Dear Sons,
Someone decided long ago to set aside a special day in June to celebrate dads. I'm not sure why they thought I needed to be honored for loving you. Being your dad is the greatest privilege in the world.
You're nearly adult's now. It seems like yesterday that I cradled you all in my arms after lulling you to sleep on my chest. I still try to cuddle you, but you're not as easily convinced anymore. LOL. Besides, how big you've gotten! Bigger and taller than me.
People tell me all the time that you're my clone, a bona fide me. If only they knew how proud it makes me to hear that. At the same time, it's terribly frightening that someone in the world has my DNA, along with the tendency to reproduce my quirks and frailties. Thankfully, mom's DNA helps to balance that out. That's the beauty of God's system. Two flawed and feeble human beings reproduce a blend of themselves in someone who has a lifetime to live life better than they did.
You're well on your way, already pondering hard questions and sensitive to deep insights.
I love that you are so strong willed. Even at birth, you wanted to enter the world at your pace, on your terms. So what that it took many hours! Mom would have to deal with it (which she did, I might add, with remarkable grace and enduring strength).
If there's only one thing I successfully pass onto you (besides 80% of your physical features, which, frankly, I had no control over) let it be this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbors as yourself. These truths, combined with the strength of your character, have the power to change the world. Do harm to no one and respect all of life!!!
They're hardly original thoughts, but there are none better to build your life around. The God who fearfully and wonderfully formed you in your mother's womb deserves every ounce of your love and affection. Throughout life's challenges, He will always provide, never steer you wrong, and empower you to fulfill a destiny that's exceedingly abundantly above all you, or anyone, can think or imagine.
That destiny intimately involves other people. God saw fit that you would be born at a time when over 6 billion of them would share your world (with two added each second!). Leave your mark by loving each and every person your life touches as God first loved you: your future bride, your children, your mommy and daddy; friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and those you meet in passing; those who love you and those who don't; those who spitefully use you. Love attaches no conditions. It expects nothing in return. It gives freely and in abundance, only then to multiply and grow.
As you learn to love others, don't forget that your love for them can go only as deep as your love for yourself. Not narcissistic self-obsession (remind me in a couple of years to explain what "narcissism" is), but rather, an understanding that you are God's handiwork, crafted for His good pleasure. He uniquely designed you to be you alone, comfortable in your own shoes. Be ready to create your own path. Never will there be another James, Chris or Jacob. Never will someone else impact the lives you will as only you can. Imperfect though you will be, learn to appreciate your weaknesses, as it's in them that you will experience your Creator's greatest strengths.
James, Chris and Jake, strive to create a home here on earth that you esteem and want to share with others. A place of security and love, laughter and nourishment, where you can cry without fear, grow without judgment, and discover without prejudice.
I'm tempted to say that I can't wait to see what your future holds, the joys and challenges that await you, the legacy your life will create. But I'm enjoying you too much right now. Wither you believe it or not.
I pray you cherish your life's journey as much as I am.
Love, Dad.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Easter Island compound extends lifespan of old mice
These Easter Island monoliths have endured for centuries. New research suggests that a compound first discovered in soil of the remote South Pacific island might help humans stand the test of time, too. Credit: Image copyright Happy Alex, 2009. Used under license from shutterstock.comThe giant monoliths of Easter Island are worn, but they have endured for centuries. New research suggests that a compound first discovered in the soil of the South Pacific island might help us stand the test of time, too.
Anti-Aging Hormone MDs - www.BodyLogicMD.com
Houston TX Physicians specialize in Natural Bioidentical Hormones.
Wednesday, July 8, in the journal Nature, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and two collaborating centers reported that the Easter Island compound - called "rapamycin" after the island's Polynesian name, Rapa Nui - extended the expected lifespan of middle-aged mice by 28 percent to 38 percent. In human terms, this would be greater than the predicted increase in extra years of life if cancer and heart disease were both cured and prevented.
The rapamycin was given to the mice at an age equivalent to 60 years old in humans.
The studies are part of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) Interventions Testing Program, which seeks compounds that might help people remain active and disease-free throughout their lives. The other two centers involved are the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.
