This piece is based upon the slash-dash-bracket alphabet by Robin Farquharson as modified by Dom Sylvester Houedard. As recounted by Frater Choronzon at a meeting of the Chaos Society in 1990, the late Dr Robin Farquharson was one of the most gifted individuals it has ever been my privilege to know. His doctorate for original work on the Theory of Voting ('psephology' as it's called in the trade) was awarded by the University of Oxford in 1958, and he won the Monograph Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for related work in 1961. At the time when I met him in 1968 he had recently been stripped of his post as a Senior Research Fellow ('Don') in Management Studies at Churchill College, Cambridge. I first encountered him at a meeting of the 'Anti-University'. This was a loose knit structure which operated from a series of short-term addresses. Its primary function was to promote serious academic work into subject areas which were considered to be neglected by conventional Universities. Among the assembled Anarchist Philosophers, Situationists, Astrologers and Crack-pots there was this eminently respectable gentleman, neatly turned out in a business suit. He presented a complete contrast to the tie-dyed majority of the delegates, and they were a little suspicious of him; Police Spy? CIA Agent? His contributions were succinct and positive however, and I was struck by his ability to cut through the periphera of an issue and apply his thinking to the critical elements. He was a tall man, maybe 6ft 2ins, fortyish with greying, thinning hair and that wild-eyed look which comes across, for example, in some portraits of Beethoven. Robin's fall from academic grace was occasioned by his mental balance. He writes in the preface to his book Drop Out: "I am a manic-depressive. When I'm up, I have no judgement, but fantastic drive; when I'm down, I have judgement, but no drive at all. In between I pass for normal well. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.