Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The International Flag of Planet Earth

flagofplanetearth.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–109 of 109 posts

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#101

Post by henriquemaia »

ywecur wrote: post #71
monochromatic wrote: post #50

This is a silly project that solves a problem no one has. When we encounter aliens, it'll maybe make sense to have some designation for humans/earth as a whole. In the meantime though, it's completely meaningless. And the flag itself is... ok I guess, but there are a million designs that would be equally acceptable. I just don't get the point.

I'd say it creates a sense of unity with those that travel into outer space.

I concur. When I see some spacecraft bearing the flag of one particular country, I feel something is missing, for I myself also feel part of quest for a greater understanding of our boundaries with outer space. A flag of the earth would create that sense of unity you referred to.

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#102

Post by aruggirello »

vlehto wrote: post #79
dognotdog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one is a lot more interesting, though it's basically just a map, which is atypical for flags. The OP's flag is very abstract. Presumably, any other alien race also strives for unity and lives. It's hard to create a better flag without actually knowing aliens and having some idea of commonalities and differences with humanity. Indeed, maybe we need a flag for humanity, not planet earth?

These would be the current candidates for humanity: http://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/ima... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque#/media/File:Pio... And my personal favorite: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Voyager_... (BTW there is a flag for earth: http://static.news18.com/pix/2015/04/UN_flag.jpg )

I wasn't aware the UN actually had a flag for Earth; BTW, it seems they don't regard Antarctica as belonging to our planet...

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#104

Post by vlehto »

aruggirello wrote: post #102
vlehto wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These would be the current candidates for humanity: http://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/ima... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque#/media/File:Pio... And my personal favorite: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Voyager_... (BTW there is a flag for earth: http://static.news18.com/pix/2015/04/UN_flag.jpg )

I wasn't aware the UN actually had a flag for Earth; BTW, it seems they don't regard Antarctica as belonging to our planet...

It's not really the flag for earth. But it gets kinda close being official flag and having 193 member states out of 194(?).

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#105

Post by pluma »

vlehto wrote: post #104
aruggirello wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't aware the UN actually had a flag for Earth; BTW, it seems they don't regard Antarctica as belonging to our planet...

It's not really the flag for earth. But it gets kinda close being official flag and having 193 member states out of 194(?).

Well, the exact number of countries is a very messy issue and the definition of what is a country tends to be "whatever other countries acknowledge to be one". This can be especially awkward if some of the other countries don't want to accept its status and the rest plays along because they have no incentive to get involved.

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#106

Post by scott_karana »

alyx wrote: post #44
chasing wrote: post #38

As with these sorts of things, I respect the academic exercise, but they always feel really arbitrary. Like, I could pick fifty different decent symbols and color schemes and come up with something that kind of looked good and might be a good Earth flag in a movie or something. If that's the goal, then the challenge isn't really that hard. If you really wanted to explore a flag for Earth, you'd engage people from aro…

That would lead to analysis-paralysis pretty quickly. Just saying.

Isn't that sort of the point?

"Make a static, single, identifiable representation of a massive, diverse, scattered, irregularly sparse time-malleable dataset"

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#107

Post by pluma »

teddyh wrote: post #80
databit wrote: post #66

Why not use the Olympic flag. Isn't that the purpose of the Olympic Games? To unite humanity?

If you read up on the actual Olympic Games and the Olympic Committee, you could get the impression that their purpose is to unite humanity against the Olympic Committe .

Well, common enemies tend to be the best bonding agent in any given situation, so I propose the following:

Azure, the Olympic symbol argent. Motto: "Fuck the International Olympic Committee!".

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#108

Post by pluma »

yitchelle wrote: post #51

Interesting last picture where there is a row of the American flags and then a lonely Earth Flag. I would have though it would be Swedish flags as this project is from a design college in Stockholm.

Few other countries love displaying their flag as much as the US (plus a lot of stock photography just happens to come from the US), so I'd wager it's the easiest place to find stock photography to put the flag in.
Post reply on HN