The Texas study was led by scientists at two institutes at the UT Health Science Center: the Institute of Biotechnology (IBT) and the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies.
"I've been in aging research for 35 years and there have been many so-called 'anti-aging' interventions over those years that were never successful," said Arlan G. Richardson, Ph.D., director of the Barshop Institute. "I never thought we would find an anti-aging pill for people in my lifetime; however, rapamycin shows a great deal of promise to do just that."
Versatile compound
Discovered in the 1970s, rapamycin was first noted for its anti-fungal properties and later was used to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients. It also is used in stents, which are implanted in patients during angioplasty to keep coronary arteries open. It is in clinical trials for the treatment of cancer.
The new aging experiments found that adding rapamycin to the diet of older mice increased their lifespan. The results were the same in Texas, Michigan and Maine.
"We believe this is the first convincing evidence that the aging process can be slowed and lifespan can be extended by a drug therapy starting at an advanced age," said Randy Strong, Ph.D., who directs the NIA-funded Aging Interventions Testing Center in San Antonio. He is a professor of pharmacology at the UT Health Science Center and a senior research career scientist with the South Texas Veterans Health Care System.
The findings have "interesting implications for our understanding of the aging process," said Z. Dave Sharp, Ph.D., director of the Institute of Biotechnology and professor and chairman of the Health Science Center's Department of Molecular Medicine.
"In addition," Dr. Sharp said, "the findings have immediate implications for preventive medicine and human health, in that rapamycin is already in clinical usage."
Molecular pathway
Aging researchers currently acknowledge only two life-extending interventions in mammals: calorie restriction and genetic manipulation. Rapamycin appears to partially shut down the same molecular pathway as restricting food intake or reducing growth factors.
It does so through a cellular protein called mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), which controls many processes in cell metabolism and responses to stress.
A decade ago, Dr. Sharp proposed to his colleagues that mTOR might be involved in calorie restriction. "It seemed like an off-the-wall idea at that time," Dr. Richardson said.
In 2004, a year after the launch of the NIA Interventions Testing Program, Dr. Sharp submitted a proposal that rapamycin be studied for anti-aging effects. The proposal was approved, and testing centers in San Antonio and elsewhere began to include rapamycin in the diets of mice.
The male and female mice were cross-bred from four different strains of mice to more closely mimic the genetic diversity and disease susceptibility of the human population.
Dr. Strong soon recognized a problem: Rapamycin was not stable enough in food or in the digestive tract to register in the animals' blood level. He worked with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio to improve the bioavailability of the compound through a process called microencapsulation. The reformulated drug was stable in the diet fed to the mice and bypassed the stomach to release in the intestine, where it could more reliably enter the bloodstream.
Older mice
The original goal was to begin feeding the mice at 4 months of age, but because of the delay caused by developing the new formulation, the mice were not started until they were 20 months old - the equivalent of 60 years of age in humans.
The teams decided to try the rapamycin intervention anyway.
"I did not think that it would work because the mice were too old when the treatment was started," Dr. Richardson said. "Most reports indicate that calorie restriction doesn't work when implemented in old animals. The fact that rapamycin increases lifespan in relatively old mice was totally unexpected."
Added Dr. Strong: "This study has clearly identified a potential therapeutic target for the development of drugs aimed at preventing age-related diseases and extending healthy lifespan. If rapamycin, or drugs like rapamycin, works as envisioned, the potential reduction in overall health cost for the U.S. and the world will be enormous."
Source: University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
A CREED TO LIVE BY
Don't undermine your worth
by comparing yourself with others.
It is because we are different
that each of us is special.
Don't set your goals by what
other people deem important.
Only you know what is best for you.
Don't take for granted the things closest to your heart.
Cling to them as you would your life,
for without them life is meaningless.
Don't let your life slip through your fingers
by living in the past or for the future,
By living your life one day at a time.
Don't give up when you still have something to give
nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.
Don't be afraid to admit that you are less then perfect.
It is a fragile thread that binds each of us to each other.
Don't be afraid to encounter risks.
It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.
Don't shut love out of your life by saying it impossible to find.
