Re: VMs: Updates and summaries

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey there GC my man,

At 20:27 19/08/2005 -0600, GC wrote:
> Certain early shorthand systems used a system of points and marks, 
> sometimes set at clock-points around a letter, to indicate certain 
> information. Others were extremely large inventories of markings, and 
> still others were conglomerative, like the "Feare God" symbol on F57v.

You know, I honestly do think your "Feare God" symbol has a lot to tell us 
about the VMs. But I remain far from sure that it paints quite the 
(Cambridge/Askham/Strong?) story you suspect... right now it's just one 
piece of evidence amongst many.

> I've also tried to point out, (and the statistics tend to demonstrate), 
> that the Voynich was written over an extended period, and the script tends 
> to grow and change over time.  Accept or not, this is my working 
> viewpoint.  This view explains why the further you go, the more weirdoes 
> come forward.

I think it's clear that the "language" does change across different 
sections of the VMs: but as there are good reasons to doubt the correctness 
of the page-order in the herbal pages, I ought to flag that it falls short 
of a straightforward incrementing-weirdness-vs-page-number graph. Also, 
there are notable clusters of individual weirdoes like the "walking leg 
cluster" on f66r - FWIW, I suspect the pair of those in the vertical column 
delimits a proper name [like JBISMARCKJ in German WW2 ciphers], and is then 
referred to by the two re-uses within the text.

> To give some demonstration of this, I draw your attention to Folio 84r, 
> the first one I called up from this section.  To begin with, there is a 
> word written in the blue pool at the lower left of the page.  That word is 
> "sulfer" (shades of "Bath", and a very logical explanation for the drawing).

I've looked at this pool lots of times (50? 100?), and have yet to see (via 
any of the image enhancement tricks I've tried) any part of it that reads 
"sulfer" with the clarity you seem to claim. I can see a shape that has 
that general form, but it's still a long way short of a legible word per 
se. Can you please tell me how to read it so that I can see what you see?

> To the text however- anything written in the typical label section I don't 
> consider lines, so the first line starts with the body of text.  Line 4, 
> third word in, (my notation 84r.4.3), there is a hook over the letter "o" 
> in the word "oe".  Common transcription separates the two preceding words 
> ending in "89" because they are used to the separation, but as you see, 
> there is no separation here, which is indicative of a system, not a word 
> form.

I agree, any coherent view of the VMs should also give an account of things 
like this "hooked o".

> I believe I said before that we are asking the wrong questions, and 
> therefore receiving meaningless answers.  The answer is 42, and I think 
> after all this time we all know that, but there is the matter of the 
> actual "question", yes? :-)

FWIW, I think the biggest question we need to be asking right now is to 
what degree the text we are attempting to decode is what was originally 
written down. From what I've been looking at recently (which includes f84r 
as well as many other pages), I would say that the answer is far from 
obvious... more on that soon, hopefully!

> I'm open to any discussion whatsoever on my ideas, but for those who wish 
> only to argue, I direct you to http://www.alsirat.com/flame.html, where 
> you might find rules to live by.

Yes, and what I find particularly nice about that page is that you see both 
paths open to you - both Jedi & Dark Side (depending on what categories 
your census form allows you to tick) . :-)

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

PS: good to have you back! :-) 


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