Historian Gray Click Here!

I don't know if you know this, but the Internet watches back. The successes of Anonymous are not your successes. Facebook users take note, not only is it near impossible to delete your account, but Facebook employees follow your clicking for fun. Even if you are unknown, you are not un-noted. This site uses Google Analytics to become analytically involved with our readership. (The average time on site is 10 minutes for an US reader, while not even a minute for a UK reader. How we can compete with Beat That Quote?)
As of now, we can take comfort, the eyes that stare back at us rarely focus in. You may be filmed as you neck in Central Park, but odds are no one will look at the tape unless a Terror strikes nearby. You may post a wacky comment on your Facebook crush after visiting their profile for the 50th time today, and while Facebook employees could giggle at this, they probably won't. But what about the historians.

I don't really sweat our blog's hits and stats. I post for my friends and family, as a personal record, and for my true love; the historian I sometimes imagine wafting through the gases of my web life. He is the hidden figure in the "generation me" equation --a name by the way which must go and is completely inadequate in describing the natural self-indulgence children born today will posses. But the web denizens of today and tomorrow will continue to dream of being noticed after they are dead, in some sort of 7-up induced fantasy.

But what will remain, and will anyone care? First, what will remain: from my experience, not a lot. This blog will be a collection of broken links and words that were arranged just to make room for the links in the first place. Will that dance with the mildest of restrictions be one day noticed as art? Does it satisfy Alan Moore's criteria of structure? Probably not. But if not as art, then as comforting history? Who knows? I've been online long enough to know that things don't last out here, at least not how you intended. But that doesn't mean no one will care.

To be honest, I'm not ready to say if my Historian of Tomorrow will ever find me. That's a prediction I'm not ready to make. But surely there are smaller things I can try my hand at. The futurists at the Long Now have been doing this for awhile. Kevin Kelly has a daring prediction on Long Bets that I'm not willing to disagree with:
“By 2060 the total population of humans on earth will be less than it is today.”
If you take into account what Stewart Brand says, it's hard to disagree.

But here's a prediction I've had kicking around in a notebook for awhile. But I'll put it into play now,

PREDICTION:
Within five years I will be able to buy a Killer Robot Nixon from the Futurama episode, A Head in the Polls.

WHY:
Eventually anything you want, will be available anyway you want it. As culture continues it's march into the physical world, expect more dolls, replicas, and garments from your favorite obscure tv show/movie/book/comic/blog post.

Young actor's murderer still on the loose - could this be the beginning of a spree?

I have recently received insider information from an actor working in New York, that Heath Ledger was killed by the Joker. Ledger was recently quoted as saying that playing the part of the psychotic Joker in the upcoming film, The Dark Knight, put such a strain on the actor that he could not sleep at night.

Ledger told The New York Times last year that Heath Ledger stressed a little too much over the role.
The interview was done in London during the filming of Batman.
'It is a physically and mentally draining role (his Joker is a “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy” he said cheerfully ) and, as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he is not sleeping much," Heath Ledger told The Times.

“Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.”
[Link]

So there you have it. Now the Joker's started killing people out here in the real world. Well, kind of the real world. New York City anyway, not LA, or Tokyo or one of those DC cities. A proper Marvel city. I'm starting to see it more and more. Life drifting into the broad strokes of a comic book: pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Chick Stone, and fuck sake let's say it, script by Stan Lee.
And that might be putting too precise a point on it. The inks aren't always by Chic Stone, and sometimes the pencils are by Steve Ditko. But regardless, like in the Mighty Marvel Age of the 1960s what we're seeing around us is a world shaped by the artists. A world that is running a few steps faster, and a fews steps deeper than what the writers are picking up or getting down.

Things are starting to happen which lead me to think that the dread iron system, whose shadow we have been cowering under since the birth of our New American Century, when on September the Eleventh the assault on the hearts, minds, and rights Americans began, but what I'm trying to say, is maybe that's ending now.

Yeah, so this is the thing. I might be fooling myself, and even if I am, its okay I need the break from the bleak. But I really am starting to think that maybe things are getting better. I really don't want to jinx it, but maybe the brutal and much loathed system, will just break. Fall apart like a poorly thought out Rube Goldberg machine. Not so bad. Weeds are springing up through the cement. Tree roots cracked it but the dandelions have the flowers now.

