Lonelygirl15

As they said on Mathnet, it's time to play "what do we know".

We know that ATHENToR is a deliberate misspelling of athanor, complete with lowercase 'o', as cainam keenly observed. As with 'vail', I think the purpose is to draw our attention to it so that we will interpret it in some way with deeper and multiple meanings.

Quoth the wiki, with editorial boldface ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanor ):

In alchemy, an athanor is a furnace used to provide heat for alchemical digestion. An athanor is a self-feeding furnace, designed to maintain a uniform temperature.

The athanor was also called Piger Henricus, Slow Harry, because it was chiefly used in slower operations, and because when once filled with coals, it keeps burning a long time. For this reason the Greeks referred to it as "giving no trouble", as it did not need to be continually attended. It was also called the Philosophical furnace, Furnace of Arcana, or popularly, the Tower furnace. [1]

Other references

In the work Life of Apollonius by Philostratus the Athenian, an allegorical description is given of an occult hill. The author gives this hill the name "Athanor".

We've got connections to The Tower (tarot card XVI, which this card most closely resembles) and Athens as the home town of Philostratus.

Part of me can't shake the feeling that ATHENToR is also an acronym, and the little 'o' stands for 'on' or 'of' or 'or'. At the same time, I'm now quite certain my anagram idea is not worth pursuing further.

The Tower tarot card is a symbol of hubris punished by humility (a la the Tower of Babel), which could certainly be the story of the research at Facility J.

"Two-faced" can mean deceitful. Not sure if this is part of the understanding of the card we're meant to acquire, but it would tie in with the hubris of The Tower.

I think there's more encoded in the numbering of the card as "XVI + I". The Tower is XVI, The Star is XVII ( = XVI + I), and The Magician is I. Here's a hypothesis: the story here is that The Magician is using an alchemical furnace, The Tower, to transmute The Star. So our new hydrophilic friend is the sum of the ingenuity of a scientist and the power of an attempt by humans to reach into heaven.

Sorry this is more than a bit disorganized. Hopefully something coherent managed to come through.

What I find toughest here is not knowing what sort of thing we're looking for. If it's a tinyurl, or a location, or a last name, there's some kind of guideline, but here it seems we're looking for an allegorical story that ties together all of these symbolic elements. I guess we'll know it when we see it.

phipunk wrote:
I think there's more encoded in the numbering of the card as "XVI + I". The Tower is XVI, The Star is XVII ( = XVI + I), and The Magician is I. Here's a hypothesis: the story here is that The Magician is using an alchemical furnace, The Tower, to transmute The Star. So our new hydrophilic friend is the sum of the ingenuity of a scientist and the power of an attempt by humans to reach into heaven.

I was about to send a message off to J very much to this effect, although you've summed it up a lot better than i was going to. You should send it off to him.

Archetype schmalchetype. I don't know what's cooking in that oven, but when he said to cainam, "the meaning of the DNA sequence will come into focus," and "transmutation" regarding the "ATHENToR," that to me sounds like an euphemism for a vigenere cipher. So I whipped out the old vigenere machine.

Using the key 'ATHENToR' you can 'transmutate' the following dna sequences: * encrypts ANY dna base
. encrypts NONE of the dna bases (coincides with the little o in ATHENToR)

I'm not sure what to do with the first base (*), but since there would be 7 letters, one in excess of what's needed for 2 codons, I decided to ignore it. The dipeptide for the first sequence before being encrypted (atcga.c) is [I-D]. ID, as in identification? However, the dipeptide after encrypting is [Stop-F]. I don't know how to take that further. The alternate dipeptide didn't get me anywhere either.

As phipunk said, not knowing what we're looking for makes it very tough.

deagol wrote:The dipeptide for the first sequence before being encrypted (atcga.c) is [I-D]. ID, as in identification? However, the dipeptide after encrypting is [Stop-F]. I don't know how to take that further. The alternate dipeptide didn't get me anywhere either.

As phipunk said, not knowing what we're looking for makes it very tough.

Stop-F == F-Stop == Photo. Photo ID?

