In the early ’70s, I wore a peace shirt. That is, it had a peace sign on it. For some reason, this caused little consternation . . . and I lived in an army town. Then again, Canada wasn’t at war in the ’70s. In fact, Canadians were peacekeepers.

But the idyllic ’70s are dead and buried, and Canada is currently in Afghanistan trying to do what the old superpower, the Soviet Union, could not. Interesting. And darned if I know what happened to the shirt.

So . . . where did the peace symbol come from?

There’s plenty of documentation to support this view:

In 1958, Bertrand Russell and Canon John Collins formed the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). They organized a four-day march from London to Aldermaston — where England’s nuclear program was centered — and introduced CND’s symbol

. . . what was generally referred to world-wide as ‘the peace sign.’

Photo courtesy BECTU History Project

A brief history of the CND may be seen at the CND site. Another view may be read in the article, ‘Whatever happened to CND?‘ from the BBC News website.

The CND symbol was an amalgam of the semaphore ‘N’ (for ‘nuclear’) and ‘D’ (’disarmament’) and was carried by marchers as lollipop-like signs. A forest of them may be seen on display during a CND march, below:

Photo courtesy BECTU History Project

So what’s the big deal? A philosopher and a churchman decided to form a group protesting nuclear weaponry manufacture and proliferation and have a symbol designed. The symbol’s meaning evolves from meaning nuclear disarmament to ‘peace’ and Pagosa Springs, Colorado goes nuts?

Okay, so America is at war . . . but isn’t peace, ultimately, its objective? Anyone’s objective?

Certainly, there exist people who do not want peace at all — who want to war for God, for instance . . . despite the evident impotence of any god who needs people to fight for him. Be assured that an Entity capable of creating “everything made that was made” really doesn’t need your help or mine to take down people who don’t like Him.

There are other theories about the peace sign’s genesis. Stephen King researched this for a dormitory confrontation in ‘Hearts in Atlantis‘. Non-CND theories didn’t fare well, therein.

I remember a Jack Chick publication. ‘The Broken Cross‘, which stated that witches had to renounce the Christian God by turning a ceramic cross upside down and breaking off the arms (thus creating a peace sign, y’see). I know of no witches (and I do know a few . . . you may, too, though you may be unaware of this) who underwent this or similar initiations, but one should note that Mr Chick’s work isn’t always the most factual. As I remember, he blames most of the planet’s ills on the Catholic church.

Lisa Jensen’s and Bill Trimarco’s displaying a Christmas wreath in the shape of a peace sign calls to mind the heralding of Christ’s birth in Luke: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace and good will toward men.”

Frankly, ’tis the season, and a little peace and good will shouldn’t make people writhe in horror . . . or charge $25 /day to punish someone for having the audacity to herald it.

- - -

Incidentally, the peace sign at the beginning of this piece is courtesy of peacesymbol.org

Science has outdone itself yet again, providing an explanation (and a mathematical formula, yet) for the famed ‘beer-goggle effect’ — an observable, quantifiable and too-often-replicated happenstance wherein ugly people pass along their genes by sneakily appearing attractive to the inebriated.
The same findings were earlier noted in Scotland by University of Glasgow and St Andrews professors, who apparently weren’t funded by Bausch and Lomb.

– BBC News

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The new iPod Shuffle is in stores, and is ridiculously cute (albeit it has no discernable cuddly factor). 1 gigabyte, US$79. Also from Apple, the PRODUCT (RED) iPod Nano (Apple donates $10 of the purchase price to Bono’s African AIDS charity) is now available in an 8-gigabyte model . . . days after I bought mine.

Neil Patrick Harris (’Doogie Howser’) has informed a largely unsurprised planet that he is gay.

Reverend Ted Haggard has been given the Parson’s Punt from the New Life Church he used to head.

380 people voted on this story on Yahoo, so I gotta do it: 33-year-old Pittsburgh native John Sheehan, fresh out of prison, is likely going back Real Soon Now. He was seen near a Bay Area (California) transit station, lying naked on a tree stump indulging in auto-eroticism. Usually this is sufficient to break any parole restrictions, but Mr Sheehan had an ace up his sleeve: an awl up his rectum. No word on what Mr Sheehan was in prison for (passing bad cheeks?), but the mind boggles.

Pastor Ted Haggard, An evangelical minister strongly opposed to gay marriage (and, presumably, drugs) resigned among allegations that he’d been having a three-year affair with a male prostitute who supplied him with methamphetamine.

Initially denying all, he has since amended his denial to gay sex, only. He did, after all, purchase methamphetamine (but didn’t take it, ‘course) and enjoyed one relaxing massage.

Pastor Haggard was the president of the American Association of Evangelicals (roughly 30 million members) and the minister of the New Life Church (approximately 14,000 members) at the time the allegations arose.
. . .

Sex scandals involving evangelists are old hat. Depending on your age, you may remember Jimmy Swaggart’s lip-trembling confession (prostitute) and the PTL Club’s downfall (fraud, conspiracy, church secretary Jessica Hahn).

In July, 2005 Ms Hahn informed Larry King that Tammy Faye Messner (of PTL Ministries, then Tammy Faye Bakker) had been having an affair, so hubby Jim Bakker and associate John Fletcher drugged her drink, then raped her.

Her allegations — and allegations of Bakker’s homosexuality coming from peers such as John Ankerberg eight years after the fact helped to bring down Bakker’s empire; serious financial abuses were discovered, and Jim Bakker was sentenced to serve 45 years, but ultimately spent just over five years in prison.

Tammy Faye Messner is currently in a hospice care with inoperable lung cancer (initially spread from her colon).

Today at 4pm eastern, the fourth event of the esteemed Blogger Poker Tour takes place.

Yours Truly has been doing miserably on the tour, so much so that I hang my head in shame as I think about it.
I rattled this in after the second event (the first I’d participated in):

Well, it wasn’t looking too good for me with 3 queens and an ace kicker. We bet and bet, and my Estonian opponent needn’t have worried about having a weak kicker; having the other queen, he also had another card to make a full house.

I went out perhaps six or seven hands later with an A-2 going up against someone’s A-A. Yep. Ordinarily, an A-2 isn’t an all-in kind of thing, but when you’re down to 300 chips, it’s worth a shot. But not against pocket rockets.

There were 75 of us — I dropped like a stone at #72. Not my day.

However . . . today’s meeting of blogging poker nuts is being hosted by IronGirl, and she’s dubbed it the IronGirl’s Omaha a Go-Go.

This is good, y’see, ’cause I love Omaha. Perhaps I’ve a chance of making up for two awful outings (I missed one). Should you see any flying pigs this afternoon, you’ll know I pulled it off.