• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Mayday Mystery

Metadiscussion upon being noted

Logan5:
Oh, sorry. I took your comment to be about their explicitly bringing this thread to Brian's attention. After Juls had already indirectly brought it up.

As far as Mr. Hungerford, I suspect that he did what he thought best in the situation. If a reporter for a small-circulation alternative paper could track him down, so could the Orphanage's adversaries.


I had always considered the possibility that Brian was a fellow traveller. At one point I sent him a characterization of gen:18 in relation to one of the ads. I'm sure someone intimately familiar with the text would find my analysis puerile or possibly even blasphemous. Anyhow, for whatever reason, Brian filtered it. You'd figure people that honour such notable scientists/mathematicians (who apparently tried to discern God's plan from studying His _works_) wouldn't mind logical scrutiny of their _literature_.


As far as erudition :
Yes, the Orphanage does seem to have some educated members. But intelligence is only one of nature's tools. Why painstakingly pick the lock when you can smash the window? Oblique strategies, such as proper application of genetic algorithms, could get us into places thought to be inviolate. I was really hoping that having this thread on the FTMB would draw some intuitives, such as, errr, dowsers or RV'ers into the fray.


Re: RAW & Illuminatus.
Gee, I had noticed the common threads. I totally missed the temporal relationship with the publication date of "Illuminatus!"
The problem is, that such a tome makes a admirable smokescreen for many things. Whether "I!" is directly relevant or not is a mystery to me. And just in case RAW is reading this -- if this is all a wind-up, I will make sure you feel my displeasure! (Incidentally, I had read an amazon review one time that pointed out that "I!" meta-programs the reader by forcing them to switch mental frameworks every few hundred pages. Do we see similar efforts happening in the ADW ads? From what I see, the ads are all trying to force the reader into one distinct mindset.)



A final note: I don't think have all the answers here, just in case anyone is put off by the sheer volume of my ramblings. I'm just throwing off ideas to try to get others involved in the discussion here.
 
The Lathe of Heaven and the Kobayashi Maru

CRAP!

It just occurred to me that if these guys are trying some weirdo metaphysical/quantum direct manipulation of reality, they're snockered from their own definitions.

If they are trying to directly change reality, they are de facto interferring in God's plan. They're cheating. So for this to be allowed to work, one of their two core suppositions must be false.
 
I currently lean toward the position that the object is to change the reality we experience by changing us. Thus, perhaps one of the objects of the communications would be to put one through the work of one's transformation while leading one to think that they were solving a puzzle or investigating a mystery, which was one main RAW theme I was toying with.
Aside from the level of proficiency in various obscure areas, it seems to me that there is also a certain hauter regarding both the seeming lack of curiosity, resulting in a low number of parties interested in "solving" the mystery, and the level of effort and intellectual rigor we're bringing to bear. This attitude has the familiar flavor of advanced graduate work in the humanities, particularly philosophy and religion. That would also provide an easy connection to New Jersey
 
ok, I feel like I'm going in circles with this. Trying to get started unravelling things but I have no idea whether the ends of the string I'm trying to grab have already been pulled.
Is there a place where some of the concepts and meanings are put? The maydaymystery site seems rather disorganised and abandoned. Things are discussed making reference to other things that I can't find. The lexicon and other resources haven't been updated for several years - a note in the lexicon saying use the search engine instead, but the site doesn't have a search engine (unless it means google etc, in which case a lot of hits come up...) I'm trying to start with the older adverts and so on to get a feel for the simpler things first but there seems to have been no discussion or comments on any of those for a couple of years. Have they been forgotten? Or have they been completely explained and thus need no further work?

At the moment I'm just trying to find connections between things, but without going through all the observations about every single page, I don't know whether something appearing on one page with no comments has been discussed to death on another page that featured the same thing... and the later ones are so full of information that it's hard to keep track of what's where...

Steve.
 
juls:
on the maydaymystery page you suggested an alternate Captain Morgan to Jessica's in her Excel file. I couldn't see any bio or details for hers so I can't tell if it's the same, but I found a reference to another Captain Morgan: a freemason who published a book on freemasonry in 1827. No idea if it's relevant, but interesting nonetheless.

