Presi-Digitation

Discovering and Decoding 

the President’s Binary Hand Signals

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Birmingham, Alabama

1 April 2017

One and two and one and one and…

Visual artists Don Stewart and Sue Ellen Brown of the DS Art Studio in Homewood, Alabama have made a startling discovery, simply by observing the hand gestures of the 45^th president. After months of careful study, the husband and wife team believe the leader of the free world is telegraphing coded messages using binary code in his own digital sign language, and has been doing so since he began running for office.

Hand Signals

Stewart, a former physician, and Brown, a computer artist, began noticing the candidate’s peculiar hand motions early in the presidential campaign.

“It was actually way back in the summer of 2015,” says Brown, who was first to comment on the candidate’s odd manual gesticulations. She noticed the regularity with which Mr. Trump repeatedly extended his index finger in an upward ‘number one’ direction, followed by circling his thumb and forefinger into the letter “O”.

“He just kept doing it, over and over, so I got curious and started keeping notes,” Brown said. “It turns out he was speaking in sign language, signaling individual letters, made up of zeroes and ones.”

Since then, the husband and wife team has been poring over hours of video footage, carefully cataloguing the sequences of 1’s and O’s indicated by Trump’s articulate right hand. After writing down the numbers on separate note pads, the two then compare their numeric lists, revisiting the video record to resolve any conflicts.

Once the raw lists of binary figures are complete, they are scanned into a computer program that simultaneously reads the numbers, and separates them sequentially into eight-bit segments for translation into alphanumeric characters.

“It took us a while to get the software right,” says Brown, “But with a little bit of tweaking, we were able to obtain reliable data. Incredible data. Better data than anyone has ever been able to generate before.”

With eight ‘bits’ or gestures, per letter, it takes a long time to code a word by hand, much less a full sentence.

“That’s probably why he talks so much,” says Stewart.

According to the two researchers, Trump’s messages cover a wide range of topics from DAPL and NAFTA to MAGA and several mentions of WAFFLES. ‘You are Losers,’ and ‘I am WINNING’ appear frequently. Neither artist would offer details concerning the content of additional coded messages, citing national security concerns, and the fact that their translations aren’t infallible, for a number of reasons.

“It turns out, he’s not a very good speller,” said Stewart, “Though the man is spot-on with the terms ‘B-I-G-L-Y’ and ‘H-U-G-E’. He nails those every time.”

“And TRUMP. There’s a lot of T-R-U-M-P,” Brown said.

When pressed, the two investigators also admit that their translating program isn't perfect. Some of the passages they have recorded make no sense at all when processed through their proprietary computer algorithm. This could be due, they say, to glitches in the software, or simply a faulty interpretation of the hand gestures, for example, when an upturned finger actually means ‘Number One’. “That can throw off an entire sequence,” said Stewart.

Both concede that more study is needed, and have plans to run their ‘nonsense’ data through a more advanced series of algorithms, including punctuation filters, and Cyrillic character analysis.

When asked why they have only interpreted the president’s right-handed gestures, Stewart noted, “If you try and follow both hands at once, the messages become unreadable, so either the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, or he’s sending different information to two audiences at once. For now we’re focusing on right-sided speech alone. That’s where most of the action is. We plan to review the numbers from his sinister side in a follow-up study.”

Asked when the intelligence community will allow them to discuss their findings in greater detail, the artists stated that the meetings with federal authorities have been planned for some time, but repeatedly postponed until a later date.

Contact:

Don Stewart                www.DSArt.com

Sue Ellen Brown         www.ZooLNArt.com

DS Art Studio Gallery

2805 Crescent Ave

Homewood, Alabama 35209

205-802-4700

1-800-372-7864

####

Squashed Economy

We Southerners pride ourselves on living close to the land. We love to tell anyone within ear shot about how many acres Great Granddaddy Earl used to plow back on the home place, or how much ‘proppity’ came into the fambly when Aunt Eunice married herself a Quincey – one of them Montgomery Quinceys. 

True, these days the closest thing to tending the soil that many of our suburban neighbors ever do is toss barbecue ashes into the so-called ‘wild area’ of their subdivisions, or cut a check for the local lawn service to spread another springtime dose of Weed & Feed. But that doesn’t stop them from going all-out to celebrate the changing seasons with vivid displays of rural vegetation, so much that it looks like they all just come back up from a trip to the family farm. Even in the posh, manicured neighborhoods of the suburban south, this time of year you can count on finding rows of colorful fall produce lined up like movie props on the doorsteps of our cookie-cutter McMansions.

Starting right after Labor Day, as soon as the white shoes of summer disappear into the back of the closet, the front of every house is festooned with the fruits of somebody else's harvest. Indian corn, pumpkins and gourds are artfully stacked and propped against hay bales and dried cornstalks, accented with lacey arrays of mums in bushel baskets, and watched over by happy Raggedy Andy scarecrows with straw hats and hinged elbows. Yes, it’s Hoe-down time in the city, and if the zoning ordinances allowed for barns, there would probably be talk of a raising somewhere.

