samcol

TBH I was hoping the subject had been laid to rest with the recent release of the birth certificate but saw something that caught my eye.

Apparently on the recently released Obama birth certificate it contains a process called 'kerning'. The way I understand it is that on typewriter fonts each character takes up a given space everytime due to the nature of the machine. Modern computer fonts can be blended together better because the fonts aren't mechanical in nature like on a typewriter. A typewriter doesn't know what character is coming next so it has to leave enough space for any character, while a computer can change the spacing on the fly.

I'm not an expert on the subject and was wondering if someone could confirm that this is true.

Here's a video that describes the issue:
Does the birth certificate contain kerning, and was it possible on a typewriter in 1961? Those are the two questions I'd like answered and would prefer it not turn into another birther thread if possible.

Thanks

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Baraka_Guru

To help people relate to this in computer terms, "proportional fonts" is another way to describe what goes on in computers vs. "monospaced" typewriters.

However, proportional spacing in typewriters apparently date back as far as 1941.

IBM Executive typewriter with proportional spacing - going back to 1941 - Democratic Underground

Here's an IBM link making reference to it: IBM Archives: 1941

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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samcol

Well that certainly clears a few things up for me. Kinda surprised at how critical the forums are on democratic underground of the legitimacy of the birth certifice. They have some pretty good analysis going on.

Thanks Baraka

__________________
It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

ASU2003

Is there a purpose to the fake border?

Also, I learned my new word for the day...

jewels

Yes, it's quite possible. The keystrokes appearance are dependent upon the force upon the keys. This was quite common for a fast typist if a key was depressed too quickly, so that the key imprinting was interrupted by the one that followed. Also, individual keys on a typewriter would sometimes become slightly bent which could also explain the spacing.

The scanning could easily have been distorted, too. There are so many possible explanations. Besides, why would you only see it on the street address and occupation?

I can't believe people are still making an issue of this. It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!

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We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
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MSD

Baraka nailed it. On a side note, that guy's voice is really annoying.

RogueGypsy

I never paid much attention to the whole issue, even thought I found it a little suspicious when it wasn't produced 3 years ago when requested. Now however there are a couple of odd things about it floating around the net, both easily verifiable.

Kenya was not a country until 1963, yet it lists Kenya as his father's nation of birth on this 1961 birth cert. ??

The listed place of birth is "Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital". The hospital(s) in question in 1961 were called "KauiKeolani Children's Hospital" and "Kapi'olani Maternity Home", respectively. The name did not change to Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital until 1978, when these two hospitals merged. How can this particular name of the hospital be on a birth certificate dated 1961 if this name had not yet been applied to it until 1978?

Being a newer fabrication would also explain the Kerning, as would simply reissuing the original on modern equipment.

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Methods, application and intensity of application vary by the individual. All legal wavers must be signed before 'treatment' begins. Self 'Medicating' is not recommend. However, if necessary, it is best to have an 'assistant' or 'soft landing zone' nearby. Any and all legal issues resulting from improperly applied techniques should be forwarded to: Dewy, Cheatum & Howe, Intercourse, PA 17534. Attn: Anonymous.

Baraka_Guru

RogueGypsy, although I can't speak to the hospital name change, between the '20s and '60s, Kenya was referred to as Kenya Colony, or, officially, the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya (under the British Empire).

EDIT: According to Wikipedia's sources, the hospital's name change occurred in 1931: Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children – Wikipedia

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

RogueGypsy

"This is the story of two hospitals: Kauikeolani Children's Hospital and Kapi‘olani Maternity

Concerned about the welfare of Hawaii's mothers, Queen Kapi‘olani held luau and bazaars to raise the $8,000 needed to open Kapi‘olani Maternity Home in 1890. She endowed her legacy with “Kulia i ka nu‘u” or “Strive for the highest.”

In 1908, Albert and Emma Kauikeolani Wilcox donated $50,000 to start a children's hospital. The community, concerned that two of every seven infants in Hawai‘i did not live to see their first birthday, rallied to match the Wilcox's gift. A year later, Kauikeolani Children's Hospital opened.

The two hospitals joined in 1978 to become Kapi‘olani Medical Center for Women & Children. Staying true to its mission, the non-profit hospital has played a vital role in the health of Hawaii's women, children and adolescents. It is staffed with highly skilled, compassionate physicians and nurses, dedicated to providing the finest care for Hawaii's families:"

Kapiolani Women and Children | About Us


I'm more inclined to believe the official site over Wiki.

Same with Kenya, I'm only seeing your explanation on wiki. Everything else I'm seeing calls Kenya "British East Africa Protectorate" and appears to include several countries. There are some references to the 'Kenya Colony', but the official name was B.E.A.P.. Wouldn't the official name belong on an official document? Or at the very least Kenya Colony? Did the hospital admins just take it upon themselves to shorten or rename a nation? Why would they even do that?

Like I said above, I really paid no attention to the whole debacle. But now I have to ask myself; Why didn't he just produce the BC to begin with and avoid all the Birthers accusations? Why the 3 year mystery? Really, if you're applying for a job, you are expected and required to produce documentation of who you are, what makes him special?


