Has the Voynich Manuscript Mystery Been Solved?

by Martin J. Clemens · January 26, 2014   http://martinjclemens.com/has-the-voynich-manuscript-mystery-been-solved/

One of the all-time most popular posts on this blog is also one of the earliest.  It’s about the famed and mysterious Voynich Manuscript.  You may remember it, but even if you don’t, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ve heard of this cryptic book from times past.
Thus far, the Voynich Manuscript has defied all attempts to decode it, despite the efforts of many learned and skillful code breakers, linguists, and scholars.  Even the American NSA took a shot at it, and failed.
Brought to the public eye by Polish-American rare books dealer Wilfred M. Voynich in 1912.  It was said that he acquired it from Jesuit Priests from Italy, though this story has been questioned for its veracity.  Some claim that it’s an elaborate hoax, perhaps perpetrated by Voynich himself, while others suggest Voynich got swindled by a clever merchant, who manufactured the book as an oddity in search of a buyer.  In spite of this doubt about its true origins, most who have endeavoured to crack the manuscript’s secrets have begun from the position of assuming it has its origins in Europe.  As it turns out though, this assumption has been the main reason no one has been able to decipher it.
Published January 20, 2014 in the peer-reviewed journal HerbalGram, the American Botanical Council put forward a new theory that turns the whole story on its ear.
The authors of the paper, Arthur O. Tucker PhD. – botanist and emeritus professor at the Delaware State University – and Rexford H. Talbert – a retired US DOD and NASA information technologist – apparently took a different approach to the analysis, which led them to the other side of the planet.  Instead of assuming the books origins lie in Europe, they discarded all previous assertions about the book and started anew, beginning with the many illustrations contained therein.
Most of the images in the Voynich Manuscript appear to be botanical in nature, with a few being geometric oddities and others being representations of humans and other animals in various poses and scenes.
Tucker and Talbert compared the botanical illustrations to known plant species, which had been done before, but not as thoroughly.  Instead of limiting their comparisons to plant species found in Europe, they expanded the search to all known plant species, and wouldn’t you know it, they found a few matches.  Surprisingly though, these plants aren’t from Italy or anywhere else in Europe, they’re from Mexico.
Comparing the illustrations to the world’s geographic plant distribution at the time of the book’s first reported appearance (1576-1612), they found significant similarity between some of the images and the soap plant depicted in the 1552 Codex Cruz-Badianus of Mexico.  From that discovery, they were able, eventually, to identify 37 plants, 6 animals, and 1 mineral from the pages of the manuscript.
This alone is a monumental breakthrough in the story of the Voynich Manuscript, but it doesn’t end there.

“A search of the surviving codices and manuscripts from Nueva España in the 16th century reveals the calligraphy of the Voynich Ms. to be similar to the Codex Osuna (1563-1566, Mexico City). Loan-words for the plant and animal names have been identified from Classical Nahuatl, Spanish, Taino, and Mixtec”[1]

These references to Pre-Spanish Conquest languages are exciting, and the prospect of decoding the entire manuscript is tantalizing, but a problem still exists.  With the obvious exception of Spanish, most of these are considered dead languages and there are only a handful of people in the world who study them, let alone whom are capable of deciphering a text containing some 35,000 words.
What does this mean for the mystery of the book though?
The Voynich Manuscript’s enigmatic past has been a cornerstone of the story and a big reason it’s become so popular among the Fortean crowd, not to mention scholarly circles.  That past seems to have been shattered by this discovery, but it’s not all bad.
While it seems clear that Wilfred Voynich wasn’t telling truths in his assertions about the book, whether by his own doing or by virtue of his own gullibility, the language contained in the book has, until now, been undecipherable.  Its value has been only as an exercise in sleuthing and translation.  Now though, the book holds the potential to unlock a previously little-known period of New World history.  A history that has been infamous for hiding its secrets away for centuries.  It could hold the key to dead and dying languages, botanical mysteries, and even anthropological issues that have long defied explanation.
Due to the fact that the apparent language of the manuscript is a dead one, in that it’s no longer spoken or written by anyone, most of the books secrets remain locked away in its pages.  This discovery is, however, the first breakthrough in this mystery since it made its debut in 1912.