But it seems this is a transition period; reality is becoming less fixed, and change starts to happen faster and faster. New technologies are rippling into ever facet of life and every field of thought. And so the world starts to look more like a comic book. But I've said that already, so let's go to some examples:

Okay Tom Cruise is a lot of my evidence. I don't know when you first realized that he's a super hero, but for me it was a picture I saw on some tabloid last May that looked something like this,
I believe here he's pictured riding towards Avengers Mansion shortly before his falling out with Hollywood types he once considered nearly family. So far Tom Cruise seems a lot cooler than Tony Stark, who he was originally on the team to replace. Perhaps since Tom Cruise thinks he can move things with his mind, and did overcome his dyslexia through hard work, his mental powers make him more appealing than a gadget hero like Stark's Iron Man.
[Tom Cruise taking ‘Mission’ to Tribeca]

Also if you watched the latest Tom Cruise bit to hit the web, (but not the news, copyright is still ironclad for them) you may have gotten the impression that Tom Cruise's legacy will overshadow that of Scientology. I think he is using his mental powers and personal energy to summon forth something. And his image is starting to represent that something more than the dying cult he is presently apart of.
[Watch the Secret Scientology Tom Cruise Video]


And if Tom Cruise is our superhero, we know we're in the Marvel Universe since his arch villains are a shadow band of hackers known as Anonymous who have vowed to destroy Scientology. Sometimes, over the top is exactly the spot you need to hit. Seems like this could actually start some commotion.
[Message to Scientology]

I'll try to start posting more comic art and more evidences of this most enjoyable turn of events. And hopefully as my world outlook has been brightened, the stories I find and share will be a bit more upbeat from now on. But no promises.

"Sometimes I feel like all science is doing now is reverse-engeneering Jack Kirby..."

Is there a word for that unsettling experience of walking by some street corner you've walked by a thousand times before and noticing the building that was always there had been torn down, replaced by some shiny new thing--and now that the old thing is gone, you realize you can't really remember what was there before? I feel like that's happening around us all the time.
[pulphope]

===

I had a strange sense of seeing a foreign object, realizing I couldn't fully grasp it's significance to my future-self, but knowing one day in the future it would be significant. One day, the iPhone will return to me. One day I would be holding one of my own, never knowing how I ever got along without it before.

Over at the table sits Dean Haspiel, chilling with Heidi MacDonald and JahFurry. Dean and I start talking about Jack Kirby (not the first time). We talk about comics, the glory of them, making them, inventing them, loving them. We talk about science fiction in comics, about Jack Kirby and his particular type of science fiction. "In comics, there's no budget," I hear myself saying, "just your paper and your brush and your imagination."

"Look at all that stuff Kirby came up with, " he says. "Kirby just INVENTED on paper, he didn't bother to build any of it. He already thought of it. It was enough to just think of it -- he was just blueprinting the future..."

"Sometimes I feel like all science is doing now is reverse-engeneering Jack Kirby," I say.

And we sit there in silence a bit. The thought of Jack Kirby's imagination tends to make cartoonists' conversations taper off into quiet introspection. The place was full of people but the noise of Jack Kirby in my head drowned it all out--exploding, psychedelic Kirby visions, weird twisting pipes on Orion's cycle, the chrome curves and jet-exhaust vents on the underbelly of the Fantasticar, Darkseid's Omega Beams, with all their strange, Cubist trajectories, Seriphan and his collapsing Super Cycle, the silent corridors of the Red Ghost's lunar hideaway, High Father's staff, Machine Man's extending arms and dismantleable magenta body parts, his bug-like red eyes, his impassive stare-- the images paraded along an infinite mobius strip of their own, like the marching red ants in the MC Escher print.

"All the iPhone is is a retarded Mother Box," I declare. Dean nods, knowing.
[pulphope]

I finally got to look at the iPhone, like the iPod Nano, it's a 2010 device existing with a halo of improbability around it here in 2007.

