Memories, Mortality and MAGA Mysteries

In the wake of Wheatie Warrior’s passing, we renew the site mission by directly addressing “things unspoken” – now brought into the light.


In the immediate aftermath of the passing of our dear Wheatie, announced last Monday, I chose to deal with only the most substantive technicalities, in large part so that we could properly grieve, and not get caught up in mundane and mortal technicalities. Thus, many important questions for discussion were set aside.

I will deal with those items, and much more, in this post.


Mood Music

(From Wheatie’s post HERE):

(More mood music from Wheatie can be found at the end.)


Wheatie Warrior

Unlike the expected passings of some of our other comrades, Wheatie was, for lack of a better term, “missing in action”. There are reasons for this, and they bear explanation.

In giving you some explanations, I will be limiting what I tell you for TWO reasons.

ONE is out of respect for Wheatie’s desire for privacy. All authors and posters here can expect the same respect. If you want to consciously, knowingly, and with extreme intention, tell the world who you are, that is fine with me. Otherwise, I will assume you want some privacy, and by default will protect that privacy – even upon your illness, death, or simply leaving of this site – no matter under what circumstances. Maintaining your privacy does not include legitimate concerns of law enforcement, blah-blah-blah. Note, however, that I said “legitimate”.

TWO is in order to maintain site security. Keeping the enemy guessing is useful.

SO – why was Wheatie “missing in action”?

In contrast to most of the authors and commenters here, Wheatie was extremely careful to shield her identity. She did not wander far from this site. She didn’t post on “big tech” social media, other than Gab, and that was only after its security was proven, and after Gab was chosen as a secure posting back-up for this site.

Wheatie’s computer security was “minimally divulged” and “not negotiable”. Very often, with authors, I have to deal with security (or lack thereof) and/or permissions needed to work on posts or to upload information, the requirements of which are more rigorous than for merely commenting. Thus, I often learn a lot about an author’s practices of and attitudes toward computer security. They range, and that’s OK.

I will not get into Wheatie’s exact security measures, but they were substantial. Wheatie NEVER allowed convenience to trump security. She would NEVER lower security in order to comment on a site, create an account, watch a video, etc. Wheatie was a ROCK on the items needed to keep this site safe, and her identity private.

Indeed, the only people who appear to have ever gotten past her security, of which I am aware, was the Q team.

That is, in fact, why Wheatie was trusted by me, as she was trusted “in real life”. She NEVER let emotions get in the way of logical thinking, when it came to security. She was cool as a cucumber in tricky situations.

SO – without giving you the details, which would help our enemies, I can tell you that Wheatie’s own security measures likely prevented her from contacting us when she became ill, and until her death.

I want to repeat that. Wheatie was so mission-focused that she did not break her own security policy, or allow somebody else to break it, to let us know that she was in trouble.

Indeed, Wheatie tended to keep mum about most of her medical dealings, other than minor details about symptoms she was experiencing.

All of this combined to make it very difficult to find out what happened to Wheatie, when she went missing. We were very lucky, in fact, that she had divulged a few small things to me, ironically in the interest of assisting with site security. That was enough to help make a “positive ID”. Without that information, we might have never known for sure what happened to her.

Now – this would have all been a “bonk on my head” to start opening up a bit more with you – not just about my own situation, but about YOUR need to “make arrangements”, so that you, too, are not “missing in action” someday.

But there was another death that hit me particularly hard, which gave me a “double-bonk”.


My Friend, The Spy Popular Guy

There is nothing that will wake one up to one’s own mortality faster than a younger friend or relative dying. And that is exactly what happened to me.

At some point during the first half of this year – basically while Wheatie was MIA – I had another friend – a close friend – who “died suddenly and unexpectedly”. And “suspiciously”, I might add, in the words of the police.

Yeah, you are immediately thinking EXACTLY what I’m thinking.

IT WAS PROBABLY THE FUCKING JABS.

I do know that my friend HAD to have been jabbed, because it was a condition to go back to on-site work, after roughly two years of work-at-home. Indeed, he had JUST started going back to on-site work at that employer – which I can tell you for a FACT is “deep state” as all get-out.

