CW - with another great post. There's something in his writing, or the way he takes us through the facts, that is so gripping.
The post I link to here is about The Voynich Manuscript - written in a code that has not yet been deciphered.
Since I just saw Contact last night it made me think of the cryptologists in that film, trying to "put together" all the pages of information they received from the unknown pulse from outer space. They couldn't get it right - the edges never quite matched up - And so the code remained gibberish. Until John Hurt reveals the secret: One must think on multiple dimensions. The pages of information did fit together - but not in a linear way. Once you "cubed" the pages, making them fit together in a 3-dimensional space - as opposed to laying flat side by side on the table - the primer was revealed.
Go read CW's post. Very cool stuff. As always.
Posted by sheilaThere is a guy out there on the internet (don't have the link handy right now but I'll post it if I find it) who says the Voynich Manuscript is actually a Hebrew dialect encoded in a kind of visual cipher, instead of a mathematical one like we are used to.
Ixs srrt of luje h3w ywu cvn raed tkps - the mind can form patterns based on visual clues even when there is no describable mathematic formula.
Anyway, this guy says the Voynich Manuscript predicts the end of the world - but they always say that, don't they?
Posted by: CW at June 24, 2004 4:41 PMWell imagine if they had done all that work to decipher the code, only to find that it said:
Add 2 cups of flour
Add a tablespoon of sugar....etc.
That would be a big let-down.
Posted by: red at June 24, 2004 4:43 PM