Don’t be the First to Read About…

… the results of the Voynich carbon dating. At least, you won’t be if you stick around here.

René Zandbergen has kindly provided the broadcast date of the long-awaited Voynich documentary (December 10th), which will contain the even-longer-awaited results of the carbon dating performed on the VM earlier this year.

Unfortunately, the broadcast is with austrian station ORF2, which my cable provider carries not (which sucketh like only a vacuum cleaner made by Microsoft could suck). Thus, this blog will only able to mirror the information, but can’t be the premier source.

Stick to Nick Pelling’s blog to get the details and be up-to-date!

Are You Tired of the Strokes yet?

You probably are.

Well, in this case, let me point you to a mostly overlooked gem in Voynich research, namely Sarah Goslee’s website. Not only is she a fellow SCAdian*) (Hail from Drachenwald!), but she has also put together a few nice statistical tests on the VM. As always, caveat emptor!, and honestly I haven’t figured out what “principal coordinates ordination on Euclidean distances of row-standardized frequencies” is supposed to be, but I’ve been in the game long enough to be suitably impressed by a procedure with a name of that length.

No, seriously, I’m still struggling to understand what exactly Sarah did and what the results mean, but this has all the appearance of a very interesting and competent piece of research which has up to now not received the mention it deserves, IMHO.

Hence, my usual piece of advice: Check it out, bros!

*) No, it’s not this.

“Booby Traps of the Mind”

If I should ever write a book about the Voynich manuscript, this is what I’m going to call it.

Moat so deep, donjon so high…

I didn’t get around doing much regarding the Voynich lately, much less post anything about it.

To avoid the impression that I’ve fallen off the edge of the world, rather than presenting you something original, let me point your attention today to Richard SantaColoma’s latest work: He has taken the mysterious “rosettes foldout” (aka “f86v”) from the VM, recreated the landscape depicted in 3D, and fed his results into a CAD program.

The original rosettes foldout with its mysterious castles, towers and cities

The result of Rich’s work is this amazing animation which includes a “flyby” of the rosettes landscape. Of course, much of this is speculation, and everything will depend on Rich’s interpretation of the VM painter’s original ideas. I have no idea how useful this will turn out in the end, but in any case it’s a novel and well crafted approach.

Enjoy it on Youtube!

The great tragedy of Science

The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas Henry Huxley, “Biogenesis and abiogenesis” (1870)

Hail (New) Atlantis!

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the latest arrival in the community of Voynichese bloggers:

Rich SantaColoma, who has for some time developed his Drebbel-Microscope-New-Atlantis theory about the VM’s origin, has finally succumbed like the rest of us to the Web 2.0 paradigm and has opened his own blog, aptly named The Voynich-New Atlantis theory.

I recommend this blog to everyone who’s interested in the VM, not only because Rich has in general shown a positive attitude towards my blog ;-). But though I’m not really a subscriber to his theory, I still think he has a number of valid points, and I agree with many of his observations regarding the general research on the VM. The blog may seem a bit verbose at the beginning, but check it out anway: It takes some space to summarize a theory that’s been well developed over the past few years…

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Rich!

Kissing on the first Date

According to Yale’s New Journal (scroll down to the article “Shelf life”), the long awaited radiocarbon dating and ink and vellum analysis on the VM are finally underway!

Let’s just hope that this will be one instance in the VM’s history where one answer doesn’t open a whole box of new questions… Unfortunately, the article doesn’t give a date when the results are due, but, considering that the publication is from February and seems to go back to December 2008,… it might be coming anytime.

Stay tuned!

(Thanks to Jeff Haley for bringing this to the VM’s mailing list’s attention.)

Achtung! Wichtigen Annunzment!

Guten Abend!

Will der eminent hollandisch Voynitschist, Voynitschologe und Über-Voynitschosoph René Zandbergen maken eine Performanz in Deutschland an der Mai der 26te, and is in Darmstadt an 6 an Nacht, was ist 18.00 Uhr.

Hier, Herr Zandbergen wollen given eine spektakular Presentation umabout der most mysteriös Voynitsch-Manuskript, was ist ein ungelesen ungekomprechendete Buch von die mysteriös Renaissanz in eine most kopfzerbrecking Chiffre kodiert, welch nonemand zu konne gekrackt habe als jetzt. Will taken nur ein Stund, sein Herr Zandbergen just eine hour da, schnell schnell! Fur schneller speaken, Herr Zandbergen will speaken in Englisch.

Note: Ist nix Performanz für die Hanswursten von der Street, nix Publisch Performanz, but privat. For getten Entree, Sie inquirieren Herrn Zandbergen personlich under r_zandbergen at yahoo dot com fur einen Invitation, bitte.

Danken fur Attention. Weitergehen, weitergehen!

(This message was brought to you by the International Association of Translators in Training.)

A stroke of genius?

n = I
in = L
iin = F
iiin = E

…?

Final Words on the Voynich Manuscript

I somehow had to catch your attention, didn’t I?

(Plenty of gut feeling and pointless ranting to follow.)

It has been a matter of debate for some time, whether the writings on the VM’s last page, f116v, is a part of the original manuscript or “extraneous” writing which has been added later — perhaps denoting an aborted solution attempt by a later would-be decipherer. This is supported by the mix of apparently latin and Voynichese characters.

I can’t really figure this. It wold be extremely unwieldy to work out a translation on the back of the very book one tries to decipher. I’d also expect more notes and scribbles on such a worksheet than there actually is.

What speaks for the “Michitonese” on f116v being written by the original author?