If you saw this:
what would you think it meant? I think it means exhaust fans are pleasant to pirates and not to everybody else, who run to find aircon. NASA Watch thinks it means "that big ceiling fans can send flaming arrows down to kill pirates and people crossing the street". It might even mean that if you see a pirate on a windy day, you should run for your life.
The UN, though, thinks it means "the potential dangers of being close to a large source of ionizing radiation".
Which goes to show that successful symbols are never designed by committees that are not experts in symbol design.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Not Exactly Rocket Science has a great post showing that sloths in the wild may be slow, but aren't actually that sleepy:
Rattenborg captured three female brown-throated three-toed sloths in the Panamanian rainforest and fitted them with the recording cap, a radio-telemetry collar to reveal their…
As I survey the lack of reason that infests--nay, permeates every fiber of--my country, sometimes I despair. Whether it's because of the freak fest that the race for the Republican nomination has become, with each candidate seemingly battling to prove he can bring home the crazier crazy than any…
Read Part One of this series here.
At this point Strobel and Meyer left the stage. The room grew dark, and a video came on the large screen to my left. It was an excerpt from the The Privileged Planet, based on the book of the same title. The book was written by astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez…
Does anyone remember the H1N1 influenza pandemic? As hard as it is to believe, that was five years ago. One thing I remember about the whole thing is just how crazy both the antivaccine movement and conspiracy theorists (but I repeat myself) went over the public health campaigns to vaccinate…
Hmph! I figured it out.
But it took long enough that I probably fried.
Yeah. If you already know what the radiation icon means, this one's pretty clear. If you don't, well ... you probably guess it's not good, but I doubt you'll guess radiation.
The top icon is obscure, but the ones at the bottom are clearly telling us to run away from the pirates.
Wha--? The radiation symbol is obscure? It's been used aggressively and exclusively for at LEAST forty years. I'd certainly say it is the least obscure symbol for radiation available.
I'm not claiming that it is a well designed warning sign. I don't think it is all that well-designed. But I understood it pretty quickly.
It is surprising you got it PirateDan because it clearly indicates that you should run away from ionizing radiation (of course you have to run very fast, esecially from gamma rays)unless you are a pirate.