That employer has a rather sneaky total vaccination requirement. Everybody has to go back to partial on-site work, and everybody who works on-site has to be jabbed. That kind of “two-step from hell” logic is par for the course with this DS outfit.

“Oh, no – we don’t require our employees to be vaccinated. Only if they are on site.”

“But you’re requiring everybody to work on site.”

“People who are required to work on-site are only required to work on site part of the time.”

“But on the days they are required to work on site, they’re required to be vaccinated – no?”

“You’ll have to talk to our Washington office about the exact specifics of the policy.”

OMG – the double-talk.

Now – as far as I know – the circumstances of death point to stroke or heart attack. The trouble is that, when I go into “I’m not a medical examiner, but I slept at a Holiday Inn Express” mode, I realize without too much deep thought, that it could also have been a “George Floyd” type of death – e.g., a fentanyl-induced heart stoppage, or something similar. AND – sadly – because this person had been a known toker and party guy in his youth, any murder with drugs will likely stick as a drug death, despite the fact that this guy NEVER did hard drugs or popped pills, to my knowledge. He had not even toked in decades, to my knowledge. But unfortunately for the truth, a past like his can be used quite easily as cover. Families and survivors will ASSIST in the cover-up of a drug death.

You may be asking “why would Wolf worry that his friend might have been murdered?” Hang in there – I’ll get to it.

My friend was in excellent health – mild high blood pressure being treated – but otherwise robust. Running, cycling, tennis, ping-pong, backpacking – you name it, he did it. Good weight, good habits, good lifestyle.

It was definitely NOT suicide. No note, no obvious means, and the most happy-go-lucky guy on Earth, with everything going right and looking forward to an excellent retirement.

He could have retired at any time, and THAT is where I’m guilty of not saving him from the jab.

You see, this guy – I am certain – was connected to some agency or entity – I just don’t know who. White hat – black hat – gray hat – sun visor – whatever – he was either working for somebody, informing for somebody, or (and this is quite certain) had friends who were “somebody”. It could have even been that he was “nobody” – but EVERYBODY was watching him because of his connections.

And it gets MORE complicated. My friend was everybody’s friend. “Everybody” included absolutely anybody and everybody who you might think was a foreign or domestic spy, a player, an asset, an informant, a defector, or even just a potential mass shooter. He just “accidentally” made it a point to know all the “interesting” people. It was uncanny.

I never knew where my friend took information, but it was clear he was scooping up knowledge for somebody – and also carrying out some kind of “orders of influence” – but it was impossible to separate the real person from his apparent “mission”. And on top of that, his life was full of contradictory cover. He could have been a very good spy – or just a nobody.

Trust me – he was not a nobody.

This guy was an exceptional person – as in an exceptionally good person. He wasn’t a church-goer – far from it – but he had been raised in a godly family, by a deeply religious mother, and it showed. Despite hanging out with some of the most anti-Christian people you can imagine, he showed all of the Christian virtues in spades, to an almost Biblical degree. There were times that I wondered if he wasn’t some kind of “undercover angel”, if you know what I’m saying.

And all of that ended – mysteriously – some time after he took the jab.

But here’s the thing.

One of the biggest reasons he took the jab is because I stopped giving him information.

I stopped giving him information because of January Sixth.

I stopped giving him information because I knew that my conversations with him were always recorded by somebody – probably FIB – and that whoever was behind him would pressure him into asking about January Sixth.

And it’s not just because I expected ANYTHING I said about January Sixth to be abused by the disgraceful DODGE and FIB.

You see, there are things about January Sixth – things I saw that day – that I have not told anybody. Things that I have not told you all. Things that have implications I don’t understand.

Things that are – as I like to call them – potential “nukes”.

For my own selfish battle reasons, I didn’t tell him the information that could have saved him, about the jabs.

What could I have done differently?

Were I a better and more courageous person, I would have taken his calls. I would have warned him about the jab. I would have – ultimately – talked him out of it. I would have told him everything I knew – all my scientific thinking about it. I would have let him follow along on my journey from “hopeful believer” in the jabs, to “red-pilled realist” warning people against them. I would have said “RETIRE NOW! Take your money and GTFO while you can. Don’t let that place kill you!”

