Re: some books I read

On Sep 6, 11:03 am, The Other <ot...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

So that's what I've been reading -- three meditations on theology and
one political confession of faith. Didn't plan it that way, that's
just how it worked out.

I've read some books about secret codes and cryptography recently:

Codebreaker, by Stephen Pin***
Can you Crack the Enigma Code?, by Richard Belfield
The Mathematics of Ciphers, by S.C. Coutinho

The first two are historical surveys, and the third introduces
RSA cryptography. Some parts of the first two were already
vaguely familiar to me, such as the story of Bletchley Park
and the Enigma Machine, and the Zodiac killer. Other things I
knew less about, such as the Voynich Manuscript. I buy the
argument that it's a 500-year-old forgery, and the code is
meaningless. And speaking of medieval manuscripts, another
book I've read recently is:

The Archimedes Codex, by Reviel Netz and Willam Noel

which is about the discovery (and eventual sale for two
million dollars at Christies) of the oldest surving
manuscript of Archimedes.


.