The Cephalopod Christmas Cookie story

Hi all,

I've been working on building models of small cognitive systems for many years now.  I've built a lot of preliminary software to help me understand how neural models tie together and I've had the pleasure of working with some talented students while on this journey.  I've had a really varied career path and I have worked in areas that involve autonomous robots and artificial intelligence for companies and even NASA for a short time.  I've always been really interested in the following questions:

1. How much cognition is possible in a small brained system?  Very small brains such as are in Portia Fimbriata are capable of what might be considered cognitive acts.  What if I could build a model of a small brain?  Then I could study what happens as parts of this brain are modified so as to limit functionality -- this is called a lesion study.  A lesion based simulation would have great value in developing our understanding of these things.

2. What kind of software tools might be used to develop such models?  I have been trying to build models like this since about 1986 and I still consider myself a beginner.  But with the advent of processors with multicores and better computer languages such as the functional languages Clojure and Scala, some hope of better simulation tools is beginning to seem likely.  I am very active in learning about these.  Indeed, there are tools now that allow an animated model to be superimposed over a web cam feed to give the illusion of something living being part of the images being broadcast.  This area is called Augmented Reality or AR
and I am learning about that now.

3. What can we do with combinations of DNA genomic information and software together to build a model?
Can a software model be visible to our eyes just as if it is really in the room?  These are questions of virtual reality and it is not so far fetched.  The sensors we use in XBox and Play Station based gaming now routinely send feedback to your hands and eyes to make you feel like you are actually touching someting.  So with the proper equipment, a person might be able to touch a simulated creature and really interact with it.
And what if people had sensors implanted in their bodies like RF chips which are now routinely used to provide information to sensors in stores and so forth about prices etc?  Such an enhanced person might be able to interact with a simulation like it was real!

4.  Can we do short term synaptic and neural modifications like a software upload?  Not now, but who knows what the future might bring....

And therein hangs this little tale about a mathematician (me) desperate to find a way to get his biology colleagues to finish reading their joint paper which contains just too much math.  This was originally written in 2009 and I just edited it lightly for this version.  I actually submitted it to the magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction but it did not impress them very much.  It was my first story rejection though and I will always treasure it!  Anyway, here is the story.  See if you like it.   A couple of notes: in some countries, they say "maths" instead of mathematics and they call "cookies" biscuits.


The Tale of the Three Authors

by Jim Peterson

Nick looked at his incoming mail box and shook his head in annoyance. It was another message
from the bloody yank, Peterson, about the West Nile virus paper. Nick looked at his watch and
realized he had only six hours before he had to get on the plane to go back to Sydney. And he
still had so much to do. He wasn’t sure if all of his instructions for the experiments he wanted
done were as crystal clear as he hoped and with all of that on his mind, Peterson kept pestering
him about a paper that was after all using maths. Maths wasn’t going to help him understand this
biology! Sighing, he clicked on the email. There was no message which was a surprise as Peterson
tended to be overly chatty. Instead just an attached graphic. He clicked on it and immediately an
icon popped up on his screen.

It was very odd! It looked like an octopus but it was pink and it had enormous blue eyes. As he
was looking, the octopus sort of wriggled and winked at him. Then, another image slowly moved
up behind the first. It was hard to describe, but it really did look like it had swam up behind the
octopus. It was a beautiful cuttlefish. Suddenly, his speaker squawked into life.

”Nicholas, is that you?”

Surprised, Nick coughed and bemusedly scratched his beard.

”I certainly am me! Who are you?”

”I, sir, am Inkapod and my esteemed partner is Inkalot. We have come to save you.”

Nicholas scrunched down in his chair a little.

”Save me from what?”

”Why, from maths, of course. Did you receive the Christmas Cephalopod cookies from Jim?”

”Why yes, they are right here. But I haven’t opened them.”

Inkapod moved languidly on the screen in front of Nick and then loomed forward and commanded

”Well, open them! We have a lot to do and little time!”

Stunned, Nick reached for the cookies that were wrapped in plastic and ripped the packaging open.
The cookies fell to the ground before he could catch them and then before his unbelieving eyes,
hovered in front of his face right before they attached themselves to his head. A cuttlefish went on
his left temple, an octopus cookie landed on the bridge of his nose and looked into his eyes while
a giant squid landed on the top of his head.
Inkapod and Inkalot looked satisfied on the screen in front of him. Nick was in shock; everything had happened so fast and now here he was festooned with Christmas cookies that had come
alive. He sputtered

”Get these damn biscuits off of me”

just as Inkapod said

”Initiate cognitive transfer”

and then settled back looking at Nick with those huge blue eyes which, by God, had magnificent
curly eyelashes!
Everything went blank at that moment.

As Nick opened his eyes, he saw a small amoeboid like blob resting on his hand. As he struggled
to come awake, it shifted form and settled into what appeared to be an octopus wearing a red
Christmas hat and wearing red elf boots on all eight tentacles. As he watched, the face of the
creature blurred and suddenly took on the appearance of his own.

”Righty, crikey, mate! How you do?”

it said.

”Call me Bernard.”

Nick who was turning so red a possible stroke might come to the mind of any onlooker, sputtered

”This is fooooooooooking nuts!! What the helllllll!!”

but his diatribe slipped off into incoherent babbling as Bernard leaned forward and mentioned, in
a nicely conversational tone

”Jim’s work you see. A little nano self assembly using proteins from YOU and his latest
working small brain cognitive system. All courtesy of DARPA and very hush - hush; indeed, we
will have to kill you if you say anything about this!”

Bernard looked expectantly at Nick. It turned out Bernard’s eyes were also a beautiful blue. Nick
was so nonplussed all he could say was

”Blue eyes? Huh....”

