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Someone claims to have made a breakthrough with the Voynich manuscript: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-26198471 also http://stephenbax.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Voynich-a-provisional-partial-decoding-BAX.pdf
The reports introduced me to an idea for it that I hadn't noticed before: that it's a book in an novel script in an extinct language. That would sound romantic on its own, but compared to "massive hoax" or "medieval RPG manual" it feels almost banal. In his paper Bax notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rongorongo the undeciphered script of Easter Island, and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_alphabet which isn't undeciphered but had a rocky early period and could easily have died out leaving us some book in a weird script and extinct Slavic dialect.
I also wondered "what if we had an Iliad-class epic in Linear A?"
There's also undeciphered texts, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohonc_Codex
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_N_176
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Stone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starving_of_Saqqara
Rohonc is most like Voynich, including in being suspected of being a hoax.
In reading around, I stumbled upon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugtun_script which is a Yupik syllabary created in five years by Uyaquk, who like Sequoyah of Cherokee fame, started out as an illiterate. (Five years? Between this and Vai, Sequoyah starts to seem slow.) Unlike the Cherokee script, it didn't take off, and having a Bible translation in "what the hell is this" seems a plausible outcome.
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland mentions some new work claiming people were on the SE Asian continental shelf aka Sundaland 50,000 years ago, with much older populations, and SE Asian culture starting there before sea level rise kicked them off; the Polynesian culture says Y chromosome + mitochondiral DNA shows 'Taiwanese' migrants move into existing Melanesian populations. Given that people were in Australia 40-60,000 years ago, people north of there seems like a no-brainer...
***
Disney princesses as Game of Thrones characters. http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/disney-princesses-as-game-of-thrones-characters
Related fanart:
http://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130924-15541250-lannisterlions.jpg
http://hbowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/house_baratheon.jpg
http://hbowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/house_stark.jpg
https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/f6520061f08acfa0fb3fdb01513ff969/tumblr_mk4x90lRwU1qa5wxio1_500.jpg
***
Finns are pushing an initiative for gay marraige. I got excited, until I learned that all it does is push a bill into the legislature, where it can die in committee just like any other bill; it's not an initiative for a referendum, as in Switzerland or US states. Lame!
***
Venezuela is exploding.
http://caracaschronicles.com/2014/02/20/the-game-changed/
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/02/nicolas_maduro_s_venezuela_erupts_in_violence_the_venezuelan_president_appears.html
The reports introduced me to an idea for it that I hadn't noticed before: that it's a book in an novel script in an extinct language. That would sound romantic on its own, but compared to "massive hoax" or "medieval RPG manual" it feels almost banal. In his paper Bax notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rongorongo the undeciphered script of Easter Island, and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_alphabet which isn't undeciphered but had a rocky early period and could easily have died out leaving us some book in a weird script and extinct Slavic dialect.
I also wondered "what if we had an Iliad-class epic in Linear A?"
There's also undeciphered texts, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohonc_Codex
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_N_176
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Stone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starving_of_Saqqara
Rohonc is most like Voynich, including in being suspected of being a hoax.
In reading around, I stumbled upon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugtun_script which is a Yupik syllabary created in five years by Uyaquk, who like Sequoyah of Cherokee fame, started out as an illiterate. (Five years? Between this and Vai, Sequoyah starts to seem slow.) Unlike the Cherokee script, it didn't take off, and having a Bible translation in "what the hell is this" seems a plausible outcome.
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland mentions some new work claiming people were on the SE Asian continental shelf aka Sundaland 50,000 years ago, with much older populations, and SE Asian culture starting there before sea level rise kicked them off; the Polynesian culture says Y chromosome + mitochondiral DNA shows 'Taiwanese' migrants move into existing Melanesian populations. Given that people were in Australia 40-60,000 years ago, people north of there seems like a no-brainer...
***
Disney princesses as Game of Thrones characters. http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/disney-princesses-as-game-of-thrones-characters
Related fanart:
http://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130924-15541250-lannisterlions.jpg
http://hbowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/house_baratheon.jpg
http://hbowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/house_stark.jpg
https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/f6520061f08acfa0fb3fdb01513ff969/tumblr_mk4x90lRwU1qa5wxio1_500.jpg
***
Finns are pushing an initiative for gay marraige. I got excited, until I learned that all it does is push a bill into the legislature, where it can die in committee just like any other bill; it's not an initiative for a referendum, as in Switzerland or US states. Lame!
***
Venezuela is exploding.
http://caracaschronicles.com/2014/02/20/the-game-changed/
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/02/nicolas_maduro_s_venezuela_erupts_in_violence_the_venezuelan_president_appears.html