And yet, all of that is still “love of this world”. What if HE did the right thing by just letting the jabs kill him, innocently? What if – weirdly – the disease and the jabs are God’s way of evacuating the righteous from this sinful world?

I will always be second-guessing what I did and didn’t do – just like the guy who I let the ChiComs destroy and drive nuts at “shallow state”, so that I wouldn’t spill my secret knowledge that his boss had been identified to me as a ChiCom asset.

THIS MORTAL WORLD IS ROUGH. Our actions suck. Our inactions suck. Our justifications stink in the nostrils of The Lord. Or reasoning is foul and filled with error.

So – where does that leave me? Other than two steps from hell?


Wolficarditis

I have generally been vague about my health issues or lack thereof, to create as much uncertainty as possible. The “event people” are constantly looking for plausible excuses for their little arranged deaths, so it’s generally advisable to keep as much medical privacy as possible.

The problem is, both openness and secrecy can be used by the other side. Sometimes, oddly, openness is more of a friend than secrecy. After Wheatie’s passing, and that of my friend, I’ve begun to see more virtue in a bit more openness.

So you’re going to get some.

I’m actually in pretty good health for my age, but after my initial bout of Wuhan-vintage COVID, in January 2020, my level of health became erratic.

What I did NOT tell people here, when I talked about “taking care of health matters”, is that I was in the hospital a few times.

Generally speaking, I don’t like to let people know that I’m in the hospital, if I can possibly avoid it. Worse still, I also found it easier to just keep the secret after getting out of the hospital. I don’t know if that was such a good idea now.

I definitely had a cardiac inflammation which I’m going to call “wolficarditis”, to retain just a wee bit of ambiguity on the diagnosis. We will never be exactly sure what caused it, but I can tell you that it was not the jabs, because I never took one.

There is some possibility that my wolficarditis was “smoldering” since either Wuhan (Jan 2020) or Delta (Nov 2021). Or, alternatively, it could have been caused by a later brief, mild, illness which was probably either omicron or flu (but which tested negative for COVID on the initial and only test).

The first time in the hospital, between Wuhan and Delta, was mysterious. It involved odd and extremely unusual high blood pressure, weak pulse, altered vision, and distorted time perception. Looking at it now, it may very well have been what our member Happy go lucky described to us recently – a lacunar stroke – or perhaps a similar type of intermittent blockage.

Anyway, ironically, I’m now doing exactly what I need to do for BOTH wolficarditis and wolfmoonar stroke. I feel great, and will continue to do so, until I don’t.

And when I don’t, I will make sure that there is a PLAN in place, to deal with the issue, and any potential aftermath.

So let’s start talking about plans.


Your Personal Plan

If you are happy with being able to come and go from this site unnoticed, to depart with quiet mystery from this site forevermore, when you depart this world, then we’re done here. You can move on to the next section of this post. You like your privacy, and…..

“Privacy is not a crime.”

People here have no need or right to know what happened to you, if you leave the site for any reason – temporarily or permanently.

That said, friendships develop, and we worry about our friends worrying. Many of us have been together on this site for approaching 4 years, and for many of us, 4 to 8 years on CTH before that. Think about it! That’s a long time. We have talked more to each other online, than with many “real” friends in “real life”!!!

Thus, if you’re one of those people who feels a need to “stay in touch” with the group here, in the event of hospitalization or death, then please read on.

When I talked about what happened to Wheatie, two people – cthulhu and Aubergine – immediately commented about making arrangements for the blog to be notified in the event of tragedy. Cthulhu estimated only a 30% chance of this “digital legacy” working – Aubergine estimated 15%. That will do in a pinch, but hopefully this post will give all of you some tips to raise the percentage.

First, let me explain something important. ANYBODY can post on this site, and I WILL see it. This means that you can always get word to the gang via me or one of the authors.

So – if you are in the hospital, and can get online somehow, or can instruct somebody else to get online, all they have to do is get on this site (theqtree.com) on somebody’s phone and leave a comment AS A GUEST on any post, and I WILL see it, and it will NOT publish. If you want it to be for my eyes only, then make the comment on any one of my posts, such as the Monday open thread – otherwise, depat, bakocarl, SteveinCO, or any other author of that post particular post will ALSO see the comment (in addition to me).

