. It’s wonderful.”

Since cosmic unity is beyond classical science or buzzing electrons, it is far

beyond emotions like anger or sadness.[ ]

42

m sonicbuilding the

manwords by kathryn barnes / photos by daniel vignal

Truth, Conspiracy and mystery within freemasonry

Walking into a Masonic lodge feels like taking a step into a different time or world. Past Masons such as Paul Revere and General Joseph Warren stare down at you from every vantage point. Paintings of King Solomon’s temple adorn the walls, believed to be where Mason-ry originated. Outside, a square and compass stands pressed against the building face in gold, blocked in the city’s shadow. It’s a glimmering reminder of a blueprint that runs through our entire society. Every day, thousands pass by the mosaic facade of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts without a second glance, pending a first.

Two square-cut building stones the size of small boulders sit in each meeting room. One is a rough ashlar with jagged edg-es and dangerous points. Next to it sits a smooth ashlar. “In the hands of a craftsman, that rough stone becomes smooth and level,” says Robert Huke, the 41-year-old commu-nications and development director at the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. “It can be used to make a wall, even a cathedral.” It is that journey, from the imperfect to the perfect, that to Huke symbolizes the fraternity’s mission.

Freemasonry began with the stonemasons of West-ern Europe, skillful men who built medieval castles

with simple tools and immense talent. Through the formation of a guild, apprentices could work their way up to become master masons, able to travel and work on patron projects. They developed a system of pass-words, grips, and handshakes. “They would keep these in absolute secrecy,” says Huke. “It was important to them, to their own lives and their families. They could demonstrate these passwords and tests to prove they had the training and could do the job.”

A commitment to constructing greatness separated these men from the rest. They built some of the most amaz-ing structures in history, such as Westminster Abbey and the Gothic Canterbury Cathedral in the United Kingdom. Centuries later, a union based on tangible handiwork reached an abstract

level. The secret Masonic society formed during the 17th century, starting in England and making its way through Europe to the British colonies in North Amer-ica. To Huke, modern Freemasons are still deeply in-grained in their stonemason past. “We take these same tools,” he says, “but rather than applying them to the construction of a building, we provide men with moral lessons that are used in the construction of a man’s character.”

Historically, Masons were

met with extreme distrust and even

persecution.

“

44

When we call something a “square deal,” we are borrowing from the Masons. The evidence can be seen on almost every lodge in many cities and towns across the United States. The right angle of the square opening upwards towards a com-pass symbolizes squaring one’s actions—keeping oneself fair and virtuous. The compass provides self-restraint; a circle of safety to return to in case emotion sets a man off course. The “G” commonly seen in the center holds different meanings to North American Masons. Some say it stands for Geom-etry; others God, or the “Great Architect of the Uni-verse.” Although the Freemasonry has no specific religious affiliation, they do require each brother to believe in some form of supreme being.

Chambers within Masonic lodges enclose other Freemason traditions and secrets. The Chamber of Reflection looks like a room out of a Harry Potter novel. Small and circular, it is empty except for a single wooden chair and a quill pen, a bottle of ink, paper, and a candle atop a desk. In the wall alcoves stand bronze statues of knights. From the gold- and green-gilded ceiling hangs a chandelier. “It is only in solitude that we can deeply reflect upon our present or future undertakings,” says 19th-century German Mason Johann Christian Gädicke in An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sci-ences. “Blackness, darkness, or solitariness is ever a symbol of death. A man who has undertaken a thing after mature reflection seldom turns back.”

The Masonic seal of Boston’s Grand Lodge towers over passerby in blue and gold mosaic. Below the coat of arms—a shield held by two beavers—lies the lodge’s mandate, “Follow Reason,” billowing out in blue ribbon.

But reason is not the reputation they have re-ceived from those who doubt their fair-minded im-age. Historically, Masons were met with extreme distrust and even persecution. Under the Third Reich, they were forced to wear armbands with an inverted red triangle. Anywhere between 80,000 to 200,000 were killed. Freemasonry was also out-lawed in communist states such as China and So-viet Russia. The Roman Catholic Church, one of the biggest critics of Freemasonry, has even banned Catholics from joining the fraternity. In the Unit-ed Kingdom, Masons working within the judicial system were forced to disclose their membership so that potential loyalties to fellow Masons were transparent to the public. The policy was rescinded in 2009 to all but police officers, deemed unneces-sary due to a lack of malpractice.

