Amazingly, it turns out that National Treasure wasn’t a great primer on national history: Great Seal Secrets Revealed!
The Seal will remain at the State Department but the interactive exhibit is designed to travel and curators hope it will dispel the rumors and educate Americans about the real meaning of the symbols.
Among the highlights:
_That known Masons like the first U.S. president, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin had no role in designing the final seal, which uses elements of traditional heraldry, such as the unfinished pyramid to symbolize a work in progress, arrows for war and an olive branch for peace. Masons share some of those symbols, but they have never been exclusively the domain of the order.
_That the phrase “Novus Ordo Seclorum” below the Roman numerals for 1776 at the base of the pyramid translates as “A New Order of the Ages” that began with independence and does not imply the United States will be the lynchpin of a sinister “New World Order.”
_That the words “Annuit Coeptis” (“Providence favors”) and the eye of providence that hovers over the pyramid refer to unexpected interventions of fate that assisted the colonists in creating a new country.
_That the references to 13 refer to the number of colonies that formed the original United States.
Because Hillary has said she just loves endless rambling about WoW instead of, you know, stuff about the baby or journalism or, well, anything else …
I’m late to the party, but I’ve been checking out World of Warcraft blogs lately. As expected, a lot of them are pretty bad — as are all blogs — but there’s also some surprisingly good ones out there. I haven’t found any good roleplaying ones yet (either they seem to just be painfully bad fan fiction or seem to ramble on about nothing indefinitely), but here are some out of character ones that I like:
- A Dwarf Priest – Jenn plays a dwarf priest in a similar way as the blog’s author and has a similar attitude about things.
- An Engineer’s Journal – My dwarf hunter is an engineer, and the topic’s handled well here. In addition to the narrow topic, it focuses on other things of general interest, much like the other blogs I’ve listed here.
- Banana Shoulders – I mostly just curse paladins in PvP, either for being incredibly tedious to kill or because they like to slap on Crusader Aura before we all jump off the rock to start an Eye of the Storm match, because somehow, getting to the nodes faster, but with a large chunk of our health gone is a good idea. That said, this is an extremely good general interest WoW blog.
So, Google News now has a local news feature. I’ve had it set to e-mail my phone with any news with the keyword “Hesperia” for a while now, although that means I periodically hear about wrestlers from Hesperia, Michigan or the Hesperia hotel chain. Now, I can narrow things down by ZIP code instead. It’s not immediately obvious that it’s a big improvement for me, but for folks in a smaller community, being able to zero in by your ZIP code will let you see what’s happening in your neck of the woods, even if you live in New York or something.
And if you live in New York, there’s another alternative for you: EveryBlock, which currently only serves NYC, Chicago and San Francisco, but it collects more data than Google News does, including Flickr images from the area.
It’d be interesting to see this model applied somehow to more traditional media.
At least, according to Lost’s Sawyer. It could be worse: He could have called me “Freckles.”
Despite earlier predictions of a delayed launch, the revised site was able to be launched today, just before lunchtime. There are a few kinks yet to be worked out — I really need a new HUSD and sheriff’s department logo, and the internal pages have a few minor issues — but I think it’s an upgrade. Putting more news on the front page is always a good thing, when it doesn’t turn into clutter.
In April, once the rest of Freedom has gotten on board with this revised platform, we should be able to go in and fine-tune the Star’s colors to match the hard copy version of the paper.
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