Palindromic domains and URLs




This is the index page of the palindromic domain
      ed.xozzox.de

You can reach it by typing "ed.xozzox.de" backwards into the address field of your browser

A palindrome is a text (generally: any sequence of letters and numbers) which can be read backwards, yielding the same words as when reading normally.

White space characters, capitalization and punctuation marks are usually ignored in this definition. For palindromic URLs, however, every character has to be considered.

Palindromes exhibit a "syntactical mirror symmetry" with respect to an imaginary axis through the center of the character string (and "perpendicular" to it). This is not an optical mirror symmetry, since the character shapes are maintained: they do not become their geometric mirror images, only their sequence is reversed. See my ambigram URL for a true geometrical rotation symmetry of a character sequence denoting a URL.

A page with the same domain, expanded to a fully qualified palindromic URL:
      http://ed.xozzox.de//:ptth

Other palindromic URLs I know of :

http://graner.net/nicolas/salocin/ten.renarg//:ptth, which contains a long palindromic text of Georges Perec, a French writer (1936-1982).
http://wordsmith.org/words/sdrow/gro.htimsdrow//:ptth
http://www.gef.free.fr/rf.eerf.feg.www//:ptth
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~sssbownj/jnwobsss~/ku.ca.gdr.www//:ptth (defunct)

One of the most famous palindromes (in English) is:

A man, a plan, a canal - Panama

The "center of symmetry" is the letter "c", which only occurs once. (And "a" is the only vowel.) For some thoughts about the source of this palindrome see this article

A recent (as far as I know first published in Februrary 2009) creation by the US comedian Demtri Martin (www.demetrimartin.com) has 224 words. Here the center is the "I" in line 14, "Be still if I fill its ebb".

"Dammit I’m Mad"

Dammit I’m mad.
Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I’m in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level “Mad Dog”.
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I’m a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash,
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I’m it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I’d assign it a name.
Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:
“Sir, I deliver. I’m a dog”
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I’m mad.

For more information on palindromes, check out the Wikpedia article on palindromes.