HOW TO STAY SECURE ON LINE.

The Internet Archive has been taken off line for days by a hacker attack. This is a useful reminder to the rest of us to tighten our security on all our devices.

1. Always make sure your software is up to date by turning on automatic updates. This gives North Korean hackers a chance to compromise your computer or phone by hijacking the update process, and it is considered sporting to give hackers a fair shot.

2. Keep a hatchet or axe next to your device at all times for use in case of emergency.

3. Avoid elementary security mistakes. The most elementary mistake you can make in managing any device is to connect it to the Internet, and yet an estimated 100% of Internet users have made that very blunder.

4. Print out a list of all your usernames and passwords and register it with the U. S. Copyright Office. Then it will be illegal for hackers to steal your login credentials.

5. Make sure you have something plugged into every open port on your computer or phone, including the headphone jack. Hackers often access your data through “security holes,” but you can thwart them if there are no holes.

6. Always take advantage of two-factor authentication, in which you must respond to a text message on your phone in order to access a password-protected site. That way a hacker cannot breach your security unless you lose your phone, which never happens.

7. Keep your phone and computer in a lead-lined bag. Place the lead-lined bag in a lead-lined safe. Ask a random stranger to change the combination on the safe without telling you the new combination, and then kill the random stranger. Now you are secure until the next burglar with a scrap of ambition notices that you have a large safe sitting around and wonders what’s inside it.

. One comment.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.

Christopher Columbus thinking thinky thoughts

On this day in 1492, Christopher Columbus made his first landing in the Americas on San Salvador Island. “The natives,” he wrote back to his sponsors Isabella and Ferdinand, “are intelligent, sweet-tempered, gentle, and peaceful. They would make great slaves. How many would your majesties like?” Columbus himself took a few of the people to paste in his album, and the light of European civilization shone brightly in America for the first time.

. 2 comments.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR.

Sir: I have been listening to political speeches lately, and I think all our politicians could use some practice in elementary rhetoric. But I think, as a start, they could make an improvement by adopting one simple rhetorical technique. What is this technique of which I speak? Epanaphora! Epanaphora would give their periods rhythm. Epanaphora would give us a reason to sit up and listen. Epanaphora would give the proper emphasis to the main point of their discourse. Epanaphora would be the one rhetorical technique I would recommend that our politicians adopt forthwith. But not antistrophe. I do no wish to hear any antistrophe. I cannot abide antistrophe. I think they should at all costs avoid antistrophe. Epanaphora is the way to go. Epanaphora, and not antistrophe. —Sincerely, M. T. Cicero, McKees Rocks.

. One comment.

POLICE BLOTTER.

The entire membership of the Blandville Odd Fellows was arrested last night and charged with vandalism, public intoxication, and resisting arrest. It is asserted that police responded to a 9-1-1 call, and when they arrived on the scene, the men were busy smashing windows at the lodge of their inveterate enemies, the Even Boys.

. One comment.

AN ENIGMATIC ADVERTISEMENT.

In a magazine from 1911, we found this advertisement among the usual promotions for correspondence schools and manuals of sexual relations from a physiological standpoint.

This young lady is going boating. Before leaving she sent for a bound volume of “The Caldron,” the magazine of disdelusion. All wise people take this little magazine with them when they go on an outing.

To approach an outing in a disdeluded state sounds like a reasonable precaution. But under what delusions might we suppose this young lady would otherwise be laboring? The delusion that the weather will always be fair? The delusion that she will not have to walk home when her gentleman friend rows her out to the middle of the lake? The delusion that her posture is natural? Dr. Boli thought it would be entertaining to read a few numbers of this magazine and become disdeluded, but it was not to be found in the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, or Google Books. Perhaps that is how the disdelusion is accomplished. You send your dollar for a year’s worth of the Caldron, and no magazine ever appears through your mail slot, and you are cured of the delusion that advertisers in the backs of magazines are fundamentally honest.

. 4 comments.

THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT IS BACK.

Voynich Manuscript

Every so often we bring up the Voynich Manuscript again. It is one of the great unsolved mysteries, and thus one of the great attractive nuisances for cranks.

About three years ago we received a correspondence from one Nikolai Anichkin, a Russian who claimed that he had succeeded in beginning to decipher the manuscript. He had “received a positive result,” although when we look closer at his writings we see that this does not mean anything like “succeeded in reading so much as one whole line.” At that time we devoted a whole article to his claims and our response to them.