Unrelated to that, but I walk past the place where Ridley and Latimer were burned most days on my way to or from work.
Several other names I've seen had an Oxford connection too, but coincidence probably - I suppose there weren't *that* many places of learning around back then!

Finally, a snippet of info on Flacius - he seemed to have a bad deal with May Day, being the day on two separate years that the city councils of where he was living ordered him to leave because of his religious views.

Steve.
 
just chiming in

After my last delivery I thought I'd come back and reread this thread (hi juls!:) )

I usually hate message boards but here are a few thoughts :)

- Someone mentioned 'pattern recognition' by william gibson, with the whole 'footage' link. I thought the same thing when I read it, but I doubt gibson's ever seen the MM. Lucky him. That'd be a seriously different book if ya ask me :) For those of you who haven't read it, read it. Great book.

- philo's comment re: me 'filtering' a message - i don't really filter, ever... I screw up, yeah, I forget to post messages/clues, I don't go back and rescan bad images, I double post, i don't post stuff i think has been posted before in other areas. But I don't filter. If I ommitted something, send it back to me and I'll throw it up on the site. Yes, I hand maintain the HTML for the site.... Yes, I know a database would be much easier, but I'd have to hand-reenter 20megs of data into a dB and I'd prefer not to blow a weekend of my life cutting and pasting :)

I used to be really, really into this, but after X years it kind of fell by the wayside... someobody else mentioned the site looks 'abandoned' ... I've honestly got too much other stuff going on to spend a lot of time on the MM, so any percienved weirdness on *my* part is most likely due to me half-assedly maintianing my site than anything else...

-bhance
maydaymystery.org
 
Hi Brian :)

Sjwk - I can't remember a whole lot about Jessica's Capt. Morgan now except that he was American and an army captain rather than a sea captain. The context of the mayday Capt. Morgan is that he does appear to be intended as a 'sea captain' Capt Morgan if you look at the contexts that he appears in. I haven't looked at the link yet, but I'll check it out later. :)

At the moment I'm tussling with my very rudimentary French and the tape, I feel that I am probably spending more time on it than it deserves - I suspect that it has little to add to what was said in English. Something that I was going to remark on that perhaps highlights the mindset of these people is the way that they refer, as they do on the tape, to 'these troubled times' - having read history at Uni, I have to say that these times do not seem to me to be any more troubled than times have always been - show me one time period when people weren't sh*tting on eachother. Unless we're talking in cosmic time and we include (if we're inclined to Christian belief) the time before 'the Fall'. Heck, even the dinosaurs tore lumps out of eachother, there's nothing remarkable about these times except in your heads, guys. :rolleyes:
 
bio's

Sjwk - Jessica compiled a large excel file of biographical material, this is located under 'recent developments' date 11/29/00. I have had a scan through this and can't find any bio material for Capt Morgan, there may be more on one of the 'text pages' but all I could find for now is under 'lexicon' - see entry for 'Alekhine' and hit link to a page called 'people', which gives the following:

"Morgan, Daniel (1736-1802), general in the American Revolution, who defeated the British at the Battle of Cowpens. He was born near Junction in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, but moved to Virginia in 1753. Morgan served in the French and Indian War and later took part in several campaigns against the Native Americans. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was commissioned captain in the Continental Army, and he went with Benedict Arnold on the expedition (1775) against Québec, where he distinguished himself as commander after Arnold was wounded. Taken prisoner, he was exchanged in the fall of 1776 and commissioned a colonel. He fought in the battles of Saratoga in the fall of 1777."

"Dissatisfied and in ill health, Morgan retired from the army in 1779 but reentered as brigadier general in 1780. On January 17, 1781, he won one of the most brilliant victories of the war, when he overcame a superior British force by his effective use of cavalry at Cowpens, South Carolina. After the war Morgan commanded troops in western Pennsylvania charged with suppressing the Whiskey Rebellion. He served as a Federalist representative in Congress from 1797 to 1799."

I'm not sure if this is the same guy as your mason chap, IIRC when I looked at the link, his book was written in the 1800s which seems a bit late for this guy. Myself, I'm still inclined to believe that the Capt. Morgan in question is still the Welsh pirate chap because they have referred to him in relation to navigation and ships, there was also a reference somewhere to 'Port Royal', which was where Morgan was buried and which disappeared into the sea later during an earthquake. There is also the references to 'letter of Marque' - Morgan worked as a buccanneer under this license from the crown.

