From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Mar  1 21:40:50 2000
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Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 09:41:40 -0500
From: Bruce Grant <bgrant@mail.msen.com>
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This month's issue of _Esperanto_ (journal of the Universal Esp.
Association) lists a new book available
from them which may interest mailing list members:

Jaap Maat, _Philosophical Languages of the Seventeenth Century:
Delgarno, Wilkins, Leibnitz_
Amsterdam Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, 1999, 341 p.
ISBN 90-5776-026-6
(in English, 26.70 euros).

The description reads "Doctoral dissertation. Description of and
comments on the philosophical language
projects of Delgarno and Wilkins and the related ideas of Liebnitz."

They can be reached at uea@inter.nl.net

Bruce Grant

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Mar  2 15:40:55 2000
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From: Adams Douglas <adamsd@cts.com>
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Subject: Off-topic Latin request.
To: voynich@rand.org (Voynich Manuscript List)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 12:39:57 -0800 (PST)
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Sorry to send this to the list, I forgot who is good with Latin.

Are the starting words below a proper translation, and what's the best way 
of translating the whole thing? I have a gift planned for the friend who
sent me this.

You can reply privately to this part, so as not to clutter the list
further.

Forwarded message:
> if you ever see a shirt that begins
> "Catapultum Habeo" but translates
> 'I have a catapult. Give me all the gold or I will hurl a rock at your head'
> I want it! I lost mine, and its absense is felt sorely here. ;)
> 

ObVoynich: Is there any significance to the _absence_ of different objects
in the VMS pictures? I was thinking first of siege engines and then simple
things like carts, draft animals, and other objects one might expect in the
few scenes which seem to depict a landscape in the background? I've seen
other medieval engravings which feature an object, person or plant, but
there's often detail in the background landscape as I describe.

-Adams

-- 
====================================================
Adams Douglas, San Diego, CA   Adams@Douglas.net
http://Adams.Douglas.net/
PGP Public Keys: http://Adams.Douglas.net/pgpkey.txt
UTM:11S0487200 3623500 MGRS-2:11SMS872235 (100-meter)

               "Geography is only physics slowed down            
                with a few trees stuck on it."
                                   ---Terry Pratchett

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Mar  3 02:52:50 2000
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Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 02:47:13 -0500
From: Steve Kudlak <chromexa@ovis.net>
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Adams Douglas wrote:

> Sorry to send this to the list, I forgot who is good with Latin.
>
> Are the starting words below a proper translation, and what's the best way
> of translating the whole thing? I have a gift planned for the friend who
> sent me this.
>
> You can reply privately to this part, so as not to clutter the list
> further.
>
> Forwarded message:
> > if you ever see a shirt that begins
> > "Catapultum Habeo" but translates
> > 'I have a catapult. Give me all the gold or I will hurl a rock at your head'
> > I want it! I lost mine, and its absense is felt sorely here. ;)
> >
>
> ObVoynich: Is there any significance to the _absence_ of different objects
> in the VMS pictures? I was thinking first of siege engines and then simple
> things like carts, draft animals, and other objects one might expect in the
> few scenes which seem to depict a landscape in the background? I've seen
> other medieval engravings which feature an object, person or plant, but
> there's often detail in the background landscape as I describe.
>
> -Adams
>
> --
> ====================================================
> Adams Douglas, San Diego, CA   Adams@Douglas.net
> http://Adams.Douglas.net/
> PGP Public Keys: http://Adams.Douglas.net/pgpkey.txt
> UTM:11S0487200 3623500 MGRS-2:11SMS872235 (100-meter)
>
>                "Geography is only physics slowed down
>                 with a few trees stuck on it."
>                                    ---Terry Pratchett

I sort of read it as "I have a catapult..." The first is correct. I don't remember
my Latin Orthography so I can't tell you about that. Nor have I a Latin dictionary
to make sure "catapult" belongs in the third declension (neuter) and isn't female
or male!  Latin does that. I am pretty sure that "I have" is correct as habere (to
have) is an -ere verb. It has been ages since I did anything significant in Latin
and I have never had to make presentations in Latin!!!

You bring up an interesting questions, which to me seem to have answers in the
negative. We can be pretty sure that it isn't a military manual. The lack of
military looking things in it might hint it wasn't a general work. Military things
have been important to humans for a long time, there lack is interesting. But
herbals and astrological works don't usually have such unless general. Mars after
all is god of War and is important astrologically.