The quickest way to receive love is to give love;
The fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly;
And the best way to keep love is to give it wings.
Don't dismiss your dreams.
To be without dreams is to be without hope;
to be without hope is to be without purpose.
Don't run through life so fast
that you forget not only where you have been
but also where you are going.
Life is not a race,
but a journey to be savored each step of the way.
by comparing yourself with others.
It is because we are different
that each of us is special.
Don't set your goals by what
other people deem important.
Only you know what is best for you.
Don't take for granted the things closest to your heart.
Cling to them as you would your life,
for without them life is meaningless.
Don't let your life slip through your fingers
by living in the past or for the future,
By living your life one day at a time.
Don't give up when you still have something to give
nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.
Don't be afraid to admit that you are less then perfect.
It is a fragile thread that binds each of us to each other.
Don't be afraid to encounter risks.
It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.
Don't shut love out of your life by saying it impossible to find.
The quickest way to receive love is to give love;
The fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly;
And the best way to keep love is to give it wings.
Don't dismiss your dreams.
To be without dreams is to be without hope;
to be without hope is to be without purpose.
Don't run through life so fast
that you forget not only where you have been
but also where you are going.
Life is not a race,
but a journey to be savored each step of the way.
MEANING OF LIFE
When compiling his great dictionary, the young Noah Webster travels to the Himalayas, where he climbs to the cave of the world's wisest man. "O, great sage," he says, "tell me the meaning of life." The sage sits Noah at his feet and, with great solemnity, commences to unfold the meaning of life. When finished, he places a hand on the young man's shoulder and says, "Do you have any other questions, my son?" Noah flips a page in his notebook and says, "You wouldn't know the meaning of lift, would you?" ~Robert Brault
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
!!!RAIN!!!
What is this? This wet stuff. OMG it is rain. I am sitting in my office looking out my window watching the rain. It is so nice. I just want to go back home and crawl in bed and just listen...But I have to make money so I will continue to just sit here and watch...
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Scottish Clan Carnegie
Motto: "Dread God"
Badge: A winged thunderbolt.
Names associated with the clan: CARNEGGIE CARNEGY CARNEGI CARRYNEGGI CARRINEGY CARNIGY CARNAGY CARNEAGGIE CARINNEGI CARNEGIE CARNAGIE KERNAGY KORNEGAY BALINHARD BALLINHARD CARNAGE
The name Carnegie derives from the barony of this name in the parish of Carmyllie, Angus. The Carnegies of Southesk, the first family, were previously designated by the Gaelic township name of Balinhard, also in Angus, and are descended from John de Balinhard whose forebears held these lands. The name first appears in records about 1230 in connection with the Abbeys of Arbroath and Balmerino. John, the 1st of Carnegie died in 1370 and was succeeded by John Carnegie of that Ilk. The direct line of this family died out in the mid 16th century and the lands of Kinnaird were acquired by the Carnegies of Kinnaird, Brechin who hence restored the title Carnegie of that Ilk. From this family, John of Kinnaird was killed at Flodden in 1513 and his son Robert was captured at the Battle of Pinkie, knighted on his release and made an Ambassador to France. His son Sir John was loyal to Mary Queen of Scots till her death. He was succeeded by his brother, John whose son David, 8th of Kinnaird was created 1st Earl of Southesk in 1633. The Earldom of Northesk was given to John his brother who descended from Lord Lour, younger brother of the 1st Earl of Southesk, becoming Earls of Ethie. (The North and South Esk rivers cross the county of Angus). The 5th Earl was forfeited after his support of the house of Stuart in the 1715 Rising. He is commemmorated in the song in "The Piper o' Dundee". The 5th Earl had no issue thus the title passed to a cousin Sir James Carnegie of Pitarro. He reinacted the title lost after 1715 and became the 9th Earl of Southesk. The heir by his marriage to Princess Maud inherited the title of Duke of Fife and is second cousin to the Queen. The most famous bearer of the name was Andrew Carnegie, the son of a weaver whose family emigrated to Pennsylvannia. Starting work in a cotton mill at 13 he rose to become one of the leading railroad magnates and the foremost ironmaster in the United States. In his published work "The Gospel of Work" he wrote "The man who dies rich dies disgraced" and hence he spent the remainder of his life distributing his wealth and creating the Carnegie free libraries in Scotland. The present head of the Carnegies, the 11th Earl of Southesk, still lives at the clan seat in Angus; Kinnaird Castle, Brechin.