You don’t have to use your normal information on this strange device, although you can do it if you want to do it. Perhaps you’re using a trusted relative’s device. Perhaps you’re borrowing a phone from a nurse or hospital staff member. The point is, you can identify yourself in the message of the comment. If I need to, I’ll respond to you in the same article or daily open thread.

The reason this works is that ALL NEW COMMENTS from new users, as well as comments with a new origin or some other change (including spelling errors), will always go into moderation, where I will see them.

You are “never alone” from your friends from this site, if you can get on the internet somehow.

However, this only takes care of situations where YOU are able to communicate. What if you can’t? What if you are intubated in an ICU, in a coma, or even GONE?

For these situations, you need to leave instructions with SOMEBODY. Those instructions can be at any level of formality or legality. AGAIN, your friends and relatives can ALL comment on this site, and I will get their comment in moderation, if they have never commented here before. I can then make a judgement of what information should be passed on to the group, per the instructions passed on to me.

You are welcome to test this out on a friend or family member’s device. I will NOT approve the comment, but I will tell you if it worked. That way it will work exactly the same, the next time, in a real situation.

Some people leave a digital legacy – which is a new feature in the Apple world. This means that people can leave control of their devices to a spouse, friend, relative, or business partner.

Other people leave their usernames and passwords to their survivors. Still others end up having some computer or phone professional get into the devices – if it’s even possible.

Please feel free to discuss personal plans in the comments, or to “test out” your plan, if you’re unsure.

But now, we have to talk about something else.

We have to talk about my plan for the site.


The Group Plan

The advantage of having a single admin who is a “security hardcore” is that there are very few social hacks that can get around site security. The disadvantage is that this single point of failure means that the entire site may fail. And yet, THAT is part of the plan. Most members here are already active on several allied sites. We also have a Gab group where people can meet freely. We have plenty of back-up. This site can disappear tomorrow, and the GROUP survives.

The value of our site is not in the archival content, as much as it is in the organic continuity of research and understanding. The primary strength of the site is in our evolving conversation and thoughts, which include many alternative viewpoints and beliefs.

Our strength is in our community, not in this site per se.

Thus, I always regard our community as its own failsafe plan. If something happens to me, and/or to this site, you all will figure out what to do.

Indeed, some of us made continuity plans in the very beginning of the site. The strategy was somewhat Alexandrian. By many of us secretly preparing to lead future alternative sites, the regime would have to play whack-a-mole to stop us.

And look at us now. Look how many healthy, viable, and active or potentially active blogs and discussion sites were created by members here.

THAT is our true safety net. This site can literally VANISH OVERNIGHT, and yet the GROUP lives on.

Now, since none of you noticed my being in the hospital, any of the times it happened, it would seem that my plan for such circumstances is both working and well-tested.

The problem is, that if I die, there need to be further arrangements. I will be shoring up the contingency plans for my “sudden departure” during the next few months. My main concern is preservation of the contents on the internet. It is likely that I can leave a small trust to support the site for a number of months or years, or at least long enough to copy the contents, if desired. The problem is then handing over administration. That gets tricky, and I need to consider the options. That will not be arranged in the open.

Right now, the cost of the site is roughly $1500 a year, but it will likely rise rapidly under Bidenomics. For other reasons, however, we may also want to move the site to a new host, depending upon what happens with our nutty regime trying to start World War III. In that event, the cost may increase or decrease. We have already been hit by a 10% energy cost increase. Don’t ask about the exact circumstances – just know that Biden is why.

Therefore, in the event of my demise, it may be best to “start over” on a free site somewhere, with a new admin, and then re-grow from that colonization.

We’ll see. I will say this. I’m not worried.


In God We Trust

You can worry about your legacy here – or you can forget about it. Ultimately, God is in control, and will correct your errors. Trusting in God will see you through.

The world to worry about is not this one – it is the spiritual world that only vaguely but beautifully intersects our own world, through us. Stand up for Truth, and the Spirit of Truth which defends Truth. Defend the Kingdom of Heaven, and its footprint in this world.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. But from that fire, arises a light that pleases The Lord. Help to make it so.