“”Dr. Arthur Tucker has made a breakthrough in the interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript,” stated Jules Janick, PhD, James Troop Distinguished Professor in Horticulture at Purdue University. “He has demonstrated to my satisfaction that it contains images based on Mexican flora and fauna. Clearly horticultural information has provided a smoking gun. The education of the Aztec elite by various Spanish priests in ‘colleges’ in the 16th century provides a plausible narrative for the creation of this manuscript.”[2]

Whatever happens from this point on, the Voynich Manuscript is now redefining its own past and revealing a world unimagined.

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[1] Arthur O. Tucker and Rexford H. Talbert. A Preliminary Analysis of the Botany, Zoology, and Mineralogy of the Voynich Manuscript. HerbalGram 2013; American Botanical Council http://cms.herbalgram.org/herbalgram/issue100/hg100-feat-voynich.html?ts=1390759855&signature=704f379ca44c85d8e9aea06f328d7312

[2] American Botanical Council Publishes Revolutionary Analysis Unlocking Mysteries of 500-Year-Old Manuscript. Digital Journal press release: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1689897

Martin J. Clemens

Writer, Fortean, atheist, misanthrope…and lover of science and history. I also blog at: mysteriousuniverse.org and www.dailygrail.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.

Alien technology possibly spotted orbiting a distant star

Scientists recently identified an irregular mess of objects orbiting a distant star that defies most natural explanations.       ~ hehe could "they"  B the ass prober's    ???  fuckers

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By: Bryan Nelson

October 14, 2015, http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/alien-technology-possibly-spotted-orbiting-distant-star

The irregular objects are large and planet-sized. Remind you of anything? (Photo: Serious Cat/Flickr)

Nestled between the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra sits what might be the strangest, most mysterious star in our galaxy. This star, designated as KIC 8462852, is not particularly unusual in and of itself. What's odd is what astronomers have spotted orbitting it: an irregularly-shaped mess of objects that appear unnatural, possibly even alien, reports The Atlantic.
The star was first flagged by amateur astronomers in 2011 for its peculiar dimming pattern, as detected by the Kepler Space Telescope. By themselves, dimming patterns in distant stars are not that usual. In fact, they are what Kepler scientists look for in their hunt for faraway planets. As planets pass in front of their stars, they momentarily block out a portion of the light being emitted by the star, thus revealing themselves. Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered this way in recent years.


The dimming pattern identified in KIC 8462852, however, was unlike any discovered among the over 150,000 stars that have been analyzed by the Kepler Space Telescope. The pattern suggested that KIC 8462852 was surrounded by a whole jumble of objects in extremely tight formation. Such a pattern might be expected from a young star, with a solar system that was first forming. Young solar systems are typically characterized by a messy field of debris, which eventually coalesces into a system of planets as the star's gravity molds and shapes them. But KIC 8462852 is not a young star. A field of dust surrounding a young star would give off infrared light, and excess infrared light is not observed here.
“We’d never seen anything like this star,” explained Tabetha Boyajian, a postdoc at Yale. “It was really weird. We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out.”
It should be reiterated that this mess of objects is irregularly shaped. It's not something that should form naturally, not given a sufficient amount of time, anyway. So it's likely that it was deposited there recently, because otherwise such a field of objects would have been shaped into a more regular pattern or swallowed up by the star's gravitational field by now.
So what is it? Scientists have considered a number of scenarios, from instrument defects, to an asteroid belt pileup, to planets crashing into one another. But at this juncture the list of possible explanations has been narrowed to two. First, it's possible that the debris field could be a sea of comets, recently yanked inward into the solar system by the gravity of another close-passing star. This sort of event would represent an extraordinary coincidence, though — a rare event, one not observed in any other star ever observed.
The second possibility that can't be ruled out is a wild one, an explanation that scientists don't put forward lightly. It's possible that there is no natural explanation for the objects circling KIC 8462852 at all. It's possible they are alien.
“When [I was shown] the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked,” explained Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, to The Atlantic. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”
In other words, it could be a swarm of mega-structures put there by ET — our first glimpse at alien technology. Perhaps it's a fleet of alien spacecraft, perhaps a network of stellar-light collectors, technology designed to catch energy from the star. You can let your imagination run wild.
The idea has garnered enough momentum that researchers at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) have submitted a proposal to point a massive radio dish at the unusual star, to see if it emits radio waves at frequencies associated with technological activity. If such radio waves are detected, then things would get serious.
The first observation isn't expected to happen until January, however. Depending on how those measurements go, follow-up research would occur in the ensuing months.
If the truth is out there, it might be found circling KIC 8462852. It could be the most exciting news in the history of astronomy, or just another cosmological coincidence. We may find out soon enough.