I don't think the characters they have chosen to use as codenames are spurious or derive *purely* from personal preference of those involved, I suspect that they may be cryptically appropriate in some deeper manner - perhaps they are representative of function and relationships in some way. I also think that this mystery is going to require an awful lot of cross-referencing to really get to grips with - once I get some ink in my printer I figured I would print all the pages off and pin them up somewhere side by side and see what I can do. :smokin:
 
I was thinking of printing them all off too - easier to look at things side by side rather than flicking back and forth on the screen. Trouble is, I have very little time to spend on it (like Brian). Actually, that's not entirely true - I have time, but I *shouldn't* be spending it on this when I have walls to plaster and a milion other things that need doing! ;) If I have them to hand then I can occasionally flick through and see if anything leaps out.

Brian: Don't think I was criticising you when I commented that the pages seem 'abandoned', I know that there's only so much time you can spend. It was more that on a lot of pages, particularly the early ones where I was starting, there's not been much discussion or contribution of thoughts for the past couple of years - nothing much that you can do about that!

I just wanted to see if there was some other place for information so that I can try and concentrate on things that people haven't looked at rather than spend the little time I can spare duplicating something that's already been found.

One other thought. While a lot of the technical stuff goes way over my head, if there's any specific things to figure out I may be able to find some answers. I have good friends whose native tongues include Greek, Dutch, French, German and Spanish, and could probably find people who speak pretty much anything else. Also, working in Oxford I do have access to academics who are experts in pretty much every subject. While I wouldn't want to pester them frequently, I can try asking them to look at the odd diagram or translate the occasional phrase.

Steve.
 
Hi Steve

A good start might be getting a translation for the French on the tape if that's a possibility. I'm afraid that my French is probably not really up to it. :)

Juls
 
Most of the names adopted by the principals seem to fit one way or another. There are a couple that I don't get:

1. Why "the Orphangage"?
Is this a reference to the children's crusade? Is this a further indightment of the failures of the Church?

2. Why the pimp?
Their using a the persona of a homeless person in communications with Brian seems strange in light of my 7/24/2003 posting.
In such a system as the Calvinist theocracies of Geneva, Huguenot France, Scotland, or New England, the poor were convicted prima-facie by their situation. Every member of the elite might not be a member of the elect, but the poor, and especially the indigent poor, obviously were not. The incompetent, the wastrel, the drunkard, and all those who lived only for pleasure rather than profit were self-evidently damned.
Click to expand...
Why pretend to be someone that they see as beneath contempt? Of course, I can recall no direct comment from the orphanage that indicates that they hold such views. The above comes from here, one author's analysis of Calvinist views.
 
Philo T

'The pimp' was a nickname that Brian coined when they sent a communication to him in Ebonic (is that the right term?) - and they just went along with it after. I agree with you that the names do fit in one way or another, but I do think that the question of which names they have chosen would bear more scrutiny. The way that they are generally appropriate could mask a more specific criterion - well, that's a feeling I get and I'm gonna have a look at it, if I come up with anything it'll get posted up here and/or at MM.

Regarding the Orphanage - I noted that in the French section of the tape they referred to it as 'L'Orphanage' rather than translating the word to its French equivalent - that may not mean a whole lot but it might reflect something of how they view the name that they have given themselves. I thought that 'orphanage' might have been chosen because it reflects some characteristic of what they are - perhaps a group of folk who have 'orphaned' themselves from their past lives and the culture/background that they were born into for example.
 
I shall see if I can get anything translated. Definitely sounds like reading from a script though, and at one point sounds like she's just on the verge of laughing while reading it.

I seem to have been contributing a pile of observations over the last few days - I don't think I'd go as far as to call them clues ;)
Still, a question or observation can always trigger someone else to think of something.

Steve.
 