W

(From Wheatie’s post of last September, HERE.)


2022·07·02 Joe Biden Didn’t Win Daily Thread

Change my title?

I’ve got to admit, I recently thought of changing my title to reflect a more current controversy. After all “Brandon” not winning has been beaten into the ground around here.

But recent revelations of slightly less recent events–I speak of the news about Wheatie–have cause me to harden my stance. Change the title? Hell NO!

Beaten into the ground? Yes…but it’s still 6,666 feet above sea level.

Keep beating, pounding, and pummeling!!!

Hey China!

Or rather, “Hey Chinese Communist Party and your entire array of servitors, ass-wipers, and fellators!”

You’re not even worth my time this week. When you decide to act like civilized people, maybe I’ll give you a lesson or two in how non-barbarians behave.

Hey BiteMe!
(Or, Whoever Has Their Hand Rammed Up That Putrefying Meat Puppet’s Ass)

[Language warning]

You and yours have caused a lot of injury. Literal injury with your war on people who don’t want to take an untested vaccine. When people die in an emergency room because a hospital won’t admit them because they haven’t had their clot shot, that’s a crime.

I’m going to address here the insult on top of the injury, because I am among the insulted. I still have my health but apparently you want me to live under the 8th Street Bridge (which actually isn’t on 8th Street, but whatever, that’s what the I-25 overpass over Cimarron is called), so maybe if you have your way that won’t be true for long. Dreadful time of year to become homeless.

No, you’re just trying to make me unemployed, because I won’t take your fucking shots.

Well, that threat is NOT going to work. I. Won’t. Take. Your. Fucking. Shots.

And it looks like enough people agree, that you’re having to back down, you worthless asswipe.

You’re LOSING.

You LOSER.

You Chinese-bought ratfucking traitor.

I would love to see you die an agonizing, humiliating death. (This isn’t a threat, because I am not threatening to cause that death. I am just announcing my intention to party if it happens.) It would be just recompense for the way you’re killing America…and millions of Americans.

His Fraudulency

Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.

One can hope that all is not as it seems.

I’d love to feast on that crow.

(I’d like to add, I find it entirely plausible, even likely, that His Fraudulency is also His Figureheadedness. (Apparently that wasn’t a word; it got a red underline. Well it is now.) Where I differ with the hopium addicts is on the subject of who is really in charge. It ain’t anyone we like.)

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices.

Kitco Ask. Last week:

Gold $1,827.40
Silver $21.24
Platinum $918.00
Palladium $1,952.00
Rhodium $15,000.00

This week, markets closed as of 3PM MT.

Gold $1,813.90
Silver $20.00
Platinum $901.00
Palladium $2,032.00
Rhodium $14,550.00

Silver is at an even $20.00. This isn’t too far off from the traditional price of gold, back when a piece of gold was money. An ounce of gold, back then, wasn’t worth $20.67, it was $20.67 even if the government hadn’t minted it into coins as a convenience. Back when government mostly did useful things.

Independence Day

This is the Second of July…not the Fourth of July. But an excellent argument can be made that this is Independence Day.

It was on July 2, 1776 that the Continental Congress voted for Independence. The document, of course, reads July 4, 1776, but that is the date that it was adopted as a statement of the reasons for Independence.

In fact the original resolution from the 2nd is quoted in the Declaration of Independence, at the end: That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved of all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, and do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

Those words, passed by the Continental Congress on July 2, 1776, made us independent.

From that point forward, it was just a matter of making it stick.

James Webb Space Telescope Update

They’ve now crossed off all but one of the 17 instrument modes–the last one is the coronagraphy module on NIRCam (Near Infra Red Camera). This is an adaptation of an designed to study the sun’s corona–i.e., its atmosphere–by blocking out the sun itself with an opaque disk. Except that here the goal is to directly image extrasolar planets by blocking out their primary star–which is a billion times brighter. Without doing so it’s like trying to take a picture of a firefly next to a searchlight.

We’re still expecting a big media event in less than two weeks with the first “real” pictures from JWST, as opposed to ones taken to help align, adjust, and calibrate the optics and instrumentation. So far what we’ve seen is basically orange and black, and is probably technically accurate…JWST can’t see yellow through violet.

