Seal of Pas

Gwern Branwen · 28 Oct 2011, 16:06 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:06:14 -0400
Subject: (urth) Seal of Pas
In-Reply-To: <E88D3E82FDBA4F87AB682AD83F3534A9@Rover>
References: <SNT123-W17A419E8EF0B42F4E4843CCFD30 at phx.gbl>
	<E88D3E82FDBA4F87AB682AD83F3534A9@Rover>
Message-ID: <CAMwO0gyMMrQFH7m_1Dt+ydbmsLJu7+S_vOS_240pqtPfOyX4Sw at mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
> From a naturalistic perspective, the numbers shouldn?t have any significance
> that we would understand in the story: they should encode the contents
> and/or date of storage, serial numbers etc.

It has been a while, but wasn't there just one sequence of numbers
which made up a Seal of Pas? If the sequence doesn't change, then none
of those 3 suggestions would work (serial numbers which don't change
are not useful; it's unlikely that every single chamber would have
been sealed at the same time (especially since a datestamp that big
ought to be accurate down to really small units like nanoseconds) or
would have the same contents).

The Seal is a little frustrating; I had tried looking at it as ASCII
and, I think, an EBCDIC, but nothing popped out.

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net/Suzanne%20Delage

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