Dec. 3: Peace sign

 In Bible college, someone told me that the peace sign is a broken cross, that the hippies who employed it believed that shedding Christianity was one step toward the attainment of utopia.

Years later, in Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis, someone explains that the peace sign is inspired from the semaphore alphabet. Semaphore is a way of communication using only two small flags, one held in each hand. Each letter has its own semaphore tradition and, if you're adept at it, you can probably send and receive messages as fast as I can type this paragraph.

In semaphore, the N is conveyed by holding a flag in each hand and pointed at the floor at about 30 degree angles from the body. The D is conveyed by holding one flag straight up at the sky and the other pointing straight at the ground. When you superimpose these two semaphore positions together, you get something that looks like the peace sign.

ND stands for Nuclear Disarmament.

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The world would be a better place if we didn't have nuclear weapons. If only we could trust each other. But we can't and we shouldn't, so it seems a necessary evil that they exist. If Hollywood has taught us anything, it is that nuclear warheads would be great if we need to destroy an asteroid that is heading toward us.

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Somewhere up there is an asteroid called Apophis* which is scheduled to come pretty close to Earth sometime in the year 2029, when my son will be old enough to get his driver's license. Apophis is about 340 metres wide and is supposed to come within 32,000 kilometres of the Earth's surface. I am not an astronomer and I have never stepped foot in the NASA** building, but I'm not about to faint if someone tells me that someone wanted to shoot me but missed by 32,000 kilometres.

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By the way, the origin of the peace sign is not the stuff of urban legend. It was designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a graduate of the Royal College of Arts and is on the record as saying that the symbol incorporated the semaphore letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament).

Still, whenever I see it, I can't help but think it's an anti-Christian symbol because of what that person told me in Bible college.

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Ah, but I won't judge you if you wear a peace symbol. I might think you're a little behind the times because that thing hasn't been chic since the 70s. Generally speaking, when I see someone wearing a peace sign, I assume that they have long hair and eat a lot of kelp and that their house smells like incense and that they have a record player at home that plays Janis Joplin and that they smoke a lot of pot.

The latter is most troublesome because I don't like pot and I don't like being around people who are under its influence. 

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Apophis was discovered in June of 2004 and was formally named a little over a year later after it met the criteria set out by the people who decide when galactic objects can be named by people (probably the illuminati or the head writers of the Golden Girls.) The people who discovered the asteroid named it Apophis because that is the Greek name for Apen, who was an enemy of the Egyptian sun-god, Ra. That's sort of appropriate because, according to legend, Apen tries to swallow Ra during his nightly passage. Still, I wish we would give up the habit of naming things in space after figures from ancient mythology. Going forward, I want to start naming asteroids and planets and balls of stardust after deceased pop culture figures.

Waiting for the day when as asteroid called John Denver 56238 starts hurtling toward the Earth.

And peace, out.

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* How do we know it's called Apophis? Did we ask the asteroid its name? Silly humans, arrogant enough to think we have the right to name galactic objects. What if the asteroid wants to be called Sally instead? Ya just never know.

** Second note this month where I referenced NASA.