Strangely Familiar?

Here is a picture of the familiar old Civil Defense emblem, which was retired yesterday after almost 70 years of service. We Cold War kids remember it well, if not fondly:


Here is its replacement, the Emergency Management logo:

And here is the current symbol for DC Comics, publisher of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.

Is it just me, or do logos #2 and #3 look an awful lot alike?

I leave it to your imagination to determine what this strange resemblance might mean, if anything...

Although I like to think I'm as cynical as the next guy, this news summary from this morning's New York Times struck even me as a little crusty:

Pope Backs Turkey’s Bid to Join European Union
The gesture of good will, a reversal of his position, was aimed at blunting Muslim anger toward him.

Short of Benedict himself saying, "I'm doing this to blunt Muslim anger toward me," it seems unlikely that we really know what Il Papa has in his heart. Mind, I'm sure that anger-blunting was part of the package (see above re my cynicism), but is it not also possible that the pope has re-thought his previous opposition to Turkey's joining the EU, that he has had a legitimate change of mind and/or heart—and that perhaps that instead of or in addition to anger-blunting is behind his new position?

But our society does not allow for that. To change one's mind is to flip-flop, to waffle, to bow to political correctness or some other pet bugaboo. Stubbornness has become a virtue. Real men "stay the course"; real men are consistent, and consistency requires one to be as ignorant today as he was yesterday.

Growth? That's a funny word…