Mark Liberman recently asked, “What was the earliest use of mixed typographical symbols (as opposed to uniform asterisks or underlining) to represent (part or all of) taboo words?” The use of such symbols appears to have originated as a comic-strip convention. Comic strip fans, following Mort Walker’s Lexicon of Comicana, have often called these cursing characters grawlixes, though I prefer the term obscenicons. In Gwillim Law’s history of grawlixes, he lists examples of cartoon cursing going back to the Sep. 3, 1911 installment of “The Katzenjammer Kids.”
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Along with a sequence of asterisk-dash-exclamation point-dash-exclamation point, the speech balloon also features what appears to be a stick-figure devil firing a cannon, with three more exclamation points for good measure.

Plants are able to “remember” and “react” to information contained in light, according to researchers.

Plants, scientists say, transmit information about light intensity and quality from leaf to leaf in a very similar way to our own nervous systems.

These “electro-chemical signals” are carried by cells that act as “nerves” of the plants.
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But in this new study, he and his colleagues discovered that when light stimulated a chemical reaction in one leaf cell, this caused a “cascade” of events and that this was immediately signalled to the rest of the plant by via specific type of cell called a “bundle sheath cell”.

The scientists measured the electrical signals from these cells, which are present in every leaf. They likened the discovery to finding the plants’ “nervous system”.
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Plants perform a sort of biological light computation, using information contained in the light to immunise themselves against diseases ”
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“[So the plant] has a specific memory for the light which builds its immunity against pathogens, and it can adjust to varying light conditions.”

He said that plants used information encrypted in the light to immunise themselves against seasonal pathogens.
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The images showed chemical reactions in leaves that were not exposed to light
“So the plants perform a sort of biological light computation, using information contained in the light to immunise themselves against diseases that are prevalent during that season.”
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“This requires an appraisal of the situation and an appropriate response - that’s a form of intelligence.

“What this study has done is link two signalling pathways together… and the electrical signalling pathway is incredibly rapid, so the whole plant could respond immediately to high [levels of] light.”

Blake catalogs a variety of techniques used to conceal or disguise meaning; or to limit its circulation, or to draw out the hidden powers of language itself. They include cryptography, Kabbalah, crossword puzzles, riddles, anagrams, magic spells, slang, and the private languages that emerge within tightly knit groups.

Part of the fascination of the book comes from noticing how often these modes of concealment resemble one another, or bleed together.

The ability to store information by writing it down (in effect, concealing it from the eyes of the illiterate) was once rare enough to make it a close kin of sorcery. And so the properties of the written word were themselves virtually occultic. The power of an amulet might come from a tiny scroll inside, running it like a little Pentium processor; and the text on that scroll could be baffling unless you knew to look for the anagram spelled out by the first letter in each word.

Each character has its own origin story, but most turn up first during wartime. The term “Uncle Sam” began as a reference to the United States government during the war of 1812, but the image of an old man with a goatee was popularized by the famous World War I recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg. (Uncle Sam and John Bull appeared together for decades in political cartoons in both countries.) France’s Marianne emerged during the French Revolution as a symbol of reason and liberty. Bharat Mata, a sari-clad mother goddess who symbolizes India, was born during that country’s independence movement in the 19th century.

Personifications are often surrounded by other national symbols, too. Italia Turrita, the womanly representation of Italy, wears a “mural crown” symbolizing the country’s great cities and holds ears of corn that symbolize its agrarian tradition. Germania’s crown of oak leaves supposedly represents heroism, her sword symbolizes power, and the hemp branch means peace. Britannia often appears above waves, emphasizing the nation’s geography.
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Some personifications have strong political associations. Ireland, for example, was long represented as Hibernia by pro-union Brits, who depicted her as the helpless younger sister of Brittania. Irish nationalists, meanwhile, would use Kathleen Ni Houlihan, an old woman who needs to be protected from the British colonists. Srulik, the adorable young cartoon character who came to represent the state of Israel in the 1950s, was seen as a repudiation of the anti-Semitic drawings that depicted the country as a conniving old man. Handala, the iconic cartoon symbol of the Palestinians, is depicted facing away with his hands behind his back.

Each character has its own origin story, but most turn up first during wartime. The term “Uncle Sam” began as a reference to the United States government during the war of 1812, but the image of an old man with a goatee was popularized by the famous World War I recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg. (Uncle Sam and John Bull appeared together for decades in political cartoons in both countries.) France’s Marianne emerged during the French Revolution as a symbol of reason and liberty. Bharat Mata, a sari-clad mother goddess who symbolizes India, was born during that country’s independence movement in the 19th century.

Personifications are often surrounded by other national symbols, too. Italia Turrita, the womanly representation of Italy, wears a “mural crown” symbolizing the country’s great cities and holds ears of corn that symbolize its agrarian tradition. Germania’s crown of oak leaves supposedly represents heroism, her sword symbolizes power, and the hemp branch means peace. Britannia often appears above waves, emphasizing the nation’s geography.
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Some personifications have strong political associations. Ireland, for example, was long represented as Hibernia by pro-union Brits, who depicted her as the helpless younger sister of Brittania. Irish nationalists, meanwhile, would use Kathleen Ni Houlihan, an old woman who needs to be protected from the British colonists. Srulik, the adorable young cartoon character who came to represent the state of Israel in the 1950s, was seen as a repudiation of the anti-Semitic drawings that depicted the country as a conniving old man. Handala, the iconic cartoon symbol of the Palestinians, is depicted facing away with his hands behind his back.

The elemental power of sexuality has also waned in American popular culture. Under the much-maligned studio production code, Hollywood made movies sizzling with flirtation and romance. But from the early ’70s on, nudity was in, and steamy build-up was out. A generation of filmmakers lost the skill of sophisticated innuendo. The situation worsened in the ’90s, when Hollywood pirated video games to turn women into cartoonishly pneumatic superheroines and sci-fi androids, fantasy figures without psychological complexity or the erotic needs of real women.

Furthermore, thanks to a bourgeois white culture that values efficient bodies over voluptuous ones, American actresses have desexualized themselves, confusing sterile athleticism with female power. Their current Pilates-honed look is taut and tense — a boy’s thin limbs and narrow hips combined with amplified breasts. Contrast that with Latino and African-American taste, which runs toward the healthy silhouette of the bootylicious Beyoncé.

The psychology of perception seems to suggest the existence of a common cognitive system which treats all or most sensorily conveyed meanings in the same way. If all signs must also be objects of perception, there is every reason to believe that their modality will determine at least part of their nature. Thus, the sensory modalities will be visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, kinesthetic, etc. A list of sign types would include: writing, symbol, index, image, map, graph, diagram, etc. Some combinations of signs can be multi-modal, i.e. different types of signs grouped together for effect. But the distinction between a medium and a modality should be clarified:
text is a medium for presenting the modality of natural language;
image is both a medium and a modality;
music is a modality for the auditory media.
So, the modality refers to a certain type of information and/or the representation format in which information is stored. The medium is the means whereby this information is delivered to the senses of the interpreter. Natural language is the primary modality, having many invariant properties across the auditory media as spoken language, the visual media as written language, the tactile media as Braille, and kinetic media as sign language.