New Python.org website?

[Terry Hancock]

On Thu, 19 Jan 2006 18:02:52 -0000
"Richard Brodie" <R.Brodie at rl.ac.uk> wrote:
> Not only is there a Red Star of David but it has been
> causing great controversy for years in the ICRC. Google
> "Red Crystal", or check Wikipedia for the story. At least,
> it had some kind of resolution. 

"Like, OMG, it's a *New Age* religious symbol!"

Squares and diamonds are IIRC also religious symbols in some
Native American cultures -- at least the "four points"
concept is, as it represents the world with four cardinal
directions.

And I really bet, that if you come up with ANY reasonably
symmetric symbol, somebody somewhere can come up with a
religious significance for it.

There's an important distinction here, too. As I
understand it, the point of the official recognition of "Red
Cross/Crescent/Crystal" symbols under the Geneva convention
is so they can make rules like "It's a big no-no to bomb
buildings with this symbol on it".*

That introduces considerable new wrinkles to the problem:
the symbol most be unquestionably recognizable, even in the
heat of battle, it must be EXTREMELY neutral if people who
are otherwise blowing each other to hell are going to agree
on its use, and the stakes for error are extremely high.

None of this applies to the choice of logo for Python.

The better example was the swastika comparison to a company
logo.  But that's a bit different situation. In order for
the swastika to acquire this extremity of hostility, it had
to be the symbol of what is widely regarded as one of the
most evil political movements in the history of Earth.  Even
so, there are still some "innocent" uses of the symbol, such
as for shrines in Japan.

If you are validating this level of hatred for the symbols
of Christianity (or Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or whatever),
then I assert that it is *you* who are being religiously
intolerant, not the person that used the symbol.

Let me put this a different way. Let's suppose that Python
was written by an Omanian, instead of a Dutchman. If, in
the interest of providing a unique identity, the author
incorporated a crescent moon into the logo, this would not
deter my using it, nor should it in any way reflect any
religious implication whatsoever -- the artist, would, at
most, be using imagery representative of the works' origin.

This, you understand, is an example of *intentionally* using
a religious symbol in a logo.

Now, imagine that the language was instead, say, an
astronomical data reduction tool.  Now, the use of a
crescent becomes topical to the language, and the fact that
the author lives in a Muslim country or is himself Muslim
would be completely incidental to the use of a symbol which
resembles a crescent moon (but might really be a generic
illuminated planet in space).

Then some conspiracy theorist comes along and says "Hey, you
know the symbol for XYZ is a crescent, and the author is
Muslim, it's a plot!"

Oh come on.

The confusion of "cross" and "plus" sign is similarly
accidental (and I'm not even sure that the + was
intentional).

It looks cool, it's got not one Python, but two, it's nicely
iconic, and unique, and the "+" is even topical to computer
languages, and has, as someone else pointed out, a
"positive" connotation. ;-)

I still like the PyGame python better, but it's not a bad
logo. If anything, my objection would be that it's starting
to look a bit too "corporate" for my taste.  A little too
clean and boxy.  But I can get over that.


* The part I've never been able to relate to, though, is, if
they can agree on stuff like this, why can't they agree NOT
to blow hell out of each other?  Seems like that would be
rather more constructive.

 -- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com