Thoughtless for the Day

The peace symbol IS divisive and political. But that's not really peace's fault, is it? That blame can be laid squarely at the feet of a string of low-quality shit wars, started for cynical reasons and executed with such grand incompetence that they require constant politicization to keep running. You politicize war, and you must by extension politicize peace.

-That guy over at You Are Dumb

Under normal circumstances, I try to avoid commenting on any topic that the majority of other blogs have seized upon. They way I see it is if I stay off their turf then they won't invest in tiny plastic Roman soldiers. Today, I'm going to make an exception to this rule.

Currently, the World Wide Internets are abuzz with the tale of Bob Kearns (AKA "The Alton Verm for late November") a simple man and president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association who stood firm in his conviction of the Satanic origins of the Peace Symbol. The thing that really piqued my interest in this story (apart from the obvious joy of mocking Mr. Kearns) was that none of the media which covered it bothered to look into the actually history of Peace Symbol. For all the casual reader might know, Bob Kearns, although obviously retarded, might be correct and the "Footprint of the American chicken" may have originally started off as the uber-cool anti-Christian Nero cross.(Great crazy rant link!)

Sadly, the real history of the Peace Symbol is pretty damn dull. It was designed for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 by Gerald Holtom (who, to my knowledge never attended a single Satanic Mass: wimp.) and incorporates the Semaphore code for N and D (for "Nuclear Disarmament" and not for "Nicodemus Diablo")

Further Proof that I am PZ Meyers' Bitch

PZ asked for his readers to link to this post as an experiment.