The BBC has an informative article on the origins of the peace symbol, to celebrate its 50th anniversary:

Gerald Holtom, a designer and former World War II conscientious objector from West London, persuaded [Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War] that their aims would have greater impact if they were conveyed in a visual image. The “Ban the Bomb” symbol was born.

He considered using a Christian cross motif but, instead, settled on using letters from the semaphore – or flag-signalling – alphabet, super-imposing N (uclear) on D (isarmament) and placing them within a circle symbolising Earth.

The sign was quickly adopted by [Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament].

Holtom later explained that the design was “to mean a human being in despair” with arms outstretched downwards.

Not immediately obvious to me. I always wondered if there was a connection to chickens or birds. The dove?

American pacifist Ken Kolsbun, who corresponded with Mr Holtom until his death in 1985, says the designer came to regret the connotation of despair and had wanted the sign inverted.

“He thought peace was something that should be celebrated,” says Mr Kolsbun, who has spent decades documenting the use of the sign. “In fact, the semaphore sign for U in ‘unilateral’ depicts flags pointing upwards. Mr Holtom was all for unilateral disarmament.”

I would say celebrating is good, unless it’s premature and increases the risks of failure. President Bush, however, seems to have made a career out of prematurely celebrating and re-branding failures as his grand success.

Most interesting to me is how the symbol interpretations have grown so rapidly and widely over a short period of time, despite the origins being known and well documented. Anti-nuclear groups did not register it and instead allowed it to be used for free, for freedom. According to the article South Africa tried to ban its use due to its role in the anti-apartheid movement, and right-wing extremists in America claimed that the symbol had communist and satanic origins.

All of this is just food for thought as I work with teams to find root-cause of information technology issues. Settling with an assumption, or celebrating early, are hazards to be avoided.

Chilling report on the Tiger attacks at the San Francisco Zoo:

“The zoo is too often chasing problems rather than proactively addressing known concerns,” the report said. “This will require a shift in culture and the supervisory and maintenance staff to make it happen.”

Where have I heard that before? The details of the story are telling, such as the fact that a gun meant to be used in times of emergency was inaccessible to the person trained/authorized to use it. I suspect this incident will help create that shift in culture, but it is a shame about the cost (two deaths, mauling, and trauma) that it took to catalyze change.

Interesting story on how rescue teams are struggling to keep up with advances in auto safety:

“We build more fire stations, we make faster fire trucks, we’ve got helicopters to get you to the hospital,” said Roberts, an expert who teaches extrication to colleagues around Florida. “But what’s slowing us down are these vehicles that are harder for us to get into.”

The problem has rescue workers scrambling to update their tools and explore different ways to attack cars with their cutters, spreaders and saws. Some agencies with equipment more than a few years old are arriving at accident scenes and finding out that it will no longer do the job.

The obvious answer is to design newer vehicles with rescue requirements in mind.

Automakers say they are doing more to make safety information available to rescuers and tool makers before new models come out. For instance, Ford is already offering a look at the skeleton of the 2009 F-150 pickup, built with the strongest steel construction the company has ever used.

“We want to facilitate the discussion as much as possible, because we understand the critical nature of their work,” Ford spokesman Wesley Sherwood said.

Safety information is nice, but what about a standard for vehicle safety that rescuers can be trained on and practice? For example, surely the hybrid engineers can find a way to route cables in a consistent fashion that is free and clear of a rescue saw or least give rescuers the right of explaining their preferred cutting path.

Buried amongst the long list of recent critical security patches for Apple OS X is this delightful bit of language:

The “Set access for specific services and applications” radio button of the Application Firewall preference pane was translated into German as “Zugriff auf bestimmte Dienste und Programme festlegen”, which is “Set access to specific services and applications”. This might lead a user to believe that the listed services were the only ones that would be permitted to accept incoming connections. This update addresses the issue by changing the German text to semantically match the English text.

I like how it reads “the X button was translated as X, which could be confusing, so it has been changed to Y”. Much clearer now. Anyone have the new German phrase?