Juls:
Just to be entirely clear : I realize that the "pimp" moniker was made up by Brian. My curiosity is about the persona adopted by the person that sends him these emails. It could be just as simple as the ebonics was a dumb joke meant to obscure any profiling of the writer's natural mannerisms. OR was the demptsy dumpster residing persona chosen for a reason.



sjwk:
I agree that some of the things on the website are sort of jumbled pell-mell given that Brian maintains it on his own time. I've done some diddling with my own pages than deeplink into what he has done in an attempt to force another structure on the raw data. I've considered cranking out a simple page with thumbnails of all the adds to aid in the "where was that page again" dilema. One thing that would be a big help is if the pages had anchors to each individual clue sent in so it could be linked to from wherever.

I suspect, intentionally or not, the lack of an enforced order on the clues actually aides one of purposes (from the Orphanage's view) of having the website. That is, drawing in bright, obsessive people and indoctrinating them with a history of the reformation. The fact that it's the "student" doing their own digging makes this actually more effective than spoon-feeding the same information.

It really seems like all the contributors, my own meager efforts included, have only picked off tiny slivers of literal interpertations from the ads. As far as I know, nobody has completely unravelled any of the ads, even the earlier ones.


As far as the clue I sent in that Brian lost, it's probably better that it was. It was most likely irrelevant. It's easy to make paranoid assumptions in matters like this. I accept Brian's explanation of what happened there.
 
Philo T

I got the impression that they had developed the character of the pimp accordingly - as Brian had identified him. Therefore, for myself I suspect that the first of your alternatives is the most likely - it was done first as a ruse and elaborated into a personality after Brian had imposed a name onto him. This brings up another thing I've been thinking on. I'll post something on that later, no time now.

:smokin:
 
You know, the more I look at this, the more confused I feel - time for a step backwards...

Costs of advertising and so on aside, it's clearly not a student-type thing - it's been going on for at least 20 years (and I'm guessing at 30+ based on references to the Agenda of 1st May 1972). The fact that it has such a wide variety of content: theological, scientific, historical, mathematical also indicates that it's not a group of people all from the same field of expertise, but yet they must all be able to understand it unless content from different subjects is aimed at different people who only understand that area.

The geography involved changes - we've had periods with lots of South African references, lots of German references and lately lots of French references, suggesting people are moving about.

And yet, they still use a local University paper for correspondance. How do people elsewhere in the world ever see the adverts unless the locations are only references to local locations?

If 'members' are as widespread as it would appear, then surely it would make sense to use other methods of communication. They seem happy enough to use emails and comments via the website. They also must use other methods or else how have those who send the emails been 'authorised' to send a particular message.
So if they use other communication, what is the point of these infrequent ads? They seem to be status reports, but who to?

Also, if they have opponents, why continue to use a system that has been revealed to the public? And why are they offering cryptic assistance to people trying to unravel it? Their opposition could clearly use these clues too. Are they trying to recruit new members who figure it out? Are they trying to cause a distraction with effectively random ads, deliberately putting it into the public eye to confuse their opponents? Or are they just trying to see how many people they can make spend time on it?

The focus does seem to be religious in nature - all the Lutheran references and biblical quotes. But the science bits seem to not fit in with that. Lots of references to atomic physics and so on.
And above all that, all the references to time and location.

Is Dr Who real and living in Arizona?

Steve.
 
mayday website upkeep

Originally posted by bhance

I used to be really, really into this, but after X years it kind of fell by the wayside... someobody else mentioned the site looks 'abandoned' ... I've honestly got too much other stuff going on to spend a lot of time on the MM, so any percienved weirdness on *my* part is most likely due to me half-assedly maintianing my site than anything else...

-bhance
maydaymystery.org
Click to expand...

Has anyone asked what Brian's consulting rate for web development is? That could be one way to ensure an update once in a while.

After all these years chipping away at this, that could be Brian's worst nightmare. Either that, or he'd welcome the chance to work on something of interest to him and get paid for it.