What I expect we will see is “false color” images. What does that mean?

So glad you asked…

Color (And False Color)

Our eyes function by focusing light onto a layer of light sensitive cells called the retina. The cells can be divided into “rods” (sensitive to dim light) and “cones” (sensitive to brighter light). The cones in turn are a bit more specialized; there are three (and in many people, four) types, each most sensitive to a different color, and they are called the blue, green and red cones (though the red cone is actually most sensitive to a yellowish color). When it’s dark, the cones basically can detect nothing, and the rods pick up the burden. Rods tend to be a bit more broadly sensitive, though they are weakest in red light. But since our brain receives only the one signal, it interprets what it gets as monochrome–black-and-white.

We can compare this to sound. Our ears have sensors for thousands of different pitches, but those sensors are in only two places, the right and left ear. So we get extreme clarity as to the pitch of the sound, and even the combination of pitches (chords), and somewhat lesser clarity as to its direction. The eyes are actually the opposite; we get excellent directional discrimination, and not-nearly-as-good pitch–er, color–discrimination.

The ears can, at least before age takes its toll, nominally pick up anything between 20 Hz (Hertz, named after Heinrich Hertz, who discovered radio waves) and 20,000 Hz. That’s a range of 19,980 Hz, but that’s not the correct way to think about the range. As it happens, you want to look at the ratio, not the absolute arithmetic difference (which will depend on the units you are using anyway). A sound of 440 Hz, combined with a sound of 880 Hz, will blend very nicely, and musicians will say the range is one octave (which comes from the Latin for eight, for complicated historical, music theory nerd reasons–perhaps some other time). That’s not necessarily a difference of 880-440=440 Hz, though, it’s a doubling. The difference between musical notes is always a ratio of their frequencies, not their arithmetic difference. Another pleasing combo is 440 an 660 Hz, this is a 3/2 ratio and is called a “perfect fifth” even though it has nothing to do with 1/5. (It’s not fifth (the fraction) but rather fifth (the one after fourth, or four after first). Again, music theory nerd stuff and a lot of historical legacy.) An octave difference represents a doubling or halving of frequency, depending on which direction you’re going.

The ratio between 20 and 20,000 Hz is 1/1000, and that is almost exactly ten octaves. (Ten octaves would be 1/1024, which is ½ x ½ x ½…nine multiplications, ten ½s) and sorry I didn’t mean to remind you of Liawatha.)

When dealing with light, though, we tend to think not in frequency but in wavelength. But you get from one to the other by dividing a constant (the speed of light) by the one you have, to get the one you want. But the end result is, you can still think in terms of octaves, except that with light it is a halving or doubling of wavelength.

How do we perceive different “pitches” of light? As colors. Every different frequency (or wavelength) is a different, pure color of light.

I’m going to paste this in directly from Wikipedia. It shows the wavelengths and frequencies of each of the seven recognized major colors of light.

ColorWavelength
(nm, billionths of a meter)
Frequency
(Teraherttz, trillion cycles per second)
Red~ 700–635 nm~ 430–480 THz
Orange~ 635–590 nm~ 480–510 THz
Yellow~ 590–560 nm~ 510–540 THz
Green~ 560–520 nm~ 540–580 THz
Cyan~ 520–490 nm~ 580–610 THz
Blue~ 490–450 nm~ 610–670 THz
Violet~ 450–400 nm~ 670–750 THz

(And of course the color blocks themselves didn’t come through, so I had to do a bit of rearranging.)

So light covers a range from 400 to 700 nm, and that is less than one octave.

A word about the names, red, orange, etc. We have inflicted on us in school the mnemonic “Roy G. Biv” as a way to remember the colors of the rainbow. (The rainbow, of course, is mixed (white) light, split up into all of the pure colors. Or you can do the same with a prism.) Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. I never really saw the point of this mnemonic, though. A mnemonic needs to be something familiar, and I never met the (undoubtedly fictitious) Biv family. I have seen plenty of rainbows, though, so I remember Mr. Biv by remembering the rainbow, not the other way around.

