Warwick - 04 December 2010 11:01 PM

As Ivy Matt points out, the only case of “upside-down logo” that will spring to mind for most people is the Nazi swastika. In other words, inverted peace symbol means war - you can’t expect most to know the backstory about the CND logo creator. Everyone knows the Nazi / peace swastika thing.

I’m not quite sure I understand. I was concerned that an upside-down peace logo would automatically be interpreted as a war logo, and I think that’s something most of us don’t want associated with Focus Fusion—even someone with a nick like “Ivy Matt”. 

However, I don’t recall saying anything about the swastika. Thanks to this discussion, I suddenly realized that an inverted right-facing swastika is also a left-facing swastika, but I think most people would think of a left-facing swastika as a right-facing swastika flipped on the vertical, rather than horizontal, axis. I am aware of the argument (favoring the continued use of the left-facing swastika by Hindus and Buddhists) that the left-facing swastika is a symbol of “good” while the right-facing swastika is a symbol of “evil”, but I regard that as a specious argument made up after the fact. I am unaware of any evidence that the orientation of the swastika ever meant anything prior to the adoption of the right-facing swastika by the Nazis. A better argument, in my opinion, is that the swastika was in use with a generally positive meaning for thousands of years before anybody ever heard of Adolf Hitler. At any rate, I’m not sure this left-facing swastika = “good” argument is widely known in the West.

I did refer to a different symbol appropriated by the Nazis earlier in this thread, but it’s one much less widely known. It’s a rune—or pair of runes—used on the graves of SS members. Both runes occur in the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (ca. AD 400) and the Norse Younger Futhark (ca. AD 800), with different pronunciations, but the Nazis probably adopted them directly from Guido von Lists mystic and quasi-historical system of Armanen runes (AD 1902), where they occur as runes #15 and #16. The similarity with the peace symbol is obvious. On SS graves the upward-branching rune was the “life” or “birth” rune and the downward branching rune was the “death” rune. There was also a panzer division that used the “death” rune enclosed in a circle, which is indistinguishable from the well-known peace symbol.

While I’m explaining myself, if anyone wondered what I meant by that “unilateral disarmament” quip a page or two back, I was simply interpreting the upside-down peace symbol as a semaphore—like how the peace symbol was supposedly derived—and then coming up with a suitable expansion for “UD”.

Mass appeal: I’m generally in agreement here. A symbol is just a symbol, not the thing itself, and there’s nothing about the DPF, from what I can see, that is inherently objectionable to any more-or-less mainstream political ideology. I don’t think the peace symbol, however oriented, would be much of a stumbling block to anyone who is sufficiently interested in the technology. However, if the FFS wants something more neutral, I’m wondering why they didn’t just use the “energy burst” form of the logo on the website, while reserving the peace symbol for more specialized uses. No need to come up with something new.

Religion: I assume the Wormwood example was designed to show how someone could give anything a non-neutral interpretation. I think a much more likely interpretation of the star (even in a different season) is the Star of Bethlehem, but given the numerous flags that have one or more stars on them, I’d say a star is pretty generic—a five-pointed star at least. I’m not sure what special meaning an eight-pointed star could have.

...but I regard that as a specious argument made up after the fact. I am unaware of any evidence that the orientation of the swastika ever meant anything prior to the adoption of the right-facing swastika by the Nazis….

Then it’s urban legend; all the same, it’s very well-known. At school they said the ‘left-facing’ swastika was a sign of peace and consequently inverting it was a deliberate choice to represent war. (Not that their source for that was likely to itself be anything more than an urban legend necessarily.)

I’d say a star is pretty generic—a five-pointed star at least. I’m not sure what special meaning an eight-pointed star could have.

A five pointed star can also be a pentagram - clearly Satan has lulled you. 

Warwick - 09 December 2010 01:55 AM

Then it’s urban legend; all the same, it’s very well-known. At school they said the ‘left-facing’ swastika was a sign of peace and consequently inverting it was a deliberate choice to represent war. (Not that their source for that was likely to itself be anything more than an urban legend necessarily.)

In school they also said things about what it meant if you had an earing on one ear or the other. 