”Oh, that. Jim is absolutely fascinated with the vampire squid. Even has a stuffed animal he
keeps in his bedroom. All I can say is his wife is one understanding human! Of course, I am Jim
in a way, so I am partial to his, shall we say, eccentricities....”

Bernard suddenly leaned forward and flicking off two of the red boots, prodded Nick’s nose with
a tentacle.

”Jim assembled the software using Portia fimbriata architectures. Very nice little tropical predatory spider with a small brain exhibiting what some call cognitive behavior. A lot of his design is
based on good old P.f.– so I want to fill you with all these interesting neurotoxins. Indeed, to some
extent, you look absolutely delicious and I keep thinking about a small web, a little wine, some
cheese.”

Bernard ducked his head, swallowed (it was odd to see that in an octopus Nick noticed) and continued

”But I digress, my job is to help you finish the West Nile Virus paper. Jim wants you to stop
being math phobic. So here is little bit of Jim”

and with that, Bernard leaned forward and touched Nick’s forehead.
Nick felt a surge of strangeness and then Bernard shoved a printout of the paper in front of him.
Suddenly all the equations glowed in colors and Nick could follow the logic effortlessly. He also
felt a tug in the back of his mind to build a web, but he couldn’t remember how to create the stuff!
Nick cleared his throat

”Ugggggg.....What have you done?”

”Oh, just a little neural rewiring. A bit of synthesesia to help you get through the paper.”

Nick looked up and saw Inkapod and Inkalot beaming down at him with nice cephalopod smiles.

”Ah, he is coming around I think. I bet Alison should be popping in soon!”

Just then another email popped up, this time from Alison in Sydney. As he clicked it open, it
sprouted into a wonderfully colored sea dragon wearing Alison’s features. Around the sea dragon’s
”neck” was a yellow kerchief with the name Gertrude on it. Gertrude was also wearing a Christmas
hat.

”Ah Nick, I see you got Jim’s Christmas cookies and messages. I must admit the math is easier
now!

At that very moment, in Sydney, Alison was in the corner trying hard to build a web out of left over
spaghetti from her lunch. She looked at her hands and visibly shook off the web building impulse.
She ran to her computer and opened a chat box.

”Nick? Are you there? Are you having a few spider obsessive things happening?”

Nick frowned as left hand suddenly jabbed forward and tried to inject neurotoxin into his keyboard.

”Right you are Alison. We better read this bloody paper so we can get this math upgrade out
of our head as soon as possible! And, really, equations in burgundy?”

Alison replied quickly

”Yes, things are somewhat stable, but I don’t want this to go on too long...”

Alison in Sydney and Nick in Germany looked at the paper. Over their shoulders hovered Inkapod,
Inkalot and an octopus named Bernard and a sea dragon called Gertrude. They all smiled as the
process of vetting the paper began.

Nick had just landed in Sydney and was getting picked up by his wife from the airport. The
cognitive upgrades had oozed into nothingness over the last day or so and Alison reported hers
had drifted away also. Nick looked up at the blue sky and realized he was looking forward to be
home so that he could start up a salt water fish tank for his newest passion: cuttlefish. Alison had
told him yesterday about the new desert aquarium she was going to use to raise a colony of small
spiders. He stretched, life was good and he was glad all was back to normal. He just hoped Jim
didn’t have any more papers for them to vet.
Just then his cell phone rang.

”Nick, this is Jim. I’ve found some funding and I think I’ll be able to come next month to work
on models! How does that sound?”

Nick tried to answer, but found he could not. Hi wife was surprised to see the fingers of his hands
form into talons as if they were trying to inject something. She glanced at him as he shouted

”Noooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!”

and beat on the dashboard of their old and venerable Volkswagen van.
Nick was usually odd when he got back from a trip but this was a bit weirder than usual! Little did
she know that over at the children’s hospital, Alison was taking kids temperatures with talon like
fingers....

Jim hung up the phone. It seemed like his cognitive transfer experiments had gone off without a
hitch, no side effects at all. He looked up from his terminal and patted Inkapod on the head.

”Good job and you too Inkalot. I bet Nick and Alison really appreciate what I did!”

Christmas 2012

Hi all,

Christmas 2012 started with making the cephalopod based ginger bread cookies I am famous ( or infamous ) for.  My kids helped me do this over Thanksgiving.  We start with a standard ginger bread dough, roll it out about 1/8" think and then cut out the cephalopod patterns.  I just drew a Christmas based squid, octopus and cuttlefish out on heavy cardboard and cut them out with scissors.  Then you lay the pattern on the rolled out ginger bread dough and trace its outline with a knife, peel it out of the dough and place on a cookie sheet.  I used parchment paper under the dough to keep things from sticking.  Here is a Christmas octopus ready to be cut out.  The pattern has the colors for the hat and so forth we want to add when we do the icing.

After it is cut out it looks like this.

Here is the Christmas squid laid out on the cookie dough before cutting it out.

Once cut out, here you can see the squid next to its pattern.  You can see how we will try to color it with icing too.

Once enough have been cut out, we have a cookie sheet full ready to bake.

And after baking, we have our undecorated cookies.

The kids made a few other christmas cookies -- like a whale!

After decorating, the cookies went into plastic bags so they would still be fresh throughout the holidays.

Then we decorated the house for the holidays.  We always do that at Thanksgiving.
Here is my home study with lights.  The light strings have a lot of space oriented ornaments like shuttles and star trek themed pieces.  Some of them say things when you turn on the lights, so in the morning when I turn on the lights in my study, I hear this wonderful crazy blend of "lift off" and other sayings!

Then we put up our tree and decorated it.

Now we were ready for the holidays!