OT-Governor General binary

[Colin McGregor]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 5:38 PM, marthter <marthter-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On 10-10-04 01:35 PM, Colin McGregor wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 11:56 AM, teddy mills<teddymills-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>  wrote:
>>> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/Personal_Coat_of_Arms_of_Governor_General_of_Canada_David_Lloyd_Johnston.jpg.jpg
>>>
>>> any ideas?
>>>
>>
>> First a little bit of background for those on this list who don't live
>> in Canada or are new to Canada... The Governor General acts as the
>> Queen's representative in Canada, a very largely ceremonial job. No
>> bill can become law without the signature of the Queen or Governor
>> General, but the Governor General is required to sign any bill passed
>> by Parliament.
>>
>> On October 1st David Lloyd Johnson became the new Governor General,
>> replacing Michaëlle Jean (who served as Governor General for 5 years).
>> As with tradition the new Governor General had a new coat of arms
>> (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms) made for him (see the link above
>> for an image of his coat of arms). Across the bottom of the coat of
>> arms are the digits:
>>
>> 110010111001001010100100111010011
>>
>> Question is, what does the above mean, if anything? My first impulse
>> was to chop the above into 8 digit blocks ... problem, there are 33
>> digits so the above can not be evenly broken into 8 digit blocks. If
>> we assume the above is 4 x  8 digit blocks followed by a 1 we have:
>>
>> CB 92 A4 E9 1
>>
>> In ASCII that is E'$e1, which is meaningless to me. For the old school
>> IBM mainframe programmers the above is also meaningless in EBCDIC
>> (some of the above codes point to non-existent/undefined codes).
>> Taking the flip side, assuming a 1 followed by 4 x 8 digit blocks we
>> have:
>>
>> 1 4B 25 49 D3
>>
>> In ASCII that is 1K%1O, which is also meaningless to me. The above is
>> also meaningless in EBSDIC. As a decimal (base 10 number) the above is
>> 6830770643 a number that doesn't have any special significance that I
>> am aware of.
>>
>> > From 1943 to 1945 Canadian nickels had a Morse code message ("We Win
>> When We Work Willingly") around the edge of every nickel
>>
>> (coincollecting.a-z-series.com/canada-victory-nickel-of-1943-1945-and-its-story)
>> . So, is the above Morse? Well, Morse is a binary code, but one that
>> doesn't have fixed length characters, so the above could be broken
>> down MANY ways, more than I am willing to spend the time to work
>> through...
>>
>> So, the digits may have been chosen because they "look good"... Or, as
>> Mr. Johnson is a former University of Waterloo President (a university
>> with a first rate computer science department) there may be a well
>> hidden meaning in the digits. All I can say after a fairly quick look
>> is that there is no obvious meaning to the digits chosen...
>>
>
> First off, that is a pretty rockin coat of arms if you ask me.  I liked the
> little disembodied winged feet, the candle in the top centre
> (enlightenment?), and of course the red narwhal/horse hybrids with their
> lashing tongues and fuzzy beards... definitely not your my-little-pony(tm)
> versions of the unicorn.
>
> My first observation on the ones and zeros was just that they were a
> palindrome, which probably most supports the "just because it looks good"
> theory.  Either that or it is the key clue to the location of Samuel de
> Champlain's buried treasure.
>
> I love how nobody here even mentioned the two more obvious attempts at
> messages embedded in the coat...  the gold writing around the circle
> (largely blocked by the horses' front legs) or the latin message just above
> the digits, and the question of the ones and zeros was simply implied by the
> original poster's "any ideas?"

The two Latin inscriptions are easy. The gold writing around the
circle has shown up in some past Governor General coat of arms, it is
DESIDERANTES MELIOREM PATRIAM, meaning “They desire a better country”,
the motto of the Order of Canada
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Canada , an award for outstanding
public service) which Mr. Johnson won in 1994 (you can see a small
drawing of the Order of Canada medal just above the words "CONTEMPLARE
MELIORA"). The other inscription, CONTEMPLARE MELIORA, means “To
envisage better things”.

Only the digits in the coat of arms are not fairly clear as to meaning...

> Also I don't think horses have cloven hooves so that's a little weird, or
> perhaps that's just due to a mis-informed artist, or I guess I could be
> jumping to conclusions about unicorn feet.
>
> Oh well, cool tradition anyway.
>
> Martin
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