word-association or i'm feeling lucky

German courts have made a ruling against a major driver of the internet, essentially establishing that anticipating a seeker’s search query is badgering and putting potentially libelous words into one’s mouth. Now, individuals can petition, administratively embargo the internet and have false or unflattering suggested results disassociated and stricken. What do you think? Is auto-complete a useful and non-sensational tool—like spell-check, our friend, unbiased and regulated by the hive of users or is it prejudicial and a potential source for infamy? This decision will certainly carry precedence and cause repercussions. Will the over-class and industry later gain license to prune and preen their public perceptions as rumours and unfounded or will reputations of by-standers be protected?

worshipful company of fishmongers

Indubitably superior to any cookbook or restaurant guide, the cataloguers at Mental Floss present a superb and saintly calendar of various patrons of food and drink. Though often times the association is lost, it’s really interesting to learn about the better angles of our cuisine and maybe to whom to turn for intercession for both cooking and greater crises.

the phantom toll-booth or intersecting rings

In response to horrible traffic snarls that converged on the town of Swindon between Bristol and Reading, civil engineers installed this intimidating-looking but ingeniously effective array of roundabouts in the early 1970s.

Probably without the aerial view of this anti-clockwise clockwork, called the Magic Roundabout, I’m sure the layout directs drivers quite naturally and would result in no hesitation or panic. It was a challenge for me at first and I’m still content to circle a few extra times until I get my bearings, but I have learned to embrace the Continent’s shared fondness for the traffic circle to regulate cross-roads. I won’t forget, however, our shock and uncertainty upon the first time we came to Ireland together and leaving the airport in a rental car were confronted with a roundabout a few lanes deep. Maybe that first hurdle was intentional to remind visitors of the rules of the road.

zeichenträger

Designed by Gerald Herbert Holtom a few months prior, the first public appearance of the Peace Sign occurred fifty-five years ago today, at a rally against the proliferation of atomic weapons in the UK. The simple sign was quickly adopted as a banner by activist groups around the world. Although some point to much old and mixed origins of the symbol, including signs of Christian persecution and intolerance, anarchy, the Petrine office, and even as a unit badge by a Panzer division during World War II that led the advance into Russia and Hungary—which surely experienced distress to see the sign paraded and celebrated. The artist may or may have not known and been influences by these past associations but the popular legend has it that the Peace Sign is a overlapping of the semaphore signals for N and D—for Nuclear Disarmament. Whatever the true history, the icon is now universally recognised as a sign of outreach, engagement and reconciliation.