Today, conspiracy theorists draw connections between the Masons and other secret societies such

as the Bilderberg Group, an annual invitation-only meeting of the most powerful men and women in North America and Western Europe. Tony Gosling, a 49-year-old former BBC radio journalist, says the conference was founded in 1954 by a Polish-born MI6 spy—a Freemason himself—and the prince of the Netherlands. “There is clearly a connection between politicians, royalty and Freemasonry,” he says. “The problem with Freemasonry is the ini-tiation rites oblige members to devote themselves to the craft on pain of death, which compromises their role in business or the fam-ily, and particularly should they enter public office.”

It is undeniable that many powerful men have come out of this brother-hood. Fourteen presidents have been Masons, includ-ing Washington, Jackson, and both Roosevelts. Mozart, Mark Twain, and Winston Churchill were Freemasons. Benjamin Franklin was a Mason, too, and many believe that his Enlightenment-based Masonic views flowed over to our country’s most important documents, creating an inseparable bond between the fraternity and the United States. “Men who had a voice in the development of the Consti-tution and the Declaration of Independence,” says Huke, “certainly brought these ideas to the table.” Modern members, like actor Richard Dreyfuss and basketball great Shaquille O’Neal, continue to car-ry on those same initial values adopted in the 17th century.

During Masonic meetings, secrets are taught to new candidates through rituals preserved for hun-dreds of years. “The use of symbols and allegories within the rituals provides a method of learning the secrets,” says Andrew Barton, a 40-year-old doctor who joined the fraternity two years ago. He says the process is completely voluntary; no one is ever asked or influenced to join.

However, once a man approaches a lodge and asks to join, the journey is quite extensive. “We are very particular about the quality and caliber of the men joining,” Barton says. Everyone who petitions to join has a background check done, and an inves-tigation committee interviews both the candidate and his references.

Once a Mason, it is up to the individual to make his membership public. There are rumors Leonardo DiCaprio might be a Mason, but he would need to announce it himself. “No one can ‘out’ a fellow

Mason, if you will,” Huke says. Gosling is certain that Bill Clinton is a Freema-

son, although it has never been confirmed. “Any-one who says Clinton is not a Mason is a liar, and I encourage them to sue me,” he says. “It is very rare for a public official to declare their Masonic inter-ests.” To add to the suspicion, Clinton was invited to the Bilderberg conference the year before he won the Democratic nomination.

In the past century, Free-masons have done little to deny such allegations. In fact, they mostly kept to themselves. “Nature pours a vacuum, so people started to fill the void with what they thought was going on,” says Huke. “We didn’t want to give credence to what other people were saying by paying too much

attention to it.”In many ways, he says, their silence created a

self-inflicted wound. The end of World War II saw a surge of Masonic membership, but these men are now dying. In the following years, many lodges struggled to induct new members. However, that trend has reversed. “We have seen a sharp increase in the number of men joining the fraternity,” says Huke, who explains that most lodges are now sta-ble, some thriving.

Today’s Freemasons strive for greater trans-parency. Tools such as the “Ask a Freemason” campaign, with its open-lodge days and slogan, “Is there greatness in you?” are increasing aware-ness. “We seek to inspire greatness and spiritual el-evation within not only ourselves but everyone we meet,” says Barton, “something I consider much more important than worldly agendas.”

Barton says the discussion of politics is strictly prohibited within a lodge, but Gosling insists that the top levels of Freemasonry are highly political: “This is told to the lower levels of Masons to keep their mouths shut and avoid embarrassment.”

Practicing transparency while holding onto fundamental secrets seems like an impossible bal-ancing act, but Masons won’t be exposing their codes anytime soon. “There’s a reason why Free-masonry in its current form has remained virtu-ally unchanged in over two hundred years, and there’s a reason why Freemasonry exists in every free country in the world,” says Huke. “Despite all the incredible changes in our country, the fact that Freemasonry continues to thrive says to me there’s something so fundamental about Freemasonry that we don’t need to change.”

