Palindromia (Backwards = Forwards)

Martin Gardner in the US Navy, 1942

I am still thoroughly enjoying Gardner's book, The Ambidextrous Universe. Most of what follows it from there:

Palindromes are words, letters, numbers, even stories, that are listed the same way backward as forwards.

In letters, perhaps the best known is:

Madam, I'm Adam.

Then there's:

A man, a plan, a canal - Panama !

and

Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.

We can palindrome with words alone, such as:

Is is odd how asymmetrical is "symmetry"? Symmetry is asymmetrical, how odd it is.

You can cage a swallow, can't you, but you can't swallow a cage, can you?

Girl, bathing on Bikini, eyeing boy, finds boy eyeing bikini on bathing girl.

The lines in a poem can also be palindromic, as in Lindon's:

As I was passing near the jail
I met a man, but hurried by.
His face was ghastly, grimly pale.
He had a gun. I wondered why
He had a gun? I wondered ... why?
His face was ghastly! Grimly pale,
I met a man, but hurried by,
As I was passing near the jail.

What follows is interesting, it is a very-very-very short Science Fiction story, in which the words of the story are the same both forward and reverse, by Frederic Brown:

THE END

Professor Jones had been working on time theory for many years.

"And I have found the key equation," he told his daughter one day. "Time is a field. This machine I have made can manipulate, even reverse that field."

Pushing a button as he spoke, he said, "This should make time run backward run time make should this," said he, spoke he as button a pushing.

"Field that, reverse even, manipulate can made have I machine this. Field a is time." Day one daughter his told he, "Equation key the found have I and."

Years many for theory time on working been had Jones Professor.

END THE

I do believe however that Dmitri Martin (American comedian and ernstwhile contributor to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), has the record, at 244 words (and it is palindromic in letters) :

"Dammit I’m Mad"

by

Demetri Martin

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.

Numbers can also be palindromic, for example the last yearly ones were 2002, 1991, and 1881.

What about prime numbers? Yes there are palindromic primes. One oddity, of the first 47 palindromic prime numbers, 24 of them come in pairs separated by only the middle digit, by 1. they are:

2
3
181
191
373
383
787
797
919
929
10501
10601
11311
11411
12721
12821
13831
13931
15451
15551
16561

16661

30103

30203

Norman Gridgeman noticed the above relationship.