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

[Colin McGregor]

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Maureen Thornton <maureen-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Want the answer from the "horses mouth!"?
> Looking at the explanation of the symbolism on the website, there is the
> statement “The wavy band inscribed with zeros and ones represents a flow
> of information, digital communication and modern media.”
>
> We are surprised by the speculations that are appearing about the
> significance of the set of digits. However, there is nothing significant
> about the construction of the digits except to say that the symmetry of
> digits presents a better appearance.

Okay, as I thought quite possible at the start, the digits were picked
because they looked good, fair enough...

Still, the reaction of the geek community should really NOT surprise
these folks, drop any sort sort of a puzzle in front of many geeks and
they will attack it until they they have some sort of solution (years
ago when I got a Rubik's Cube, my solution was to figure out how to
disassemble the puzzle and then re-assemble it correctly, none of that
spinning sides around to get things right :-) ). So, a number coded
into a symbol and "what is this?" "how does it work?" are normal geek
reactions.

Colin.

> Sincerely Yours,
> Darrel E. Kennedy
> Assiniboine Herald / Héraut Assiniboine
> The Canadian Heraldic Authority / L'Autorité héraldique du Canada
> Rideau Hall
> 1 Sussex Drive / 1, promenade Sussex
> Ottawa, ON. / Ottawa (Ontario). K1A 0A1
>
> Phone: (613) 998-5481 / (800) 465-6890
> Fax: (613) 990-5818
> Government of Canada / Gouvernement du Canada
> www.gg.ca  (showing our grants of arms at
> http://archive.gg.ca/heraldry/pub-reg/main.asp?lang=e
> Email after 15 Sep 2010: darrel.kennedy-2fiWaKc/skw at public.gmane.org
>
> Well there you is!
>
>
>
> On Tue, 2010-10-05 at 13:27 -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 10:23:52AM +0000, Peter wrote:
>> > Well the Romans used biquinal abacii. And they were not new when they started
>> > using them apparently. Biquinal means base-2-and-base-5 which is actually
>> > clever, you only have one free hand to check things off on fingers while holding
>> > an abacus in the other. Of course 2 came from having 2 hands in total (used 1 at
>> > a time). Later 2*5 became our current base 10. Apparently biquinal is tightly
>> > connected to Roman numbers, the numbers from 1 to 10 clearly reflect this,
>> > including the built-in shorthand notation (IIX = 8 instead of VIII etc).
>>
>> I have never seen IIX although it has apparently been seen in rare cases.
>> It is shorter, but not by much.
>>
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_abacus
>> >
>> > According to this calculus may have meant 'playing with pebbles' to someone way
>> > back then...
>>
>
>
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists