Molecules of Death

A Taste for Poison is Neil Bradbury’s book featuring eleven substances that have been employed by poisoners trying to get away with murder. Each of the short eleven chapters features a historical vignette, how the poison affects the human body, how the murders were eventually solved, and assorted bonus tidbits about the molecules in question. The eleven substances are insulin, atropine, strychnine, aconite, ricin, digoxin, cyanide, potassium, polonium, arsenic, and chlorine. The prose is brisk and engaging. I enjoyed it even more than the Deborah Blum books.

 

There are two references to Harry Potter. The first mentions Snape’s taunting of Harry in his first Potions class: “What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?” Snape answers his own question – that they are different names for aconite. Bradbury’s book explains the names: “an attractive plant, with tall spikes of hooded purple or blue blooms… the flowers look rather like the cowls worn by medieval monks… [and] use of the plant as an arrow poison for hunting wolves and other dangerous carnivores.” The root of the Greek word means “sharp dart… the tips of which were coated with poison”. And apparently in Homer’s Iliad (which I’ve read, but no longer remember), “the noxious drool from [Cerberus, three-headed dog of the underworld]’s three snarling snouts fell upon the ground, and immediately poisonous aconite plants sprang up.” No mention of that about Fluffy in the Harry Potter books.

 

The second reference is Alnwick Castle located in the northeast of England: “The castle, used as a backdrop in several Harry potter films, possesses an unusual attraction that would not be out of place in Harry’s Hogwarts. Among the manicured formal gardens and cascading fountains is a garden surrounded by high walls and guarded by ornate heavy iron gates. Emblazoned above the entrance is a sign warning visitors, ‘These Plants Can Kill’. Escorted visitors are prohibited from smelling, touching or tasting any of the plants…” Snape would have loved it. But why would anyone keep such plants? It turns out that several of the poisons featured in this book also have therapeutic purposes. A mantra repeated throughout the book is that it’s the dose that makes the poison. Aconite is in fact used in some herbal pain remedies but the danger is that there isn’t a big difference between a pain-remedy dose and a fatal one.

 

The chapter I found most interesting was on arsenic. The first vignette features the murderous Borgias, one of whom managed to become pope, and enriched himself by murdering off cardinals with arsenic. The second vignette features the Austrian region of Styria (tidbit: where Arnold Schwarzenegger hails from). Apparently, the alpine peasants regularly consumed it and built up a tolerance. They argued that this “helped them breathe better at the high altitude, … aided digestion, prevented disease, and increased their sexual potency.” Apparently arsenic “does stimulate the production of hemoglobin… and may provide a clue as to the Styrians’ claim that arsenic helped them breathe better at high altitudes.”

 

I didn’t know that arsenic was, for many years, fed to chickens and made them “appear plump and pink”. Nor did I know that the bodies of dead Styrians stayed well preserved because the high arsenic content killed putrefying bacteria. I also learned that the “Styrian defense was a boon to defense lawyers and was used in many trials” to argue that “arsenic found in a dead body was not evidence of foul play but a sign that the victim was an arsenic eater who took the powder as a tonic… Similarly, finding arsenic in the possession of an accused was not de facto evidence of malice, because she – and often the accused poisoner was a she – could have been applying the arsenic to her skin to improve her complexion.” The Styrian women claimed they used it to improve skin tone.

 

The main murder story in the arsenic chapter surrounds one wealthy socialite, Madeline Smith, in 1850s Scotland. There’s scandal, deception, and family connivings of Victorian society, and the arsenic was dispensed in cups of hot cocoa. The Styrian defense was raised during the trial. The final verdict was “not proven” which apparently meant that “Madeleine hadn’t been found innocent, but that the prosecution had not proved her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” In the aftermath, she changed her name, moved to England, later moved to New York, and “died at the ripe age of ninety-three.” Sometimes people do get away with murder.

The Deep

I could have become a marine biologist. But in college, chemistry seemed so much more interesting than biology. Thirty years later, I’m finding biology fascinating, although admittedly it has mainly to do with my learning the intricacies of biochemical evolution as part of my origin-of-life research.