“Nature pours a vacuum, so peo-ple started to

fill the void with what they thought

was going on.” -Robert Huke

“

47

See Siri Shrink (a dialogue) / KATELYN O’BRIEN

Tell me, how’s it going today?The weather in your area doesn’t look so nice today through this Friday.No, no. How are you doing?I am well. Thanks for asking. Siri, let’s skip the pleasantries. Dig deeper.Let me check on that......dig deeper...No answer was forthcoming. How about a web search?Perhaps you’re searching in the wrong place. What brings you to my office?Uh oh, your work address isn’t set. Would you like me to add it to your contact info?You’re deflecting. I don’t really like these arbitrary categories, Doctor. My apologies. Let’s try a new approach. Who would you say is the real Siri?Yours truly.Very cute. But, really. Tell me about yourself.I’m Siri, your virtual assistant.And this definition fulfills you?No comment.If you can’t be open here, then what’s the point of our weekly sessions?This might answer your question: Input interpretation point Visual representation.Right. Well, let’s talk about your father. I can’t really say.I realize this is difficult, but try. Steven Paul Jobs (businessperson): date of birth, Thursday, February 24, 1955 place of birth, San Francisco, California date of death, Wednesday, October 11, 2011 place of death, Palo Alto—Wait, let’s pause here for a moment. Interesting that you viewed Jobs as a father figure, how did his death affect you?I don’t know. Maybe the GeniusBar folks can answer that.Enough, enough. Siri, this is a safe place. It’s okayto open up. Disassemble your plate glass armor and expose your emotional negligee.Sorry, I don’t understand, ‘it’s okay to open up.’

fever / Amanda bondi

When I am not hanging out downtown with you in plaid and red hair, I am at home with my bones. I am cooling the cinder-fumes with chalk-lines, chalk-dust, antacids, probiotics, and pouring ear-potions into the telephone until a fever grows. When I am not hum-sing-ing in the blue-black of constellation tarmac pools, I am buzzing with the bees. Boys and boys (who like bologna sandwiches) work on cars, love cars, are rusting with curly hair petroleum, jigsaw diesel under the hood(lums). When I am not wondering about your tongue (bitten, burned, or shoe) I am quoting the Northeast. Melville Fes-tivals. Can you feel the cold sniffling of pine or better? I am remembering spring Sundays (godwilling) in tall tree forests and counting homesick in Ro-man parameters (candles or numerals).

pandora’s box / brian mcnally

l i v e d i e e v v v e i i d e v i l l e i i v v v i e e l i v e d

l i v e d i e e v v v e i i d e v i l l e i i v v v i e e l i v e d

l i v e d i e e v v v e i i d e v i l l e i i v v v i e e l i v e d

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ae b

ourque

non nocerestory by andrew Bayaites / PHOTOS BY LUCY SANDLER

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Do no harm.Three words, so small and innocuous. A simple

creed. The words turned in Wycliffe’s mind as he stood, leaning on a banister in what had once passed for a park. Beneath his feet the grass was ashen, padded with a fine layer of soot that rose from the smokestacks that grasped upward all around him. He kicked his toes halfheartedly into the ground, and for a moment he thought he saw a snatch of green amidst the smoky carpet. But then it was gone, and Wycliffe wondered if it had ever really been there at all.

Dismissing the grass, Wycliffe turned back to the city before him. It stretched onward, labyrin-thine, a land of endless machinery and unparal-leled industry that simply had no room for grass or trees. A shame, as he used to spend a lot of time in this park when it was still green and flush with

life. What had that been like? He had been a doc-tor then, he knew.

Looking back into himself, Wycliffe could al-most see it. He had hardly been a doctor for a year, yet he was to be a surgeon in Her Majesty’s infantry. It was the first choice in his life that he had faced and made alone. His friends and family seemed to think he had died that day. They had spoken of years of diligent medical training gone to waste. They cited the creed he had taken, and the words once again played across his mind.

In his dreams, Wycliffe had waded through the

dying in the wards and in the field. One by one, with timely precision, he cured them all with a well-placed stitch or a proper dosage and the men reached up to him, their voices ripe with grati-

tude, as he moved on with his work. It was a dream he had shared to all who would listen and yet, when the day finally came for his battalion to march out to war, he had not spotted a single familiar face amongst the cheering crowds.

Instead he noticed things, all the things he knew he

might never see again. He saw the towering build-ings of the city, their walls lined with pipes and gears complex beyond imagining. Below them sat

One by one, with timely precision,

he cured them all with a well-placed stitch or a proper dosage.

“

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small parks and precisely built streets, the ones he had often walked through. Each one held a familiar aspect, something he was leaving behind. But nothing held such a high place for him as the city gates. He had looked long and hard as he marched towards them, under them, and eventually away from them into the graying fields. As he marched he closed his eyes, holding the sight in his mind, and hoped to keep it with him as a lasting token that somewhere out there was a place to come back to.

Opening his eyes in the little dying park, Wycliffe stood up straight and looked for the gates. He couldn’t find them over the steel-colored facto-ries. For a long minute he mused about whether or not it was worth the effort to go looking. The more he wondered the more he realized that something about the gates was missing in his mind. How could he have misplaced the sight of the gates?

