A quick news tidbit before the real topic of today's post: It seems that a schizophrenic who "thinks she's in her 40's" and a 58 year-old alcoholic have been living in a treehouse for a dozen years ever since "another hermit offered them the home he had begun to craft with discarded lumber and corrugated plastic amid the roots and branches of the 300-year-old oak." Read about their wacky adventures and their pending eviction from the tree here.

The other day I was watching the Harry Potter movie again. In case you haven't seen it or read the books (there must be one of you out there), the plot centers around an artifact called the "philosopher's stone" which can turn metals into gold and create an eternal life elixir. For some reason, when the novels were Americanized, they changed the name to "sorcerer's stone", despite the fact that the stone itself is not a work of fiction. Well, not that there really is a stone that can make you live forever, but back in the 13th century an alchemist named Nicholas Flamel claimed to have a book which described how to use the stone to live forever. Rumor has it that Mr. Flamel is still alive today thanks to the elixir, but others say he "only" lived to be 116.

Alchemists were pretty wacky people, who often made wild claims about turning lead into gold and creating tiny people in airtight jars. Called "homunculi", these tiny people were supposedly fed human blood until they matured to the size of a human child. For some reason, having a tiny human-sized person who ate blood was a great goal of alchemists, and in fact many of them claimed to have successfully done it. The problem, though, was that no one else ever managed to actually see it, and in fact most of the claims were probably triggered by one alchemist claiming to have discovered how to create life and the others just trying to "keep up with the Joneses", where the Joneses in this case were eccentric jobless obsessive medieval "researchers".

According to one website (disclaimer: most people on the internet are kooks or frauds trying to spread their own agendas. Except me of course.), there are modern-day alchemists who use health food and alternative medicine to hide their "real research" and go on important crusades like trying to prevent the government from putting flouride in water (purportedly because it's being used for mind control) and curing heart disease using elixirs of gold and fire.

In fact, there are still real people (according once again to this kooky website) who are trying to forge the philosopher's stone. In quote: "Do you understand? No, I didn't think so. The process is not just an chemical process, it is also a spiritual process inside the mage. And it is also a spiritual evolution of the world. When we finally have achieved the creation of the Red Stone, It will transform the whole world. That is why we are tirelessly working in our laboratories, to bring about the great day". There are even instructions on this page for how to become an alchemist yourself ("years of hard apprenticeship during which you are treated like a janitor"), how to make a love potion, and reanimating dead things (although, "Some alchemists experiment with turning people to dust, and trying to raise them again. If anyone have succeeded, they have not told anybody." Sign me up).

In conclusion, there is a whole world of wackiness out there on the internet: alchemists, people with scientific proofs of God (who, amusingly enough, now has his site blocked by his ISP), and webloggers, all trying to convince everyone else that their crazy ideas are right. Oh what an age we live in.