⍾ LI'L MUSHROOM GUY
⎌ LEAP-FROGGIN' O's
☣☮ BIOHAZARDOUS HIPPIE WARNING
∰ THREE VIOLINS SHARING HULA HOOP
☃ Unicode table for you: with sliders to help you whiz through all those characters you didn't even know you had. ☃
⫷ All symbols in the table have links underneath them which lead to active Wikipedia Pages. ⫸
[ previously ① ⓑ ☠, via ]
␄
posted by not_on_display on Aug 31, 2009 - 91 comments

Japanese Element Symbols is an introduction for non-Japanese to the Japanese language through Kanji symbols, its alphabet, elements of Japan's culture, and what to expect on the culinary front.
posted by netbros on Aug 6, 2009 - 12 comments

Symbolic Gestures. How, exactly, does a simple picture go about telling you, "Be careful here. It's cold, and sometimes ice forms on the roof, and it can fall off, and it can be sharp, and that can hurt you"? Inspired by the upcoming Ken Burns documentary, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, Jesse Smith of The Smart Set examines the pictograph designs that convey important information to park visitors. [more inside]
posted by amyms on Jul 31, 2009 - 35 comments

A video of 2000 Symbols set to the Cool Kids via Matchstic.
posted by cashman on May 7, 2009 - 7 comments

The Ministry of Type is a weblog about type, typography, lettering, calligraphy and other related things. The FontFeed, from the folks at FontShop, is a daily dispatch of recommended fonts, typography techniques, and inspirational examples of digital type at work in the real world. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Mar 31, 2009 - 12 comments

Decodeunicode.org has a useful and full-featured search for the names and glyphs for those Unicode characters that display as a plain box full of despair. It is presented by the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz. Roll the dice ⚅⚄ and try it out. [more inside]
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim on Jan 23, 2009 - 25 comments

Despite some rather interesting biographical information, Iridius’s interest in typographical symbols is noteworthy, especially the section on alchemical ones.
posted by cthuljew on Jan 20, 2009 - 6 comments

This strange mixture of meanings and symbols confuses me. maybe it's just that some of the ideas are confusingly named.
posted by StrikeTheViol on Aug 4, 2007 - 34 comments

Minotauromaquia - a stop motion animated short set to Stravinsky's in which Picasso confronts the minotaur and some other painted characters come to life. The image of the Minotaur is a recurring symbol of self in Picasso's works. (main link via Milinkito [more])
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 5, 2006 - 12 comments

You see, when large trucks make a right turn, they swing a little bit wide to the left first. Simple idea. Many ways to express it. God bless us all.
posted by signal on Oct 29, 2006 - 35 comments

A Brief History Of The Clenched Fist. With illustrations.
posted by jack_mo on May 3, 2006 - 18 comments

✙ ☪ ◊? The addition of a third protective symbol (fourth, if you count this happy lion) will allow the Magen David Adom of Israel to join the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies after over 50 years. It might look odd, but a lot of other symbols we take for granted have interesting recent origins. ☮ was designed in 1958. ☣ was created by Dow in 1966. ☢ first appeared as a doodle in the 1940s. The symbols of the planets have many origins, but here on earth, the origins of ☺ remain so convoluted that it might take a fictional "symbologist" to sort it all out.
posted by blahblahblah on Oct 3, 2005 - 44 comments

? , !, & @ .
posted by ?! on Aug 22, 2005 - 46 comments

"Almost half the children committed one or more of these mistakes. They attempted with apparent seriousness to perform the same actions with the miniature items that they had with the large ones. Some sat down on the little chair: they walked up to it, turned around, bent their knees and lowered themselves onto it. Some simply perched on top, others sat down so hard that the chair skittered out from under them. Some children sat on the miniature slide and tried to ride down it, usually falling off in the process; others attempted to climb the steps, causing the slide to tip over. (With the chair and slide made of sturdy plastic and only about five inches tall, the toddlers faced no danger of hurting themselves.)"
posted by Tlogmer on Aug 18, 2005 - 34 comments

Claudette Colvin --a Montgomery teen arrested 9 months before Rosa Park's now-famous refusal to sit in the back of the bus. There were 4 women who stood up before Mrs. Parks, yet most of us know nothing about them. It was their actions that led to the Supreme Court overturning segregation on public transit, yet Rosa Parks is the visible symbol. On worthy and "unworthy" messengers and symbols.
posted by amberglow on Aug 13, 2005 - 14 comments

These people are apparently unaware that the swastika was not a Nazi symbol in 1880. Is there more than one way to look at this? One Jew's perspective.
posted by spock on Jul 29, 2005 - 181 comments

Symbol fun. Happy Friday.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies on May 27, 2005 - 13 comments

Lakota Winter Counts. Lakota and other plains tribes counted time by winters. An appointed recorder would choose one major event to mark the year, depicting that event by name and symbol. Early records dating back to the 10th century were often painted on buffalo skins; more recent winter counts were recorded as text journals. These fascinating records offer insight into natural and historic events for our land that precede accounts of European settlers. - more -
posted by madamjujujive on Apr 26, 2005 - 12 comments

Language started with emotional signaling. That's the thesis of a new book, The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, And Intelligence Evolved From Our Primate Ancestors To Modern Humans, by Stanley I. Greenspan and Stuart G. Shanker.

Lived emotional experience is key to language learning, the authors suggest. "Mathematicians and physicists may manipulate abstruse symbols representing space, time, and quantity, but they first understood those entities as tiny children wanting a far-away toy, or waiting for juice, or counting cookies. The grown-up genius, like the adventurous child, forms ideas through playful explorations in the imagination, only later translated into the rigor of mathematics."

