We swim in a sea of symbols: acronyms, emojis, icons of all sorts, etc.  As old Confucius declared, “Signs and symbols rule the world, not words or laws.”  One example is the Straw Hat Pirates’ Jolly Roger.  The original Jolly Roger was a black flag emblazoned with a white skull and crossed bones was used by a number of pirate captains in the 1710s, according to Wikipedia, and “became the most commonly used pirate flag during the 1720s, especially after Charles Johnson first said so in his “A General History of the Pyrates” was published in 1723.  The Straw Hat flag was featured in last month’s “Gen Z Protesters Are Uniting Behind a Manga Pirate Flag, a CNN article by Lex Harvey.  It begins, “As Nepal’s famed Singha Durbar palace went up in flames last week, protesters determined to rattle the government hung a manga flag showing a skull wearing a straw hat against the building’s ornate golden gates …. for the Gen Z protesters that filled the streets of Nepal, ousting the country’s prime minister … the gesture was packed with meaning. The flag comes from the wildly popular 1997 Japanese manga One Piece by Eciichiro Oda, which tells the swashbuckling story of the charming pirate captain Monkey D. Luffy and his misfit ‘Straw Hat’ crew. Together, they set sail under a Jolly Roger flag that wears Luffy’s quintessential straw hat and his trademark beaming smile …. the flag symbolizes Luffy’s quest to chase his dreams, liberate oppressed people, and fight the autocratic World Government.”  Besides Nepal, the Straw Hat flag’s flown in huge protests in London and Jakarta against the Gaza genocide, and effectively against national governments in France, the Philippines, and Madagascar, and all were led by their Gen Z citizenry who love anime and manga comics but are frustrated by lack of employment opportunities and the widespread governmental corruption.  The participants have developed an international network sharing ideas and techniques to bring about change.

More prosaic symbols abound, too.  Music terminology can be daunting for non-Italians, but the notation symbols are clear.  For example, “Sforzando” means “suddenly forced”, and “denotes an abrupt, fierce accent on a single sound or chord.”  It’s symbol is “SƒZ.”  Vocalists and wind instrument players look for “breath marks,” “a large comma or apostrophe … located at the end of the phrase above the staff.”  Proofreaders and editors have their own symbolic glossary.  According to California State Chico, a large upside down “V” denotes a “carat,” where a letter, word, or phrase should be inserted, and “stet” inside a circle means to leave a word as it was before the editor erroneously corrected it.  Libraries have their special symbologies, too.  Besides the ubiquitous decimal systems to bring order to the mayhem of human information, there’s the National Library Symbol sign, “a white silhouette of a book and a reader on a blue background indicating there’s a library nearby:” That blue was “originally specified as Pantone PMS 3285” in 1982 when it was adopted by the persnickety American Library Association.

Another symbol used by librarians and logicians is the Venn Diagram.  Lucidchart.com tells us that a “Venn diagram uses overlapping circles or other shapes to illustrate the logical relationships between two or more sets of items … to graphically organize things, highlighting how the items are similar and different.”  It’s named for John Venn, an English logician born in 1834, who described it in his1880 paper “On the Diagrammatic and Mechanical Representation of Propositions and Reasonings.”  For instance, to compare the aspects of public libraries that people want to use them for versus what they need from their libraries, in circle A list the wants (quiet, mental stimulation, fine art, comfort, etc.) and in circle B the needs (shelter, safety, restrooms, food and water).  Where A and B overlap are qualities listed in both circles: good books, WIFI/internet, reliable information, educational and entertainment opportunities, and a sense of community.  Venn wasn’t the first with this concept.  Ramon Llull, a Catholic philosopher and knight, conceptualized it around 1300 CE, and in the late 1700s Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler developed a similar diagram 

Venn gets the credit, nonetheless, but when it comes to innovations in the sport of cricket, he stands alone, or at least with his son.  In 1909 they struck out Australia’s best batsman four times using a wooden mechanical bowling arm the Venns created that could throw a cricket ball with accuracy and various spins.  Last year engineers from Cambridge led by Thomas Glenday 

recreated the device. “The spin has been the key piece, and probably the most complicated part of the design. It’s thinking about the different forces that are acting on the ball simultaneously, and that transition of energy – it makes one hell of a diagram!”   And as modern Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang observed, “Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.”