January 13, 2005

Rise to vote sir! And possibly possibly the longest palindrome ever.
posted by arse_hat 19 years ago
  • well, yes, but it doesn't make an awful lot of sense, does it?
  • Does the Mona Lisa’s smile “make sense”? Break out of your conventional Madison Avenue button down plastic fantastic box and dance my friend!
  • They don't have "Able was I, ere I saw Elba?" Bah! See also...
  • This is neat but not a pure palindrome in the spirt of old skool, oulipo, p'drome nerds. There are lots of scripts availible now to aid in the composition of such palindromes, and this one was likely written that way. As prismatic alludes to, it has none of the literary qualities (theme, feeling and continuity) of wholly human endeavors. This is more of an adventure in low-end computer science. For old school check here and also the classic "Dog Sees Ada"
  • Also (on preview), flashboy's link also references mesures of "purity" in regards to palindrome.
  • Thanks fatnat. Great link.
  • I think Perec might have written the longest (semi-sensical) palindrome ever, but it was in French. For a more interesting very long English palindrome, check out 2002: A Palindrome Story by Nick Montfort and William Gillespie.
  • When can we get some damn Unicode action happening here? Until that blessed day, "Perec" is probably the preferred spelling.* *My boss had lunch with him, and said he was a terrific person. Another reason to give up the ciggies if any of you kids needed one!
  • Very interesting. My favourite is still "No, Mel Gibson is a casino's big lemon."
  • Wow.
  • How's that a reason to give up ciggies? I was under the impression all Frenchmen, especially the mysterious author-types, smoked.
  • Right. And they all die. QED.
  • If the stipulation that a palindrome make some kind of sense is set aside, then this is indeed impressive. And in any event quite interesting to see, arse_hat. Seems more akin to a palindromic prose poem that anything else I can think of.
  • Right. And they all die. Yeah. And some of them get their cancerous tongues and sundry other bits cut out before they do. Your call, obviously. Logic -- is there anything it can't do?
  • I can make a longer palindrome than that. Just add Rat to the start, and Tar to the end. Hurrah!. I'm great me.
  • A rat, Tara!
  • What bernockle said.
  • Making palindromes is easy. It's just reading the results aloud that's hard. Drahs taht doul ast luser eht gnidaert sujs ti y saes is emord nil ap gnik am.
  • I think ones that makes sense are more amusing than brute force record attempts. So the ones on that site are indeed good. But as far as longest ones go....
    "You could evaluate long palindromes in the academic sense - were they published? in print, right? by whom? - then you
  • I think the Washington Post Style section had a palindrome contest about the war. My google-fu cannot find it, but I remember the winner: Mad dash, saber, draw no Osama; So, onward, rebash Saddam!
  • A man, a plan, a canal: Suez.
  • Wolof, how do you want to spell Perec's name? It's not as if he has any accents in it. (His name is "wrong" in standard French, and David Bellos's excellent biography goes into this a bit, as I recall, as a mark of his otherness/alienation/outsiderdom/etc.)
  • If I recall correctly, Perec is the Polish spelling of the common Jewish name that's usually spelled Peretz in English; the French, of course, refuse to employ foreign letter values and pronounced it "perek" (which sounds like a Breton word), and the family wound up adopting that pronunciation (presumably as the preferable alternative to constant pronunciation fights with Frenchmen, which can wear you down).
  • "pronunciation fights with Frenchmen, which can wear you down" They can also provide hours of low cost entertainment of an eve. ;-)
  • His name is "wrong" in standard French Thanks, I didn't know that!