CARNEGIE: The name originates in the Barony of Carnegy in Angus. The Carnegies of that Ilk, originally 'de Ballinhards', descended from Jocelyn de Ballinhard in the 13th century, whose descendant in 1358 obtained ownership of the Barony and adopted the name. In 1409 Duthac de Carnegie acquired the lands of Kinnaird by marriage to the heiress Mariota but perished on the field of Harlaw two years later. John, 4th of Kinnaird, fell with his king at Flodden in 1513 and family loyalty to the House of Stewart gained his successor position as a Lord of Session, and Mary Queen of Scots' ambassador. The 8th Laird, Sir David, was created Lord Carnegie in 1616, and by Charles I made Earl of Southesk in 1633. The Royalist 2nd Earl was imprisoned by Cromwell, and such abiding loyalty to the Stewarts led to the forfeiture of their estates following the 5th Earl's proclamation of the 'Old Pretender' at Montrose in 1715, and his participation in that Rising. This Earl being devoid of issue, the family representation passed to the 3rd Carnegie Baronet of Pitarro who repurchased the estates and to whose descendant the Earldom was restored in 1855 as 9th Earl. The 11th Earl married Princess Maud, daughter of Princess Louise, Duchess of Fife. and such union bringing also the Dukedom of Fife to the family. Almost concurrently with the Southesk Earldom, Sir John Carnegie, Lord Lour, brother of the 1st Earl, acquired the Earldom of Ethie in 1647, but had it altered to 'Northesk' in 1666. Two Northesk Earls were celebrated Admirals, the latter being 3rd-in-Command under Nelson at Trafalgar. From the earlier common lineage, and from the respective earldoms, many cadet families evolved throughout Angus and Kincardineshire. Perhaps the most universally celebrated of the name was Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) who from humble origin in Dunfermline, Fife, rose to make a vast fortune in railways and steel in America.
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Friday, July 3, 2009
Creating a Bucket List - 100 Things to do Before You Die
What do you want to do before you die?
Stop putting your dreams off for "some day" . . . Take inspiration from the movie "The Bucket List" and ask yourself: If I had one year left to live, what would I be sure to do? Create a list of 100 things you want to do before you kick the bucket and start crossing items off your list, today.Maybe you want to . . .
1. Write a script for a TV show
2. Do stand-up comedy
3. Write a children's book
4. Go camping
5. Ride a gondola in Venice
6. Learn how to salsa dance
7. Host Saturday Night Live
8. Visit a Renaissance fair
9. See the Mona Lisa at the Louvre
10. Witness a solar eclipse
It's never too early or too late to create a bucket list. So, whether you're 10 or 98, use this lens for inspiration and for guidelines on how to get started. You'll also find over 360 things you can consider adding to your bucket list (suggestions to get your creative juices flowing).
"Will you succeed? Yes, you will indeed (98 3/4% guaranteed)." - Dr. Seuss
How to Create Your Bucket List
A lot of people are unsure as to what to include in a bucket list, so they decide to put it off until they're crystal clear on exactly what they want. Don't allow performance anxiety to stop you from creating your bucket list. Start by creating a preliminary rough draft; you can always add, delete, or modify as you go along.You're going to create your list by having an individual brainstorming session. Set your kitchen timer to go off in forty-five minutes and find a place where you won't be interrupted. Play Baroque music in the background, if you have it. Baroque music, such as "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi and Pachbel's "Cannon" have been shown to slow brainwaves down to the Alpha range, the brain frequency which has been linked to increased creativity.
Do not criticize or evaluate what you write down during the brainstorming process: you're trying to open yourself up to possibilities. Write down whatever comes into your head, it doesn't matter how wildly impractical the idea seems. Basically, you're going to have to quiet your internal critic, that little voice in your head that might be saying: "You can't do that"; "That's silly"; "I can't afford that." Push the limits on what you currently think is possible for you and think outside the boundaries of your current life.
