oh, I'm quite sure that whatever secrets may be hidden in this are really rather silly, but that't not the point... it seems to be a really cool crypt of some sort... people don't spend days putting puzzle-pieces together just to see the picture on the box in a slightly larger and more pixelated form.

I mean, over the last day, I've navigated NOAA archives, listened to the White Album about 50 times, tuned-up on environmental law (Manson's Vermont connection), watched a bunch of 1940's cartoons, and learned to do modular arithmetic with 1500 year-old, magic Viking Runes!!

And the best part is, I'm sure that that's just the tip of the big-ol-loonie iceberg. If anyone can think of a better way to spend a tuesday, please, let me know.

Sweet Bottlekid. I was acually just about to come here an post that up. Any sign on what the "code3" part means tho? or why "worm" is spelled "warrom"? I'll definitely keep looking into it.

@76: I was wondering what the hell that symbol was... interesting.... One of the main things I've been focussing on is those first few lines. I think whatever crypto keys there might be, would be in there. A few brief observations:
1) "Good" is encircled with "Ha Lo Soul". That circled section should be treated as it's own entity, so "good" should not be read as part of the first sentence.
2) If you trace the arrow from "you" at the beginning of the second line, it leads to the numeral "2". Put that together with the other two arrows, and the fact that "I" is dirrectly beneath "two", and you get this 1:1 correspondence list: "To"-->"X", "Too"-->"Ordal", "Two"-->"I", and "2"-->"you".
3) so if we go with the futhark thing for a bit --which doesn't seem too unreasonable-- we have a few ways to procede. But here's where I'm starting: [http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0149-6611(193011)45%3A7%3C465%3AG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E&cookieSet=1] and [http://www.ancientscripts.com/futhark.html] It's some of the basics for decoding.
4) here goes: X = 6 (good crops, riches), Udal = 22 (inherited, cultivated land), I = 10 (Cold, death... hmmm, self commentary????) and taking 'you' phoeneticaly for the only U sound available, we get Ur = 1 (help and protection). So we have some numbers to start working with.

We might be well under way!

@71 Sproing3: I'm pretty convinced that this is either a hoax-puzzle or a Manson-written puzzle, but either way, I'm pretty sure it's a puzzle. It's a little too methodical for pure random crazy. I mean, I'm sure it's still quite crazy, but I think there's some sort of a (prob. crazy) message under all the superficial crazy.

Basicaly it has too many halmarks of a Crypto-puzzle to just be random bablings, that, and he does actualy say "I'm playing clown words to say I didn't forgit", and it does have the non-transcripted margin note about some "code3".

If crypto-shit (or maybe just my writing) neither entertains nor informs you, then continue on with your prisoner's rights stuff. I just figure that if any community was chock-full of people who would be intruiged by something as obscure as this, well... BB is kind of that place, ain't it?

Now go-on, get about your rhetoric and leave us(me) nerd(s?) with our play-things.

Oh, almost I almost forgot(git) the most crucial thing.... the transcription missed one of the margin notes. On the second page, as far as I can tell it says: "The book warrom Turns - code3"

I didn't notice this until after I had gone through all the other stuff, so now I'm even more convinced. Or maybe just loonier...

Sorry to interrupt the whole morality/meanie-nicey thing ya'll got going here....

but has anyone read the manson letter carefully?

Well, I'll get back to that in a #>/sec... First, what caught my eye about the manson post was the very distinctive photo. I reside in Vermont, and well, that photo made me stop dead in my tracks for a few minutes. Mainly because I'm pretty sure that I've been to this place, or maybe just a few hundred like it, at some point in my life. Evidence: 1) weathering patern on barn/shack/covered-bridge-ish-thing. 2) Dirt Road.
3) Tree species. 4) New Power Lines -- we had a huge ice-storm in '98 --. 5) Post-and-beam house in background.

But one big thing didn't sit right... the time stamp says "98 4 19" and the trees are never this green by the end of April. However, a few quick checks on weather and news archives revealed that '98 had temperatures consistantly in the upper 70s from early march through may. It was one of the earliest springs on record. In addition, on 4-19 the weather was overcast, 90% precip, and unseasonably foggy. So one of the big reasons I'm interested in this is that it would seam that Chucky M has an original photo from somewhere near where I live....

Back to his letter, because this is where it either all gets really interesting, or where you all call me crazy and flame me out for ruining a perfectly good morality-scrimage.

Some oddities (other than the crazy) about these letters:

1) End of the first letter certainly sounds like a clue/challenge to me -- "I bet you don't remember this - you don't even know where it's at. HAHA. I got you there." So That got me to thinking: maybe I already have the first clue?

2) At the beginning of the second letter he draws our attention very sharply to a few key themes:
2a) the idea of replacing syllables with numbers in some sort of pattern -- ie. he separates the numerical "4 GOT" from all other instances of "forgit".
2b) the dissection of certain words into separate phonemes -- ie. "Hay Lo Soul".
2c) The selective use of homo-nyms/phones. He even points out later that this is not simply because he's stupid, he specificaly says he's "playing clown words to say I didn't forgit".
2d) selective capitalization. could be some sort of an anagram... not sure yet.
2e) this one is hard to notice until later in the letter, but he only uses "+"-signs, never the word "and", and for the entire first half of the letter, he uses "to" at any place where he could have used "+".

