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Carpal Tunnel
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back in the monster thread, paulb wrote Some time ago Max posted the
following which I added to my desktop to send to a friend but never got round to it.
Frightening, isn't it, in retrospect
Type NYC (all caps) in a large size, say 72 point. Change the font to webdings - cute,
isn't it? Now, change the font to WINGdings - anything but cute.yesterday I received this from the 'Goodies to Go' listserver: Back in 1992, the New York Post ran a basically
unfounded story about a supposed anti-Semitic message
found within Microsoft's graphical font, Wingdings.
The story goes that a person was installing software on a
computer running Windows 3.1. I don't know that the
fact that the operating system was 3.1 is so important, it
just happened to be in every version of the story I found,
so I am including it here.
The installation went along just fine until the person
doing the work opened the computer's new word
processor and typed in the letters "NYC." He (one story
had the installer as a "he") proceeded to alter the text font
to Wingdings. There was the hidden message.
The screen displayed a skull-and-crossbones, then a Star
of David, and then a thumbs-up. You can try it yourself
if you'd like. Just make sure the three letters are
uppercase.
This was taken to mean...[deleted]
I want to know why it specifically has to mean that. The
Star of David is actually called "Magen David," or
"Shield of David." Why couldn't the images represent
that death is shielded and it's a good thing? Why
couldn't the images mean that a guy named David makes
good pesticides? It could also mean that the Jolly Roger
was successful in following the north star.
It is really an embedded message or is that just simply the
way someone interpreted it?
To further muddy the waters, another major U.S. city
that's known only by letters, DC, produces an upturned
and down-turned thumb. Really. Try it. Does that mean
voting? Does that mean the city is both good and bad?
We could go to town on that one.
Let me throw another one into the mix. Write the word,
"JEW" and turn it into Wingdings. Again, follow the
capitalization pattern. You get a smiling face, a finger
pointing at it, and then a cross. How do you take that?
Try typing in "JESUS" and see what you come up with.
That one seems far more contrived then NYC.
What do you think of the symbols that appear when you
type in, "ALLAH"?
How about, "GOD"? Can you get anything out of that?
If you're looking for something bad, you'll surely find it.
Accusations flew and Microsoft investigated the incident
along with the Anti-Defamation League. The results of
the investigation were that Microsoft did not intentionally
place the characters so that such a statement would
appear. Furthermore, Microsoft didn't even create the
Wingdings font. A company named Bigelow and Holmes
built the coding. That further added fuel to the fire.
This was all a metaphysical synchronicity known as a
coincidence.
If you're wondering, as I was, why Microsoft did not
choose to change the Wingdings font characters, it was
because they believed that changing three characters
could have effects upon text already displaying the font.
The actual Microsoft statement regarding the Wingdings
debacle can be found here:
http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/wingding.htm
Now, you may be wondering why I am dredging up a
story from ten years ago. The reason is that after the
terrorist attack, the story regarding the "NYC" Wingdings
concern is beginning to come up again, along with a few
other interesting conspiracy theories.
You may want to be aware of these before you begin
getting the overly concerned emails that are sure to start
flying around very soon.
With the advent of Internet Explorer 4, Microsoft
introduced a new graphical font called, "Webdings." To
quote Microsoft, "Our team of iconographers traveled the
world asking site designers and users which symbols,
icons and pictograms they thought would be most
appropriate for a font of this kind. From thousands of
suggestions we had to pick just two hundred and thirty
for inclusion in Webdings."
No one asked me.
OK, that's fine. Why have one set of strange characters,
when you can have two, I guess. The problem is that with
the knowledge of the Wingdings NYC problems, those
who created Webdings seized a moment.
Type "NYC" into WORD and change the font to
Webdings if you have it. It shows a human eye, a heart,
and a series of skyscrapers.
"Ah Ha!" you say! I love New York!
This is the point at which conspiracy theorists will start
proclaiming that if Webdings had a blatantly inserted
message, then the original Wingdings font message must
also be true.