Don't stop at 100; write down as many things as come to your mind. Later you can sift through the list you created and narrow it down to 100.
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Principle Four: We must individually accept Jesus Christ...
Principle Four: We must individually accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our life.
The Bible says, "But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12).
We accept Jesus by faith. The Bible says, "God saved you by his special favour when you believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it" (Ephesians 2:8,9).
Accepting Jesus means first believing that Jesus is who he claimed to be, then inviting him to take the control of our lives and make us into new people (John 3:1-8).
Jesus said, "I'm standing at the door and I'm knocking. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in" (Revelation 3:20).
How will you respond to God's invitation? What will you do with the claims of Jesus Christ?
Consider these two circles.
Self-Directed Life
Christ-Directed Life
Which circle best represents your life?
Which circle would you like to have represent your life?
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Principle Three: By giving his life for us...
Principle Three: By giving his life for us, Jesus Christ opened up the only way to friendship with God. Through him we can know and experience God's love and plan for our life.
Jesus Christ is God's solution to the problem of human imperfection and evil. Because of Jesus' death on the cross, we don't have to be separated from God any longer. Jesus paid the price for our sin and in so doing, bridged the gap between us and God.
He also said, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again. They are given eternal life for believing in me and will never perish" (John 11:25-26).
But not only did Jesus die for our sin, he rose from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:3-6). When he did, he proved beyond doubt that he can rightfully promise eternal life-that he is the Son of God and the only means by which we can know God.
Yet just having knowledge about God's plans and purposes isn't enough. We need to consciously recognize that Jesus has paid the price for our sin and more than that, we need to welcome him into our lifeBlogged with the Flock Browser
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Principle Two: We choose to go our own way, cutting ourselves off from God. Therefore we cannot know and experience God's love and plan for our life.
The fact is, we need Jesus. The Bible says, "... all fall short of God's glorious standard" (Romans 3:23b). Though God intended for us to have a relationship with Him, we naturally want to do things our own way. We're stubborn, selfish, and frequently unable to follow through on our promises. Try as we might, we just keep stumbling.
Deep down, our attitude may be one of active rebellion or passive indifference, but it's all evidence of what the Bible calls sin- an old archery term which literally means "missing the mark."
This diagram shows the great gap that exists between us and God. The arrows illustrate that we are always trying to reach God and find a meaningful life through our own efforts. We may try to do good things or adopt a new guiding philosophy--but we inevitably fail.
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Make a Change
Power to Change is really about one thing: knowing Jesus. The Bible tells of his birth, his teaching, his death and his coming back to life.
Principle One: God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
God created you. Not only that, he loves you so much that he wants you to spend eternity with him. Jesus said, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
God says, "For I know the plans I have for you...they are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11).
Jesus came so that each of us could know and understand God in a personal way. Jesus alone can bring meaning and purpose to life
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Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code Unlocking This Cipher Wasn't Self-Evident; Algorithms and Educated Guesses
By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN
For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.
The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them.
University of Pennsylvania Archives
Robert Patterson
in this message, Mr. Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Mr. Patterson wrote. But, he added, most ciphers fall "far short of perfection."
To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering."
Mr. Patterson then included in the letter an example of a message in his cipher, one that would be so difficult to decode that it would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race," he wrote.
There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the State Department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.
The cipher finally met its match in Lawren Smithline, a 36-year-old mathematician. Dr. Smithline has a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology, or code-breaking, at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a division of the Institute for Defense Analyses.
A couple of years ago, Dr. Smithline's neighbor, who was working on a Jefferson project at Princeton University, told Dr. Smithline of Mr. Patterson's mysterious cipher.
Dr. Smithline, intrigued, decided to take a look. "A problem like this cipher can keep me up at night," he says. After unlocking its hidden message in 2007, Dr. Smithline articulated his puzzle-solving techniques in a recent paper in the magazine American Scientist and also in a profile in Harvard Magazine, his alma mater's alumni journal.