 

It also helps if there are amazing engaging books for popular audiences on the subject. Chemistry is sorely lacking here. But marine biology gets another boost from Edith Widder’s Below The Edge of Darkness. It’s a memoir recalling pivotal events in her life and in her career studying bioluminescence. She has plenty of interesting life stories, and she’s a very engaging writer, so that’s a major plus. And she does a fantastic job bringing out the lure of the strange denizens of the deep. And I mean thousands of feet sea-deep where light hardly penetrates. Here be your mythical creatures, both monstrous and colorful. The color red looks black to prey and predators when you’re in the deep.

 

Bioluminescence is key in the deep. Even though it’s very expensive metabolically. To emit photons is energetically costly (in the hundreds of kJ/mol) so you’d better have a good reason to shift resources in that direction. Especially when there’s not much access to available energy in the deep. Denizens of the deep have huge eyes. For one thing, they need bigger eyes for better light-sensitivity. Some of them have one eye on the top and one eye on the bottom (of different sizes) to see different contrasts of light. But many also have light-emitting organs for a variety of reasons ranging from luring prey to camouflage, luring predators to signaling danger. Light is the communication device of the deep – although we haven’t figured out its coded language yet.

 

I learned so many things from Widder’s book including all the things you have to worry about when you’re in a submersible. People die if mistakes are made. And how ingenious you need to be if you want to ‘see’ creatures in their natural habitat without shining a whole bunch of light at them and scaring them off. I learned about all manner of adaptation in the dog-eat-dog world of the sea, except there aren’t any dogs per se but rather much stranger creatures. It’s a eye-opener in multiple senses. Yes, there is a giant squid of the deep, Kraken-like. There’s a brownsnout spookfish with four eyes, and a barreleye fish with a rotating telescopic eye inside its head.

 

I also learned not to trust what I see on Discovery. In the tug-of-war between entertainment and science, entertainment wins big to the chagrin of participating scientists. I also learned that the deep ocean science exploration budget is peanuts compared to NASA even though we could learn so much more about life and our earth that would be both practical and edifying. Yes, outer space is cool, but the deep… you’ll see it’s real cool if you read Edith Widder’s book. You couldn’t ask for a better apologist. I hope more folks read her book and get excited about it.

 

P.S. For another marine biology memoir, there’s the jellyfish book.

First Spell

What is the first spell that Harry Potter learned at Hogwarts?

 

I don’t know. In his first week of class, “there was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.” In Astronomy, Herbology, Potions, and History of Magic, there may not have been much or any spellcasting. Defense Against the Dark Arts should have had some, but Quirrell didn’t teach any. That leaves Charms and Transfiguration. No mention is made of what Flitwick asks his first-years to do in class, but McGonagall has her students attempt to turn a match into a needle. No one succeeded on their first try but Hermione came closest.

 

It’s not until the midnight duel when Alohomora, the door-unlocking spell, is cast. But it’s Hermione that does so. The next spell mentioned is in Charms class on Halloween morning: Wingardium Leviosa – to levitate objects. Ron is doing poorly at it. Presumably Harry has also tried. And once again Hermione is the first one to cast the spell successfully. Later we are told that over Christmas break, Harry sneaks into the Restricted Section of the library, but Harry lights a lamp rather than casting Lumos. Can Harry cast any spells successfully in his first semester? I’m not sure.

 

What spell should Harry have learned first? I would like to claim it should be Lumos. It’s a simple spell that produces light at the tip of your wand. Like turning on a tiny flashlight, or nowadays, your mobile phone magically works just as well. Since the purpose of a wand is to focus energy, casting a spell involves absorbing energy into the wand and then emitting energy to produce the effects of the spell. Since the wand is made of matter, and all matter contains atoms and electrons, the effect of absorbing energy is to excite the electrons from the ground state into an excited state. Electrons in an excited state are unstable, and so an easy path for them to become more stable is to lower their energy by returning to the ground state. Conservation of energy means photons are emitted. If the wavelength of these photons is in the visible range (400-700nm), then we observe it as light.

