A palindrome is a word that is spelled
the same backwards and forwards like the
word racecar.  Forwards
it's spelled R-A-C-E-C-A-R. Backwards it
is spelled R-A-C-E-C-A-R.  A palindrome.
The word pulp is not a palindrome or is it?
No.  But kind of.  The title of this
video might give you a little hint about
where I'm going with this.  Here's another
one.  When I watched Jake's new episode of
CYSTM on vsauce3 I said
*Morse Code*
which means Wow in Morse code. Morse code began in the
19th century when Samuel FB Morse a
painter was commissioned to paint a
portrait of Marquis de Lafayette he
began by painting a study just to kind
of get some of the details right but he
never finished it because while he was
working on that study he received a
letter from a messenger on horseback
telling him that his wife was sick.  He
rushed to her side.  She was quite far
away but by the time he got there she
was not only dead she had already been
buried.  Morse was so upset by how slow a
message carried on a horse was that he
worked on faster electronic
communication.  The Morse code he created
transmits letters using patterns of two
kinds of signals: those of short duration
and those of long duration.  Here is Morse
code in its modern form.  Pretty cool.  As
you can see a letter like V okay the
letter V is three short duration signals
followed by one long duration signal.
Learning Morse code can be a challenge
because the connection between the
patterns of short and long duration
signals, dots and dashes or dits and dahs,
doesn't quite make intuitive sense with
the order of the letters.  That's because
Morse designed this system such that the
frequency at which a letter appears in
the English language is inverse to approximately how
long it takes to send that message using
Morse code. Learning Morse code is best
done in fact it's only truly done
correctly by sending and receiving Morse
code messages.  There are links down in
the description below where you can take
lessons and learn how to really get a
sense of what each letter looks or
sounds like in Morse code but today I
want to show you some mnemonics. Using
these works really well.  It won't make
you fast in Morse code but it has helped
me remember what each letter is in Morse
code.  Let's begin with this fantastic
flowchart looking thing. Here's how the
chart works.  You start where it says
start.  A movement to the left represents
a short duration signal, a dot.  Any
movement to the right represents a long
duration signal, a dash.  So as you can see
we start with a short signal a dot we
land on E and in fact that is exactly
what E is in Morse code. One more dot
that is one more movement to the left
brings us to I so I is two dots and sure
enough it is.  Three dots is s, four dots
is H and there you have it.  If I go all
the way out dot dot dot for an S and
then put in a long signal well then I
have to move from s to the right which
takes me to V and sure enough V is dot
dot dot - V dot dot dot -  This way of
organizing Morse code is very cool
looking but I mean using this to learn
Morse code just means a whole visual
thing to have to remember.  Similar is a
visual mnemonic created by Robert
baden-powell published in the Girl
Guides handbook back in 1918.  Here it is
it's all the letters of the English
alphabet A to Z with dots and dashes
incorporated into the shapes of the
letters.  As you can see E just has one
little dot on it.  I don't find this that
helpful. I applaud the effort that went
into it. You sort of have to read these
like you would read a book
left to right and top to bottom except
not all of them. There's something better.
Verbal mnemonics.  These are what really
helped me so let's get right into those.
I have here on this legal pad the 26
letters of the English alphabet as well
as a period and a comma.  The way this
mnemonic works is it associates with
each letter a word or phrase that gives
you a clue as to the pattern of dots and
dashes that represent that letter.  Every
word or phrase contains emphasized or
stressed syllables and syllables that
aren't. Stressed syllables are dashes.  Unstressed syllables are dots.  You might
be able to come up with a system that
works better for you but this one has
served me extremely well. Let's begin. The
letter A. The letter A is a dot followed
by a dash: boop-boop.  Okay so to remember that think of a word
that starts with A, specifically the word
apart.  Oh no everything fell apart. Apart.
Unstressed. Stressed.  The opposite would
be apart but we don't pronounce it
apart.  We pronounce it apart.  So apart is
A which is a-part: dot dash.  B is how I
remember B: boot to the head. Boot to
the head. C is coca-cola coca-cola. D is
dockworker.  Dockworker.  E is just eh!  F is a little bit weird.  This really works for
me. I never seem to forget that F is
associated with this phrase even though
the letter F isn't even in it. The phrase
is this: get a haircut get a haircut.  G is
good gravy. H is hippity hop. I is I I.  J
is let's jump jump jump. K is kangaroo. L
is to L with it. M is mm-hmm.
N is navy.  O is one of us. P is a poopy
smell. Q is God save the Queen. R is rotation.  S is sí sí sí. T is
tall. U is underwear? V looks like the
roman numeral five so think Beethoven's
fifth: duh duh duh duhhh.  W is a white whale. X is x marks the spot.
Y is a yellow yo-yo. And Z is a zinc
zookeeper.  As for the full stop the
period and the comma piece of cake. Watch this. For a period you just think a stop
a stop a stop and for the comma I love
this one:
comma it's a comma. Now these might seem a little bit silly or weird or possibly
confusing to you.  That's fine.
Come up with your own.  All I'm saying is
that this system has stuck with me
really well. I don't know why. Perhaps
because it's just so strange but I love
knowing Morse code even at this just
kind of rudimentary level because Morse
code is everywhere like in Hollywood on
the Capitol Records building.  The light
at the top of the spire blinks a message
in Morse code every night.  :et's figure
out what it is.  Hippity hop.
One of us.
To L with it.
To L with it.
Yellow yo yo.
A white whale.
One of us.