Imagine a Power User President

Here's a photo from Time Magazine's recent article on Al Gore. Looks like a lot of windows are open on those three 30" Apple Cinema Displays. I bet he has scripts and plugins worthy of the sharpest power-user. And a Big G5 to run all those displays. Imagine a president who not only read the paper, but read it online. And Google News. And that days top blog posts.

Imagine a president who left his position at Google, Apple, and his startup, not Haliburton.

In his interview with Diane Sawyer, she paraphrases his views that TV is anesticizing and the Internet will be more interactive. Before she begins to refute the Internet, he gives her the patronizing look of a patient web-zealot. "Go ahead and explain to me why your industry isn't doomed." I much prefer his brand of historical determinism.

His main point on Good Morning America seems to be, "Hey America, think something is wrong with the processes of politics, and media that allowed THIS to happen? Go with that feeling."

Shiny Futurism

The Future on TV:

2057: Hyperspace author and string field theory co-founder, Michio Kaku hosts this 3 part Discovery Channel documentary, with complimentary website

End Day: Five different 'when not if' scenarios presented by the BBC

Five Ways to Save the World: BBC's law of fives, says this show should be good, even though I haven't watched it yet. I guess End Day needed a flip side.

Take a Chance

The two episode pilot of Space Above and Beyond is now on TV Links, along with four scattered episodes of the shows first and only season. These episodes give good feel for what the world is like in 2063. The show has really great story arcs and I recommend watching the whole thing through, on DVD, or perhaps TV Links in a few days.
Watch Space Above and Beyond

read about the 1990s

I hadn't thought of this before, but wikipedia tells me that 2063 is the year, in Star Trek, when humans made contact with their first extraterrestrials, the Vulcans. But the first contact in Space Above and Beyond is more Heinleinian than that socialist clap trap.

OLPC Reality Check

There have been quite a lot of people trying to impose reality checks on those of us who have put all our eggs in the OLPC basket. OLPCNews has been dutifully covering the praise with the criticism, and as Vernor Vinge said in his recent Long Now speech, it is important to remain open to counter-scenarios, and the signs of their arrival. Here's a slice of negativity pie from Eduardo Villanueva Mansilla, in Lima Peru. Originally written on November 16, 2005, but posted on OLPCNews today.

This new tool, in the best possible scenario, will force a poor country's whole educational system into becoming a very different animal, without consideration of the goals looked after and the possibility of reaching them through lesser, although cheaper and locally produced and locally enabling, means. And in the worst possible scenario, this gadget will end up changing nothing, and the poor will get the chance to receive the worst education possible in full color.

Without doubting for a minute the good intentions of those involved in the project, it is impossible not to think about the whole idea as a world-changing attempt just like many that the computer has brought, and a sort of good intentioned but massive ego trip.

The computer has changed the world in so many different ways but for those imagined by the apostles of computing. This could be the final proof required to make the entire computers-will-change-the- world meme finally moot? I certainly hope so.

Mansilla's main contention is that a computer is not a substitute for an education, and the local environments; the schools and towns, will bend to serve the laptop, not to be served by it. Mansilla is guided by a principle that at times makes me question any technological revolution; wait, how are computers going to make things easier, when they have only ever made things more complicated? Isn't the shadow of every machine a mountain of troubleshooting?

But the death of schools at the hands of OLPC? Eh. So what. Like most people who enjoy tv-links, gmail, and blogging, I never got much out of school. To see the classroom replaced with something else, does not fill me with fear. I hope the next evolution in education is a real one, a good one, and inherently linked to the Internet. And this is where people misunderstand the $100 laptop. It's not an education project and it's not a laptop project, it's an Internet project. Once we give everyone the Internet, nothings going to matter. Adapting Vinge, the Internet must swallow all bureaucracies, within the century, if mankind hopes to survive and to thrive. It's kind of like the opposite of privatization.

However, will the Internet alone be enough to educate the children? In a recent video of the OLPC design team on OLPCNews, a top Engineer revealed a secret goal of the project; to indoctrinate a generation in the open source philosophy. Sounds plausible, possible, and a great first step in tearing down all known businesses and governments. But will there be any benchmarks for it? As I write, Chief Executive Bush is getting ready to veto a Democratic budget for Iraq that has benchmarks for measuring success. Similarly, Chief Negroponte has denied the need for benchmarks or even trials of the system with children. At times Negroponte's stubbornness has seemed frightening, but also strangely reassuring.

