RE: VMs: Can one "prove" a hoax?

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

As to your source for this information, I must say that Penn Leary
and I have traded barbs for quite some time, and am no longer
welcome in his "world".  This is precisely because of his
methodology in the pursuit of Baconian cipher.  The mildest I can
say is that his methodology is "flawed", always has been, and
unfortunately always will be.  As a great fan of Sir Francis
Bacon, I am deeply cut when someone tangents in such a way as to
detract from the honour and integrity of such an outstanding
individual.  There is *NO* statistical evidence that can support
Penn's position, in fact, there have been several very valuable
computer studies that statistically prove the fallacy of Penn's
stance.

Nevertheless, he is a fellow Baconian, and for that I give him his
place in my heart.  Never mind the fact that Penn is responsible
for the myopia of Cryptologia in regard to Baconian cipher
articles.  It is my understanding that after a backlash of letters
condemning his one submission, Cryptologia no longer considers
cryptographic articles from Baconians.  For this reason I have not
submitted my article on the solution to the Knight's Tour Cipher
located in the First Folio.  (No, it actually had nothing to do
with Bacon, but more a reverence to the two men who funded the
publication, both Knights of the Inner Temple, a law school/guild,
better known in legal circles as Knights Templar).  The solution
involves a "closed tour" that when plotted on the chessboard
reveals a man kneeling at an alter, hands raised upward toward
heaven, a longtime symbol of the much older Knights Templar.

Most of this discussion but forward by Penn was the Friedman's
response to several early Baconian books dealing with acrostics
and complex anagramming.  My shelves are littered with Baconian
books from this time period that should never have been written,
and I think I may even have this particular book from the
Friedmans.  Both Elizabeth and William Friedman, by the way, had
direct and personal contact with some of the early Baconian
hoaxters, and it is understandable that they felt the need to lay
bare the fallacies of these fraudulent charades.

One point in this argument that I would like to clarify is point
1:

> 1) The first rule is that a cipher system must have
> rules; to use such
> devices one must methodically follow the rules. A
> cipher unit (the
> "cipher-text") is formed of one letter of the alphabet,
> and it must
> correspond to another letter in the deciphered text
> (the "plaintext").
> Elizabethan practice."

I have often argued that any cipher system, acrostic,
anagrammatic, or complex, must have rules, and these rules must be
translatable in terms of algorithmic, visual, or common sense.
Anything that does not follow rules to a very large degree cannot
be considered a cipher.

I do however, disagree on the second part of this argument.  A
cipher symbol or glyph does not necessarily have to have a
one-to-one correspondence.  Bruno's alphabets of 30 characters
took into account such patterns as "sh", "ch", etc., and
shorthand, an early form of cipher, sometimes involved entire
words represented by a single symbol.  This was the case with Mary
Stuart's cipher, as an example.  I would rather say that the
correlation between cipherbet and cleartext be consistent by
repeated example.

GC

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