Have Fun,
Sends Steve

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Mar  3 21:45:11 2000
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Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 21:44:16 -0500
To: voynich@rand.org
From: Daniel Harms <dmharms@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Voynich Article
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All,

Much as I hate to admit it, the MS. has hit the big time, but not quite
in the way we wanted.  There was an article on the Voynich Manuscript
published in the _Weekly World News_ for March 7, pp. 40-41.  They 
didn't talk to Yale or any of the conventional scholars - the best they
could do was land Mike Jay, the author of the previously-mentioned 
Fortean Times article.  The piece reads as if his had been placed on a
fourth-grade reading level and completely sensationalized (though
FT is not necessarily a paragon of journalism to begin with...)

Yrs.,



Daniel Harms     dmharms@acsu.buffalo.edu
The Internet:  Learn what you know.  Share what you don't.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Mar  4 05:59:55 2000
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From: Adams Douglas <adamsd@cts.com>
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Subject: Re: Voynich Article
To: dmharms@acsu.buffalo.edu (Daniel Harms)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 02:59:10 -0800 (PST)
Cc: voynich@rand.org
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20000303214416.00b3bda0@pop.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Daniel Harms" at Mar 03, 2000 09:44:16 PM
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Daniel Harms wrote:
> 
> All,
> 
> Much as I hate to admit it, the MS. has hit the big time, but not quite
> in the way we wanted.  There was an article on the Voynich Manuscript
> published in the _Weekly World News_ for March 7, pp. 40-41.  They 
> didn't talk to Yale or any of the conventional scholars - the best they
> could do was land Mike Jay, the author of the previously-mentioned 
> Fortean Times article.  The piece reads as if his had been placed on a
> fourth-grade reading level and completely sensationalized (though
> FT is not necessarily a paragon of journalism to begin with...)

Don't feel too bad. The WWN recently won a libel suit by arguing that no
one believes what they print anyway.

-Adams

-- 
====================================================
Adams Douglas, San Diego, CA   Adams@Douglas.net
http://Adams.Douglas.net/
PGP Public Keys: http://Adams.Douglas.net/pgpkey.txt
UTM:11S0487200 3623500 MGRS-2:11SMS872235 (100-meter)

               "Geography is only physics slowed down            
                with a few trees stuck on it."
                                   ---Terry Pratchett

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Mar  6 16:08:03 2000
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Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 13:04:00 -0800 (PST)
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Rules in the Voynich Manuscript
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Antoine Casanova posted an article in sci.crypt today with the above
title, message ID <8a0lih$tqs$1@nnrp1.deja.com>.  It looked interesting,
but I didn't understand all of it.  In particular, I don't know what it
means to have an "accounting of the Hamming distances equal to the unit", 
which seems to be central to the analysis.  I *think* that means that for
each length of VMS "word", he counts how many pairs there are of two
different words of that length that differ in exactly one character
position, ignoring the frequencies of the words.

He also draws a distinction between "words" and "terms", which isn't clear
to me.  I agree that it's not clear that the groups of characters
separated by spaces are necessarily words in the underlying language;
maybe it's a good thing to have a different name for them than "words".  
Is that what a "term" is, then, an unambiguous name for the things that
look like words?  I didn't see a definition in the paper.

My biggest concern with this analysis is that it looks like it wouldn't
remain valid if we changed our assumptions about how big a chunk of script
constitutes a character.  For instance, what if it were repeated with the
Frogguy transcription alphabet, which turns many Currier transcription
characters into multi-character sequences?  That would also break the
grouping by length.  So I'm not sure it would meet one of the criteria I
articulated some time ago for statistical tests, that of stability under
changes to the arbitrary assumptions.

Still, it seems like an interesting line for research, and the pattern of
><>< in Table 5 looks quite impressive.

Matthew Skala                       "Ha!" said God, "I've got Jon Postel!"
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca            "Yes," said the Devil, "but *I've* got
http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/    all the sysadmins!"

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Mar  6 23:32:23 2000
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Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 20:36:32 -0800
To: voynich@rand.org
From: Julie Porter <Julie.Porter@efi.com>(by way of jporter@ricochet.net (Julie  Porter))
Subject: voynich
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Would that I had more time to post to the list. I hardly have time it seems
to breathe. I do however monitor the list on a regular If quiet basis. I was
particularly amused by the account of the Dodo in Prague. I have been doing
some traveling myself, Although I missed Prague this time. I did get an
article published in the British Horological Journal on References to Clocks
and Watches in the works of Charles Dickens.(I sometimes think CD would have
been amused by the Vms. Then again he left us that Mystery of Edwin Drood,
Which Sherlock Holmes proved to be unsolvable. (there are 7 unique solutions
and 1000+ variations.) Even more if one includes the stage play where the
audience gets to vote on a different culprit every night.