When will we know if this is working? Within the year. How will we know if this is working? Trust us, it will be so big, no one will be able to miss it.

Portuguese Wikipedia, April 3, 2006 - 248 907 artigos

Iron Steed

Someday soon, hybrid cars will be replaced with hybrid horse/hondas. Modeled after insects, the bio-vehicles will be lovingly treated as the half-living things they are. Running on gasoline or oats, the steeds will be ideal for most any environment, great when you have no idea what tomorrow's weather will be.

Good luck exploring all the cool stuff over at Modern Mechanix, of course, Via BoingBoing.

Futurist Digest Weekly

I've more I want to highlight from that Bruce Sterling speech, because it has a lot of startling ideas. But I've been coming in to a lot of really great speeches lately. So I think I'll just sort of index them here.

What if the Singularity Doesn't Happen? [mp3]
Vernor Vinge @ the Long Now Foundation
February 15, 2007

[Slides] [Summary & Discussion]

In one scenario, Vinge breaks failure of a tech-rapture down in software/hardware terms. Software never advances to the level to deal with all our information. Software fails catastrophically and deters economic incentive for advancement. Etc. Vinge says that if we can make it through this century than we can be fairly certain we'll reach the Singularity.


Storytelling & Spore
Will Wright @ SXSW
March 2007
[via Wonderland]

The Spore stuff I'm somewhat skeptical of after listening to Will Wright's Long Now speech he gave with Brian Eno.
[mp3] [Summary & Discussion]
Though Wright has lots of interesting things to say about generative systems in both speeches. I think that Spore will not quite be the realization of the dream that many (he) may be claiming. It will still be trapped in the mundanity of Sim City and the Sims.

The Wonderful Power of Storytelling[txt]
Bruce Sterling @ the Computer Game Developers Conference, San Jose CA
March 1991

A few more snippets from Sterling's speech, because it covered so much ground, and being 16 years old, it now has covered even more.

Something of the sort may come from virtual reality. I rather imagine something like an LSD backlash occuring there; something along the lines of: "Hey we have something here that can really seriously boost your imagination!" "Well, Mr Developer, I'm afraid we here in the Food Drug and Software Administration don't really approve of that." That could happen. I think there are some visionary computer police around who are seriously interested in that prospect, they see it as a very promising growing market for law enforcement, it's kind of their version of a golden vaporware.

I now want to talk some about the differences between your art and my art. My art, science fiction writing, is pretty new as literary arts go, but it labors under the curse of three thousand years of literacy. In some weird sense I'm in direct competition with Homer and Euripides. I mean, these guys aren't in the SFWA, but their product is still taking up valuable rack-space. You guys on the other hand get to reinvent everything every time a new platform takes over the field. This is your advantage and your glory. This is also your curse. It's a terrible kind of curse really.
~

In the art of book-writing the classics are still living competition, they tend to elevate the entire art-form by their persistent presence.
~
I'm into technical people who attack pop culture. I'm into techies gone dingo, techies gone rogue -- not street punks picking up any glittery junk that happens to be within their reach -- but disciplined people, intelligent people, people with some technical skills and some rational thought, who can break out of the arid prison that this society sets for its engineers. People who are, and I quote, "dismayed by nearly every aspect of the world situation and aware on some nightmare level that the solutions to our problems will not come from the breed of dimwitted ad-men that we know as politicians."

That last bit, reminded me of something Vinge said in his speech, about a world where the masses were better educated then the elites; here the government would have to provide true freedom, or a closer imitation of it than has ever been seen, to satisfy this new class. (olpc users unite!) And finally, Cory Doctrow makes some interesting points in his non-speech article, You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen.

The novel is an invention, one that was engendered by technological changes in information display, reproduction, and distribution. The cognitive style of the novel is different from the cognitive style of the legend. The cognitive style of the computer is different from the cognitive style of the novel.
~
The problem, then, isn't that screens aren't sharp enough to read novels off of. The problem is that novels aren't screeny enough to warrant protracted, regular reading on screens.

