VMs: Facts and Fallacies

["John Grove" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	December 1988, Reader's Digest published a book with that title.
There is no surprise that the VMS was listed as one of the oddities they
covered. However, "Brumbaugh's Breakthrough" didn't make much sense to me.

Digits 1-9, with the alphabet broken down in four rows underneath...
A-I
J-Q +US
-R-S-T-U-
V-W-X-Y-Z

	The only 'successful' example they gave was mention a picture that looked
like a pepper and the code 757752 spelling (among other possibilities
PEPPER).
the fact that the spelling is modern English is always completely ignored,
as
is the fact that it didn't really explain any other words in the whole VMS.
It was alluded to that other words could be made up (no-brainer with four
letters
for every digit) that seemed to make some kind of sense.

	Speculation is certainly necessary because we have to do a lot of guesswork
before we can make any direct hits. The danger that I see so often (and
probably
have done so myself often enough) is to consider our 'theories' as fact.
Stating
the 'date 1533' is on the page isn't a fact, neither are the possible
matches to
plants or astronomical events certain. They may well be good guesses - but
they don't
and won't hold up to any kind of criticism no matter how many times we
repeat them.

	That said, we do want to make our point(s) clear and that we believe we are
heading
down a right path and will try continually to strengthen our position
against a
barrage of others that are out there.

	It is very easy, I think, to put a bias into our own research by convincing
ourselves in the first glimpse (or for that matter at any given time) that a
Eureka moment
has made it clear to us that the VMS represents something we are already
familiar with.
We all have a desire to 'get a clue' out of this thing that seems to point
us toward an
avenue of study - but we have to keep in mind that the stronger that clue
seems to us
- that it might actually implant a strong bias in how we look at the whole
VMS.
No matter what we believe the VMS to be - we have to keep asking ourselves

				- What else could it be?

	And keep up the good work!

John.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Nick Pelling
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 3:17 AM
To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: VMs: Finding_02


Hi GC,

> > ...to be more precise, the <ain aiin aiiin> pattern
> > seems to me most likely
> > to be some form of steganographic Roman numerals: and
> > as I don't see the
> > evidence for the VMS' being an obviously
> > mono-alphabetic cipher, I don't
> > buy into Teague numbering either.
>
>You keep poking holes in my heart and ask me not to bleed! :-)
>God I love it!!!!

Errrrm... I do my best, I think? :-9

>Seriously..... never mind... I just can't get serious about this.
>Every time I look at a post with these strings attached, <dain
>daiin daiiin>, this looks seriously impressive.  And when we can
>narrow our discussion down to <ain aiin aiiin>, well that's even
>more impressive.  Any strings the length of these characters
>*must* be significant, yes?

The EVA string length has no significance in my mind. I'm simply looking at
the structure of a set of (perhaps morphologically related) shapes and
wondering (in no particular order):-
- "what function could they perform?"
- "why were they necessary?"
- "what could they mean?"

In the absence of any definitive answers, I'm sure my (current) hypothesis
is neither better nor worse than anyone else's.

>My question would be - if you are NOT separating the strokes in
>dain, daiin, daiiin, dumass, then how do these reflect roman
>numerals any better than say, 89, oe, os, oy as word endings?

I refer the honourable gentleman to my three questions above. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


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