In times of plenty, it’s easy to tell how well the South’s economy is doing simply by counting the number and variety of domesticated squash lined up in neighbors’ doorways. And not just the Jack O’Lantern kind, either:  Giant Ironbark, Golden Nugget, Hubbard, Fairytale, Albino, Red-Stamp, Japanese Kobocha, Albino, Sugar Pumpkins and Lord Knows What-All pile up in bumpy, multicolored mounds as folks contend not just to keep up with, but to pull ahead of and leave the Joneses way behind. With price tags of up to forty-five dollars each (no kiddin’, I’ve looked), the toll for a porch-full of these ornate veggies can run up to two or three hundred bucks. Add another hunnert for a sizeable display of those teensy, puff-ball chrysanthemums - coiffed bubbles of color in bright yellow and autumnal rust, and shades of white & lavender seldom seen together outside of a beauty parlor, or the front pew in church on a warm Sunday. The price of the scarecrow is anybody’s guess.

In lean times, the displays are fewer and simpler, but the trend never dies out completely. A basket of mums sits lonesome out on the steps in front of the porch swing, or folks might get double-duty from a single pumpkin, mainly by avoiding the temptation to cut the traditional zig-zag grin and triangle eyes on the front. Instead, they use a magic marker to draw a face on their Jack O’Lanterns, scary enough to entertain the kids through Halloween. Then, on November first, they just turn ol’ Jack around to face the wall, and leave his orange backside to announce the arrival of the harvest season.

One thing is certain in good times and bad: No matter how much money and effort was spent embellishing the doorway, every piece of floral and vegetable décor is kicked out to the curb the day right after Thanksgiving. That's when the harvest hops to the rear-view mirror, and the city shopping season begins.

No matter that the pumpkins have already survived half of the season intact, and are built to last the winter as a stable source of supper – or that the mums are perennials, and will flower forever if they’re just poked into the ground. Today they’re trash, tossed out to make room for even more elaborate, internally-lit Christmas decorations.

Me, I’m just glad my Grandma ain’t around anymore to see it. “I’ll Swannee!” she’d say. “People throwing away perfec’ly good groceries, by the bushel at that. Might as well be pouring money down the drain!” Her idea of cutting up a pumpkin, Halloween or otherwise, was nothing more than the first step in making a pumpkin pie. She may have been citi-fied, but she knew how to recognize a mess of dinner on the vine, and she knew how to cook it, too.

Now I’m not sayin’ Southerners have forgotten how to cook – it’s just that nowadays most of our Turkey Day pies either come from a can, or directly from the freezer. Tell me who knows any more how to draw and quarter a sizeable winter squash, bake the slabs and render them into nutritious side dishes and desserts. Hardly anybody, that’s who.

But if anyone wants to stop over by our place for a visit, or a bowl of pumpkin chili, a slice of pumpkin bread or a big, thick piece of pumpkin pie, you’re welcome to it. Our house is easy to find – it’s the one with all the multi-colored chrysanthemums out front in the flowerbed.

Periodic Table of Elephants

Sometimes, when you're married, you remember to do what you're told.

SO, there I was, sitting at the dining room table, minding my own business, thoroughly entertaining myself by making silly jokes inside my head, and giggling right out loud – which turned out to be inappropriate, I was told, and rude, besides, since apparently I had forgotten that I was not alone at the table, and in fact I was in the middle of dinner with my wife and kids, to whom I apparently should have been paying far more attention. The kids were ignoring me. They were used to this sort of behavior, frankly, from their dad as much as their middle school friends. No harm done there.

Not so with the Missus. Though she would much rather have been allowed to eat her chicken and broccoli in peace, or maybe participate in some light adult conversation during her meal, experience had taught her long before to expect a great deal less from a dinner spent with a giddy child, with or without his two young sons.

“Okay, out with it.”

Well, she asked, I thought, considering a development that carried with it both positive and negative potential, more on the positive, I believed, since the particular pun bouncing around inside my head was truly awful, of the sort that begged to be shared with an audience; negative in that the particular pun was truly awful, and should probably best be kept bouncing around inside my head. Still giggling, I decided to bank on the positive, and share my silliness with everyone present, whether they deserved it or not.

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” I began, halting, giggling, having to clear my throat and start again. “Wouldn't it be funny,” I said, “if someone came up with a Periodic Table of Elephants?”

A long moment passed in total silence, broken only by my periodic snickers.

I almost collapsed in unabashed levity, holding myself up from the table with one hand, the other holding a napkin to my eyes, which were glistening now from the crystal clarity of the joke, and the depth of my wife’s husband’s mastery of humor. Oh, but she did marry a clever man. Just ask him.

“Elephants!” I repeated, certain that she hadn't heard me clearly enough. “Isn't that a riot! You know, little cartoons of actual elephants, acting out each of the chemical elements. I mean, Elephants – Elements, that’s the pun. Get it?”

She got it. She had it on the first pass. It was a geek joke, meant for a limited audience, but one of which she was a member. She almost smiled, nearly. The joke was that good.