..

__________________
Methods, application and intensity of application vary by the individual. All legal wavers must be signed before 'treatment' begins. Self 'Medicating' is not recommend. However, if necessary, it is best to have an 'assistant' or 'soft landing zone' nearby. Any and all legal issues resulting from improperly applied techniques should be forwarded to: Dewy, Cheatum & Howe, Intercourse, PA 17534. Attn: Anonymous.

Baraka_Guru

It says right in the Wiki: "In 1978, it merged with Kapiʻolani Hospital to become Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children."

The issue, I thought, was regarding the name: Kapiʻolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital.

Regarding Kenya, I'm reading that the East Africa Protectorate became the Kenya Colony on July 23, 1920. Are you reading something different? Also, shortening "Kenya Colony" to "Kenya" isn't a stretch. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that sometime between 1920 and 1960, people both inside and outside of the colony simply called it "Kenya."

As for not producing the BC at the beginning and applying for a job whilst providing required documentation and why Obama is so special.....

Good questions. Why is Obama so special that he's the first president that I'm aware of that had to release a copy of his BC to the public to assuage the concerns about whether he was born in the U.S.? Have you seen G. W. Bush's certificate? Clinton's? Bush, Sr.'s? Reagan's? etc. Should this be a matter of course for future presidents that it's mandatory to release documentation that you're qualified to be president (or even run)?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Daniel_

I had to provide my passport to get my job, it seems not unreasonable that POTUS has to. Interesting point that no other person was asked. I guess fear of the foreign is as much to blame for that (known foreign father) as much as fear of the black man.

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ocularist

Baraka,

i must respectfully say that either you are ignorant of typesetting, or you are intentionally misleading people: which is it?

PROPORTIONAL typesetting has nothing to do with KERNING.

In your link to the IBM example of a typewriter with PROPORTIONAL capabilities, IBM created a typewriter that was cognizant of the actual widths of letters of the typeface they designed. each letter was struck, and spaced out to the next letter only the width of that letter. this did not reqiire that the typewriter be cognizant of LETTER PAIRS. AT NO TIME do the descenders of a following letter actually encroach upon the vertical space of a prior letter, as is done in KERNING.

KERNING needs the intelligence of LETTER PAIRS, which when typeset by a book printer, was done in lead by the knowledge of the person putting the letters in the rack (HE would be the person understanding letter pairs like -ly, or -ty, etc) or by a computer that is able to look ahead in the letter stream.

NO TYPEWRITER OF THE 60's or any other time possessed this knowledege; nor is it possible because the typewriter cannot strike until it knows the next letter following to decide to HOW MUCH TO SPACE.

LOOK AT THE EXAMPLE PAGE at that IBM link you provided: you WILL NOT SEE any example of descender encroachment!!!

SO, we're back to the original poster's question-- the answer is that kerning is present in Mr. Obama's "original long form birth certificate", something that is not physically possible with ANY TYPEWRITER -- this forces the issue that it MUST NECESSARILY BE A FORGERY, and unfortunately, a simple-minded one at that...

I say simple-minded, because I have been digitizing and OCR'ing documents for some 15 years involving archival quality documents and results--I even have friends at Adobe (creator of the pdf format utilized by the forger), and have been involved with their beta testing programs, so I'm fully aware of the "tricks" that can be used to simulate a forgery.

If you enlarge the "white house" document to let's say 800%, and look at the "typewritten" letters, you will notice an interesting anomaly-- something not physically possible with an actual typewriter: every instance of the same letter is identical!! On a typewriter, if you strike. row of a's for example, the physical force of the hammer striking the ribbon and then the paper behind it creates an ink blob that "looks like" an "a". But if you enlarge the image of the "a" with a magnifying glass, you will immediately notice that the edges are not crisp...there are areas of grey around the letters where very little ink was put to paper, and in addition, as the ribbon moves (being made of fabric in thise days), varying amounts of ink would be applied. As a result, each "a" is as individual as a fingerprint!

To produce a forgery as simple minded as this one is, all one has to do is "digitize" an example of each letter off of an existing birth certificate. When a computer lays the pattern down, to the unaided eye (without zoom or magnification), each letter in a row will look like that "a" we just talked about... HOWEVER, EACH "a" will be identical!

So, what happened here is that the "forger" was an idiot not familiar with the tell-tale signs of digitization, and also forgot to turn off kerning (the forger, had he been aware, could have done this).

THIS ALSO TELLS ME THAT THE CIA AND FBI WERE NOT INVOLVED in this forgery!

WHY? Because THEY have the ability to produce a forgery that is correct! THEY MAINTAIN WAREHOUSES OF ACTUAL EQUIPMENT and PAPER. They would have taken the typeface and pulled an actual typewriter of thqt make and model, pulled out the actual paper (they have reams of actual paper -- every one ever produced) and produced a forgery indistinguishable from a real one! THEY would have made sure the document sequence numbers were correct (Mr Obama's is earlier than those produced a day later). THEY would have matched the culture of the time (Mr Obama's talks about "African"-- a term not used to describe his race at that time)... and a host of other "issues".