3) The end of the first letter talks pretty specifically about two key points. The first is that Billy "don't remember" --notice the use of the word don't, even though everything else is in the past tense--. The second point has something to do with geography and space --"where it's at", "got you there". The rememberance theme is picked back up on right away in the second letter, and the excplicit change from "hear" to "here" show that the spacial theme is as well.

So if we assume that Chuck doesn't ask everyone why they've forgotten an important place (which is a pretty big, but necessary assumption), that means one of two things: 1) That the entire thing is a hoax, and that Billy wrote both sets of letter, or 2) the more likely option that Charles Manson spends a bunch of time on the internet researching all sorts of exentric things, found out about "Billy", and has decided to use this as an oprotunity to encode a message in a published letter. I don't know, it kind of seems like his style.

So what do you all think? Am I as loonie as Manson, am I way too into Crypto, or is there the chance that all of these Crypto-red-flags actually do point to something worth finding out? I'll be working on it, let me know if any of you other procrastinating crazzies decide to do the same.

Wow! *teehee* That really looks great. If the film is half as good as the trailer then it just made my top-10-to-see list... probably right after Darkon.

Well, we seem to have found the WMDs... Weopons of Mass Digestion. I bet they have them in Iraq too.

Um... The PDF here is the edited version, not the original. As I understand, the original document specificaly said TORTURE. The PDF from BB has the censored "make their lives a living hell."

Were you compromised?? Hacked?? Or just posted the wrong PDF??

I agree that the awkward sounding "Storm Worm Botnet" should be renamed... How about "Neuromancer"? ... Or "Jane" maybe...

Come on everybody! Now's the time to make a run on the banks! I'll race ya to market crash... On your mark, get set, go!

Wolfram's Blog (once you get through the typical Wolfram evangilism in the first half) has some really interesting points about possible applications of this find.

"When we think of nanoscale computers, we usually imagine carefully engineering them to mimic the architecture of the computers we know today." ... however,
"We don't have to carefully build things up with engineering. We can just go out and search in the computational universe, and find things like universal computers--that are simple enough that we can imagine making them out of molecules."

Here's the link to Wolfram's whole post:
http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/10/the_prize_is_won_the_simplest.html

I can see it now...

--"Cat Urine? That's some new street slang huh? So who are you getting your 'cat urine' from?"

--"Fluffy mostly, a little from Mr. Paws"

--"Johnson, write that down, it looks like we have some new playas on the scene, and I don't like the sound of em."

@Bricology: As this conversation is becoming incresingly polarized, I'll try to keep this short. In answer to both your questions I'm just going to say that there is a big diference between doubt and disbelief. I doubt my faith constantly. I don't see any problem with that. I feel it strengthens it. And if you keep reading on the "Revolution in Jesusland" blog, you'll see that much of the conference which they're talking about involves really serious and pointed doubt regarding many core aspects of Christian faith. The 'rejection' you talk about, whether in terms of tenets of Christianity, or in terms of other religions, is disbelief, not doubt. Disbelief can be doubted just as easily and productively as belief can.

@Noen#33: Since when did "theist" become "Fundementalist Christian"? This is exactly the point I am trying to make here. It seems that every time a progressive individual says that they believe in God or the teachings of the Bible, they get labeled Fundementalist and Anti-science. I love Science and Logic and Rationality and think it's all freaking awesome! I also love God and Jesus and some of the beautiful poetry and lessons in the Bible and think all of that is freaking awesome as well!

The Bible, Koran, Torrah, and every other religious text, are not all moral preaching. A lot of it is poetry, genaeology, history, oral tradition, politics, the list goes on... And in the same way, theism is a whole hell of a lot more (excuse the pun) than just trying to come out on top at judgement day.

@Bricology: I'm sorry I said you were ignorant about Christianity. What I should have said is that you are presenting a very limited view of Christianity. It's a very similar argument to the whole "feminist-lesbian-baby-killing-man-hating" argument. In other words, it's not an argument. You seem to have had a rather bad experience with Christianity in the past. Not everyone has. And not everyone who believes in God is delusional. There are some really cool and fascinating movements in the evangelical church. Even if you disagree with them or hate them, I hope you can at least see that they're doing something new, and stepping outside their own box quite a bit. I wish everyone did that more often.

@#30: Your ignorance about Christianity is astounding. I would attempt to inform you, but as you obviously did not even bother to read the blog which this was a link to, it would be a waste of my time. Do all of us a favor and read the material in question before you comment on it.

@Mycophage: Love the name. Yes, I generalize, one must on a comment thread.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that secular progressives ally themselves with homophobic anti-abortion movements within the evangelical community. As hard as it might be for anti-theists to believe, evangelical America is no more monolithic than White America, Black America, Middle-Class America, or any other America. There are some (by any standards) progressive and liberal groups within the overall evangelical movement. These groups are important allies.

That said, I am a theist and I have (quite litteraly) laid my life on the line doing abortion clinic defense. Having faith doesn't imply anything about one's social values. Many of the most radical social movements in history have been religiously based. It's time that secularists stopped being anti-theist and were just atheist for a while.

Progressives always ask me why I hate Richard Dawkins so much.... Thank God (or whoever) that someone else out there gets it! Religion and religious people are not the enemy of progressive causes. Closed-minded progressives often are. If we could stop believing that all believers are ignorant rednecks, maybe we could get something done for once.