Recently Mr. Anichkin has been in touch again. In fact he left a comment on the same article as his previous comment from 2021. In fact he left the same comment.

Since he obviously thinks his discovery is important enough to publish it to the world in our Magazine once every three years or so, we shall do him the courtesy of bringing his comment to the front page, along with a few scraps of our own commentary.

Good day!

Your site has information about the Voynich manuscript.

I am deciphering the Voynich manuscript and received a positive result.

There is a key to cipher the Voynich manuscript.

The key to the cipher manuscript placed in the manuscript. It is placed throughout the text. Part of the key hints is placed on the sheet 14. With her help was able to translate a few dozen words that are completely relevant to the theme sections.

The Voynich manuscript is not written with letters. It is written in signs. Characters replace the letters of the alphabet one of the ancient language. Moreover, in the text there are 2 levels of encryption. I figured out the key by which the first section could read the following words: hemp, wearing hemp; food, food (sheet 20 at the numbering on the Internet); to clean (gut), knowledge, perhaps the desire, to drink, sweet beverage (nectar), maturation (maturity), to consider, to believe (sheet 107); to drink; six; flourishing; increasing; intense; peas; sweet drink, nectar, etc.

This list of translated words does not inspire us with a great deal of confidence in the key to the cipher. It seems obvious to Mr. Anichkin that they add up to something deeply significant; but to us they seem like a random collection of terms with no connection to one another.

Is just the short words, 2-3 sign. To translate words with more than 2-3 characters requires knowledge of this ancient language.

We remarked the last time Mr. Anichkin wrote to us that he did his case no favors by being coy about the identity of the “ancient language.” Sanskrit? Classic Maya? Akkadian?

The fact that some symbols represent two letters. In the end, the word consisting of three characters can fit up to six letters. Three letters are superfluous. In the end, you need six characters to define the semantic word of three letters. Of course, without knowledge of this language make it very difficult even with a We can say…

We might note that the incomplete sentence was incomplete three years ago when Mr. Anichkin first wrote to us, and it has not been completed since.

We can say that the Voynich manuscript is an encyclopedia of knowledge that humanity needs today. I managed to partially solve the mystery of mount Kailas ( for example, its height is 6825 meters).

Wikipedia gives a different height for Mount Kailash or Kailas: 6638 meters, which is significantly different but not interestingly different. If the mystery is a 187-meter difference in measured heights, Dr. Boli would have been content to leave it unsolved. If it is something more interesting, Mr. Anichkin ought to have told us what the mystery is. We have the impression that he thinks everyone knows about the mystery of Mount Kailas, but, as with so many things that apparently everyone else knows, Dr. Boli was not invited to that meeting.

The manuscript indicates the place where the Grail Is hidden, as well as the Font and Cradle of Jesus.

Dr. Boli does not know what the Font of Jesus is. He has a horrible suspicion it may be Papyrus. As for the Grail, it might indeed be useful for humanity to know where that went, if only to stop the Nazis from getting their hands on it.

For more information, see my article [redacted because the domain name has expired and the article is no longer on line].

I am ready to share information.

With respect, Nikolai.

I am looking for a person, or even an organization, who will decide to responsibly continue to decipher the Voynich manuscript. I would be grateful if you would let me know.

Mr. Anichkin is still looking after three years for someone who will responsibly continue his work. Dr. Boli will therefore make an offer to his readers. If anyone wishes to give Mr. Anichkin some responsible help—such as, for example, teaching him the first principles of epigraphy—then such a person may leave a comment on this article, and Dr. Boli will be sure to give him Mr. Anichkin’s contact information.

. 3 comments.

ASK DR. BOLI.

Dear Dr. Boli: I just visited Philadelphia for the first time in a few decades, and I found the place changed. There used to be a “gentleman’s agreement” in Philadelphia that no building would be built higher than the statue of William Penn on City Hall. Now Philadelphia is infested with skyscrapers just like everywhere else. Why did they give up on the gentleman’s agreement? —Sincerely, A Man from Camden Who Doesn’t Get Out Much.

Dear Sir: Because the last living gentleman in Philadelphia died in 1984.

. One comment.