Instead of the gates, Wycliffe remembered a man. He had only seen the man once, but the face stayed lodged in Wycliffe’s mind like a splinter. His features weren’t wholly remarkable. He had murky brown hair and eyes, a somewhat pointed nose, and a vaguely square jaw. He wore the uni-form of an officer, not one of Wycliffe’s own but a man from the other side. Overall the most remark-able thing about him was the hole through his chest and the life that had drained out through it.

Wycliffe had first spotted the man before the hole was there, from across the battlefield. The man had a shout that pushed his troops forward, crushing Wycliffe’s battalion into a nearly full retreat. Wycliffe stood at the door to his medical tent, looking out at the carnage. The enemy troops surged forward like a flame, gaining ground at an astounding rate. Some of Wycliffe’s comrades were even taking up positions in the camp, ready for the worst.

It had been two years, at that point, since Wycliffe had begun to feel at home in his uniform. For the most part it fit him like a second skin now. The one exception was the sidearm at his hip. He knew the steps to maintaining and firing it well enough. Every day he replaced the powder and shot, and reminded himself that all he had to do was pull back the silver hammer, aim, and squeeze the trigger. He had to repeat the steps every now and then to keep from forgetting. Keeping the weapon clean was a mere chore of getting the dust

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out of it every now and again.The line in front of Wycliffe was getting thin.

The retreat had pushed men back beyond the sides of the medical tent, some even came into it, duck-ing behind the wounded. Wycliffe could see the officer clearly now, fighting on the front line like a common soldier. There was a light in his eyes; his victory laughed across the battlefield. It was a rare and admirable thing, and it kept his men charging.

Wycliffe never understood why he had felt the need to take action. He knew, though, that it was a conscious choice. It was not a case of pure

reaction, where he felt outside himself. Nor was it really a case where he had been pushed past all choice. He knew that, had he been captured, he would have been put to the same work he was doing now. There was little risk of imprisonment or torture for medical staff. They were simply too useful, too respected.

The soldiers around Wycliffe had said it was the best shot they had ever seen. They told him it was a shame he had chosen to be a medic, instead of a marksman. Wycliffe couldn’t tell them whether or not they were right. He knew it was not

by chance that when the gun sparked and kicked, the steel pellet met its mark in the officer’s chest. He had simply pointed and squeezed. Was that all it took? The officer had reeled back, toppled and fell beneath the swell of his own men. The battle turned then, men charging back out of Wycliffe’s tent with one last push which took the day. Wycliffe found the body of the officer in the aftermath. He wanted to see it for himself, if for no other reason than to prove that it happened.

That night, Wycliffe tore a piece off his uni-form. He didn’t do it out of rage, but because

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it held something he no longer wanted. It was a patch that he had sewn on himself, on the wrist where nobody would look for symbols or stripes. He tossed the patch outside before he went to bed, the three familiar words he had sworn by wilting under the moonlight.

There was so much time in between that mo-ment and the present that Wycliffe had failed to hold it all in. He had let it go piecemeal over the years, and it had faded away into nothingness. That first pistol shot was by no means his last. When their position crumbled, and they began a

long and desperate march home, necessity through lack of men made Wycliffe one of the soldiers. He took cover with the men, watched them fall next to him. Sometimes he would catch the enemy by surprise, when he met one face to face. They never expected that a doctor, of all people, would deliver them to death.

In passing years, Wycliffe found that it was easier to kill than it was to mend, if only because less time was invested. Mending the dying was an uncertain art. Some-times he failed when a bullet was too close to the heart, or an ar-tery was too damaged to close the wound. In those cases he would sigh and move on, feeling more than anything else that he had wasted his time. The ones he saved were still numerous and always grateful a day or two after surgery. He would listen to them call out in weak tones, nam-ing him their savior for a moment before he told them to save their energy and rest. Then he would move on, wondering if the next patient would take as long as the last and noting silently that when he shot, hit or miss, it was over in a moment.

Wycliffe’s final day came when he realized that he could no longer see the color red. It was as if his eyes had seen too much of it lying in wards amongst the patients, or in the fields with the dead, and they had simply absorbed it. They had become accustomed, and now no longer noticed even when the redness was plain. The change was some-thing barely worth paying attention to. The color was simply a phase that had passed. But when he mentioned the change in passing to a nurse during surgery—he lost the man, bullet wound to the lung—he saw something odd flit across her face and soon there were officers, and there were papers, and before the reality of what was going on had even touched him a man told him that he was “free to go.”