Some of the older members may recall that my background is in the print
industry. That I participated on some of the first efforts of a type 1
postscript font of the Voynich alphabet. I am also a big fan of Dr. Dee.

Over the last few months I have had a few thoughts on the Vms. In the
process of book design, the designer will sometimes look on edge at a page
to see how the rivers of text flow. These are caused by gaps in the spacing.
I had the Bennett book open to page 189 on my desk when I had dropped
something like a pencil. Reaching down to retrieve it, It seemed that the
rivers of the text spacing seemed to continue from the illustrations.
Enhanced by what look like pen refills. It is interesting to compare this to
the other 'random' texts in the book like the Balzac cypher on page 184. This is
of course a function of the word break spacing. I looked at a few pages of
my Petersen copy. His markings seem to get in the way.

I think I have mentioned before that I have played about with several
different western calendar calculation from time to time. (Including the
Hebrew calendar.) Still no luck finding any Metonic (19) or solar cycle (28)
repeats. Then again I have not made an in-depth study of such as related to
the Vms. There is a really Good Calendars.FAQ and the Catholic archives
online have some interesting points on some of the more subtle an esoteric
attributes. (Like leap day is really Feb 24 and not Feb 29th)

Not really related, I picked up a book to read on fairies, while traveling.
It seems to be written to the same audience (and even credits) the Fortean
times. About 20 or so years back someone gave me a copy of Les Matins des
magicians and an English translation of Les mysteries of the cathedrals.
This book reads about the same. I also got a book _A cabinet of Medical
Curiosities_ on historical beliefs once considered science but now
unconfirmed. Not that any of this has more to do with the manuscript than
the Dodo. It is interesting to see how people in the past may have thought
from a 21st century perspective. Some of this still remains. There is
currently on US TV a credit card commercial which features spontaneous
human combustion. Exactly as Dickens wrote it.

Most of my free time, when not making 18th or 19th century dresses, has been
on the depth recovery of multiple images in order to recover a 3d model of
the scene. I put together a translation to the Macintosh of an image
analysis program called Tina <http://www.delectra.com/tina>. It still needs
a lot of work, but is partly usable. Now If only I had some good scans of a
certain manuscript...
-julieP


From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Mar  6 23:32:23 2000
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Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 20:36:32 -0800
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From: Julie Porter <Julie.Porter@efi.com>(by way of jporter@ricochet.net (Julie  Porter))
Subject: voynich
Sender: jim@mail.rand.org
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Would that I had more time to post to the list. I hardly have time it seems
to breathe. I do however monitor the list on a regular If quiet basis. I was
particularly amused by the account of the Dodo in Prague. I have been doing
some traveling myself, Although I missed Prague this time. I did get an
article published in the British Horological Journal on References to Clocks
and Watches in the works of Charles Dickens.(I sometimes think CD would have
been amused by the Vms. Then again he left us that Mystery of Edwin Drood,
Which Sherlock Holmes proved to be unsolvable. (there are 7 unique solutions
and 1000+ variations.) Even more if one includes the stage play where the
audience gets to vote on a different culprit every night.

Some of the older members may recall that my background is in the print
industry. That I participated on some of the first efforts of a type 1
postscript font of the Voynich alphabet. I am also a big fan of Dr. Dee.

Over the last few months I have had a few thoughts on the Vms. In the
process of book design, the designer will sometimes look on edge at a page
to see how the rivers of text flow. These are caused by gaps in the spacing.
I had the Bennett book open to page 189 on my desk when I had dropped
something like a pencil. Reaching down to retrieve it, It seemed that the
rivers of the text spacing seemed to continue from the illustrations.
Enhanced by what look like pen refills. It is interesting to compare this to
the other 'random' texts in the book like the Balzac cypher on page 184. This is
of course a function of the word break spacing. I looked at a few pages of
my Petersen copy. His markings seem to get in the way.

I think I have mentioned before that I have played about with several
different western calendar calculation from time to time. (Including the
Hebrew calendar.) Still no luck finding any Metonic (19) or solar cycle (28)
repeats. Then again I have not made an in-depth study of such as related to
the Vms. There is a really Good Calendars.FAQ and the Catholic archives
online have some interesting points on some of the more subtle an esoteric
attributes. (Like leap day is really Feb 24 and not Feb 29th)

Not really related, I picked up a book to read on fairies, while traveling.
It seems to be written to the same audience (and even credits) the Fortean
times. About 20 or so years back someone gave me a copy of Les Matins des
magicians and an English translation of Les mysteries of the cathedrals.
This book reads about the same. I also got a book _A cabinet of Medical
Curiosities_ on historical beliefs once considered science but now
unconfirmed. Not that any of this has more to do with the manuscript than
the Dodo. It is interesting to see how people in the past may have thought
from a 21st century perspective. Some of this still remains. There is
currently on US TV a credit card commercial which features spontaneous
human combustion. Exactly as Dickens wrote it.