But regardless, what’s the deal with blue and indigo, and why does the table above show cyan and blue? The seven named colors go back to Isaac Newton (mid-late 1600s) at least; he was the first to scientifically investigate the spectrum/rainbow. We wonder today why a blue purple was a distinct enough color for Newton to call it out, but in fact what probably happened is that he used “blue” to refer to a color somewhat like the sky, and “indigo” to refer to the blue you get from indigo dye (i.e., similar to the blue in the Flag). And indeed if you look at a rainbow, you do see a wide “light blue” stripe between the green and Flag-blue stripes.

[Newton proved that the individual colors of a rainbow are pure. Once he extracted, say, a particular yellow shade from the spectrum, nothing he could do to it would change its color–except of course mixing it with some other light. He could shine it through colored glass, or use it to illuminate different colored objects. The most he could do to that light was reduce its intensity, he couldn’t change its color. White light, of course, changes color when it goes through colored glass (see any Gothic cathedral); it’s not pure. In fact it’s a mix of light of all colors.]

We think of that as “light blue” but many languages (Italian and Russian among them) think of it as a distinctly different, separate color, as different from blue as orange is from red to us.

So what’s in the table basically reflects the seven “original” colors of the rainbow, once you untangle the cyan/blue/indigo confusion.

But this is all packed into less than one octave.

It’s worse, though. We can only truly distinguish three colors independently, basically blue, green and yellow, because of the cones in our retinas. Fortunately, those cones have a fairly broad frequency response. You don’t have to exactly match the peak frequency of a yellow cone for it to register, which is a good thing because that yellow cone is the major cone that responds to red light, albeit weakly (the green cone responds very weakly). If its range were narrower, we couldn’t see red, no matter how infuriating Leftist douches became. And that’s why the “yellow” cone is actually called the “red” cone.

The graph above shows the response of each of the three types of cones according to the wavelength (across the bottom). Red runs from 635-700 nm, so you can see green barely responds at all to say, 650 nm light, and the red, even though it peaks at a yellow wavelength, responds more strongly.

Let’s say you’re looking at a pure, bluish-cyan light of 500 nm. Your retina will register green somewhat weakly, red even weaker, and blue even weaker than that. Your brain will put those together, and you see “cyan.”

But it’s possible, with light, to fool your brain with a mixture of totally different frequencies of light, to get almost the same effect as some pure wavelength. This is not possible with sound. A mixture of different pitches trying to simulate, say, a middle C, will sound like some sort of chord; it will be a very different sound, perhaps “dark” or perhaps not, depending. That’s because your ear has thousands of those humps in it, and they’re narrow, with less overlap. You will actually perceive the different pitches separately and put them together in your brain and get a different effect.

But, as I said, the eye can be fooled. Don’t believe me? I have evidence. You’re looking at it right effing now.

Your computer screen only emits three colors, a certain pure blue, a certain pure green, and a certain pure red. So if it wants to show you cyan, it has to mix blue and green somehow. In fact a 50-50 mix is what we call cyan.

But it will not look quite like a pure cyan extracted from a prism. Why? Because you set the intensity of the blue and green phosphors of the computer screen in the right ratio to duplicate the blue and green cones’ response to the original pure cyan…but the green phosphors will get a much stronger response from the red cones than the original cyan light did. So any cyan on a computer screen will look a bit washed out to us compared to a pure cyan out of a rainbow, which is what they call “saturated.” It will be pale. And this will be true of printed colors as well, though usually in any professional grade application there are more than three “true” colors in a print and it’s possible to more closely approximate what the eye sees from all three cone colors.

One last loose end before I move on: I mentioned that some people have a fourth type of cone. That doesn’t actually end up helping them, though, because their brain basically ignores it. If the brain actually processed it, however, they’d be able to see perhaps ten times as many colors as we do (ten million versus one million). And of course, color blindness (“daltonism” named after John Dalton of atomic theory fame) results from missing one or more of the “normal” three cone types. [But there is, apparently, one recorded but not confirmed case of someone who could use that fourth cone color.] The reason color blind people can sometimes see a slightly-off hue more distinctly than others is because they have a different set of frequency responses than everyone else, and so they’ll respond to pigment mixes differently. (This includes an ability to cut through camouflage sometimes, including spotting people in Ghillie suits that others cannot see.)

