Cipher Mysteries

Podcaster "thevampiresamurai" has just posted up part 1 of "The Incrutable Dr Woo Manchu", his audio story linking Sherlock Holmes, the Voynich Manuscript, Roger Bacon, Khmer shorthand, and a murdered Chinese laundryman, all being investigated by dogged cigarette-smoking private eye Carson Albion....

It's a typical writer's puzzle: when something you read (or write) really sucks, but an even half-satisfactory alternative is nowhere to be found. That's basically how I feel about almost everything that's been written about the VMs: even though it's an amazing mystery, that also somehow highlights all the dangerous sides of knowledge, accounts always amble off in the same ...

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 belief” in turn to ...