Most of my free time, when not making 18th or 19th century dresses, has been
on the depth recovery of multiple images in order to recover a 3d model of
the scene. I put together a translation to the Macintosh of an image
analysis program called Tina <http://www.delectra.com/tina>. It still needs
a lot of work, but is partly usable. Now If only I had some good scans of a
certain manuscript...
-julieP


From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Mar  7 05:30:01 2000
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Message-ID: <D96E2AFA0DF3D211B139009027454948E086EE@helios.gnv.tcc>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: about "The Voynich manuscript"
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 11:28:12 +0100 
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Bonjour  tous,
"Term" must be understood like "vocable" not like "word".
Bye.
AC.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Mar  7 14:07:45 2000
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Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 19:08:03 +0000
From: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
Organization: Banzai Institute
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To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: about "The Voynich manuscript"
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Antoine.CASANOVA@tcc.thomson-csf.com wrote:
> "Term" must be understood like "vocable" not like "word".

My French dictionary says "vocable" means "word".  My English
dictionary says it's a word considered as a set of parts
without respect to meaning.  Is this what you intended, or is
it to be understood instead as "letter", "morpheme", "phoneme",
or something else?
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	Highday, 16 Rethe S.R. 2000, 19:01
	12.19.7.0.6, 10 Cimi 14 Kayab, Sixth Lord of Night

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Mar  8 03:45:24 2000
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Cc: jim@acm.org
Subject: RE: about "The Voynich manuscript"
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 09:44:28 +0100 
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Hello,

About "term", "vocable" and "word".

We consider a text which contains words as following:

TOTO TITI TOTA TITO TOTO TI TITO TA TATA

There are nine words but only seven vocables or terms.

TOTO TITI TOTA TITO TI TA TATA

A vocable is a part of dictionary and a word occurs many time within a text.

Bye,
AC.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Mar  8 04:02:29 2000
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To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: RE: about "The Voynich manuscript"
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On Wed, 8 Mar 2000 Antoine.CASANOVA@tcc.thomson-csf.com wrote:
> We consider a text which contains words as following:
> 
> TOTO TITI TOTA TITO TOTO TI TITO TA TATA
> 
> There are nine words but only seven vocables or terms.
> 
> TOTO TITI TOTA TITO TI TA TATA

It sounds like a vocable is what I would call a "unique word", which
implies that (as I thought) the analysis in the essay is ignoring the
relative frequencies of "vocables".  Is that a good thing to do?  I
daresay some of them will only occur once or twice in the whole document;
some of those may not even be genuinely different from others, just appear
different due to transcription errors or invalid assumptions on our part.
For instance: the letter "i", written in my rather messy cursive
handwriting, sometimes looks more like a loop and sometimes more like a
line.  A reader who didn't know the alphabet might easily call those
separate letters, which (it seems to me) would cause a big difference in
the results of this kind of analysis.

What happens if you take a sample of text in a natural language and apply
your analysis technique to it?  Does it produce obviously different
results?  What about a sample of text in an artificial language?  Does it
show the same characteristics that are being called evidence of
artificiality in the case of the VMS?

Matthew Skala                       "Ha!" said God, "I've got Jon Postel!"
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca            "Yes," said the Devil, "but *I've* got
http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/    all the sysadmins!"

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Mar  8 08:34:33 2000
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It sounds like a vocable is what I would call a "unique word", 

1) A vocable is already an "unique word".

which
implies that (as I thought) the analysis in the essay is ignoring the
relative frequencies of "vocables".  Is that a good thing to do?

2)What something else do you propose?

  I
daresay some of them will only occur once or twice in the whole document;
some of those may not even be genuinely different from others, just appear
different due to transcription errors or invalid assumptions on our part.

3) Could you give us these errors and explain why those?

For instance: the letter "i", written in my rather messy cursive
handwriting, sometimes looks more like a loop and sometimes more like a
line.

4) MS is not a "cursive" handwriting.

A reader who didn't know the alphabet might easily call those
separate letters, which (it seems to me) would cause a big difference in
the results of this kind of analysis.

5) A blank separate letters and a large blank separate words. What kind of transcription do you propose?

What happens if you take a sample of text in a natural language and apply
your analysis technique to it?  Does it produce obviously different
results?

6) If i wrote this article it is because i have not detect this caracteristic in natural language!