SO WHAT CONFUSES ME, IS *NOT THAT* this is a forgery--it most certainly is, but why the CIA or FBI were not called upon to produce the forgery???!!! -- which agency could certainly have made it a lot harder to prove a forgery than this micky-mouse attempt that the white-house has unashamedly committed itself to (what an embarrassment-- they had the technology and did not use it!?)

Baraka_Guru

First of all, calm down. I'm not a typesetter, it's true, but neither am I a government agent. I know this is Titled Paranoia, but c'mon! (But you get points from me for your ironic use of the word respectfully. Well played. Whenever I'm always afraid that irony is dead, people like you come along to prove me wrong.)

It should be pointed out that I didn't even say that this is the case. But you're the pro, not me. Can you can kern a monospace font?

Do you have actual information about this?

I see it. Maybe you didn't look closely enough.

So...this is Tilted Paranoia. You'd think the mythmakers of the most powerful government office in the world would be able to find some geek(s) who knew how to make a circa-1961 birth certificate from a domestic jurisdiction that would raise little doubts. I mean, we live in the computer and Internet age. Jurassic Park looked like they used real dinosaurs.

Are you a rarity? Don't you think the federal government could find people like you to make a believable forgery?

Thanks for this. This is the good stuff.

So why didn't they find someone like you?

Maybe they want conspiracy theories based on a "flawed document." It provides a continued distraction from all the important shit they're pulling off while the wool* is pulled over everyone's eyes.




*Or forged birth certificate, as it were.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

RogueGypsy

[QUOTE=Baraka_Guru;2903164]It says right in the Wiki: "In 1978, it merged with Kapiʻolani Hospital to become Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children."

The issue, I thought, was regarding the name: Kapiʻolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital.

Right, It was the Kapi'olani Maternity Home in 1961. Why didn't the administrators know the name of their own hospital?

Regarding Kenya, I'm reading that the East Africa Protectorate became the Kenya Colony on July 23, 1920. Are you reading something different? Also, shortening "Kenya Colony" to "Kenya" isn't a stretch. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that sometime between 1920 and 1960, people both inside and outside of the colony simply called it "Kenya."

This is not so much of a stretch, dropping 'colony' from the name. The official name still being B.E.A.P. is what should have been on an official document. I'm just saying I've never met an administrator so lax as to shorten and use a common name as opposed to the official name of a place or thing. All the administrators I've ever had to deal with were so anal it's ridiculous. And officially 'Kenya Colony' never existed.

As for not producing the BC at the beginning and applying for a job whilst providing required documentation and why Obama is so special.....

Good questions. Why is Obama so special that he's the first president that I'm aware of that had to release a copy of his BC to the public to assuage the concerns about whether he was born in the U.S.? Have you seen G. W. Bush's certificate? Clinton's? Bush, Sr.'s? Reagan's? etc. Should this be a matter of course for future presidents that it's mandatory to release documentation that you're qualified to be president (or even run)?

He is the first as far as I know, but that makes it no less important. Citizenship is a requirement for the position, if asked to produce evidence of citizenship, it should be produce immediately. We aren't talking about Royalty here, although our politicians seem to see themselves as such. He is an ordinary individual seeking the highest office in the nation, one which requires proof of Citizenship to attain. Regardless of whether he is the first or the fifty first, if citizenship is in question, he is required to provide proof. There really is no; if, and, or but to this. The whole issue has been polluted with racism and political double speak. The bottom line is, if asked he needs to provide proof. Not wait 3 years then produce a document of a dubious nature. And yes, it should be part of the process. You can't get any other job without proof of who you are, why should the highest office in the nation be any different? Since the public is his boss, yes it should be public.[/QUOTE]

Once again, I have to ask why? Why, after serving 3/4 of his term does he produce this document? If he had it, why not do it immediately? Even if he didn't have it, it only takes a month at most to get a copy from the hospital or state. I've had to request a copy of my BC a couple of time, it didn't take 3 years to get mine. IF he thought it unnecessary, why produce it at all?

__________________
Methods, application and intensity of application vary by the individual. All legal wavers must be signed before 'treatment' begins. Self 'Medicating' is not recommend. However, if necessary, it is best to have an 'assistant' or 'soft landing zone' nearby. Any and all legal issues resulting from improperly applied techniques should be forwarded to: Dewy, Cheatum & Howe, Intercourse, PA 17534. Attn: Anonymous.

jewels

There's are so many possibilities here, but after pulling the version posted on the White House site, I can clearly see this was typed on a manual typewriter. The only instances of "space invasion" occur at a couple of points for the letter "o" and number "0". Why just those instances?

Correction tape, carbon paper and other lo-tech means were used to correct errors and typos back then. Manually feeding the certificate back into the roller could have thrown it off kilter that little bit, or the original may not have been perfectly matched with the carbon copy.

Sounds a lot more feasible than a conspiracy theory.

The birth certificate that you and I have to produce had been provided and in his file for years. It works for us but wasn't good enough for some others.

__________________
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

Baraka_Guru

It's because he's a Muslim plant.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Lindy

I thought he looked a little green around the gills.