Here’s West Hunter with an example of how following long inductive chains can cause you to arrive at wrong conclusions that perhaps end in Iraq getting buried in a ten-foot-deep layer of white phosphorus.

I would like to supply a similar case.

In 1989, a Missouri-class battleship called the USS Iowa was test-firing its 16-inch guns. Something went wrong. As explosive charges were loaded into the breech of gun turret number two, they suddenly detonated, sending the explosion back into the turret crew. Forty-seven servicemen died in a wash of fire.

How did it happen? The gun barrel in question was cold. No cold weapon had ever caused a spontaneous explosion in all of recorded maritime history. Navy investigators found traces of brake fluid, calcium hypochlorite, and steel wool inside the barrel. The remains of a sabotage device?

The story developed an interesting Brokeback Mountain-esque winkle when it was revealed that Clayton Hartwig, captain of the centre gun, had been in a covert relationship with a sailor in the turret crew. What’s more, he’d been in charge of the loading operation. Was this an act of revenge from a jilted lover? Both men had died in the explosion.

Elaborate theories of sabotage and murder-suicide looked right past the real reason for the explosion. Additional bags of explosives called “trim bags” are normally inserted into the main charge to correct for weight variations. Unlike the explosives in the main charge, the “trim bags” are not tightly packed, making them susceptible to the shock of the gun’s power-driven rammer. The Iowa, incidentally, had a rammer that forced the bagged explosives into the breech 0.6 meters further than regulation guidelines, and with greater force. The explosive charges remain stable under heavy pressure, but the loosely-packed trim bags were very unstable under those conditions.

A second technical inquiry established that the chemical remains in the gun barrel were most likely from a mixture of cleaning fluid, lubricants, and seawater. No reason to suspect conscious sabotage.

Finally, a test rig was built that simulated the Iowa’s 16-inch cannon, as well as the over-ramming. It was done five times, ten times, fifteen times, but nothing happened.

The testers persisted. As Nassim Taleb would point out fifteen years later, you have to make outliers part of your plan. Even if cold explosions almost never happen, you cannot escape the awful tyranny of that “almost”.

On the 18th test, the charge exploded inside the cold barrel, blowing the test rig apart.

In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Aegean is described dozens of times as “wine-dark”. Honey is “green”. Iron is “violet”. This has led to fringe theories that the classical Greeks saw the world in very different colours than us.

The content of Agatha Christie’s writing has been analysed, uncovering some interesting patterns. Her vocabulary became much smaller as she grew older, and she started using far more indefinite words (“something, thing, anything”) Some now suspect that she was writing her final novels through the early stages of Alzheimers. Of course, could also have been suffering from a similar but unrelated disease called “who gives a shit, I live in a house of solid gold.”

Aquinas once said “beware the man of one book.” Most think that means “don’t trust people who rely on one point of truth and don’t consider outside perspective”, but actually Aquinas meant the opposite, that someone who has learned and mastered just one book can be formidable.

The entire Twilight series has about 43 million copies in print. By comparison, the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung has only 820 million copies.

One of the earliest ebook readers, if you take a cosmopolitan view of the word, was the Nintendo Gameboy. In the mid-90s someone found a way to fit the entire KJV Bible on a GB cartridge (you can download a ROM here), allowing for reading and even advanced capabilities such as indexing/referencing. On eBay the original cartridges are selling for more than $500, making it one of the more expensive editions of the Bible.

Someone once described fiction writers as “professional liars”. If you accept this, science fiction might actually be the least lie-filled genre, since it has potential to become the truth.

After Marquis de Sade died, his skull was phrenologically examined. It was exactly the right shape for a priest. 

Dean Koontz sold the first story he ever wrote, and then collected 75 rejections before making another sale. Some wish this ratio still held true in 2015.

The most prolific author might well be this programmer, who algorithmically generated 800,000 books and started selling them on Amazon.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 has been packaged a lot of interesting ways. First Ballantine released a limited run that was bound in asbestos. A more recent one comes with a match and an igniter strip. And, of course, you can read it on the Kindle, after wiping away a thick layer of irony.

To paraphrase something recently pointed out to me, “buy my book” is the white person’s version of “buy my mixtape”.

On the topic of The Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, I find it likely that somewhere, sometime, a person in the midst of starvation actually tried to eat theirs.