But what does this have to do with false color?

The sensors on JWST see a different range of wavelengths than we do. The wavelengths are quite a bit longer in some cases. JWST’s wavelengths top out at orange, include red…and go beyond red into the “infrared.” (And that is a reference to the fact that the frequency of infrared is lower than that of red–hence infra–even though scientists normally think in terms of wavelength…yes, a bit confusing.)

If you’ve noticed that three of JWST’s instruments have names beginning with NIR, while the fourth, the one kept at just a few degrees above absolute zero, has a name starting with MIR. These stand for “Near Infra Red” and “Mid Infra Red” respectively. Near? Near what? Near, as in close to, visible light. And Mid of course is the “middle” part of infrared.

Infrared runs from 700 nm (the boundary with red) clear up to 1,000,000 nm, which is more than ten octaves. However, JWST won’t go further than 27,000 nm. The NIRCam runs from 600-5000 nm (which means it can see some red and orange), the MIRI is the one that goes all the way to 27,000 nm.

So when JWST takes a picture and we print it, won’t it be mostly black,because it’s mostly in infrared “colors” we can’t see?

No, because we can, and will, change the colors we get back. This is downright common in astronomy, in fact. In the old, stone knives, bearskins, and glass emulsion photography plates days, we’d sometimes put a filter over the telescope to look at one wavelength of light–say one emitted by hydrogen–and get a black and white print that shows us where the hydrogen is.

It doesn’t even have to be a wavelength we can see…so long as the film responds to it and turns black where exposed. And we can take multiple pictures at multiple wavelengths and combine them, but then we want to print each in a different color. This is false color and it is how our eyes will make sense of ten octaves of color we mostly can’t see, even though we can see only one (different) octave of light.

This is done routinely. Just for instance:

This is the famous “Pillars of Creation” in the Eagle Nebula; so called because stars and planets are forming there, right now. The stars look pink, actually magenta. Now, have you ever seen a magenta star? Neither have I.

This picture is false color. It is not what you would see if you could take a star ship out there.

The green is used to show light of the frequencies emitted by hydrogen–and it’s not necessarily visible light. The red is for sulfur ions, and the blue is for oxygen ions–doubly ionized, in fact–with the same caveat about it not necessarily being visible at its original frequencies. This way the scientists studying it can directly see where the oxygen and sulfur are, since each of those constituents is color coded.

OK, that’s not obviously false color, because most of us aren’t familiar with the actual appearance of the Eagle Nebula. (I personally have seen it through a telescope, but it’s not bright even there, so my rods gave me a black-and-white image (and much smaller than this photo, too). It’s rare to see color with your eyes through a telescope unless you’re looking at planets. I once saw a hint of color in the Orion nebula…through a big scope that was gathering a lot of light.)

(Sometimes they will put together a picture that actually is true color, bringing out the colors we would see with our cones if only the object were bright enough to register on them.)

A more obvious case of false color is this:

This is a person, shown in infrared, with false colors. The yellow colors are the shorter wavelengths, blues and purples are longer wavelengths. These correlate directly with temperature as you can see in the scale on the right.

Since this is a familiar object, the false color is blatantly obvious.

[Incidentally, the normal convention with stuff like this is to show “hot” things as red and “cool” things as blue. But this reverses the actual wavelengths! It makes the shorter wavelengths red and the longer ones blue, when in reality blue has a shorter wavelength than red. But, we think of red as a hot color and blue as a cool one, so this reversal is inevitable. Blue light in fact is emitted by very hot objects, hot enough that we just don’t encounter them here on Earth. What, here, is at 30,000 K? Not much. But you can see blue-hot things though you will never feel the heat from them. Many of the stars in the night sky are blue hot.]

So when you see, soon, gorgeous color photography from JWST…remember, it’s not the real colors. Or rather, the colors are real, they’re just not the colors you’re being shown. It’s not your fault you can’t see down that far, down to colors we never had a need to name, without help.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

Whoever ends up in the cell next to his, tell him I said “Hi.”

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!