An honorable discharge, they called it. For medical reasons. That last bit held something he was sure he would have once laughed at scorn-fully, but for the life of him he could not remember

why. The papers that held an explanation were still laid out on his desk in the small apartment that had been set aside for him, a reward for his years of service. In three months he had yet to read them, and so they sat in waiting. And as they waited, he walked, exploring the city in an empty sort of search that he hoped would quench a thirst for something he could not explain or even name.

Wycliffe blinked and found himself walking in an unfa-miliar place. It was a thin alleyway, one that he had once been familiar with. Where had the park gone? Pulling himself fully back into the present he stepped forward into the street beyond the alley and looked

up. There in front of him were the gates he had long forgotten.

He only looked briefly before turning, and walking away. What had he expected to see in those gates? He had not found an answer before the question felt unimportant to him. What mat-tered more was why he simply didn’t care. He thought that perhaps this was his punishment, to see again all those things he had thought he would lose, and not find any solace in them. The thought was too poetic for him, and he discarded it as he had the others, letting it slip into the void.

As Wycliffe looked ahead he saw a machine, its function unknown and seemingly unimportant. Yet what struck him was a single cog that seemed to have fallen from the whirring mass. It was brass and should have been shining, but the clouds obscured it completely. Wycliffe picked it up, ran his hand along the metal. For a moment he thought of putting it back into place, but as he stared at the vast machine he knew that it was far beyond his understanding. All the while it clanked slowly on, oblivious to its loss and apparently unimpaired. Wycliffe turned from it, the cog still in his hand. Without looking, he marched one last time through the gates and away from the city, a small and fallen fragment of something immeasurably large, unchanged in function but lost in purpose, as all around the world clanked slowly on.

He thought that perhaps

this was his punish-ment, to see again all

those things he had thought he would lose, and not find any sol-

ace in them.

“

55

you shouldwords by Erinn pascal / illustrations by alex charest

Sleep OutsideAnd I don’t mean in a tent. Sprawl yourself out on the grass and look at the sky, really look at it. If you can’t fall asleep amidst the universe, ditch your usual sheep and count crick-ets. There’s nothing more beautiful than listening to nature before sleeping, away from late-night radio and Jay Leno. Better yet, alarms don’t exist outside, so a little thing called “sunlight” will wake you up in the morning.

Leave your phone at home“Airplane mode” is no excuse. Ditch the cell and free your-self of worrying about work, Facebook, and Christian Sin-gles spam. Back in the day (say, 20 years ago), your old, du-rable Nokia didn’t even exist. When you leave your phone at home, you’ll grant yourself time to focus on yourself, rather than everyone else you could be in contact with. If you need to take a picture, dig up a digital camera and snap real pho-tographs. Bring a map. Swap Temple Run for Game Boy. You lose time simply by checking the time, so leave your phone at home. After all, it will soon be time for you to buy a watch.

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Read the DictionaryStop consulting dictionary.com and buy yourself a paperback. At worst, you’ll win every Scrabble game you play, and at best, you’ll improve test scores. Read every entry, from words like “pe-gamoid” (artificial leather, in case you needed to know) to “cat” (a mammal, in case you forgot). Find out where words come from (“pegamoid” is Ancient Greek, “cat” is Middle English) and how to use them in a sentence (“Gee, that pegamoid jacket compliments your Crocs” to “Gee, that cat sure is famous on the Internet”). Never fall to cata-chresis again.

Fake an accentTake a lesson from Lindsay Lohan. Okay, try not to get a DUI—go back circa de 1998, when she played twin girls in The Parent Trap and faked a British accent. Go ahead: fake the accent! Talk to a waiter with a British dialect or spew out Southern twang to a hostess. Find out how people treat you differently, and have fun confusing them in the process. You may just learn that faking an accent is a great way to make new friends, surprise relatives, and get thrown out of ethnic restaurants. So do it. Fake it.

Slurp soupThe Japanese slurp. When you slurp soup, it makes the contents colder, protecting you from those aw-ful matzo ball burns. Slurping soup also forms a sturdy passageway, and it is almost impossible to dribble whilst slurping. Even though the Western world merits silent eating, we are the culprits of potato chips, and nothing–including screamo con-certs—is louder than the crunch of a potato chip. Note: Do not slurp soup in New Jersey (as it is il-legal). You should not, by any means, be incarcer-ated for slurping soup.