What about a sample of text in an artificial language?  Does it
show the same characteristics that are being called evidence of
artificiality in the case of the VMS?

7)I said that my first step is to extract structurs to the MS and after I will research analogy. I have not the desire to spend my time to compare all artificial language with MS. I have only one life!

Sincerely,
AC

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Mar  8 08:46:12 2000
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Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 10:45:45 -0300 (EST)
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@dcc.unicamp.br>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Words, terms, tokens, etc.
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The recent exchange about the meaning of "word" and "term" in Antoine's
messages highlights a common problem.  

Anyone who deals with text has the need to distinguish between those
two concepts. Unfortunately each community (if not each author) will
pick different names for them. For instance, I recall that Gabriel's
Zipf law paper uses "word" for the instance, and "token" for the
dictionary entry; whereas the compiler-writer community makes precisly
the opposite choice.

So, a plea for all list members: when you post statistics to the list,
please take the time to define your terms (or words, tokens, whatever 8-).

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Mar  8 08:55:13 2000
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From: reeds@research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
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In-Reply-To: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@dcc.unicamp.br>
        "Words, terms, tokens, etc." (Mar  8, 10:45)
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On Mar 8, 10:45, Jorge Stolfi wrote:

 
> The recent exchange about the meaning of "word" and "term" in Antoine's
> messages highlights a common problem.  
> 
> Anyone who deals with text has the need to distinguish between those
> two concepts. Unfortunately each community (if not each author) will
> pick different names for them. For instance, I recall that Gabriel's
> Zipf law paper uses "word" for the instance, and "token" for the
> dictionary entry; whereas the compiler-writer community makes precisly
> the opposite choice.
> 
> So, a plea for all list members: when you post statistics to the list,
> please take the time to define your terms (or words, tokens, whatever 8-).

I agree.  I seem to remember a book titled "Type and Token" by
some lexicostatistician or numerolinguist (or whatever-you-call-em)
a long time ago, making this distinction. There might be 130
instances of the word "cat" in a text; to Gustav Herdan that makes
150 tokens of the "cat" type.  So when I first saw Gabriel's
terms I had a hard time adjusting.

-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Mar  8 17:00:06 2000
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From: Gabriel Landini <landinig@sun7.bham.ac.uk>
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On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Jorge Stolfi wrote:
> Anyone who deals with text has the need to distinguish between those
> two concepts. Unfortunately each community (if not each author) will
> pick different names for them. For instance, I recall that Gabriel's
> Zipf law paper uses "word" for the instance, and "token" for the
> dictionary entry; whereas the compiler-writer community makes precisly
> the opposite choice.

Quite right! And *probably* :-)  the compiler-writer comunity is right. I
remember that I defined the terms, though.

Cheers

Gabriel


From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Mar  9 19:37:35 2000
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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:35:49 +0000
From: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
Organization: Banzai Institute
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To: Adams Douglas <adamsd@cts.com>
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Subject: Re: Off-topic Latin request.
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Adams Douglas wrote:
> Forwarded message:
> > if you ever see a shirt that begins
> > "Catapultum Habeo" but translates
> > 'I have a catapult. Give me all the gold or I will hurl a rock at your head'
> > I want it! I lost mine, and its absense is felt sorely here. ;)

Just back from the Caribbean and catching up.  This is from Henry Beard's
"Latin for All Occasions" (Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus), and comes out
as:

Catapultum habeo.  Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum
immane mittam.  (I have a catapult.  Give me all the money, or I will fling
an enormous rock at your head.)

Another catapult quote:
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultus haberunt.
When catapults are outlawed, only outlaws will have catapults.

Carpe jugulum...
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	19 Rethe S.R. 2000, 00:23
	12.19.7.0.9, 13 Muluc 17 Kayab, Ninth Lord of Night

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Mar  9 20:40:13 2000
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Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 17:31:58 -0800
Subject: Re: Off-topic Latin request.
From: Jordan Lund <lundj@earthlink.net>
To: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>, Adams Douglas <adamsd@cts.com>
Cc: Voynich Manuscript List <voynich@rand.org>
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    Love those Henry Beard books, my favorite was one for dealing with rude
Frenchmen. It translated out as "You realize of course you're not really
speaking good French, you're just badly mispronouncing lower-class
provincial Latin..."
                                            - Jordan
                                            lundj@earthlink.net

********************************************************************
* "Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky, they     *
*  are people who say: 'This is my community, and it's my          *
*  responsibility to make it better.'"                             *
*  - Tom McCall, Oregon Governor 1967 - 1974                       *
********************************************************************



