5 ms·
For intelligence agencies, it is important to communicate with their spies to gather intelligence,” says John Sipher, a former US intelligence
by srean 7mo ago
For intelligence agencies,
it is important to
communicate with their
spies to gather intelligence,”
says John Sipher, a former
US intelligence officer
Is Sipher really his name. Nominative determinism strikes again.
Sifr is also a valid word both in Farsi, I think. An Ironic and cruel pun.
- buildbot 7mo agoRandom chance has a really good sense of humor!
- aaron695 7mo ago[dead]
- Obscurity4340 7mo ago1/10 dentists hates nominative determinism. That dentist? Dr. Procter
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- OJFord 7mo ago> Sifr is also a valid word both in Farsi, I think That is the root of 'cipher'; meaning zero/empty/nothingness.
- srean 7mo agoIndeed and used cleverly in Casino Royale by naming Le Chiffre that way. I knew 'sifr' was an Arabic word and only today I came to know that it works in Farsi too. The double pun/irony is that the John Sipher's surname is related to the topic of cryptography and that the etymological roots is Middle-Eastern.
- OJFord 7mo agoAlso Hindi, Urdu, and no doubt others if we're drawing lines :) – there's an awful lot of overlap/loanwords.
- ErroneousBosh 7mo agoYou'd be amazed how many firefighters I know called "Burns", even leaving aside Ayrshire where lots of people are not-too-distantly related to a famous poet who, to put it mildly, put it about a bit.
- akssri 7mo agoMore so if you know the etymology, https://www.etymonline.com/word/cipher https://www.etymonline.com/word/cipher (Al Jabr, the translator of Indian Mathematical texts was a Persian IIRC)
- lioeters 7mo agoAl-Jabr, from where we get the word albebra, is an abbreviated name of the book (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing). The translator's name was al-Khwarizmi, from where we get the word algorithm. He was of Persian origin.
- srean 7mo agoWhy do say "translator's name" ? Al-Khwarizmi authored the book Al-Jabr.
- lioeters 7mo agoOh you're right, I was confused by the rich cultural exchange of translations happening at the time, from Greek and Sanskrit texts to Arabic then later Arabic texts to Latin. Both the book and the author are fascinating subjects I enjoy learning more about.
- srean 7mo agoIslamic golden age was an interesting time indeed. In addition to algebra, significant contribution to Optics.