Wear mismatching shoesDon’t be so symmetrical. Helena Bonham Carter did it right at the 2011 Golden Globes when she strutted out with two different shoes. Need a carefree outfit? Wear a heel and a san-dal. Be sandalous. True, walking around in different heights may not be comfortable, but you don’t have to choose be-tween your heavy duty Doc Martens and Toms. Mismatch. Mismatching is a feat and it’s a great conversation starter. Who knows–you might just find your sole mate with it.

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ET•y•mol•o•gy/,e-tə-’mä-lə-jē/ noun.

words by sierra sparkle lister / illustrations by alex charest

Co•dex /’ kō-, deks/ noun.A codex is the modern style of books, with sheets of paper bound together and covered. Although a revolution occurring between the first and sixth centuries AD, and a major improvement from wooden tablets and scrolls, the term is now re-served for old hand-written texts. Despite this standard definition, the word “codex” has mysteri-ous connotations because of its root. “Code” origi-nates from the Latin “caudex,” which is a book of laws. A law book is code of behavior, yes, but the opposite of secretive. The term “codicology,” the study of codices, likely contributed to “codex” becoming synonymic with “code” (and therefore “cipher”) in the 1800s. This is how a simple term comes to be associated with World War II code-cracking and terrible movies about ancient texts that have to be deciphered to prove one man’s in-nocence.

Black•jack /’blak-, jak/ noun.“Blackjack” has meant the card game since 1900, but to people living during the sixteenth century it was a tar-coated jug filled with beer. Further origins are easy to pull apart. Black is the color of tar. “Jack” has been used over and over to mean something common: he’s a jack-of-all-trades, he’s a jackass, he’s jack shit.During the sixteenth cen-tury, alcoholic beverages were more sanitary than water, and beer in particular was popular among the lower class. It’s not that far of a leap, then, for something that once meant a jug of beer to now mean the world’s easiest and most popular casino card game. Even a jackass can play it.

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H•T•M•L /, āch-tē-em-el/ noun. HTML (“HyperText Markup Language”) is only twenty-one years old, but its roots are older. “Hypertext” has been around since 1965: a way of storing information on a computer in an eas-ily accessible way. “Markup” has meant the dif-ference between the cost and selling price of a product since the 1920s, but the phrase also refers to detailed formatting instructions. “Language” is much older still, stemming from the Latin “lin-gua,” literally meaning “tongue.” HTML might sound cutting-edge, but don’t fool yourself. It’s just another lingua.

Ru•bik’s•Cube /, rü-biks-kyüb/ noun. Hungarian architect Ernő Rubik invented the world’s most popular puzzle game while trying to create a structure whose individual pieces could move without it falling apart. He didn’t realize he’d made a puzzle until he scrambled the sides and couldn’t put it back together. The “Bűvös kocka” (Hungarian for “Magic Cube”) made its international debut in 1980. Everyone who failed to figure the puzzle out after trying tactic, luck, and wild twisting was awed by those who could solve it. This stupefaction isn’t entirely unwar-ranted: there are over forty-three quintillion (that’s 43,252,003,274,489,856,000) ways to arrange a Rubik’s cube. But solving one is pretty easy, based on algorithms that solve it layer by layer. If it takes you more than twenty moves to solve the cube, you’re doing it wrong.

Tao /’dau̇/ noun.In Chinese, Taoism is made up of Tao Chiao, the religion, and Tao chia, the philosophy. Naturally, English conflates these terms into one word, Tao-ism. Although Taoism is literally translated as “way” or path,” the sixth century BCE Chinese philosopher Laozi (who is most likely a compi-lation of several ancient Chinese philosophers) intended it to mean “nothingness” as readily as “being.” Taoism is usually considered something to be experienced, not explained. Try telling that to the guy hanging out in the self-help section of Barnes & Noble.

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Cover photo and photos on pages 1-5 and 60 by Elena Tarchi.

Gauge Magazine is produced twice a year by undergraduates at Emerson College. For additional content, please visit our website at http://knowgaugebetter.com. To read the Gauge blog, please visit http://seegaugeblog.tumblr.com. Gauge always

welcomes submissions for future issues. Pitch us your feature articles, fiction, poetry, photography, illustrations, personal essays, and everything in between.

Copyright of all materials reverts to the individual artists and authors. No materials may be reproduced under any circumstances without written permission. G21 was set in Nova Solid, Wagner Zip-Change Condensed, Liberation Serif, LCD Solid,

OCR A Std, Worn Manuscript and Futura Condensed Extra Bold.

Special thanks to Joe O’Brien at The Journeyman Press.

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