> Adams Douglas wrote:
>> Forwarded message:
>>> if you ever see a shirt that begins
>>> "Catapultum Habeo" but translates
>>> 'I have a catapult. Give me all the gold or I will hurl a rock at your head'
>>> I want it! I lost mine, and its absense is felt sorely here. ;)
> 
> Just back from the Caribbean and catching up.  This is from Henry Beard's
> "Latin for All Occasions" (Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus), and comes out
> as:
> 
> Catapultum habeo.  Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum
> immane mittam.  (I have a catapult.  Give me all the money, or I will fling
> an enormous rock at your head.)
> 
> Another catapult quote:
> Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultus haberunt.
> When catapults are outlawed, only outlaws will have catapults.
> 
> Carpe jugulum...
> -- 
> Jim Gillogly
> 19 Rethe S.R. 2000, 00:23
> 12.19.7.0.9, 13 Muluc 17 Kayab, Ninth Lord of Night
> 

From reeds Thu Mar  9 20:52:04 2000
From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
Message-Id: <1000309205204.ZM12147331@fry.research.att.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 20:52:03 -0500
In-Reply-To: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
        "Re: Off-topic Latin request." (Mar 10,  0:35)
References: <200003022039.MAA20937@cts.com>  <38C84365.8524E81C@acm.org>
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To: Adams Douglas <adamsd@cts.com>, Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
Subject: Re: Off-topic Latin request.
Cc: Voynich Manuscript List <voynich@rand.org>
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On Mar 10,  0:35, Jim Gillogly wrote:

> Subject: Re: Off-topic Latin request.
... 
> Just back from the Caribbean and catching up.  This is from Henry Beard's
> "Latin for All Occasions" (Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus), and comes out
> as:
> 
> Catapultum habeo.  Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum
> immane mittam.  (I have a catapult.  Give me all the money, or I will fling
> an enormous rock at your head.)
> 
> Another catapult quote:
> Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultus haberunt.
> When catapults are outlawed, only outlaws will have catapults.

Good work spotting it in Beard, Jim. Bad work on the Latin grammar
front, Henry: catapulta, -ae, is a first declension noun, and
hence "catapultum" and "catapultus" (one each in Beard's
sententiae) are impossible forms. In fact, even without a
dictionary you can tell something is wrong in the 2nd sentence: no
Latin noun can have both -ae and -us forms: only 1st declension
nouns have -ae forms, and only 2nd and 4th declension nouns have
-us forms. (If only I had remembered this in time for my  final
exam in Mrs Craik's Latin class in 1962!)





-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Mar 10 21:33:15 2000
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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 20:36:20 -0600
From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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Jim Reeds wrote:
> 
> Good work spotting it in Beard, Jim. Bad work on the Latin grammar
> front, Henry: catapulta, -ae, is a first declension noun, and
> hence "catapultum" and "catapultus" (one each in Beard's
> sententiae) are impossible forms. In fact, even without a
> dictionary you can tell something is wrong in the 2nd sentence: no
> Latin noun can have both -ae and -us forms: only 1st declension
> nouns have -ae forms, and only 2nd and 4th declension nouns have
> -us forms. (If only I had remembered this in time for my  final
> exam in Mrs Craik's Latin class in 1962!)

	And, for something of Voynichology interest, there's always:

	"Michiton oladabas multos portas... "

	Note the lack of gender agreement in "multas portas". And, "michi" for
"mihi", and the superfluous "ola-" in front of "dabas".   

	Newbold was much too smart to make mistakes like these.  He must have
felt that the VMs's putative encryyption scheme would leave this error,
since his decipherment scheme had so many variables.  It's the story we
know all too well - a system with so many variables that someone using
it can read plain text into just about anything.

Dennis Stallings

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Mar 11 03:26:18 2000
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Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 00:20:00 -0800
Subject: Re: Off-topic Latin request.
From: Jordan Lund <lundj@earthlink.net>
To: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>, Voynich List <voynich@rand.org>
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    As long as this thread is already off topic, I just found out about a
new program called Gooey (http://www.gooey.com) and it allows all the people
currently accessing any given web page to chat with each other while viewing
the site. Think of it as a browser and page specific ICQ. Currently only for
Windows, this could be a really valuable research tool...

