h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

To let you know how out of touch I am with the rest of the entire planet, it's come to my attention that rainbows are seen as a symbol of homosexuality.

This stunning revelation was mentioned along with various sinister sounding copyright references (which I've not yet looked into to see if they were bluffing) as grounds for not approving of a picture I suggested for a project.

Now...I don't want to sound mean here...I try to be as accepting and open minded as I can be, and I've got nothing but love for my fellow human beings regardless of how they live their life.

But man, I'm starting to believe those old sayings about lawyers being inherrently evil (no offense Tom or Rick if you read this). I mean....who copyrights Rainbows? It's a RAINBOW!

I mean, what's to stop me from copyrighting the Sun? Or the blue sky? Or clouds? Ha! Let's see anyone EVER paint another picture of the outdoors AGAIN once I finish up by copyrighting Stars!

And besides...and forgive me for playing the culture card, here...but rainbows are an essential part of my religious history! Rainbows are representative of the promise that God made to never again destroy all of humanity but a few good people, which kinda leads directly into the whole saved-through-Jesus thing. Based on what I've been told, this would mean that, say, a mural of salvation through the centuries couldn't tell the story of Noah's Ark.

So to sum up....while I guess I'm okay that so many people choose to use a rainbow to be indicative of their group, I have a REALLY hard time accepting that it's now unacceptable for any other group to do so (again, probably due to some weird thing involving lawyers (sorry again, Rick and Tom, nothing personal)).

Now that I've ranted, it's time to go see which copyright laws I was lied to about, and how much of an idiot I look like.

I may be wrong here affy but, I believe there is a specific representation of a rainbow that the gay community has taken for their own. The one I see all the time is simply horizontal bars of the colors of the rainbow, not any bow to it really. If anyone can correct me, please do so.

Never heard of this either. How to go to Valhalla now?

But I hear that some firms copyright human genes. Maybe we all some day have to pay tax or whatever it is called to pass our genes on to our children .

I've heard that a (canadian) farmer, neighbour to a farmer who uses gene-modified grains, had to pay up to the modifying firm, because his plants interacted with the neighbours' and then his harvest had grains that possesed the genes the firm had copyrighted.

Affy, maybe it is the rainbow in a logo-form that is copyrighted. But still....

It would make a whole lot more sense if it was just a specific kind of rainbow. I should've thought of that at the meeting, and it'll be a few weeks before I can see this person again.

Yeah, if it's one or two *specific* rainbows, then by all means copyright them. I was just talking about a general picture of campus.

I tend to waste my rant-of-the-month quota on things that I'm wrong about, I've noticed....not sure if that's good or bad.

Thanks for talking me into a more reasonable state, everyone.