I know, I did indeed say that I wasn’t going to post anything for a while… but then this wonderful translation (from the Russian) of Evgeniya Taratuta’s (1957) “Our Friend Ethel Lilian Boole” popped up, made by Séamus Ó Coigligh (who retired as Curator of Cork Public Museum as long ago as 1981). Uhhh… whatever [...] Read more »
Fancy a walk around London? There are some real scorchers to choose from at London Walks, a company offering fascinating pedestrian slices through the many-layered cake that is our dear Londinium. But for Voynicheros, one walk in particular stands out: “Anarchy in the UK - Mob Rule & Terror Tactics” hosted by writer Ed Glinert, and [...] Read more »
Here’s a quick research note: a list of Wilfrid Voynich’s archives…
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library not only has the Voynich Manuscript itself (”Beinecke MS 408″), but also various other WMV- and VMs-related materials in accompanying boxes (marked A to N). This includes various photographs (in box D), which are also accessible on the [...] Read more »
While writing my MBA dissertation a few years ago, I spun off a short paper called “Justified True Belief: Three Words, Three Lies?“, where the abstract explained its title:-
Cornelius Castoriadis once famously described the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as “four words, four lies”: here, I examine each of the three words of “justified true [...] Read more »
If (like me) you enjoyed Roman Polanski’s film “The Ninth Gate” (I happened to see it in a hotel room in New Haven, giving it a particular resonance for me) which I mentioned recently, you might think about reading the novel from which it sprang, Arturo Perez-Reverte’s “The Dumas Club”.
Its main protagonist, Lucas Corso, gets [...] Read more »
Would having “Expert on the Voynich Manuscript” on your CV significantly raise your perceived intellectuality (i.e. an extra ten grand per year on your salary)? It would? Then read on, and I’ll reveal the secret two-stage process that They don’t want you to find out…
Stage One. You start out by pretending to be a Voynich [...] Read more »
Another day, another curiously contentful blog to set me thinking: this time it’s Alterati, “The Inside Scoop on The Outside Culture”, and specifically a two-part article there from October 2007 entitled “The Yellow Sign: Manuscripts, Codices, and Grimoires“.
In Part 1, the discussion swoops from our old friend the Codex Seraphinianus (yet again), to Borges’ Tlön, [...] Read more »
When the Voynich Manuscript misdecipherer William Romaine Newbold died, his friend & colleague Roland Grubb Kent decided to bring all his late friend’s notes together into a book: this was published in 1928 by the University of Philadelphia Press under the title “The Cipher of Roger Bacon”. If you’d like your own copy, Kessinger sell [...] Read more »
Having spent many years in that industry, I always find it quite nice to see computer games people appropriating the Voynich Manuscript. But as games get more visually “realistic” (or, rather, foolishly detailed), their reliance on conceptual props ever diminishes: so I wondered whether Charles Cecil’s Broken Sword III - which comes over a bit [...] Read more »
I’ve often wondered what Lynn Thorndike thought of the Voynich Manuscript: after all, he (his first name came from the town of Lynn, Massachusetts) lived from 1882 to 1965, and continued to publish long after his retirement in 1950, and so was active before, during and after the 1920s when Wilfrid Voynich’s cipher manuscript mania/hype [...] Read more »
