Off Topic: Governor General's Coat of Arms has a binary stream [was: OT-GG binary]

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: teddy mills <teddymills-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/Personal_Coat_of_Arms_of_Governor_General_of_Canada_David_Lloyd_Johnston.jpg.jpg
| 
| any ideas?

What's with the .jpg.jpg suffix?

The bitstream is:
  110010111001001010100100111010011

33 bits long.  Unlikely to be a fixed-width character set.

Googling shows me that /. covered this:
  <http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/10/04/0334211/The-Binary-Code-In-Canadas-Gov-Gen-Coat-of-Arms>

My favourite pair of comments:

    110010111001001010100100111010011 is 33 successive digits of pi (in
    decimal/binary/ternary/etc.). Cunningly, he did not choose the first
    33 digits, of course.

    Neither the 33 last. I can tell because I just checked it.

(The first comment is true (tautologically).)


Insightful comment:

    The blazon [archive.gg.ca] (the heraldic technical description) of the
    arms is what officially defines them, and it doesn't include the
    particular sequence of digits; it just says "in base a bar wavy Sable
    inscribed with zeros and ones Or."

    So even if it means something, that particular sequence is just the
    artist's interpretation; somebody else who redrew the arms would be
    entitled to change it. Most likely, it's just what the artist liked
    visually.
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