Digitalize Your Walk

"The Wonderful Power of Storytelling"
Bruce Sterling at the Computer Game Developers Conference, March 1991, San Jose CA

But our riches of information are in some deep and perverse sense a terrible burden to us. They're like a cognitive load. As a digitized information-rich culture nowadays, we have to artificially invent ways to forget stuff. I think this is the real explanation for the triumph of compact disks.

The real advantage of CDs is that they allow you to forget all your vinyl records. You think you love this record collection that you've amassed over the years. But really the sheer choice, the volume, the load of memory there is secretly weighing you down.

By dumping the platform you dump everything attached to the platform and my god what a blessed secret relief. What a relief not to remember it, not to think about it, not to have it take up disk-space in your head.

The unintended consequences of digitization are really interesting to me. Cellphones had lots of of those. They sewed together a net, made of everyone you know, and they used it to catch us all. I resisted getting a cellphone for years, but that doesn't matter now.

{paraphrase of me in 2004}
Civilization is based on the strength of the individual, the strength of silence, of thought and calm. And cellphones will devour our solitude. Our quiet times, when we meditate in our steps, and over many miles grow as people.
{/paraphrase}

wikiNTERJECTION: The old theories of evolution said that we were the monkey that got smart, but Lucy indicated, we were the monkey that learned to walk.///

{paraphrase of me in 2004}
Cellphones create a false sense of community; of a net ready to catch you. But this isn't any traditional community, it is a digitized one; made up of people who are abandoning reflection; becoming bytes, able to interrupt you at anytime; without obligation or responsibility to anyone.
{/paraphrase}

There would be no more Alone, I protested.

wikiNTERJECTION: The pillars of the French discipline Parkour are escape and reach. Is this the definition of freedom?///

Now I have a cellphone and soon it will have the internet. Reach. And Escape?

Useless Information

I've been ranting for sometime now about the need to visualize information. Until Wikipedia goes 3D entries like State leaders by year are essentially useless compared to the incredible connections and new ideas that something similar to Jeff Han's multitouch technology could give you with that information.

Han's demo of his technology barely touches the potential for visualization of information, but it is the first step in a good direction. Being able to see the interconnectedness of ideas with your eyes will be a revolution in thought and everything we create and think about will benefit from it.

The Dream Machine

Few things in the world or on the Internet inspire me with as much hope for the future as the One Laptop Per Child project, or as it is sometimes known the $100 Laptop. The goal is to give the poorest children of the world the tools necessary to really learn. Providing Universal Access to the Internet is the first step in creating a world worthy of the 21st century. Since I think that the OLPC is the greatest product and revolutionary idea to come out of Planet Earth in years, I will be writing about it a lot. Here are some early thoughts and links.

A Close Look at the OLPC
Here's a somewhat nerdy look at the laptop itself, which will do more than any laptop on the market today. It's a the most in depth article I've seen on what is actually in the machine. I'll try and make my own simple account of the machine's features soon.

Demo of the Interface
Screenshots of an operating system better than the one your using right now.

Powered by Hand
The $100 Laptop will use between 1-5 watts depending on use and can be powered for 10-30 minutes with one minute of pulling. The generator can also be used for cellphones, lights, anything.


Answers for Doubters
India: Hole in the Wall
"An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens." from a Businessweek Online Daily Briefing, March 2, 2000.

Frequently Asked Questions about the OLPC project

South America
I feel that much of what I read online about the machine imagines it's use primarily in Africa. Since the climate in Africa is some of the harshest in the world, it's great that the laptop has been designed with that continent in mind. However, looking at the OLPC Implementation Map I'm struck by how much this will change South America. It is the countries themselves which will be purchasing the machines by the thousands, and of the seven that have signed up so far, the two largest are Brazil and Argentina.

A quarter of the populations of both Brazil and Argentina are under 14, according to the CIA Factbook. Here are some more facts:
Argentina has 10 million children
Brazil has 48.5 million children
Argentina's literacy rate is 97%
Brazil's literacy rate is 86%
Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write among those over 15.

As of today the Portuguese Wikipedia contains 237,821 artigos. When Brazil's 48.5 million children start posting, well, we'll see.