> 
> Jim Reeds wrote:
>> 
>> Good work spotting it in Beard, Jim. Bad work on the Latin grammar
>> front, Henry: catapulta, -ae, is a first declension noun, and
>> hence "catapultum" and "catapultus" (one each in Beard's
>> sententiae) are impossible forms. In fact, even without a
>> dictionary you can tell something is wrong in the 2nd sentence: no
>> Latin noun can have both -ae and -us forms: only 1st declension
>> nouns have -ae forms, and only 2nd and 4th declension nouns have
>> -us forms. (If only I had remembered this in time for my  final
>> exam in Mrs Craik's Latin class in 1962!)
> 
> And, for something of Voynichology interest, there's always:
> 
> "Michiton oladabas multos portas... "
> 
> Note the lack of gender agreement in "multas portas". And, "michi" for
> "mihi", and the superfluous "ola-" in front of "dabas".
> 
> Newbold was much too smart to make mistakes like these.  He must have
> felt that the VMs's putative encryyption scheme would leave this error,
> since his decipherment scheme had so many variables.  It's the story we
> know all too well - a system with so many variables that someone using
> it can read plain text into just about anything.
> 
> Dennis Stallings
> 

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Mar 14 11:32:56 2000
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About "words" vs. "tokens":

    > [Gabriel:] *probably* :-)  the compiler-writer comunity is right.

I did't mean to imply that --- they are a separate crowd, we don't
have to use their slang.

    > I remember that I defined the terms, though.

Yes.  Sorry for not mentioning that in my message.

All the best,

--stolfi


From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Mar 16 09:11:40 2000
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Hello,
I did not read the Child's article (Antonini)  because something is wrong in
file format.
Somebody read it and can send me a copy ?
Bye,
AC.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Mar 17 01:51:06 2000
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Not really related to the VMS, but...

This leaf in Kircher's correspondence shows some
inscriptions from "Chinese" and "Turkish" shields:
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/058r.jpg
I can't recognize the alphabet of the first two 
inscriptions.  Anyone has a clue?

All the best,

--stolfi

PS. Other possibly interesting ones

Engraving of a monstrous Tartar captured by Count Nicholas ...
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/005r.jpg

Indiae Orientales cifra nova
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/068r.jpg

Letters to Kircher in cipher from Duke of Braunschweig-Lneburg (?)
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/088v.jpg
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/089r.jpg

Catalogus linguarum et variorum dialectorum, / quarum singulorum ...
in albo Erne-/-sti Brinskii, consulis Harderwicensis Geldri
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/142r.jpg

Sample of Kircher's invented language (Polygraphia Nova):
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/189r.jpg
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/189v.jpg

Anonymous alchemical notes (apparently not in Kircher's hand)
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/271r.jpg

Alchemical recipes given to Pope Alexander VII (in Italian)
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/300r.jpg
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/300v.jpg
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/301r.jpg
("On doing the experiment one will see whatever God will give.")

Alchemical secret for making the Arbor lunaris
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/308r.jpg

Latin Riddle:
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/329r.jpg

Test which is better, your Physics or your Latin:
PROBLEMATA I. Solidum construere, quod intra liquidum nec subsidat...
http://Brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/kircher/563/large/336r.jpg

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Mar 17 07:33:13 2000
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I forgot to say that the images are copyrighted by the Pontificia
Universit Gregoriana, and to use them publicly you should follow the
owners' guidelines and add proper acknowledgement (details in the URL below).

In fact, the proper way to use that site is to register through
the URL below.  That will give you acess to their their index and
search services.

   Athanasius Kircher Correspondence Project
   http://150.217.52.68/kircher/start.html
   
All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Mar 17 16:36:55 2000
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From: "Robert Hicks" <ramhicks@hotmail.com>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re : Strange Alphabet
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 21:23:39 GMT
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Most peculiar.

I think the first, large character is an ancient form of SHE (4th tone), 
meaning 'cower!' or 'be awed!' (very appropraite for a shield).

The curly script at the end looks remarkably like Arabic, and is probably 
one of the variants used by China's native Islamic population (i.e. The 
Uighurs of Xinjiang).  I spent some time in the Northwest of China in 
1996-7, and saw many unusual scripts based on Arabic.  Sadly, nobody I met 
knew how to read them - the scripts are used merely as decor on doorways, 
mosques and, for some reason, public transport.  I would venture that they 
probably mean nothing - not now, anyway - and are the result of generations 
of copying.

The first alphabet-like script looks like nothing I ever saw in China, and 
is certainly not Tibetan or any 'known' variant thereof.  It could, however, 
be one of the scripts used by a Chinese minority group. I know that several 
minorities used and still use their own scripts, quite distinct from Chinese 
characters, some of which are semi-alphabetic.

I'll try and scan in an image of some Chinese banknotes someday.  They may 
be interesting to look at - there are six different scripts on each note.

Rob Hicks


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Mar 19 20:45:21 2000
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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene)
To: voynich@rand.org
Cc: rene@voynich.nu
References: <D96E2AFA0DF3D211B139009027454948E086FD@helios.gnv.tcc>
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Dear all,

Antoine Casanova wrote:

> Hello,
> I did not read the Child's article (Antonini)  because something is wrong in
> file format.
> Somebody read it and can send me a copy ?