One of us.
Dock Worker.
Hollywood!
Pretty, pretty cool.
Alright now let's talk about pulp.
Remember how I said that pulp was a
palindrome.  Well obviously pulp is not a palindrome
when you're using the letters of the
English alphabet.  P-U-L-P.  P-L-U-P?  Plup?
I don't think so.  Alright well let's do Morse code.  We know that P is
dot dash dash dot.  A poopy smell.  Ok a
poopy smell.
U is under where?  Under where
L is 2 L with it.  2 L with it.  And finally P
is a poopy smell. A poopy smell.  Look at
this.  Pulp may not look like a palindrome
in English letters but my goodness look
at it in Morse code. It is symmetric
right down there through that Center dot
Pulp in Morse code is the same backwards
and forwards.  In 2010
Colonel Jose espero hid a Morse code
rescue message in a pop song that was
made just for that purpose and then
played on radios because the hostages he
was working on rescuing had radios and
he was pretty sure that they knew Morse
code but the people holding them captive
did not.  The message hidden inside that
song translated into English said this: 19 rescued.  You're next. Don't lose hope.
During World War two major Alexis Casdagli, a British prisoner of war was
held captive in a series of Nazi prison camps and during his time in those camps he
learned to sew.  In December of 1941 he
created this.
Look at those dots and
dashes.  They are Morse code for two
different messages.  One is God save the
king and the other well it's something I
can't actually say here on the DONG
channel because I refuse to have a
potty mouth but there are links down
below in the description where he can
learn more about that story.  The guards
that kept him captive were unaware of
the message he hid in that canvas so
they allowed him to hang it up in all of
the camps in which he was imprisoned.
During the Vietnam War Jeremiah Andrew Denton jr. was a
prisoner of war.  He was forced to record
a propaganda video but he sent a secret
message to those watching who might be
able to help him.  He let them know that
everything wasn't okay.  While he spoke he
blinked in Morse code
the word torture.
One last thing about Morse code.  Because it communicates using
seemingly two kinds of signals short
duration and long it sounds like it's a
binary code.  In fact Wikipedia has it
listed on a list of binary codes however
is it binary?   This is a really good
question and I can't get into a full
analysis in this episode but here's
something very interesting I learned
recently.  Yes Morse code uses two kinds
of signals but there are also spaces in
between those signals.  In Morse code the
standard unit is the length of a dot.
The amount of time that a *dit* a bit or
a dot lasts.   Let's say that on this sheet
of paper each column is one of those
lengths.  The pieces of a letter are
separated by the length of one *dit* one
dot so just so that it fits on the piece
of paper I am going to write "Hi U." I'm
gonna use letter U for you just to make
this message quicker.  Here's how that
would work. Pieces of a letter dots and
dashes that make up a letter are
separated by a length of time equal to
the duration of one dot.  Letters are separated by a length of
time equal to the duration of three dots
and words are separated by a length of
time equal to seven dots so this is what
"hi u" would look like.  Keep in mind each
one of these columns is the length of
time it takes for one dot to happen so
we begin with H which means four dots
hippity-hop that's an H so here's the
first dot and then we wait a unit of
time equal to 1 dot second dot wait
third dot wait fourth dot.  That's the
letter H we then wait a unit of time
equal to three dots letting everyone
know a new letter has begun and that
letter is I so after waiting three we do
I which is I I boop boop so we do one
dot wait one dot and we're done or moved
on to the next word so now we wait one
two three four five six seven spaces and
we begin U which is underwear.  Underwear
The where is a dash and it takes up
three units.   A dash is three times longer
than a dot.  This is "Hi U" with all of
the correct timing.  Again there are tools
down below that allow you to learn Morse
code in a much more professional way but
looking at this we can now see that in a
sense Morse code is actually a ternary
system.  You need three elements to convey everything that it can and the third one
is silence.  Interestingly these are the
three elements you need.  The only three
that you need.  For a dot think of it like
this a 1 and then a 0.  A 1 means the
signal is on and it's only on for that
one little piece of time right there but
you follow it by a 0 and that represents
the space between the next piece of a
letter.  A dash we can represent like this.  We can make it three dots so three times
longer than a dot and then follow it
with a zero.  This way the space between
dots and dashes within a letter are built
into our symbols for those letters.  Finally
we have the separation character.  Now we
actually only need this to be two zeros
because if we are still working on the
same letter we just use a dot and that
already gives us the space for the next
letter so another dot.  In fact I can just write
this like this a dot would be 1 0 and
then 1 0 and then 1 0 and then 1 0.  Then
we use the separation character which is
just two.  Add it onto the 0 already at the
end of that dot we get 3 we need between
letters.  Alight so now we've got
another dot which is 1 0 another dot 1 0
and then we have 1 2 3
separation characters needed.  There are 7
moments dot moments of silence in
between words but since we already have
1 from the last character whether it's a
dot or dash then we just need six total
zeros and the separation character has
two so there's one there's two and
here's the third for a total of seven
zeros between the words and then finally
we've got a dot 10 a dot 10 and then we have
the dash which is 1 1 1 and then a 0
signifying that we are done with that
piece of the letter U.  So there you go
Morse code; a ternary system. How about
that? Check out the links below to truly
learn Morse code if you would like to. I
think it is so totally worth it.  It is
also worth going over to Vsauce3 to
check out Jake's episode of system it is
just beautiful the dangerous lovely
science of Mad Max mm-hmm okay that's
enough from me
and as always thanks for watching