The kids looked up, wondering what was wrong with me, realizing after a moment that it was nothing out of the ordinary, meaning nothing very interesting, either. Dad was being funny. Best to keep your head down and act like nothing was going on at all. It would be over in a minute or two. For God’s sake don't encourage the man.

There was a longer pause, then, while I collected myself, while my wife tapped quietly into her apparently limitless wellspring of patience, and the kids went back to pushing their vegetables around on their plates until they could be excused, which hopefully wouldn't be much longer. One of them, I couldn’t tell which one, actually sighed out loud.

“Elephants,” I said.

“Hmmm….” she said, and paused again. “I think that’s a great idea,” she declared, finally, matter-of-factly. “I think you should do it.”

Hey, wait a minute. I’d heard that tone before.

All of a sudden the atmosphere at the dinner table changed perceptibly, almost tangibly, pulling me needlessly out of my self-indulgent reverie. Somehow, things had gone in a short straight line from silly to serious. This wasn’t going to end well, I could tell. Not well at all.

There’s a reason a man chooses to share such monumental breakthroughs with his spouse. One reason alone. He tells his wife ideas such as this so that she will be utterly confirmed in the knowledge that she married the cleverest man on Earth, and will stop at nothing to communicate to him her happiness and good fortune upon electing to say “I do.”

“My goodness!” she is supposed to say. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day!” she’s supposed to continue. “Why, I married the cleverest man on Earth! Just wait till I get you alone this evening, Dearest, and commence to smother you with kisses and such, just to show you how lucky I know I am!” Her shimmering eyes would be unable to hide her sincerity.

Well, that’s why we do it, anyway, we husbands, which is remarkable, not so much for the fact that things seldom (okay, never), turn out the way we imagine they will, but more for our inexplicable persistence in believing that they will.

It didn't happen this time, for this husband, either. What I got was,  “Yeah, that’s funny. You should do it.”

In other words, “Get Busy.”

No accolades. No overt displays of affection. Just one more item on the Honey-Do list.

How did this happen? I started to wonder, then stopped myself, mid-thought. There was no time to consider the whys or wherefores. I had no choice but to try and beat a hasty and subtle retreat.

Quick study that I am, I thought I could still see a way out of this debacle. My dream of unbridled attention had collapsed, but that didn't mean I had to let this episode end in additional work for me. If I laid low and refused to bring the subject up again, the idea might die a natural death, and I ‘d be none the worse for having spilled my silly idea onto the dinner table.

In the face of this impending threat, instinct kicked in. Like a chameleon, a flounder, a shape-shifting tide-pool octopus, I put my head down and quietly assumed the prevailing background pattern in the room, pushing my vegetables around on my plate, waiting to be excused.

After a couple of weeks I had almost forgotten my mammoth comic breakthrough, and the unthinkable consequences that had so nearly ensued after sharing it with my beloved.

Each night at dinner, I knew better than allow myself to be distracted again by anything funny. We talked about things like schoolwork, and family, deliberately avoiding any subject that could be considered remotely humorous.

“By the way,” my wife said one evening, passing a large bowl of mashed potatoes. “How’s that Elephant project of yours coming along?”

Crap. I wasn’t out of the woods yet. This woman has the memory of an… elephant.

“Elephant project, Dear?”

“You know, the Periodic Table thing you were working on?”

“Oh, that. Why, I’d forgotten all about it,” I lied. Clearly, if it wasn’t important enough for me to remember, it probably didn't need to be pursued any further. Whew. Dodged that one, however close it had come to inflicting real damage. After all, I want to be funny. The last thing I want is to have to work at being funny.

I mean, we’re not talking about a little cartoon project here. This idea, if allowed to propgate, threatened to involve something in the range of 110-120 separate drawings, all elephant jokes, each one illustrating some aspect of a unique chemical element, each placed in its proper spot on a bon fide, working periodic table. Humor and science. What good could come of that?

Besides, who had time for that kind of endeavor? Not me. I was busy being funny.

“Well, start thinking about it again, won’t you?” my better half continued. “I told my sister about it – you know, the chemist? She would love to have one of the prints for Christmas.”

I started to think about the short list of things I wanted for Christmas, then realized that that was precisely the line of thinking that had gotten me into this mess. I decided to close ranks, and deploy my last, best line of defense – the strategy that always worked for me in these dire situations. I steeled myself for the consequences, and let fly:

“Yes Dear,” I said. “I’ll get right on it.”

The next day I hit the books, and began scouring the web, familiarizing myself for the nth time with the periods, families and characteristics of atoms arranged along the elemental periodic table. Long lists were made of individual elements and their particulars, these paired with dozens of tiny elephant sketches, filling page after page with every variation of style and inference from pachyderm to mastodon to howdah to tusk. A mammoth sheet of illustration board was laid out on the biggest drawing board in the studio, ruled in 118 squares, and filled with the best ideas from hundreds of rough ballpoint sketches.

Four months later it was over, the Periodic Table of Elephants was born, and my wife was happy.

Me, too.