The code, Mr. Patterson made clear in his letter, was not a simple substitution cipher. That's when you replace one letter of the alphabet with another. The problem with substitution ciphers is that they can be cracked by using what's termed frequency analysis, or studying the number of times that a particular letter occurs in a message. For instance, the letter "e" is the most common letter in English, so if a code is sufficiently long, whatever letter appears most often is likely a substitute for "e."
Because frequency analysis was already well known in the 19th century, cryptographers of the time turned to other techniques. One was called the nomenclator: a catalog of numbers, each standing for a word, syllable, phrase or letter. Mr. Jefferson's correspondence shows that he used several code books of nomenclators. An issue with these tools, according to Mr. Patterson's criteria, is that a nomenclator is too tough to memorize.
Jefferson even wrote about his own ingenious code, a model of which is at his home, Monticello, in Charlottesville, Va. Called the wheel cipher, the device consisted of cylindrical pieces, threaded onto an iron spindle, with letters inscribed on the edge of each wheel in a random order. Users could scramble and unscramble words simply by turning the wheels.
But Mr. Patterson had a few more tricks up his sleeve. He wrote the message text vertically, in columns from left to right, using no capital letters or spaces. The writing formed a grid, in this case of about 40 lines of some 60 letters each.
Then, Mr. Patterson broke the grid into sections of up to nine lines, numbering each line in the section from one to nine. In the next step, Mr. Patterson transcribed each numbered line to form a new grid, scrambling the order of the numbered lines within each section. Every section, however, repeated the same jumbled order of lines.
The trick to solving the puzzle, as Mr. Patterson explained in his letter, meant knowing the following: the number of lines in each section, the order in which those lines were transcribed and the number of random letters added to each line.
The key to the code consisted of a series of two-digit pairs. The first digit indicated the line number within a section, while the second was the number of letters added to the beginning of that row. For instance, if the key was 58, 71, 33, that meant that Mr. Patterson moved row five to the first line of a section and added eight random letters; then moved row seven to the second line and added one letter, and then moved row three to the third line and added three random letters. Mr. Patterson estimated that the potential combinations to solve the puzzle was "upwards of ninety millions of millions."
![[Thomas Jefferson]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uSELlU3ZvbzysfooB8tZA9nrVKmJUw4xJ36zfRJ72hw8fG2AT1iVMQGl_z0-QwuOj_t91ohWT41HikVvfk2WhHOX_EnVMn066rGc2_30vCWzZ3IdkP3e4y2NEFct7hLHMvspiNNQHIeTT8rA79r_qo=s0-d)
Thomas Jefferson
After explaining this in his letter, Mr. Patterson wrote, "I presume the utter impossibility of decyphering will be readily acknowledged."
Undaunted, Dr. Smithline decided to tackle the cipher by analyzing the probability of digraphs, or pairs of letters. Certain pairs of letters, such as "dx," don't exist in English, while some letters almost always appear next to a certain other letter, such as "u" after "q".
To get a sense of language patterns of the era, Dr. Smithline studied the 80,000 letter-characters contained in Jefferson's State of the Union addresses, and counted the frequency of occurrences of "aa," "ab," "ac," through "zz."
Dr. Smithline then made a series of educated guesses, such as the number of rows per section, which two rows belong next to each other, and the number of random letters inserted into a line.
To help vet his guesses, he turned to a tool not available during the 19th century: a computer algorithm. He used what's called "dynamic programming," which solves large problems by breaking puzzles down into smaller pieces and linking together the solutions.
The overall calculations necessary to solve the puzzle were fewer than 100,000, which Dr. Smithline says would be "tedious in the 19th century, but doable."
After about a week of working on the puzzle, the numerical key to Mr. Patterson's cipher emerged -- 13, 34, 57, 65, 22, 78, 49. Using that digital key, he was able to unfurl the cipher's text:
"In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events..."
That, of course, is the beginning -- with a few liberties taken -- to the Declaration of Independence, written at least in part by Jefferson himself. "Patterson played this little joke on Thomas Jefferson," says Dr. Smithline. "And nobody knew until now."
Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1Blogged with the Flock Browser
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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