So far I’ve found most people don’t register anything is amiss.  Of course, I have it both ways on the flyer.

Sideways, shooting left-right.  A neutral compromise!

Warwick: I’m not sure I’d call it an urban legend. I might call it Buddhist/Hindu propaganda, but I can understand why they would want to defend a symbol that has had religious significance to them for a couple thousand years. And the Nazis did standardize on a right-facing swastika, so there is a kernel of truth to the myth. However, I doubt that the Nazis chose the swastika, right-facing or not, because it signified evil to them.

Rezwan: The pentagram can have various meanings, but in Satanism it’s generally inverted. At any rate, it wasn’t the flags of Morocco and Ethiopia I was thinking of.

Brian: That does seem to be the conventional orientation for the depiction of a series of events.

We could change it up a bit, and add a code.  If the arms are down, that means the machine has been taken apart for repairs.  If the arms are sideways that means firing is in progress, and when the arms are up, that means a good result. 

Then again, that might not be properly maintained and send the wrong signal.  Just like my uncle who lived across the street from this guy who flew the American flag - but he’d sometimes take the flag down, sometimes have it up.  My uncle wondered if there were events going on that he was responding to.  I thought maybe this is one of the few people who know you aren’t supposed to leave the flag flying 24/7 (except a lot of people do that - so maybe that whole “take the flag down at sunset” thing is… you know, I really don’t know much about flag protocol.  I do know where to take old flags to be retired/burned in NJ). 

Ah, so the pentagram is upside down.  A star in distress?

Flying the US flag 24/7 is legal, provided that its lit. I’d presume that to mean lit up as if on display.

On a related subject, has anyone ever worried whether FFS could be read as an amusing acronym?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/22/cia-wikileaks-taskforce-wtf

Or maybe it reads as intentional - it’s FFS because the status quo (environmental devastation of ‘conventional’ energy, hardly any public resources devoted to any fusion but ITER) is exasperating.

Actually it’s too bad they didn’t look up FFS for that article.

Sometimes explaining it seems somewhat cryptic… perhaps even a bit arcane…

zapkitty - 24 December 2010 01:47 PM

Sometimes explaining it seems somewhat cryptic… perhaps even a bit arcane…

Your thumbnail expands to show an identical thumbnail size image.  My screen and eyeball resolution are inadequate to decipher the text. 

Attach the FULL image; the site software will make its own thumbnailization.

Brian H - 24 December 2010 02:10 PM

Your thumbnail expands to show an identical thumbnail size image…

... errr, nope. All is as it should be in the message and in the way it displays here. Perhaps something went awry on your end?

zapkitty - 24 December 2010 02:42 PM

Brian H - 24 December 2010 02:10 PM

Your thumbnail expands to show an identical thumbnail size image…

... errr, nope. All is as it should be in the message and in the way it displays here. Perhaps something went awry on your end?

Yeah, I guess I tried to drag it into a new tab or something.  It’s 4 a.m. and the brain is evidently skipping certain essential steps ...

I like the quivering C12 touch!  But the waves and Ys are a bit ambiguous.

The image expands just fine over here. I figured the meaning of the image out on the third try.

Aeronaut - 09 December 2010 07:39 PM

Flying the US flag 24/7 is legal, provided that its lit. I’d presume that to mean lit up as if on display.

lol.

Warwick, also lol.  We’ve had a discussion about FFS before.  Also FF as “flying…” I can’t find it to link to it.  Of course, it’s the first thing some people notice about the name.  Makes them laugh, but it also makes it memorable.  I agree it conveys a certain appropriate exasperation with status quo.

Brian, glad you worked that out.  Now I can’t figure out why urls aren’t automatically forming links.  The settings are all correct on the back end. 

I’ll be upgrading the site soon, so that might fix some things.  Or create chaos.

Someone somewhere in the forums recently requested FF’ish designs that were more DPF oriented and as I’m currently somewhat bedfast I tinkered with stuff I’d previously done. (learning experience: keyboard and mouse management not so easy while prone )

Now with added anode and toroid:

also attached huge res png and transparent laver version of same in zip.