“I swear officer, I’m in distress! My wife took the car, and I’m out of Bacon Salt!”
Did you get a good night’s sleep?
[Moderating]
cmyk, you and others were requested to cease and desist from making “upside down” posts in this thread:
They are hard to read at best, and may be impossible to read without the right font available.
Ok, it’s was sort of funny in the context of this thread. But I think we’ve had enough.
Colibri
General
Indeed… nice hotel and very comfortable if a bit noisy from the traffic on the main road outside.
[Moderating]
Please do not post direct links to hate sites. These may be NSFW for many people (in fact, that site is blocked from my work computer).
I have broken the link.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Colibri, If you think this thread is more trouble than it’s worth, close it by all means.
If you feel it has been adequately answered, I will. We don’t seem to be getting real definitive responses here.
I think that it is possible that there could be local laws that prohibit it. It might also be possible for local authorities to use laws concerning distress signals to harass someone doing it. However, I think that you would also have a strong First Amendment defense if you were doing as a protest. But IANAL.
in before the lock!
Is the distress signal only if it’s the US flag, or is it any flag?
I believe under maritime rules it is any national flag, which would make sense, since it is intended as a distress signal that is easy to display. maybe somebody can confirm that.
Wiki says this:
No. On second throught, let it run, please. People seem to be interested in various angles of the question.
Ok, fine.
However, posters are requested to avoid extraneous political commentary.
Thanks.
This would never be a problem in Switzerland! It would be impossible to fly the flag upside down, even if you wanted to.
ETA: I hope this doesn’t count as political commentary. 
Note that the convention, which probably HAS largely fallen into disuse, as noted, applied to naval ensigns rather than actual national flags. It’s quite possible that the naval ensign for a nation with a symmetric or nearly symmetric flag may not be. The British flag is not quite symmetric, but you have to look close to see that it’s upside down. Before the cross of St Patrick was added, it would have been symmetric. The naval ensigns, however, display the union flag in a canton, and would noticeably be upside down:
Oops! Mea maxima culpa! Yes, it is a hate site, but Phred Phelps has gone so far off the deep end that I read that site regularly because I find it so hilarious!
I won’t post a link there again. Sorry.
I hope simply mentioning Westboro and its “pastor” and family aren’t forbidden topics. It’s so much fun to make fun of bigots! 
No problem mentioning it, and no problem posting a broken url. The problem was having it as clickable link, which could potentially cause some awkwardness for those posting from work.
Oops, didn’t see Colibri’s post regarding upside-down posting.
That’s very interesting. I had never before noticed that the union jack has only rotational symmetry (i.e., can look the same if rotated but not if flipped). Do you happen to know why they didn’t put the cross of St. Patrick right down the middle of the cross of St. Andrew?
My home state of Maryland has a flag that is frequently put the wrong way up by mistake: Maryland flag. I could have sworn I saw it flying upside-down in the background of a scene in Seabiscuit.
By the way, does anyone know which poster here had their location listed as “umop apIsdn”?
That would be me.