Christopher Robin Milne, famously, is the son of A. A. Milne and the basis for the children’s book character Christopher Robin in the series Winnie-The-Pooh. In the books, Milne’s love and respect for his son is subtle, but evident:

Christopher Robin lived at the other end of the Forest, and when he came back with Rabbit and saw the front half of Pooh, he said, “Silly old bear,” in such a loving voice that everybody felt quite hopeful again.

In any of Milne’s poems or stories, Christopher Robin is a loving boy with a tack for precocity and a deep capacity for warmth and generosity. For a while, Christopher Robin cherished his father’s stories, as he “quite liked being Christopher Robin and being famous”.

As he grew older, however, this quickly turned sour. Ridiculed for his starring role in the children’s series at high school, Christopher formed a hatred for his father’s work. In the army this only intensified, and when he returned, he spoke to his father only in the final stages of the author’s life; he did not speak to his mother ever again, and in the 15 years leading up to her death they had no communication. His wife, also his first cousin, detested Pooh and intensified Christopher’s own hatred of it. Christopher’s only daughter would later be born with cerebral palsy.

Christopher Robin gave away Winnie and his other childhood toys to the editor of the Pooh series, a final severance between himself and his father’s books. Christopher Robin, unfortunately, was blessed only on paper.

However, seemingly in opposition to all this, Christopher studied English at Cambridge and spent most of his life wanting to be a writer. Many years later, as an older man, he would dedicate himself to the preservation of the Ashdown Forest — where he spent his childhood holidays, and the inspiration for Pooh’s own home.

Petrichor: a word you’ve probably heard hanging around. Neil Gaiman is known for using it in popular culture; it features heavily in his novel American Gods and in the Doctor Who episode he wrote. It was originally coined by two Australian researchers in 1964.

But petrichor is not just a pretty word for “the scent of rain on dry earth”. That scent actually derives from an oil exuded by certain plants, which is released during rain. Similar to petrichor is geosmin — the scent of earth itself. Humans are so sensitive to geosmin that they can detect it even when it is only five parts out of one trillion.

Petrichor is yet to be synthesised; it is too complex to recreate. But for all its romanticism, the original researchers suggested a relationship between petrichor and petroleum formation. The scent of rain might have become the scent of the local petrol station.

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The supersoldier, the military transhuman: enhanced humans developed specifically for combat requirements. While the supersoldier may seem like the stuff of fiction, the US military have been perfecting their troops for years, starting at the basic level of psychological conditioning. In WW2 combat, faced with taking a human life, about 80% of US troops deliberately missed their target or froze completely. Now, the modern soldier fighting in Afghanistan fires upon their enemy almost 100% of the time.

The US military research group DARPA is currently researching how to further advance the human warrior. The drug modafinil allows helicopter pilots to fly for forty hours and still function the same way they would with a normal night’s sleep. Propranolol may be used as a drug to prevent PTSD — although some are concerned that it would also inhibit a soldier’s ability to make moral decisions. Silenttalk* is a mind-to-mind communications system that can already allow soldiers to control machinery with their minds, and is intended to allow soldiers to predict “pre-speech”: thoughts. DARPA is also currently researching the digestive system, to see if it is possible to create a soldier who can survive by eating warzone foliage, eliminating the need to carry food.

This extends far beyond the military. Just as LASIK eye surgery, like many projects developed by DARPA, became part of everyday life, so to will enhancing the development of the human being. “We can’t wait for these technologies to be just dumped in our lap, what we have to do is start figuring out what we should do, not what we can do…because this is coming at us real fast.”

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*The official DARPA project page for Silenttalk has been deleted

The doctrine of signatures is a theory proposed by Paracelsus in the 1500s and developed by Jakob Böhme. The name comes from the concept of a “signature of God”, and the theory suggests that every object, notably plants and animals, had a specific purpose for humans.

It goes further. The purpose was thought to relate directly to the human body part which the object resembled. For example, a walnut would be beneficial to the brain, and a cucumber would be an aphrodisiac. This also extended to herbs corresponding to appropriate body parts as medication. The liverwart, toothwart, and lungwart were all named for their apparent medical properties.

On some levels (and to a 16th century herbologist), it’s defensible — walnuts actually are good for your brain. You know how carrots are good for your eyes? Slice a carrot. It doesn’t half look like the human eye.

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Opus Dei is an organisation of the Catholic Church. It had approximately 90,000 members in 2009, 30% of which are celibate, most of these who live in Opus Dei centres.
The organisation is most notable for its support of mortification of the flesh in honour of God. Not all members practice it, but it’s common — cilices, instruments by which one may inflict pain upon themselves, are available for purchase online.

Self-mortification for God has been called an “extreme,” and “questionable” practice. But supporters say self-mortification helps restore the “sense of the enormity of sin”.

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