Just a thought.
 
untethered theorizing

Actually, classified advertisements and the like are a lovely means of clandestine communication. Suppose you were screening my mail, looking for some coded communication. Amongst all the discover card offers and so on that appear every month, there is a copy of a student newspaper. How much time do you spend scrutinizing the ads and articles for coded messages? Would you even think to do so?
Granted, a full page ad is pricey in the Wildcat, but not compared to the New York Times, and one can pick up an armload of free copies of the paper on campus and mail them anywhere in the world without causing suspicion, or conspirators could simply subscribe for $99.00 a year and get them 3rd class mail.
It would also seem likely that these things appear the way they do in order to dramaticaly lower the possibility of anyone attributing them to their true source or affinity group. Perhaps it is very deeply masked. Since it looks so bizzare, it has the potential to pass unnoticed by entities tasked with traditional cloak and dagger communications interception. Unfortunately, I am at the moment unable to imagine a group for whom such actions would be so unlikely as to be unthinkable, but there must be one.
I am also suddenly curious as to whether similar advertisements have ever been placed in the periodicals of other Universities. I imagine it would be least suspicious for each conspirator to recieve the paper of someplace he or she had some connection with, and surely not everyone would be a U of A alumnus. Anyway, I think I'll pause now, before my speculations get any more Wilson-ish. That damned newspaper piece really threw me.
 
Re: untethered theorizing

Logan5 said:
Granted, a full page ad is pricey in the Wildcat, but not compared to the New York Times, and one can pick up an armload of free copies of the paper on campus and mail them anywhere in the world without causing suspicion, or conspirators could simply subscribe for .00 a year and get them 3rd class mail.
Click to expand...
OK, I didn't check whether subscription was possible, or whether copies were sent to alumni etc. If members were regularly moving around, then keeping track of where to send them would be hard but not impossible.

It would also seem likely that these things appear the way they do in order to dramaticaly lower the possibility of anyone attributing them to their true source or affinity group. Perhaps it is very deeply masked. Since it looks so bizzare, it has the potential to pass unnoticed by entities tasked with traditional cloak and dagger communications interception.
Click to expand...

True, but if it was such a secret organization surely, having been discovered, they'd move to a different newspaper or a different method of communication, not send cryptic clues and tokens of appreciation as a means of encouragement to those trying to unravel it. That's what doesn't add up and prompted me to start a random brainstorm earlier - either it's clandestine communication or it isn't.

My mind is still stuck on the idea of time travel at the moment, and I keep seeing things that relate to that. Either that or a religious group providing funding and weapons to South African rebels. Trouble is, once you've latched onto an idea, it's hard to shake it when you keep seeing related concepts repeated over and over.

There's so many unknowns too. If you see a quotation, is the text itself important? Or is it the author, or the source from which it was taken? Is it a key to a cipher? Or a cipher itself, and the key is elsewhere? Or is the content unimportant and it's just a symbol representing something else?

Anyway, more specifically:

I've currently lost a ticket - I know I saw a second one somewhere, but want to check something and I've lost it. There's one on Feb 22 1988's ad, but I can't find the other one.

Steve.
 
Anyone know about American banknotes?
I've just noticed that the 1st May 87 ad has a banknote number on it which matches that on a banknote delivered to Bryan on 23rd Feb 2000.

Is there anything that can be looked up about it? Where it came from? Where it's been for the 13 years in between?

Steve.
 
Re: Re: untethered theorizing

sjwk said:
I've currently lost a ticket - I know I saw a second one somewhere, but want to check something and I've lost it. There's one on Feb 22 1988's ad, but I can't find the other one.
Click to expand...

Hi Steve,

Try May 1st 1999 (actually April 29th) :)
 
I've only just found this thread and started looking at the problem, but i have noticed that PI and the golden spiral/ratio have cropped up multiple times, and the fibbonacci sequence has been mentioned but not really looked into.

A lot of time is being spent examining the messages individually, i'm a lot more interested in looking at the phenomena as a whole. Why the Arizona Wildcat? Why mayday? What motive?

Surely if those responsible had intended to convey a message to a group of people in a clandestine fashion, they would have stopped or switched publications when that website went up. If they are trying to deliver a message, why so cryptic?

And the emails of help that are being recieved are all being sent in a very cliched fashion. "a friend" seriously, i've only ever seen that kind of thing in movies. if i don't want someone to know who i am i wouldn't add any name to an email. This thread and its posters have been described as being childish, but we're not the ones playing in the shadows dropping hints.

I'm going to really enjoy watching this one play out....
 
Ah, that's the one. I must have been staring at it without seeing it - went through them all several times. Must print them out.

Didn't give me anything conclusive though but I've posted my findings in case the numbers mean anything to anyone else.

