{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2702",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2702,
    "subject": "Alien Stones, base 12",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-06-28T16:14:36+00:00",
    "last": "2001-06-28T16:14:36+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0519@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-06-28T16:14:36+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Alien Stones, base 12",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Rostrum wrote:\nSorry I wasn't clear.  I mentioned that more as the exception that proves\nyour rule.  It's a nifty engineer's spin on \"solved by technological\nmeans\" that I wouldn't have thought to describe that way if you hadn't\nused that phrase.\n\nAnd, of course, the story's about more than a problem to be solved by\ntechnological means.\n\nI didn't get the ending (particularly the bit about one's marital status\nin the resurrection) until I reread it after the whole Clinton/Lewinsky\naffair, which made me laugh when the aliens said \"It depends on how you\ndefine 'is'\" -- which made me pay more attention to the comment and\nrealize what they were talking about."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well hey, don't stop there--keep going!\n\nAnd didja ever figure out the base 12 numbering system?  We are given a few\n(3 numbers and the decimal point; there are 7 undefined), and told the\nsystem reads from right to left.\n\n0 = ?\n1 = \"-\"\n2 = \"S\"\n3 = (\"S-barred,\" my guess)\n4 = ?\n5 = ?\n6 = ?\n7 = \"=\"\n8 = ?\n9 = ?\nA = ?\nB = ?\n\ndecimal point = \"|\"\n\nMy guess at \"3 = S-barred\" is based on minus plus symbol equals number plus\none. The symbols all seem to be in pairs of (symbol) and (symbol-barred),\nsuggesting a progression of one.  Graphically going from simple to complex?\nOr are they all historically based (text suggests that the 2s are similar,\njust mirror image).\n\nYet there's that odd symbol at place 7 (then again, we aren't given all\nsymbols: make 6 one of the two we have no symbol for, and zero the other\none--then they all march along).\n\nIf we reverse for our left to right reading, the sequences are:\n\n 2xx.xxx3\n2xx1.xx7x\n\n|\n1728 column\n |\n 144 column\n  |\n  12 column\n   |\n   1 column\n\nso the first sequence begins with 2 times 144, and the second sequence\nbegins with 2 times 1728\n\nWhat does it all mean--I don't know!  But Wolfe took the time to make the\nsymbols, and discuss it in the text up to a point, and then leave off . . .\nat the very least it is a puzzle.\n\nAnd their semi-Rosetta Stone (oo, another Stone) is a starmap, right?\nIncluding Sol on it.  Hmmm, a light year is specific to an Earth year, so\ndistances wouldn't be \"universal\" (the aliens would need to have an Earth\nyear to have a light year as a unit) . . . but then again, if the Earthers\nare analysing by ratios among known stars?  No, that doesn't seem to fit\nwhat they did.\n\nAnd Helen's note about stones, calculus, hmmm.  Points to the importance of\nthe numbering system, in a way.\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSirius Fiction\nHas Moved To\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}