Say Goodbye to Your Right to Assemble

THE MARTIAN HEAT RAY HAS COME TO EARTH, AND SOON IT WILL BE GOING TO IRAQ

The U.S. Military has certified the Active Denial System for use in Iraq. ADS is a microwave based ray gun to be attached to a hummer for use in crowd control.

According to Wired Magazine, December 02006, Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon:

The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.

The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military's claims.

We can also say goodbye to public speech as we know it. Today's military uses the weapons of tomorrow's police force. Make no bones about it, this technology will be used against Americans on American soil within 10 years. The tear gas of WWI was eventually turned on American citizens by their own government. This will be no different. Except with this technology a government can suppress public dissent almost entirely. Imagine what the protests of the 1960s would have looked like if Richard Nixon's government had this technology.

Eventually, the heat rays will trickle down into the untrained hands of your local police. In June 2006, after the Supreme Court decided to allow no-knock searches, John Tierney wrote an editorial for the New York Times on the 'SWAT Syndrome,' the militarization of small town police forces through over armament.

Of all the excuses for weakening the Fourth Amendment, the weirdest was the one offered by Justice Antonin Scalia last week in a Michigan drug case.

He wrote the majority opinion allowing police officers to use evidence found in a home even if they entered without following the venerable rule to knock first and announce themselves. To reassure traditionalists, Scalia declared that unreasonable searches are less of a problem today because of ''the increasing professionalism of police forces.''

Well, it's true that when police show up at your home in the middle of the night, they're better armed and trained than ever. They now routinely arrive with assault rifles, flash grenades and battering rams.

So if your definition of a professional is a soldier in a war zone, then Scalia is right. The number of paramilitary raids has soared in the past two decades as cities, suburbs and small towns have rushed to suit up SWAT teams.

Eventually small cities and towns will want their very own death rays, and Raytheon is always ready to lend a helping hand. They have developed their own smaller, commercial version called The Silent Guardian.

More from the Wired article on the Active Denial System:

Eye damage is identified as the biggest concern, but the military claims this has been thoroughly studied. Lab testing found subjects reflexively blink or turn away within a quarter of a second of exposure, long before the sensitive cornea can be damaged. Tests on monkeys showed that corneal damage heals within 24 hours, the reports claim.

The beam penetrates clothing, but not stone or metal. Blocking it is harder than you might think. Wearing a tinfoil shirt is not enough -- you would have to be wrapped like a turkey to be completely protected. The experimenters found that even a small exposed area was enough to produce the Goodbye effect, so any gaps would negate protection. Holding up a sheet of metal won't work either, unless it covers your whole body and you can keep the tips of your fingers out of sight.

Wet clothing might sound like a good defense, but tests showed that contact with damp cloth actually intensified the effects of the beam.

System 1, the operational prototype, is mounted on a Hummer and produces a beam with a 2-meter diameter. Effective range is at least 500 meters, which is further than rubber bullets, tear gas or water cannons. The ammunition supply is effectively unlimited.

Monsters & Metahumans

Aggregated mostly from Boingboing, here are some links.

List of Cryptids
One of my favorite things on wikipedia are the lists. This one is a good starting point in all cryptozoological research, and also a good case for a revolution in visualization of information. More on that later.

Ray Harryhausen Creature List
More monsters, now from stop montion dynamo Ray Harryhausen. I really like Kali, from the 1974, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.


A Sixth Sense for a Wired World
Wired magazine reports on the new tiny fad of putting a tiny magnet into your ring finger to aquire a sixth sense, an electromagnetic sense. The operation is done by body modificationists, and so there is no anesthetic, save ice.

People with magnetic implants can't erase hard drives or credit cards. They don't set off airport metal detectors or get stuck to refrigerators. The magnets are small, and once encased in skin, all they do is react next to nerves, conveying the presence of sufficiently strong electromagnetic fields. "The magnetic implant is not the most sophisticated or rich sensation, it was just the easiest to implement with our available technology," says Huffman.

Your new electromagnetic sense will let you detect a live wire, and if you are like author/guinea pig Quinn Norton, your magnet's protective silicone sheath might break down and your body will infect and dismantle the magnet. But Mr. Norton says that his sense returned, diminished, four months later when the magnet reassembled itself.