It's really a leap of logic, but that's what is being thrown
around the Web. I have to admit that it was really dumb
to intentionally embed a response to the first Wingdings,
but I wasn't in charge back then.
You may also want to keep an eye out for this little ditty,
"Q33NY." Please note that the letters are uppercase.
That matters.
Take that Q33NY, type it into your word processor and
change it to Wingdings. You should see an airplane
pointed at two pieces of paper followed by the skull and
Star of David. With a little imagination, one can see that
as an airplay running into the towers proclaiming the
death of Jews.
The problem with this one is that the code, Q33NY, is
completely manufactured. It has no relevance to the
incident at all except the "NY" stuck on the end. Now,
you'll hear that this was a flight number or a tracking
number of one of the airliners. It wasn't.
I find it a real concern that at a moment such as this,
someone would take the time to look so deeply into such
a completely unrelated area such as Wingdings in order to
find fault at one level or another.
Why look so deeply when the real problems are so large
and so visible right in front of your eyes?
Actually, maybe that is the reason.
[be sure to check out the Penn Jillette essay embedded within the link.]
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thanks, tsuwm, it's nice to see that there are people who retain some sense. I liked this from the embedded essay: This, however, is playing a nut's game - once you're crazy and know nothing about numbers, the chances of finding something psychotic and hateful in a scrabble factory explosion are hovering just around 100%".
But...why in the world would anyone name their kid Penn??  Therefore, "A plane carrying christians must be stopped if it's snowing."
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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tsuwm, I have to agree with you this time. This same argument is what Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" (a book I do not recommend) comes down to.
I differ with the author on one point, though. The interpretation originally given the cross bones/star of david/thumbs up arrangement is not *just as likely as any other interpretation. I think she is attributing the randomness of signs to the concepts they signify. The anti-semetic connotation is a more likely interpretation than the connotation "jews make good pesticides" simply because the thought is far more common and carries a much greater cultural weight. (I would add that "connotation" here refers to the product of an action of the interpreter only and does not refer to how the signs may have come to be arranged, whether purposively or no).
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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>not *just as likely as any other interpretation.
which is not what was said, and I quote, "I want to know why it specifically has to mean that." [emPHAsis added]
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old hand
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old hand
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http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/wingding.htmSomewhat akin to that is this article about Uri Geller trying to find numbers (specifically his favorite 11) relating the attacks to some preordained pattern: http://www.skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.htmlThe conclusion: What Geller and other numerologists are doing is a game, a game played with numbers and with people's minds. Sometimes it is amusing. Sometimes it is pathetic.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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which is not what was said, and I quote, "I want to know why it specifically has to mean that."
I should have made reference to the article in my first reply. I was responding to what I took to be the author's direct argument, and I stand corrected. But I didn't reply out of thin air; I was, I think, concerned with the argument implicit in the author's rhetoric (I use the word without negative connotation).
The Star of David is actually called "Magen David," or "Shield of David." Why couldn't the images represent that death is shielded and it's a good thing? Why couldn't the images mean that a guy named David makes good pesticides? It could also mean that the Jolly Roger was successful in following the north star.
The effect of this stream of possible interpretations is to produce the sense that none is more likely than another to come to mind when an individual when presented with symbolic arrangement. But there is no such equilibrium in interpretation.
Noteworthy that, presented with a figure composed of opposite triangles, the author calls it a magan David. Not only does she call it a "shield" or "star" of David, she calls attention to herself so calling it:
The Star of David is actually called "Magen David," or "Shield of David."
I want to know why it isn't a "star" or a "polygon" or…
Perhaps the relevant condition of the author's predilection isn't a general social context, but a textual one. She is advancing her argument in an argument in which the polygon has, as belonging to the nefarious grouping, been predefined as a Star of David. In that case, her writing itself is subject to a condition similar to the one she describes concerning the use of the "rectifying" symbol set to verify the supposed meaning of the original symbol set and she may be being intentionally ironic. On the other hand, it may suggest that she shares that bias of interpretation which may produce a predilection for the nefarious interpretation of the first symbol set.
