I’m trying out a new title for my blog, “riddle wrapped up in an enigma.” It was originally “david’s worldview & tech,” which does describe the purpose of the site but isn’t exactly a unique, catchy name. I’m not sure about this one yet. I’ll leave it up for a while. Let me know if you like it, or have a better (or heck, even worse) suggestion.
The reason I chose it, other than the fact that I think it’s cool, is that it kind’ve implies layers of concealment, which is more relavant when you know that I love codes and ciphers. I used to check out every book on them I could find at the library (there are a lot!), read them in a couple of weeks, and go back for more. Of course I did this with a lot of books, but this was one of my favorite topics. I love cryptograms, ciphers, encoding schemes…not so much working them myself, but reading about how they work and the cleverness involved. The secrecy was always attractive too, not so much for preventing others from knowing something, but secrecy for secrecy itself, just the power of being able to reveal or not reveal selectively.
Of course there were a lot of codes and ciphers making their way around the world back when Churchill (see below) coined this phrase. Many books from the library, which I may review someday, about them. But perhaps most important is that it contains the word Enigma, which was of course the famous “crypto-machine”:http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/enigma/ of the Germans that was broken by the Allies back in the 1920s and 30s. Of course I’m paternally Polish (my paternal grandmother came to the US from Poland), so the fact that “Polish mathmaticians”:http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm were able to decipher the Enigma machines for a while in the late 1930s may have something to do with my interest there :-)
If you’re interested in European codebreaking efforts during World War II, there’s some good info at “Bletchley Park and its Museum”:http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/bletchleypark/index.htm.
By the way, the author of the quote that bit of verbiage comes from is Winston Churchill, according to “GuruNet.com”:http://www.gurunet.com/t1-deid-847632942-dsid-1974-curtab-1974_1-method-5, apparently he said, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” back in 1939. I did use the modified version, without the “mystery.” It seemed to make the title too long. In fact I’m considering making the title even shorter. Maybe “riddle in an enigma,” or even just, “riddle enigma.”
Worst part about my new title so far: it’s hard to pronounce! You try to say “wrapped up in an enigma” five times fast! Or, is this the best part? You have to really mean to say it if you want to!