How many Voynichologists does it take to change a light bulb?

by ⋅ Leave a Comment

It’s a sad (but true) observation that most webpages (and particularly blog posts) on the VMs are serious, dull, dry, high-minded, conceptual guff, at best offering up a semi-quirky restatement of either the Wikipedia page, Rene Zandbergen’s page, or of Gordon Rugg’s hypothesis-of-possibility. You would scarce believe, dear reader, what oceans of cack I have to swim through to reach the occasional archipelago of Voynich-related interest… *sigh*

And so it is with great pleasure that I landed upon the shore of this gently satirical review of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail. Read it and enjoy!

As for the rest of the Voynichian web, it is (sadly) pretty much uniformly humourless, with the joyous exception of the excellent Uncyclopedia Voynich Manuscript entry, which has been heavily updated since I mentioned it last year (though I’m pleased to see the “medieval VCR manual” gag is still there). Recommended!

PS: the answer to the question is (of course) “None, they like being in the dark.“

More Voynich-related stuff…

by ⋅ 2 Comments

Here are some current links to amuse (and possibly inform) you…

(1) A 49-second clip on Voynich manuscript page f2v (yes, really!) from that well-known research institution, YouTube. And no, I don’t know what the commentary is saying either (please tell me if you do):-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20o1DSiiiuE

(2) Here’s a wonderful page from Uncyclopedia, an open-source Wikipedia parody (I say “an”, casually assuming that there must be more Wikipedia parodies out there). Yet the text is surprisingly fresh and on the money, and (some would say) no less enlightening or inspiring than any of Gordon Rugg’s media interviews (probably):-
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Voynich_Manuscript

(3) In November 2006, a Swede with the online handle “Pemel” announced that he might have translated the Voynich Manuscript, and that he had passed his solution on to a referee for external checking. OK, so his chance of success is sub-10%, but who knows?
http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=38615

(4) Finally, here’s a link to the blog of “Leandra Evals” (an anagram, surely?) who thinks there’s something to do with alchemy in the VMs. Could be… (though I suspect probably not):-
http://voynichalchem.blogspot.com/