 

Other spells would require channeling that energy to say, levitate an object, or turn the latch of a locked door. But that requires more from the spellcaster. After your wand has absorbed energy, you need to direct towards a very specific task. Emitting light from your wand, however, just requires you to absorb that energy and then let it go as emission. This is easy to do if some of the compounds in the wand have energy level differences that correspond to photons in the visible range. Wood has many of these types of compounds, i.e., organic molecules with a bunch of C=C double bonds in conjugated pi-systems. Simple as pie. So I expect Lumos should have been the first spell Harry learned, but who really knows what goes on in Hogwarts? I’ve yet to get my hands on a more detailed curriculum.

Mirror of Galadriel

I decided to revisit Lord of the Rings, having recently read a collection of Tolkien’s letters and a book about the philosophy behind Tolkien’s writings. Lord of the Rings is one of two fiction sets that I regularly re-read, the other being Harry Potter which is still a distant second. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Peter Jackson’s trilogy in a while, so I was pleased that I didn’t imagine the characters as the actors in those movies. And I did read the books many times before watching the movies, so I have different associated imagery.

 

It took me a week to get through Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien’s descriptive writing is wonderful and I’m still enamored by the sagas of Middle Earth. Lothlorien jumped out at me a little more this time around so that’s what I’ll discuss in today’s post. The setting is paradoxically ethereal yet also down-to-earth (in an up-in-the-trees way). There seems something magical about the place to first-time visitors, and Sam mentions being interested in seeing ‘Elf-magic’.

 

Galadriel offers Sam and Frodo a look in her mirror, her version of ‘magic’. It’s Pensieve-like in a way – there’s a basin with some liquid that you look into – but the mirror is much more than memory storage. Galadriel can command the mirror to reveal certain scenes if one wanted to see something in particular. But she also says that the mirror can show things “unbidden”. It may reveal things that are strange and difficult to interpret, yet possible much more useful. One challenge is that you don’t know if the mirror is showing you “things that were, things that are, or things that yet may be”.

 

One drawback about being a scientist is automatic the unbidden thought that comes to me: How does it work? I suppose the scientist is the magician’s bane, constantly trying to reveal the mechanics of how and likely missing the more important aspects that magic is trying to convey. In any case, when Sam looks into the mirror he sees things that he cares about – although where these scenes are in the timeline is less certain. Frodo’s viewing is bound up with the ring of power he carries, its history, and the powers that strive for and against it. The mirror, it seems, can detect the viewer’s desire. What perhaps happens next is that it somehow taps into the multiverse and flashes through prominent scenes past, present, and future. It’s not so much that it transcends space and time, but rather it can flit back and forth roaming through the ‘block’ known to physicists as spacetime.

 

Somehow this seeing of what is normally inaccessible opens up other seeing possibilities. Frodo now recognizes that Galadriel carries one of the three Elven rings of power. Nenya, the ring of adamant, is associated with elemental water. Presumably it’s an important aid to Galadriel’s ‘magic’ mirror. Sam also gets a glimpse of what seems like a shining star between Galadriel’s fingers. The Elven rings were forged by Celebrimbor, the descendant of Feanor who most inherited his skill of jewel-making. But what exactly is a ring of power? That is a longer subject for another time.

 

As the fellowship departs Lothlorien, they are given gifts. The ‘magic’ of the Elves manifests itself in the cloaks that blend in with their surroundings, the light yet cunning boats, the strength-giving waybread, the Elven rope that seems to understand the user’s needs. These are all made from materials of earth and plants; the earthiest of these is Sam’s box of earth which will yield a seemingly magical garden with a mallorn tree in its center. The knowledge of using natural materials to craft the best sort of cloak, boat, and rope, is a subtle sort of magic. As the ‘eldest race’, the Elves have been around a long time and have learned to coax the secrets of the natural world of Middle Earth. There are no large mechanical devices and machines such as found in Orthanc as Saruman raises his army with his technological ‘magic’ that cares not for the earth. Saruman’s downfall is swift. Perhaps ours will be too.

Ergodic Narratives

Having previously mused about the role that riddles play in interactive fiction, as outlined by Nick Montfort in Twisty Little Passages, today I’d like to consider the strange idea of ergodic narratives. Montfort provides a brief history of these ‘literary machines’ in third chapter of his book, although he also makes reference to the phrase ‘ergodic literature’ to describe them. (The reference comes from the title of a book by Espen Arseth titled Cybertext: Perspective on Ergodic Literature; which I haven’t read.)

