Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Monday 11 December 2006, 8:58 PM
Steorn - energetically cloning Agatha
Now here's a fascinating email from an anonymous reader. They say:
"I’m directing this message to you because in the past you have written an article on the subject of the Irish tech company Steorn who claim to have discovered ´free energy [...] Many of the people who were at a recent party hosted by Steorn in Dublin, supposedly forum members and Steorn employees, seem to resemble either a crime fiction writers or hypnotherapists!"
Well! Normally, anonymous suggestions get the bums' rush - but since the appropiate file is available from www.padd.nl I decided to go and look for myself.
It's a bit of a pain to download, because it's festooned with popups from the free hosting service used to serve the 4.5MB file, but if you're interested here are just some of the highlights, edited badly by yours truly. These are about a quarter of the examples in the file; some I've not put in are better, others are barely plausible with your eyes screwed up and the bottle empty:
I can't speak for my correspondent, but the photos seem to be accurately sourced. And you can check the original party pictures on their Yahoo and Flickr homes.
It could be that the party really was a crime fiction writers' convention with their attendant therapists, or that astonishing facial coincidence is in play, or that we're just seeing things that aren't there. Go check for yourself.
Or it could be that, as with all things Steorn, the true nature of what's going remains beyond the reach of mere logic - for now.
PreviousComments on this post
You might be interested to know that the individual who put together this document apparently also privately messaged Steorn CEO Sean McCarthy and asked for 3,000 euros in exchange for not releasing it.
http://www.steorn.net/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=30141&page=1
http://www.steorn.net/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=30401&page=4#Item_8
Just in time then Chez Bernard has released
STEORN Over Unity DNA on Ebay
Special padd commemorative edition
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120063997391
surely the first DNA on Ebay
Oh heavens, the forums. Yes, I gave up on them a while back. Shame. If I'd known there was a party I'dve been over to Dublin like a starving seagull scenting a herring boat. All that Guinness and rotating magnetic fields...
I have no idea whatsoever who is doing what to whom, who who or whom actually are, or why any of this is happening (Ah, this would be the rigorous journalism). I'll stick to my original analysis, that all Steorn has to do is put the plans online and wait for the tickets to Stockholm.
But that lookalike document is jolly amusing in its own right - though not worth €3K of anyone's money, I'd say - and adds a further taste of delightful mystery to the whole affair. It's nice that in this hyperconnected age, nobody has to take my word for anything - it's all out there for the poking around.
Just as well, seeing as I can make no sense of it.
Unity Rupe
Rupert,
Good article.
You however have the images the wrong way around. The steorn people are on the left, the crime writers are on the right.
Im the guy in the blue shirt, and Ive got a much better hairline than Mark Billingham! Im an IT graduate, though I do have a flair for writing bullshit much like yourselves
