Re: Stars in the margin, was: Re: VMs: Faces at the roots

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005, Rene Zandbergen wrote:
> I guess that you have also seen the one binary star?

Yes, now I have.  I was kidding to some extent about a typology of stars,
but I started looking and I can report, preliminarily, that there are some
apparent systematic variations among them, including, for stars in the
f103-f116 part of the text:

1) Color or internal marking.

I have noticed:

all red
central red ball

I'm less sure about possibilities like

light color (yellow? brown?)
no color
central dot

Maybe these are "in contrast."  Maybe not.

2) Number of points.

I have noticed at least the following possibilities:

6
7
8
9

In addition, less securely, it appears that there are differences in
orientation or distribution of points.  For example, 7-point stars can
have their odd point upward or downward.  I think I can see various
patterns for points in four spatial directions.  You could think of an
up-pointing 7-pointer as 1-2-2-2 (up-right-down-left) and a down-pointing
7-pointer as 2-2-1-2.  This is easy enough with 7 points, but there seem
to be variations for the other numbers of points, too, e.g., 2-2-2-2 and
1-3-1-3 for 8-pointers, or 1-2-1-2 and 2-1-2-1 for 6-pointers.
Generally, but not always, the right and left planes are fairly
horizontal.  Sometimes there's a slight tip down to the right.

3) Different possiblities for tails.

I see at least:

top-leftward
bottom-down-and-leftward (usually with a bit of a hook to the right at the
end)
no hook

Some tails are essentially an added line, but in some cases the point of
the star is extended in the same shape.   I assume this is just a "fancy"
or "bold" treatment of the same thing.  It does appear that bottom tails
are always attached to the right-most of the downward pointing points,
however many of those there are, which is part of the argument for points
grouping into up-right-down-left sets.

4) That one binary star.

As far as patterns of appearence, the most common patterns for stars seem
to vary from page to page - potentially over time - and two patterns seem
to alternate in a given page.  All red seems to occur most near the
beginning of the sequence, for example, while at one point "red ball" and
the lighter patterns seem to alternate.  In a given page (part of the
sequence) everything seems to have the same tail pattern.

Perhaps stars and their features are a bit like statical glyph plots
(e.g., Chernoff faces):  compact bundles of mnemonic features to assist
in quickly locating the proper paragraph.  Which might suggest that the
paragraphs were not immediately decyperable.  Or, if they might be
representations of features, but as part of the data presented, not as
finder aids.  For example, if they are days, different numbers of points,
different colors, etc., could represent different aspects of the day -
what star governs it, what season it is, what tasks must be performed,
etc.

______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list