 

Most folks have never used the word ‘ergodic’. I have, but that’s likely because I’m trained as a physical chemist and I teach a class in statistical thermodynamics. From that point of view, an ergodic system is one that explores all possible configurations proportional to their volume, and thereby provide seemingly stable macroscopic properties such as the pressure and temperature of an ideal gas. Assuming this system is thermodynamically closed, pressure comes from molecules colliding against the walls of the container, and temperature is related to the average kinetic energy of those molecules. The possible configurations limited in a closed box containing the gas, can all be explored. Hence, it is an ergodic system.

 

Most chemical reactions that you run in lab behave ergodically. That’s why we can apply the laws of thermodynamics, calculate interesting properties of the system, and then use our knowledge to predict and design new chemical systems. When you have zillions of particles colliding with each other in a limited spatial environment, the system space is quickly and efficiently explored. As long as the chemical reaction is not too slow, the system reaches equilibrium – where it has zero free energy and can now be described in statistical terms. As to the singular fate of a singular molecule, that’s hard to keep track of.

 

But stories, narratives, and literature, are not typically ergodic. When I read a typical story, I can only explore one path – that set out by the writer. While I am reading, or usually after I finish the book, I might consider alternative endings or how things might have worked out if one of the characters of the story had made different choices. Engaging stories require their protagonists to make difficult choices without knowing the consequences – those choices reveal the character of the characters!

 

Choose Your Own Adventure books allow you to examine more than one path. You as the reader make choices for the protagonist, which may lead to different fates. Sometimes dice are rolled to simulate a chance outcome, based on statistics. You can ‘replay’ the adventures choosing different paths until you explore all possible fates. This is ergodic in a very constrained sense. The authors have still determined the limited number of all possible fates. Computers have allowed us to multiply the number of possibilities, but our linear consciousness only allows us to experience this serially and sequentially. Even as you jump in and out via hypertext links, your conscious self can only follow the narrative along some path even if it is non-linear.

 

Why would anyone therefore bother with trying to come up with an ergodic narrative? Montfort’s brief historical overview mentions some interesting cases. The I Ching (also known as “the Book of Changes”), an ancient Chinese ‘literary machine’, utilizes a set of protocols to generate a particular oracular text. In Europe, Ramon Llull, a thirteenth-century religious philosopher and mystic devised a set of procedures to generate different textual combinations. More recently, in 1961, a Frenchman ‘wrote’ a “book with ten sonnets (each of the usual fourteen lines) bound one in front of the other and with each line cut so that it could be turned like a page, separately. Any one of the ten lines could be selected for each position… Hence there are 10¹⁴ possible poems in the book which would take more than 190 million years to read.” That same year saw another French publication: “150 loose, unnumbered pages in a box – invites the reader to shuffle the pages and read them in any order.” Apparently, it is a biography of a fictional French soldier and, depending on how you read it, colors your idea of his character.

 

The limitation of such attempts at multiple paths is that you are constrained by the creativity of the writers and the fixed texts (albeit with movable parts). Possibly more satisfying is to have a live author, and that is perhaps the appeal of Dungeons & Dragons and other such role-playing games. While I’ve never played it, reading Montfort’s book and other works on the history of games, indicates that a talented ‘dungeon master’ can provide a fantastic immersive narrative experience for the ‘players’. Is this ergodic? I don’t know. Certain paths are chosen. And players might not want to explore all possible paths, just the ones they’re interested in. We’re not like slime mold – which oozes to explore all its possibilities of finding food, before optimizing the most efficient route. Seemingly machine-like slime mold is.

 

Perhaps our humanness is what makes ergodic narratives interesting. They tickle those ‘what if?’ questions that regularly pop up in our conscious minds. Maybe our subconscious can process in parallel; I don’t consciously know because I can’t consciously analyze my subconscious. Our real life, lived out, certainly feels non-ergodic, limited by only adjacent possibilities. (Yes, there could be multiverses budding out constantly with every ‘choice’ but we have no access to them.) And maybe the exploration of multiple paths provides us with some feeling of control and being able to optimize. I might enjoy single narrative books, but I also enjoy boardgames that can be played repeatedly with different outcomes – replaying the tape of life, as it were. That’s the closest I get to interacting with an ergodic narrative.