Stuck In Stowe

I’ve examined the contents of the manila envelope.  There’s nothing that dates any of the contents, per se.  As I noted before, as a bachelor, I had the bad habit of infrequently checking my mail.

Some peculiarities about the package:

1)  No postmark.  Obviously, a postmark would have the date – and I would know when the envelope left the post office, and from which post office.

2) The adhesive on the envelope was not used to seal the envelope.  The envelope was sealed with what appears to be Elmer’s glue or maybe some kind of paste.  Whatever it was, it made it a hell of a lot more difficult to open.  I made a mess of the envelope – ripping the tab to ribbons before enlisting the help of my Leatherman pocketknife.

3) The address is written in pencil – AND it has the wrong apartment number.  7E instead of what it should have been: 7A2.  This last quirk might be the most interesting – or not.  I lived right next to 7D, but my apartment abutted the much larger 7A.  The A and A2 apartments used to be one single suite for each floor – excepting the first floor, which following in the convention of European buildings is actually the first floor above the ground floor.

The only floor with an “E” unit was the first floor.  I’m not sure why this is, but I think has something to do with the building manager’s office on the ground floor, or maybe the higher ceilings on the ground floor entrance.

There’s another glaring problem which some of you have already pointed out: how did this army doctor figure out my address from a comment I left on a Journal article?

Even considering that I, perhaps foolishly, post comments under my real name – there’s no way I can think of that he would have been able to figure out my physical address.  Although, he did work for the Government with top secret security clearance, so it’s possible he had access to some super-internet that can look at every single web page ever associated with my name…

At this point, I’m kind of looking at what might be more likely: a friend of mine playing a prank.

On the other hand, some of the details found on the documents within the envelope hadn’t surfaced until after the doctor’s death in 2008.  So it’s information that falls into one or more of the following three categories:

1)  Stuff that only the army doctor knew that he was relaying to me.

2)  Information that someone else with top secret access knew before it came out publicly in recent months.

3)  Public knowledge that was eventually unearthed by the press and leaked by various Government authorities since the doctor’s death.  In this scenario, someone could have planted the envelope in with some of my old, unopened mail.

The third option seems the most plausible, but the time-lines really don’t add up, and the person planting the envelope would have to know about my unopened mail from that period in order for their prank to make any sense.

And, thinking back, I really don’t know of anyone who had both access to this mail AND the kind of conniving mind to pull this off. Lots of people I know read the Journal, but to have the presence of mind to pull this all together would be something beyond (below?) the capabilities of the people in my inner circle.  No offense.

So, I’m back to square one here. I might be leaving out other possibilities, but it looks like one of two things happened:

1) The Army doctor sent me the envelope.

2) Someone posing as the Army doctor sent me the envelope.

I think it’s important to properly frame the “who” before I move on to the “what” contained in the envelope.

And whenever I’m faced with a kind of multi-step puzzle of chronology, it’s usually helpful to apply the principle of Occam’s Razor.

For the uninitiated, Occam’s Razor states:

Plurality ought never be posited without necessity.

And in more detail:

When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question is the most probable.

In other words, there’s no need to jump to crazy, complicated, and/or overly numerous conclusions when simple ones will suffice.  It’s the same principle used by scientists to weed out implausible hypotheses, and perhaps more relevantly, the one that criminal investigators rely on to help them focus on the most likely suspects.

That’s why when someone’s spouse turns up dead, they can expect a visit from the police.

Or, for instance, if a specific batch of weaponized anthrax gets mailed around the country, they’ll talk with the Army scientists who work most closely with the stuff. If you find an Army doctor with a history of mental illness – why start looking elsewhere?

In medicine, Occam’s Razor manifests itself as this rule of thumb: when you hear hoofbeats, think horse, not zebra.  It’s more likely that vomiting, fluid on the lung and difficulty breathing is caused by the common flu virus, as opposed to the exotic anthrax strain.

So, before I use Occam’s Razor as a tool to pursue a train of thought, it’s important to note that it IS NOT a conclusion unto itself, nor is it an absolute principle of concrete logic.  It’s just a tool.

Is it the doctor, or someone posing as the doctor?

I’d say that there’s probably close to an even likelihood that both the doctor AND someone wishing to impersonate the doctor to leak information would be reading the Wall Street Journal’s stories about the anthrax attacks.

The motive for sending me the information would be similarly unobstructed by unnecessary leaps of logic: both the doctor and his facsimile would conceivably send me the envelope in hopes that as a clearly outspoken mouthpiece, I would relay the information successfully and perhaps prudently.

At this point, the only additional step is in scenario two: the act of deceiving me.

In any event, it’s too close to call on the basis of just Occam’s Razor.  It wouldn’t make sense to rule either one out.

Especially considering the ramifications of ignoring one path for the other.  I think everyone will probably agree with me once I reveal exactly what the documents contain.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 4:12 pm and is filed under The Manuscript of Dr. Anthrax. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.