“I was only lengthening the wings on the king’s back.” Jensen explained, in reasonable tones. “I thought that if I could do it – and get away with it – I could provoke an academic discussion about the meaning of the Zuabu Bowl. The longer wings are suggestive of a demon, you see. Not a king.”

“The bowl’s been photographed countless times. Everyone would know it’s been changed. Who were you hoping to fool?”

He shrugged but did not argue. Did not even seem to understand. It was as if logic was a seven dollar bill to his mind – untenable, unusable.

Just then, a deputy cracked open the door and poked her head through.

“Superintendent Horowitz? I have an urgent phone call from…”

She waved the girl away without looking at her. “If it’s another important person calling to chew on my ass, tell them to take a metaphorical number, have a metaphorical seat, and then sit the fuck down for a very non-metaphorical wait. I’m interviewing the perp, okay? No disturbances for another hour.”

When they were alone, Dana turned her attention back to him.

“And you’re telling me you’ve done this before? Many times?”

“Yes. All over the world, and in all kinds of places. Archeological digs. Temples Museums. World Heritage sites. It’s incredible how poorly guarded most of them are. And whenever there’s a back turned, or a lock that’s not locked, I get in there and make the world a stranger and more wonderful place.”

“You destroy things. It’s amazing you haven’t been shot by now.”

“No, what’s amazing is the lives I change!” The ridiculous man adopted a Tony Robbins air. “Think of the digs that get funded because of what I do! Think of the journals that stay in print! And think of the countless youngsters who enter academia’s ivory towers because the mysteries I’ve planted at ancient sites…and their brains!”

“No.” She shook her head. “You’re not making this better for yourself at all.”

“I remember how I started down my current path. I was reading about palaeontology, and a strange occurrence in Eastern Colorado. Apparently, Palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope unearthed a partial vertebra of a massive new dinosaur of the diplodocidae family. If his measurements are accurate and the dinosaur was of the same proportions as other diplodocids, it would have absolutely been the largest creature to ever exist – even bigger than today’s blue whale.

“But nobody knows for sure, because we don’t know where the the vertebra is now – if it even existed. All attempts to locate it have failed, and we can only rely on Cope’s illustrations and his measurements.

“I read about this, and I was suffused with a sense of certainty. It was a hoax, you see. Someone drew up some pictures, and forged Cope’s handwriting and signature. How? Why? I don’t know, but in doing so, he spawned an entire cottage industry trying to locate this giant dinosaur.”

If Dana’s face did not change, it was only because it had hit the bottom of a slippery slope. Complete incredulity.

“I will never know who this man was, but I salute him, and hope to carry on his tradition. I will fake things. I will break things. And in doing so, I will make the world a more exciting and wonderful place.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“It is sublime. It is almost a holy duty. Just last year, I was in Peru, at the old Incan stronghold of Sacsayhuaman. Though there was a sign saying we should not litter, I did leave behind a small rock, inscribed with the syllabary of the Kamakura-era Japan. It was aged to authenticity in my own oven. Come last week, and what do I see?” He jabbed a finger in the air. “A brand spanking new article in PLOS Journal, arguing that there had been trans-Pacific contact between Japan and South America! The author’s knockdown argument? A rock inscribed with Japanese characters at an old relic site. My rock! He wants to finance an expedition to dig up every corpse they can get their hands on and sequence the DNA, and he might just manage it. He should write me a check.”

“Why am I listening to this?”

“I’ve crossed and recrossed the world. I’ve scratched Christian symbols in the palaces of Han Chinese emperors. I’ve planted aged maize in ancient Egyptian tombs. I’ve put Eurasian bird fossils in Australian dig sites. And then I come home, and wait for the mail. I’m subscribed to every relevant journal in existence, and there’s always great delight when my mysteries are uncovered. I long for the sound of the mailman delivering a stack of magazines. That’s my Christmas.”

“Absurd.”

She suddenly found she couldn’t endure this man any more. His enthusiasm seemed to be achieved through vampiric theft of her own.

She summoned a deputy to the office. “Take Mr Jensen and sit him in the holding cell. I have some paperwork to do.”

As he left, he caught one last glimpse of his eyes, at the tidal swells of rapturous happiness contorting his face. A magician loves to perform, even if he does have to reveal his tricks at the end of the show.

She grabbed his psyche file, and started filling it in.

MENTAL DIAGNOSIS? One field asked.

She just wrote “Mystery.”