US Runs Tank Over Evidence Before Afghan Hospital Bombing Investigation Begins

Posted by George Freund on October 17, 2015       fuck me o, my o ..that "dumb~bell"  'prize' u's gave ole mr "transparent" .. ya know the "peace' 'prize' isn't look~in 2 good ...humm  ( folks how longggg 'fore the "rest" of the Planet  geeets fed the fuck UP wit  U.S.    how long ,folks )  false flags at Home & dron~ing  /"creating terror~ist's" 'bring~ing  de~mock~res~ty" 2 the 'rest' of the World  ... how long ???

On Wednesday, an international panel announced it will pursue an investigation into the United States’ bombing of a Médecins sans Frontière (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

The U.S. bombing in Kunduz killed 22 people and is being called a war crime. As described by MSF international president, Joanne Liu, “Our patients burned in their beds; MSF doctors, nurses, and other staff were killed as they worked. Our colleagues had to operate on each other.”

The International Humanitarian Fact Finding Committee (IHFFC) is the international panel pursuing the investigation, and according to its website, aims to “[ensure] the respect for, and faithful implementation of, international humanitarian law.”

The IHFFC was formed in 1990 but has never actually been activated, meaning if the MSF investigation moves forward, it will be the first of its kind.

IHFFC requires just one thing before it begins the investigation: compliance from the United States and Afghan governments.

“It is for the concerned Governments to decide whether they wish to rely on the IHFFC. The IHFFC can only act based on the consent of the concerned State or States. The IHFFC cannot give any further information at this stage,” the IHFFC said Wednesday in a statement.

The situation places the United States and its Afghan allies in a quagmire.

They can either consent to the investigation and presumably be torn apart for their actions, or they can decline, likely citing a “matter of national security” when the public accuses them of covering up their crimes. Either way, it appears both nations will continue to be eviscerated by the independent media and the public as new discoveries about the sordid strike come to light. It seems unlikely that the U.S. would allow itself to be put in that vulnerable situation, but it faces a lose/lose situation, nonetheless.

The president of MSF said, “We have received apologies and condolences, but this is not enough.” “We are still in the dark about why a well-known hospital full of patients and medical staff was repeatedly bombarded for more than an hour. We need to understand what happened and why,” she continued in a statement on Wednesday.

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that “American special operations analysts were gathering intelligence on an Afghan hospital days before it was destroyed by a U.S. military attack because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity,”

This revelation suggests the U.S. had knowledge of the hospital’s location. It also offers insight, if it is confirmed that the hospital was purposely bombed, into the United States’ lackluster process that decides on targets for airstrikes.

On Thursday, a U.S. tank rudely rolled into the destroyed hospital “with investigators inside” the tank, a gesture of disrespect that destroyed evidence. “Their unannounced and forced entry damaged property, destroyed potential evidence and caused stress and fear,” said MSF.

The U.S. has ignored the idea of an independent inquiry, claiming that its own internal investigation will suffice. As White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “The administration has confidence that the investigation that is currently underway by the Department of Defense will provide the full accounting of the situation that the president has asked for.”

The United States’ problems in Afghanistan are far from over in the wake of a resurgent Taliban and under-prepared Afghan security forces. President Obama announced yesterday that 5,500 troops will remain in the country until 2017 and likely many years into the future.