Probably not. I think we're meant to be doing allegories and symbolism and counterpointing the surrealism of the underlying metaphor and zzzz oh sorry I dozed off for a moment.

ignatzmouse wrote:
Probably not. I think we're meant to be doing allegories and symbolism and counterpointing the surrealism of the underlying metaphor and zzzz oh sorry I dozed off for a moment.

Hahaha. My sentiments exactly.

Exactly. Oh I just noticed it says TAAG in the rings...

deagol wrote:Archetype schmalchetype. I don't know what's cooking in that oven, but when he said to cainam, "the meaning of the DNA sequence will come into focus," and "transmutation" regarding the "ATHENToR," that to me sounds like an euphemism for a vigenere cipher. So I whipped out the old vigenere machine.

Using the key 'ATHENToR' you can 'transmutate' the following dna sequences:

Code: Select all

*atcga.c  or  *atcta.c
ATHENToR      ATHENToR +
--------      --------
*tagtt.t  or  *taggt.t

* encrypts ANY dna base
. encrypts NONE of the dna bases (coincides with the little o in ATHENToR)

I'm not sure what to do with the first base (*), but since there would be 7 letters, one in excess of what's needed for 2 codons, I decided to ignore it. The dipeptide for the first sequence before being encrypted (atcga.c) is [I-D]. ID, as in identification? However, the dipeptide after encrypting is [Stop-F]. I don't know how to take that further. The alternate dipeptide didn't get me anywhere either.

As phipunk said, not knowing what we're looking for makes it very tough.

Just to make sure that I follow you: are you saying that these are the only sequences of [gatc] for which 'athentor' could be a vigenere key?

phipunk wrote: Just to make sure that I follow you: are you saying that these are the only sequences of [gatc] for which 'athentor' could be a vigenere key?

Yup. I thought that was quite promising, especially given that the little o needs to be ignored.

Bear with me; I feel like I'm grasping at straws, but this really looks like it could be something.

ToR can stand for target of rapamycin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_ ... _rapamycin ).

According to a publication in J. Bio. Chem., ( http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/270/2/815 )

The antisense primers corresponding to the rat mTOR gene were GAA TTC CCA CCT TCC ACT CCA ATG for the primary reaction and GAA TTC CAT ATG CTT GGG ACA GGC CCT GCC ACG in the secondary PCR reaction.

GAA TTC. We've seen this before.

phipunk wrote:Bear with me; I feel like I'm grasping at straws, but this really looks like it could be something.

ToR can stand for target of rapamycin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_ ... _rapamycin ).

According to a publication in J. Bio. Chem., ( http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/270/2/815 )

The antisense primers corresponding to the rat mTOR gene were GAA TTC CCA CCT TCC ACT CCA ATG for the primary reaction and GAA TTC CAT ATG CTT GGG ACA GGC CCT GCC ACG in the secondary PCR reaction.

GAA TTC. We've seen this before.

Awesome research, but I think it's a dead end. Here's why:

GAATTC is the recognition sequence of EcoRI, a commonly used restriction enzyme. By adding that sequence to the end of a PCR primer, as was done in the paper you found, you make it so that the amplified gene has a site that is recognized and cut by EcoRI, and can therefore be easily inserted into a vector that has also been cut by EcoRI. This is a very common cloning technique, and not something specific to the paper or area of research that you found.

Just out of curiosity, I googled a line that stood out for me from one of Jay's recent correspondances with Cainam -

"everything of psychic origin has a double face."

Turns out its a quote from a book by Jung -

To remain a child too long is childish, but it is just as childish to move away and then assume that childhood no longer exists because we do not see it. But if we return to the "children's land" we succumb to the fear of becoming childish, because we do not understand that everything of psychic origin has a double face. One face looks forward, the other back. It is ambivalent and therefore symbolic, like all living reality.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12. P.74

I suppose this applies towards interpretation of the double faced head at the top of the "Alchemical Furnace" the ATHENToR

Here's a really nice write-up on ribozymes by flychiqk over in the LG15 plot section. I thought it might be useful to us, so I'm linking it here. I'm not really sure where to put it, but I thought me might want to be able to refer to it.


About Ribozymes
http://lonelygirl15.com/forum/viewtopic ... highlight=