Schwarzenegger Gives California Legislature A Hidden Finger

TechCrunch.com ^ | October 28, 2009 | Michael Arrington

[Beaten Valve]

There is absolutely no way I’ll be able to make this relevant to tech. But I’m posting it anyway. Our Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, vetoed a California legislative finance bill – AB 1176. The letter is terse and to the point. And the first letter of each line in paragraphs 2-3 are even terser and more to the point.

Schwarzeneggers battles with the state legislature are epic. But this just goes way beyond epic. It’s something for the history books.

(click the link to view the message...)

[Beaten Valve]

Too little, too late from Ah-nold.

(Click the link to view the actual message)

[markomalley]

Pretty brilliant, if intentional.

[equalitybeforethelaw]

Didn’t bammy give the finger on several occassions - so why is this news?

[LeonardFMason]

“Hidden Finger”? Is Ahnold now the state proctologist?

[Dr. Ursus]

I don’t know,but I saw a Tweety Bird!

[DoughtyOne]

This is Arnold’s attempt to pay it forward. Conservatives have been giving him the finger for over five years now.

[Tribune7]

Good for Arnold if true.

[NeoCaveman]

Too funny. Good for RINOld.

[MrB]

Incredible, if unintentional.

Folks, in case you don’t see it - look at the first letter of each line.

[Liberty1970]

It is intentional. Any given 7 letter sequence has a 1 in 26^7 chance of occuring in a 7-letter sequence assuming all letters have an equal chance of appearing. This is not the case in English, so the odds are somewhat worse.

The cipher used in this case is the most elementary, recognizable form. (It would be fun to check other political memoes to see who else plays this game. I'll bet Arnie is not alone.) Anyway, the odds of this particular message appearing in any given 7 characters are random at 1 in over 8 billion with equal opportunity, much less in the real world due to the low occurence of letters like "K" and "U" and "Y". I'd bet the real odds are lower than 1 in 100 billion when the rarity of those letters is factored in.

Granted, there are any number of 7-character messages that could have meaning, but this particular message is, shall we say, highly suited to the context? The number of such possible 'highly suitable' messages is low, let's generously say 10,000 other such 7-character messages would be equally interesting. That still leaves the odds of this appearing by chance in this particular memo at around 1 in a million using my real-world estimate.

[Liberty1970]

To follow up with the excuse being given (about 'soap' and 'poet' also appearing):

Any given 4 letter sequence has a one in 456,976 chance of appearning in a given 4 spaces. (1 in 26^4) But there are thousands of valid 4-letter words, so the odds of a meaningful english word occuring by chance are around 1% in any given 4-character space. This means that given enough lines in enough memoes, yes, you will see 4-letter words coming up in this cipher form by chance.

The difference is in those additional three characters pushing the odds beyond what chance would reasonably accomplish, plus the highly significant nature of the message in context, something that random four letter words like Poet and Soap lack.

[Liberty1970]

in any given 7 characters are random at 1 in over 8 billion

My apologies. That should read "at random are 1 in over..." - I mixed my 'are' and 'at'.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Be careful... not the first letter of each sentence... each line.

Eff you, says the Governator. TI eff you SA, for good measure :-)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Good for Arnold....

[SunkenCiv]

And who can blame him?