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The Binary Code In Canada's Gov-Gen Coat of Arms
Lev13than writes "Dr. David Johnston, formerly the president of the University of Waterloo, was installed as Canada's new Governor-General on Friday. As de facto head of state and the Queen's representative in Canada he is required to design a personal coat of arms. One modern detail has attracted particular attention - a 33-digit palindromic binary stream at the base. Efforts to decode the meaning of the number using ASCII, Morse, grouping by 3/11 and other theories has so far come up empty (right now it's a toss up between random, the phone number 683-077-0643 and Morse code for 'send help - trapped in a coat of arms factory.') Is 110010111001001010100100111010011 the combination to his luggage, or just a random stream of digits?"
all it says is EH
rewriting history since 2109
that we let Governor General William Shatner slip through our fingers
I think it's safe to assume that it's an aesthetically pleasing bit of random binary to symbolically carry the message that he's in with technology, in much the same way one might tattoo some bitching runes onto one's arm to convey how one is incredibly down with the druids.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I mean, the guy that designed this is still alive, isn't he?
The first thing I notice is the binary string is a palindrome, the same forwards or backwards.
From the summary:
"One modern detail has attracted particular attention: a 33-digit palindromic binary stream at the base."
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
110010111001001010100100111010011 is 33 successive digits of pi (in decimal/binary/ternary/etc.). Cunningly, he did not choose the first 33 digits, of course.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
If he were from New Zealand I would say it's a binary solo, but being from Canada I'm not sure.
This number is a prime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindromic_prime in base 2.
In decimal it is: 6830770643
... Robert Langdon!!! I'm sure that buried somewhere in that seemingly random sequence of 1s and 0s is a code that will shake the very foundations of the human race and expose a truth that has long been hidden!
I can already hear Dan Brown feverishly scratching away at his notepad, as he begins researching and stringing together a load geographically accurate, but ultimately randomly contrived pile of nonsense for his next magnum opus, "The Canada Complex"
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
The first thing I notice is the binary string is a palindrome, the same forwards or backwards.
This is to prevent Soviet Russia jokes from working in Soviet Canada.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Even more reason to believe it is totally artistic and not a meaningful translation of anything though, as coat of arms and crests tend to do that sort of thing over the entire imagery, typically only exception for items added in later, which doesn't seem to be the case here.
Still, it's amusing to think how many people will spend their Monday trying to decode this heh
Yea, and while I agree with you that it's most likely a random number, I can't help but keep wondering. That it's a prime number doesn't help much either.
If you were the designer, what would you encode? It's hardly big enough to fit a four letter word in. I think I would probably go with the boring ol' date of birth.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
That OTAN is NATO backwards is incidental, mirroring is not the reason for it. The reason is that France succeeded in demanding French as an official Nato language. OTAN = Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord.
There is no use for mirrored writing on airplanes, they fly too fast for your cars rear-view mirror, and planes that do have rear view mirror wouldn't wait 'till the bogey is a couple of yards behind them to find out who he is.
NATO aircrafts have OTAN printed on it because the two official languages used in NATO are English and French. OTAN means Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord.
It can get even worse. At least "chop suey $3.99" is clear where is came from.
Funnier stories are those like the guy who got "pig meat" in chinese letters because it was copied off a can of that. But I'd imagine that the latter realization comes after seeing that this guy has "pig meat" written on him. Yeah.
Then there was the guy who thought he got a tattoo saying "wise dog that guards the pack", but it actually meant "dog's ass".
In the same vein of "you're not going to get hooked up with any woman that can read that", one guy got a tattoo which he thought was totally bad ass, until a Japanese girl told him it means "abusive husband". Well, I guess at least it works as a warning.
Conversely one woman got the longer version of that, and it translated to "my abusive husband beats me." It's one of the things that aren't even funny but make one wonder if she got ripped off or it's a cry for help.
Though to be entirely fair, apparently cool kids in Beijing tattoo themselves with nonsensical combinations of English letters too, like "TWARP", "GWIPO", "FRUNK" and get told by unscrupulous tattoo parlor artists that they mean stuff like "old soul with young spirit" in English. (Actual example. If you were wondering what FRUNK means in English, now you know;)) Also apparently both CRYMPH and DLECH mean "beautiful flower dancing in the wind" in American according to one tattoo parlour in Beijing. In case you were wondering ;)
Luckily individual letters are not whole words in the Latin alphabet, so most are just nonsense. But you just have to wonder if there's some brave soul somewhere in China wearing a tattoo that says "I suck cock" and thinks it means "loyalty, courage, honour" ;)
That said, since runes were an alphabetic system, I would assume most of those are equally nonsense combinations. I wouldn't wonder if some guys out there were running around with tattoos that just say "FUTHARK" because someone just copied the first characters of the runic alphabet.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The probability to get a palindrome this way is rather low (1/65536 for a string of 33 binary digits, to be exact).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Canadian planes should have 'NATOTAN' written on them to please the speakers of both languages ('NATO' 'stylishly' mirrored around the 'O'). Of course, for the Japanese, that acronym would read 'achieving a darker skin tone by slathering yourself in fermented beans'.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
"The first thing I notice is the binary string is a palindrome"
I noticed that too, from reading the summary.
That's okay, the mere fact that you have an interesting anecdote adds volumes to this conversation. No need to share it, that would just be overkill.
I shop often in an Asian part of town. Bought my daughter a lovely pink kitten-infested shoulder bag with "Sing Sing Death House" neatly embroidered on it. With little fluffy sheep dancing about.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Then you get the generation gap. I remember walking through Dresden a few years ago when I saw a young girl (14 or so) wearing a cute shirt, also with a rabbit on it, with "Squirmy Fuck Bunny" in poofy letters. I'm pretty sure that she knew what it meant but that her older, conservative looking mom had no idea.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Then an intern mashed out half of it. Geez, do I have to do all the work around here?