The following is a video released by MSF after the devastating bombing and shows the hospital before and after.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccwVM8tUD4s

Image Credit

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THE MH FLIGHT 370 SAGA CONTINUES; THIS TIME THE ...  ~ hehe my guess is 'some~body' is u's~in "tech" on THIS Planet that may....B  Off Planet ???  ...ya know may~be 'they' ain't from 'round' .....here ?      ...what ?   it's as good as the ...single bullet    bullshit !   Huh

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Joseph P. Farrell • http://gizadeathstar.com/2015/10/the-mh-flight-370-saga-continues-this-time-the-debris-is-in/

You're not going to believe this when you read it, and frankly, neither do I. But the bottom line here is that the saga of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continues to grow wierder and wierder with each articulation. This article was shared by Mr. G., and when I saw it, I knew I had to blog about it, simply so that people who are regular readers here would at least know about the story. In doing so, however, I must admit that I am hard pressed to make any high octane speculation scenario out of it, that makes any sense. However, I'll try. But first, here's the story from the U.K.'s Daily Mail:
MH370: Plane wreckage with pilot SKELETON and Malaysian Airlines colours 'found'
Now, if you've been following this bizarre (and now even more bizarre) story closely, you have probably already spotted the gimongous (to use Art Bell's wonderful term) problematic squating in the middle of the story here, for if this debris should be discovered to be MH 370 debris, then what the heck is it doing in Mindinao in the Philippines, while other debris from the rest of the plane, according to the most recent previous articulation of the story, was found thousands of miles away on the French island of La Reunion? One now almost wishes for a conventient "computer modeling" of how debris can drift from whatever point of impact the plane went down at (assuming, of course, that my original "it just went poof" hypothesis is not longer in play), to end up both in the Philippines and at La Reunion. Of course, perhaps this is wreckage from some other Malaysian Airlines flight that crashed in the region, and during that time period. Unfortunately, we have no indications of such a crash in the region other than Indonesia Air which crashed in 2014. And a quick search for that flight(No 8501) will show airline colors quite different from those of Malaysia Airlines, and therefore almost impossible to confuse with any Malaysia airline aircraft.
So assuming this recent story is a piece of wreckage from MH 370, this raises all sorts of difficulties once again, for the presumption of the most recent versions of the story has a crash of MH flight 370 somewhere in the Indian ocean, where at least one can construct convenient computer models of ocean currents explaining how debris could reach La Reunion. But if one assumes that crash site, then by what fantasical and labyrinthin ocean current does it get from the Indian ocean to Mindinao!?  And the same problem holds true of the crash was in the South China Sea, as, you'll recall, it was originally suspected to have been, until the story quickly changed. Recall that when the flight first was reported missing, there were numerous stories about Chinese and Vietnamese search efforts in the South China sea, and the Chinese government then breifly released a photograph of suspected wreckage, and then quickly retracted it. The story then changed to reports of eyewitnesses seeing a commercial airliner flying low over the Malaysian peninsula headed west or southwest into the Indian Ocean. At that point, the theories of kidnappings and hijackings surfaced, with the favored theory being a flight to Diego Garcia. Then Faux news interviewed an American general, who promptly invoked his "insider sources" who "told him" that the flight had sneakily been flown over India by flying close behind another commercial airliner so as to "confuse Indian radar" and air traffic control. Needless to say, this nonsense was quickly dispatched by the Indian government, which let the world know that if there was an aircraft in their air space without authorization, they'd know about it.
There is, however, something unique about this debris discovery, and that is it contains human remains, and, according to the article, a fastened seat beat in the pilot's cabin. Thus, the possibility arises that with a competent forensic pathological investigation of these remains, we might finally obtain some idea of what really happened to flight MH 370.
My best guess? I suspect - if they disclose the findings at all (and assuming of course that the debris is from flight 370 clearly and unequivocally, and not just "salted" in a field) - that the remains will show "anomalies" indicative of a deliberate technological interdiction of the flight.
Why is all this suspicious? Well, there is a second version of the story:
Suspected MH370 wreckage found in Mindanao
Note this significant line:

It was also said that Police in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) were puzzled over claims of the discovery since there had been no reports of any plane crash within the area.

For the moment, the mystery of MH 370 just deepened considerably, again.