(I apologize for the last paragraph; it's late, and I'll try to clean it up in the morning)
That writing is to this extent ambiguous.
But I agree with you insofar as my first reply incorrectly responded to what I remembered as the author's direct argument.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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post edited
which is not what was said, and I quote, "I want to know why it specifically has to mean that."
I should have made reference to the article in my first reply. I was responding to what I took to be the author's direct argument, and I stand corrected. But I didn't reply out of thin air; I was, I think, concerned with the argument implicit in the author's rhetoric (I use the word without negative connotation).
The Star of David is actually called "Magen David," or "Shield of David." Why couldn't the images represent that death is shielded and it's a good thing? Why couldn't the images mean that a guy named David makes good pesticides? It could also mean that the Jolly Roger was successful in following the north star.
The effect of this stream of possible interpretations is to produce the sense that none is more likely than another to come to mind when an individual when presented with symbolic arrangement. But there is no such equilibrium in interpretation.
Noteworthy that, presented with a figure composed of opposite triangles, the author calls it a magan David. Not only does she call it a "shield" or "star" of David, she calls attention to herself so calling it:
The Star of David is actually called "Magen David," or "Shield of David."
I want to know why it isn't a "star" or a "polygon" or…
Perhaps the relevant condition of the author's predilection isn't a general social context, but a textual one. She is making her argument in a context in which the polygon, belonging to the "nefarious [first] grouping," has already been defined as a Star of David. Her writing is itself subject to a condition similar to the one she describes concerning the 'retroactive' use of the existence of the "redeeming [second] grouping's " predetermined meaning to demonstrate, directly or implicitly, the pre-existence of the nefarious groupings imputed meaning.
This be an intentional irony. On the other hand, it may suggest that the author shares that bias of interpretation, which can produce a predilection for the nefarious interpretation of the first grouping. That writing is to that extent ambiguous.
But I agree with you insofar as my first reply incorrectly responded to what I remembered as the author's direct argument.
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Carpal Tunnel
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What I notice in this is an attempt to make a concordance between events and pre-existing patterns formed from our prior experience. I think this is one of the fundamentals of the way in which our brain works. On a positive level it feeds our ability to reason, learn, grow; on a negative it feeds superstition, credulity, and all the other forces of unreason.
It’s partly what I was trying to examine in my pome in the aftermath of the NY atrocity – the irony that the same pattern-making instincts can serve both inhumane fundamentalism (in which I include the unquestioning belief in the mantra of world capitalism!) and the beauty of reason in which our minds and spirits can excel.
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Carpal Tunnel
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The point behind all this talk about probabilities is that the odds against some message about something undesirable appearing at random from a collection of symbols randomly assigned to the standard character set are fairly low. The fact that a message that can be easily interpreted as anti-Semitic happened to pop out of this set of odds is just the breaks of the game. It could have just as easily been something else. Following the procedure for getting the hate message from NYC try entering REP and DEM for Republicans and Democrats, or even UKGB&NI for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Or have some fun and dig around for yourself and make up "meaningfull" ( 11 letters!*) messages.
*Yeah, I know meaningful only has 10 letters but stupid** doesn't even come close.
**Whoa, man! Add up the numbers on the telephone keypad corresponding to the letters in stupid and you get 38. Add up the 3 and the 8 and you get 11. Eerie, man! I'm gone buy me some stock in Nostradamus Enterprises!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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<<The point behind all this
I agree.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I agree with the woman who wrote the article in tsuwm's original post. The collection of symbols in WingDings and WebDings seems random - there probably was some organising logic behind the order of them when the fonts were created, but, hey, random is near enough for most people. It stands to reason that if you type in three letters, like NYC, you are going to get three symbols. Those three symbols could be interpreted any old how. There are some people who really ought to get a life. Any life will do, but a life!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Moby Dick? did someone mention a Scrabble factory explosion?? 
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Carpal Tunnel
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and you'll never *guess what the phone number of the factory was - yeah, real spooky! 
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