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22 - Fear Not, Sexy
Maidens |
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23/07/07 Running numbers |
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In the absence of anything current or relevant to talk
about today, I'm going to fall back on my usual backup
plan of talking, a little too obsessively, about a
subject that interests me. And the subject I have chosen
today is something that manages to be both genuinely
eerie, yet reassuringly nerdy: the world of Numbers
Stations.
The phenomenon of
Numbers Stations is something that you may have
observed if you have access to a shortwave radio. In
amongst the French football commentaries, Scandinavian
folk music and shrieking religious zealots, you might
just pick up something quite otherworldly. Strings of
numbers, recited in a variety of languages by (usually mechanised) male or female voices. They appear from
nowhere, sometimes accompanied by a call-sign or a
distinct piece of music, and then disappear into the
static when the message is done.
And this is no urban legend: a plethora of recordings
exists, and dedicated nerds all over the world are
constantly monitoring these broadcasts, to the extent
that
broadcast schedules are widely available on the net.
Each 'station' has its own characteristics: some use
numbers, others use the phonetic alphabet, while another
subset eschew voices altogether in favour of Morse code.
As for what they are: well, it's generally accepted
nowadays that these are spy transmissions, intended for
undercover agents, which can only be decoded using a
one-time pad. As such, we can't really hope to extract
any meaning from the transmissions, a fact that most
enthusiasts seem to accept quite readily. As for myself,
I've managed to hear two different transmissions (with
significant help from my considerably more radio-savvy
dad). One of these seemed to be the
E10
phonetic alphabet station, generally believed to be
operated by Mossad, and I've yet to identify the other
one.
It really is an interest that's simultaneously esoteric
and chilling. Strange, soulless, disembodied voices of
ambiguous gender, barking out strings of impenetrable
data... it's an unsettling mixture of the mundane and
the alien. It's even inspired an edition of
Dinosaur Comics (in fact, I originally discovered
Dinosaur Comics via the Wikipedia article on Numbers
Stations... although they've since deleted the link. The
twats).
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Yeah, well, you can
prove anything with facts. |
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