Here I come to save the day!

[pauraque_bk]

...with random links.


-How much is inside? This is a favorite at my workplace. (When customers ask how long a Sharpie lasts, we are sure to tell them that it labels 968 CDs.)


-The Voynich Manuscript. A handwritten book apparently from the 13th century, in an unknown language. Is it a code? A constructed language? Nonsense? Whatever its meaning, the script is quite beautiful.


-The Diary of Samuel Pepys. One entry a day. LJ feed at pepysdiary.


-Geoffrey Pullum of languagelog has several posts on why he hated The Da Vinci Code, focusing on Dan Brown's interesting linguistic choices. V. amusing.

The Dan Brown code.

Dan Brown still moving very briskly about.

Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence.


-uchidachi at scans_daily has been posting scans from The Super Dictionary. I... have no words.

Press.

Settle.

Idea.

Rock.

You should all join scans_daily. You should add it to your friends list. Please join me in doing so. Please do it with me. Then we'll all join hands and suck in the sweet, sweet crax. We'll hold each other's hands and smoke crax.

Comments

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

Never read THE DAVINCI CODE... and I don't plan on it.

I read about the Voynich Manuscript in Fortean Times a while back. I'm itching to write something about it, if I can only be bothered to do the research.

[threeoranges.livejournal.com]

You haven't missed much! Just read THE TEMPLAR REVELATION and you'll see all the weird shit esoteric sources Brown ripped off. Truly, the reason it's so popular is because the general public hdn't previously read stuff like THE HOLY BLOOD & THE HOLY GRAIL or THE TEMPLAR REVELATION and hence didn't know that the figure to the left of Christ in the LAST SUPPER is obviously a woman. The woman in the picture is a pretty mind-blowing revelation, but what a pity Brown had to couch that and the consequent heretical re-interpretation of Scripture in such dreadful prose and ridiculous characterization!

Also, even THE TEMPLAR REVELATION admitted that the Priory of Sion (an alleged organization which passed the secrets of the Templars down the ages) was a simple hoax caused by the deft insertion of some fraudulent documents into the archives at Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris. (The fraudsters were a bunch of French neo-Fascists.) Brown either didn't know or didn't care that the PdS was a hoax, he's based a significant chunk of the book around their "existence". Congrats Brown, you've assisted the French neo-Fascist cause no end...

Also, I saw a BBC2 documentary on the Voynich Manuscript and I go with the theory that Voynich himself faked it, he had the intelligence and motive to do so and I only wish he'd recieved a suitable reward for his magnum opus.