The book is very ambitious, and I don't think we'll ever know where language came from, but this sounds like a more fruitful line of thinking than Chomsky's deus ex machina "language gene" mutation.
posted by languagehat on Sep 29, 2004 - 32 comments

Colors in motion - an animated and interactive experience of color communication and symbolism. (flash. via One's web)
posted by madamjujujive on Jun 26, 2004 - 10 comments

Rongorongo! Say it twice -- don't it feel nice? Most people think of the enigmatic maoi when they think of Easter Island but an equally vexing mystery is found in twenty-six wooden objects which contain pictographic symbols comprising...what? A language? A mnemomic system for recording stories now long forgotten? A resource for modern primitives' tribal tatoos? We could ask, but the authors are long-gone -- the victims of hard times -- leaving only a few tablets and a bunch of carved stone to puzzle over.
posted by Ogre Lawless on Jan 19, 2004 - 5 comments

Ascii Farts.
posted by holloway on Nov 15, 2003 - 5 comments

Hate on display. The Anti-Defamation League has a visual database of symbols devised or co-opted by neo-Nazis and supremacist groups worldwide, as well as numbers and acronyms with racist connotations. Although most of us know what 88 means, there's also info about others such as the communist-separatist American Front and the Five Percenters. More neo-Nazi flags here; flags and badges here. Please remember: while racism is always immoral, symbols themselves can have several meanings.
posted by 111 on Jul 23, 2003 - 26 comments

The Swastika, Swastika links, and a complete index.
posted by hama7 on Nov 17, 2002 - 64 comments

Did you know "88" means "Heil Hitler"? Neither did a buyer at Target. "August 27, 2002 -- Target, the nationwide department-store chain, said today it will pull shorts and baseball caps emblazoned with neo-Nazi hate symbols from its shelves." After dithering for a few weeks, Target responded to tolerance.org's campaign, but is now shooting themselves in the foot again by being less than accomodating of returns of the offending (and I do mean offending!) product. The link above is to the original story, the Aug. 27 update is linked at the bottom of that page. Howcum I never saw this on CNN? 8
posted by BGM on Aug 27, 2002 - 104 comments

Warchalking Collaboratively creating a hobo-language for free wireless networking. Here is the first draft of a warchalking symbol card. [via Boing Boing]
posted by srboisvert on Jun 24, 2002 - 26 comments

Are you seeing the world differently? You may be suffering from synesthesia, a rare condition that allows an individual to perceive symbols in color. Someone who has synesthesia will read a newspaper in multitudinous colors, often perceiving a color change within particular syllables. In one case reported in this article, a man overhead a conversation in Korean, only to have his mind inundated with colors, despite being unable to understand the words. Rare condition or a state of sensory cognition to come?
posted by ed on Mar 19, 2002 - 48 comments

How the biohazard symbol came to be (from NYTimes Magazine)...
posted by Miyagi on Nov 18, 2001 - 12 comments

If you find that flags on SUVs or for sale in pop-under ads water down the meaning of Old Glory, have I got some flags for you. Art's exploration of the flag as a symbol both strengthen it's value as a powerful icon, and question our country's fallibility.
posted by machaus on Oct 27, 2001 - 9 comments

The American Institute of Graphic Arts offer a selection of useful symbols in eps and gif formats for free download. Are there any other sites offering similar symbols?
posted by ecvgi on Sep 10, 2001 - 15 comments

A Subliminal Nazi Swastika has been found in a few different toys. In the first toy, the swastika is pretty blatantly obvious. In the second one, however, the swastika was made to be more transparent and less noticeable. And for those of you that don't know about the history of the swastika, when inverted (counterclockwise) it's actually an ancient symbol for good luck. But when shown clockwise (like these toys are) it is a symbol of hate. You can learn all about it here.
posted by kingmissile on Sep 5, 2001 - 22 comments

Important Massachusetts Legislation shown here makes me pruod to live in the Commonwealth...
posted by phunkone on May 10, 2001 - 20 comments

You know those house flags? I recommend finding one with this graphic to send a message to your neighbors. Better yet, how about this one?
posted by geronimo_rex on May 2, 2001 - 12 comments

Mississippi Reaps What it Sews? Mississippi votes overwhelmingly to keep the Confederate flag as part of the state flag design. Is this democracy in action? This type of issue is usually decided by a state legislature. I understand the idea of heritage but surely there are ways to preserve it without having a banner on every corner widely seen as a symbol of slavery and racism. Even if you don't view the Southern cross as representing this, why hurt the people who do? The Nazi's built their power on the nationalistic idea of German "pride and heritage", but you don't see swastika flags flying today over Berlin. Does anyone think there should be an economic boycott of the State, like the one that was effective in getting North Carolina to remove the confederate symbol from its capital building? (Public buildings here in Texas now display the official Confederate State's flag when flying our "six flags" - not the Southern cross which was actually a battle flag.)
posted by sixdifferentways on Apr 18, 2001 - 41 comments

Bow down to Frosty! Frosty commands you! Snowmen as symbols of patriarchic oppression. Some people really just look for things to get snitty about.
posted by Skot on Dec 29, 2000 - 12 comments

never acknowledged: evidently, reparations were never made to gay holocaust survivors in germany. never mind that's where the pink triangle came from...
posted by patricking on Jun 16, 2000 - 2 comments

Laetitia Casta has been elected as France's new millennial Marianne, symbolizing the embodiment of the Republic and symbol of the Revolution. In protest to the election of a supermodel to represent France, a french villiage has named a main square after an "ordinary woman" in the villiage.
posted by mathowie on Feb 21, 2000 - 0 comments

If you've seen Sixth Sense, check this out. There's an analysis of the symbolism used all throughout the film. Lots of it makes sense, but I didn't notice too much of it during the movie.
posted by mathowie on Aug 25, 1999 - 0 comments