I did not see the referred message at all. Did it come via the list?

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Mar 23 09:34:54 2000
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Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 09:32:46 -0500 (EST)
From: Timothy Michael Raymond <traymond@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Voynich Armenian Experiment
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The Voynich Armenian Experiment (VAE) documents are now on-line at this
website:

http://home.pcspower.net/ki3u/   

I think the above website will be of great interest to many of you.

						--Tim


From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Mar 26 16:15:33 2000
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From: John Grove <jgrove@omnisig.com>
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	I found a few spare moments to take a look at the Yale Gallery link on
Jorge's site again and found something a little peculiar about all the
nymphs. I don't know if anyone has ever ventured into this particular
area of discussion before, but with the detail given to hair styles on
the nymphs and the obvious developed breasts, shouldn't there also be
plenty of under-arm or pubic hair?  Wouldn't this be expected?

	Well, just a brief thought...

	John.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Mar 26 23:21:53 2000
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    > [John Grove:] I ... found something a little peculiar about all
    > the nymphs. I don't know if anyone has ever ventured into this
    > particular area of discussion before, but with the detail given
    > to hair styles on the nymphs and the obvious developed breasts,
    > shouldn't there also be plenty of under-arm or pubic hair?
    > Wouldn't this be expected?

Well, I don't know. The male ideal of female beauty seems to always
have included a hairless body. For instance, I cannot think of any
famous nude painting that shows body hair.

One possible explanation is that hairless skin is generally a sign of
youth. (I suppose that the same association holds for men, too ---
that must be why I like shaving my beard.)

On the other hand, pubic hair in particular has a fairly strong sexual
connotation, so its absence in "decorative" nudes (as distinguished
from openly erotic/pornographic ones) could be due to prudery --- or,
in fancier words, to the general supression of sexuality that is
required to make civilization work.

Now for the Voynich nymphs, specifically. First, perhaps they *do* have
pubic hair. Check those in f82r, in particular.  We defintely need
some high resolution images...

Otherwise, the lack of pubic hair would fit with the general character
of the VMS nymphs. To my eyes, there is no erotic content in those
drawings --- or, at most, only a "childish" kind of eroticism. This
feature cannot be due to the artist's limitations: he/she was very
effective at showing the playful mood of the nymphs in the communal
shower (f84r). Check, for instance, Miss Otoly and Miss Okolshy (2nd
and 3rd from top right).

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Mar 27 01:35:41 2000
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Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 06:36:55 +0000
From: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
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To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: Shaving
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Jorge Stolfi wrote:
> Well, I don't know. The male ideal of female beauty seems to always
> have included a hairless body. For instance, I cannot think of any
> famous nude painting that shows body hair.

Hmm... Gaugin's "Nevermore" comes to mind, or Toulouse-Lautrec's
"Woman pulling up her stocking" and "Rue des Moulins: The Medical
Inspection" -- the collar and cuffs match on the redhead, as James
Bond expresses it in "Diamonds are Forever".  I'm not confident of
this one, but T-L's "Yvette Guilbert greeting the audience" may show
a furry armpit.  More typically (e.g. Degas) the potentially hirsute
bits below the neck aren't shown shaven... they simply aren't shown.

> Otherwise, the lack of pubic hair would fit with the general character
> of the VMS nymphs. To my eyes, there is no erotic content in those
> drawings --- or, at most, only a "childish" kind of eroticism.

Agreed, I don't see any particular reason to think the Voynich nymphs
are intended to represent ideals of female beauty -- other than their
nudity, they don't seem designed to inflame male prurience.  At
least <I> prefer other artists for that sort of thing. :)
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	Mersday, 6 Astron S.R. 2000, 06:06
	12.19.7.1.6, 4 Cimi 14 Cumku, Eighth Lord of Night

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Mar 27 01:40:53 2000
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Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 06:39:10 -0800
From: Jacques Guy <jguy@alphalink.com.au>
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To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: Shaving
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If you look at mediaeval drawing and paintings, 
Cranach's for instance,  whom I choose here 
because his women are very much like the VMS
nymphs with their bulging stomachs, yet 
clearly young and not pregnant (the small
breasts are not those of pregnant women), if
you look at those paintings, you will notice
a lack of body hair. Even eyebrows were
shaved or plucked and, if you look closer,
it even seems that eyelashes were plucked.

Once again, we are back to square one,  
groping in the dark for straws in the
wind. Or bubbles in the bathtubs.