The previous ticket had an expression underneath showing the ticket number converted to octal. This ticket had a different number, so I'd been wondering what that number was when converted to octal if the previous one was an instruction of what to do with this one... Sadly the result (11431542) was completely meaningless to me.

That's the trouble - so many people leaving snippets of information which might be completely irrelevant but make us spend time chasing them - shame there's no way of knowing whether something's right or wrong!

Steve.
 
Hi guys

Someone translated the French (thank goodness, that was driving me up the wall). Anyhow, as I suspected, it has little to add.

Steve, Kiel - Everyone that comes to this seems to go through the same thing - not knowing what has been found and what hasn't etc. There is some broader theorizing but it's all scattered about everywhere. I think some serious cross-referencing will help immensely - I'm gonna have a bash at it when I've finished painting the living room here - Gods know, it'll save *me* some time.
 
skjalddis said:
I'm gonna have a bash at it when I've finished painting the living room here - Gods know, it'll save *me* some time.
Click to expand...
I know that feeling... ;) I've still got to plaster before I can paint though. And tile the bathroom. Never ending circle of jobs that have to be done beforehand :D Every job I start, I discover something else that I need to do before I can start it...

I have started putting info into a database to help crossreference things but not had time to put much in beyond about half a dozen coordinates, and doubt I will have much more time in the near future. I might make it available for others to contribute too, but I don't want to take any focus away from the main mystery site... I was thinking about just having the 'facts' - quotes, locations, references to people and the text from the ads. No theories or conjecture. Just a way of being able to search for other occurrences of a phrase.

Steve.
 
A more complicated discussion system is called for i think.... possibly a message board like this one solely dedicated to the mayday mystery.

Each advert could have its own forum, and the whole thing could be searchable so you could search for "PI" and see which adverts it had already been mentioned in connection to.

i could set up the forum, but there's no way i could keep it up to date/ transfer all the existing data from the main site.

maybe a collaborative project?

anyone interested?
 
forum

Kiel - I could certainly help with transferring data - obviously we'd have discuss it with Brian and at least get his ok before doing anything :)

I have something else brewing re the cross-referencing that I'll start work on as soon as I can - I had a flick through a lot of the ads this morning, just looking at each one briefly - it gave me an insight into how they might be working this thing but I want to test my theory before I put it forward for scrutiny. It may be completely wrong and I don't want to look like a prat, naturally. :D
 
obviously we'd have discuss it with Brian
Click to expand...

From his recent input into the site i think he'd welcome someone taking the pressure off a bit.

I'll do some stuff tonight and post a link to it, see if you (all) think it's suitable....
 
Re: Philo T

me said:
This brings up another thing I've been thinking on. I'll post something on that later.
Click to expand...

Ok, back to this. I think that there's a certain amount of 'stringing us along' going on in the direct communications, to put it very, very briefly - keeps us occupied, tells us what they want us to know. Sometimes they focus people's attention onto small pieces of the puzzle when this thing needs to be looked at from a global perspective. Sometimes they try to encourage us to look at it in a broader sense, but in terms of what they are doing in the abstract - their philosopy, their values and beliefs, *not* what they're up to one the ground.

One thing that occurred to me this morning is that *part* of what they are doing in these ads is setting up a series of codes in one ad that get utilised in future ads, while at the same time relaying info for the present in codes that were set up in previous ads.

There's another thing going on with the quotes. Suppose for instance, that they had a set number of quotes / sources, and with each ad they had pre-arranged which ones were going to go into that ad - that set of quotes could be used to cover a variety of eventualities through slight alterations before the ad is submitted for publication - missing words for example.

There's a whole other thing going on with the geographical / navigation / astronomical data - that all needs drawing together.

I don't think these ads are *quite* as complex as they first appear - they seem to rely partly on the principle that folk usually 'can't see the wood for the trees' and that data is encoded over a number of ads to be used later so you never get the whole picture in one ad. People are so busy chasing up all the sources and bios for all the characters that it gets difficult to move beyond that and analyse the whole thing. Thus they remain free of any risk of being intercepted whilst at the same time gradually imparting their somewhat dubious philosophy and worldview to us in a way that allows them to lead us around this way and that.


Ugh, I'll shut up now..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top