the bird on fire

The Bird is the Word: Sophisticated Schoolyard Shenanigans

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

$igns on the Dollar Bill

by 1 Comment

By Brennan Nick, Resident Historian and Illuminatus

Top: Obverse. Bottom: Reverse

Our One-Dollar Bill seems to be shrouded in mystery. Why does it have Latin phrases like “Annuit Coeptis” or “Novus Ordo Seclorum” written on it? Why does it have a pyramid and the same eye symbol that belongs to the fabled Illuminati? Why did the founders of the United States engrave the dollar bill with these symbols? Well, to begin with, they didn’t. At least not all of it. In fact, the dollar bill that we all know and love today wasn’t put into circulation until 1929. It didn’t even reach its general design until 1935, and even after that its most recent change was in 1963 when they changed the border design of the obverse side of the bill to what we see today with the leaves and the designs around the number one in each of the corners. However, perhaps a more notable change was in 1957 when they added the words “IN GOD WE TRUST” on the reverse side of the bill above the large “ONE.”

Nevertheless, what do the rest of these symbols mean? Well, on the reverse side of the bill there are two circles. Together, they form the Great Seal of the United States. This was made by a group of men–which included Benjamin Franklin. He and others designed the pyramid and the eagle. The circle on the right depicts the bald eagle holding an olive branch and some arrows. The bald eagle itself is only found in North America and is our national animal. It represents victory and courage. Floating in front of the eagle is a shield, which signifies that Americans should rely on their own virtue as the shield does (statesymbolsusa.org). It is also a symbol of how the United States can now stand on its own. On the shield, there is a horizontal bar at the top which symbolizes the federal government and both below it and supporting it are the thirteen vertical stripes which symbolize the states (13 at the time this was made). In the eagle’s mouth is a banner with the words “E PLURIBUS UNUM” which is Latin for “Out of many, one.” Then the eagle’s right talon holds an olive branch, signifying peace while his left holds arrows, signifying war. Not only does the eagle hold the olive branch in the dominant talon, but the eagle’s gaze is also towards the olive branch, away from the arrows. What is being communicated here is that this country wants peace, but is not afraid to fight if need be. Finally, above the eagle are 13 stars symbolizing what we know as the original 13 colonies.

Now, on the left circle of the seal is the pyramid. First thing to take note of is that the face of the pyramid is lighted while the side is darkened, symbolizing how we were entering into the light and leaving the darkness. The cap of the pyramid is then broken off with the all-seeing eye imposed onto it. When the seal was first being designed, they wanted a symbol of divine providence. The all-seeing eye was put there for this as it is an ancient symbol of divinity dating back to Egyptian times. The letters at the base of the pyramid, “MDCCLXXVI” are the Roman numerals for 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence. Above the pyramid is “ANNUIT COEPTIS,” which is Latin for “God has favored our undertaking,” also hitting the theme of divine providence. Below the pyramid, on a banner, are the Latin words “NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM,” which mean “a new order of the ages.” Now, does this part sound like some sort of a secret society? A little, unless you know what it symbolizes, which is more or less the beginning of the new American Era on this new continent with a new style of government without a king.

Final note, watch the prevalence of the number 13 on our dollar bill. Remember, it corresponds to the original 13 states/colonies.

  • There are 13 letters in the Latin ANNUIT CŒPTIS (the “Œ” is a two-letter ligature of “OE”).
  • There are 13 letters in the Latin E PLURIBUS UNUM.
  • There are 13 stars above the Eagle.
  • There are 13 plumes of feathers on each span of the Eagle’s wing.
  • There are 13 bars on the shield, representing the original colonies united in defense.
  • There are 13 leaves on the olive branch, representing the original colonies’ desire for peace.
  • There are 13 fruits, representing the prosperity of the  original colonies.
  • And, finally, there are 13 arrows (if you look closely) representing the united colonies’ preparedness to fight for the common defense.

This 1780 New Hampshire bank note appeared in circulation four years after the beginning of The Revolutionary War.

 

 

 

 

*statesymbolsusa.org referenced.

 

Editor: Renée Vazquez

Ignify

by 1 Comment

By Renée

 

lately the world seems to be on its head.

in fact, that is how it has always seemed. we always have our

visors pulled over our

eyes. there we try to hide

 

from all our progress, which we deny, but we must realize that we

occupy a great time to be alive.

right now is all that we will ever

 

have.

apparently it is becoming harder and harder to see that.

perspective is what we need to solve the

problems that our beautiful world has. we need to be

involved. we, all of us,

need to care. it is

essential to stop being

squeamish about the problems that we have all allowed. we need to

stop, care and act.

Editor: Leo Milmet

Pete’s Declassified School Survival Guide: The Essay

by 2 Comments

By Peter Kadel, Senior Survival Scout

Essays, the go-to assignment of choice for English teachers everywhere. Ranging from 1 page to 100 pages, throughout your high-school career you will write so many essays and papers that it is likely that one of them will resemble the works of Shakespeare. But, what if all of them could be as good as the great William Shakespeare? Today, here at Pete’s Declassified, we are going to teach you how to write essays that are so good they will make your teacher question the very fabric of the universe and move to Thailand to discover inner peace. So fasten your seatbelts everyone! It’s time to learn.

  1. First, you need to consider your deadline. The best concepts can be ruined by spending too much time worrying about staying on topic and making sense. The best time to write a wonderful essay are the first 48 hours after the essay has been assigned; if you wait any longer your ideas will be lost forever. So, as soon as an essay is assigned, check yourself out of school, and go home. Once you are home, lock all of the doors and retreat to your lair to begin writing.
  2. During your 48-hour writing marathon, you are going to need to fuel your mind and body so you have enough energy to write a wonderful essay. While coffee may sound like the right choice, it’s not. Your best bet is to embrace your inner mad scientist and concoct a caffeinated sugar monstrosity so potent that it will give you a caffeine buzz just from looking at it. My personal favorite is brewing my coffee in Red Bull instead of water and instead of using creamer I buy an iced mocha and use that as my creamer to maximize caffeine intake. Once you’ve got a gallon or two of that in your system, you’ll be all fired up to write an amazing essay.
  3. Now that you are ready to begin writing your essay, you need to think about the content of the essay. While the subject will vary, all essays can follow the same template: hook, line, and sinker. The hook should be eye-catching and astonishing, so even if it doesn’t relate to the rest of your essay, use the flashiest paragraph you can muster to hook your audience. Next, comes the line; all you need to do for this portion of the essay is write as many lines/pages as you need to fulfill the essay’s requirements. Use as many quotes as you can; there is no need to reinvent the wheel here. The human race has been writing stuff down for thousands of years; it would be wasteful not to use what previous generations have written. My favorite resources to quote are the Rosetta Stone, the Magna Carta, the White-Gold Concordat, and business records from Mesopotamia. Once your line is of adequate length, it’s time to move on to the sinker. All you need to know for the sinker is that it should essentially sink your essay in reality. Bring it down. Crush it like reality crushes all high-school students.

If you follow all of these steps, your essays will bring a tear to your teacher’s eye and an “A” to your report card. You’re welcome.

Editor: Makena Behnke

The True Heroes

by 1 Comment

By Charles Schnell

 

Charles received Honorable Mention for this poem submitted to the Youth Town Hall “Giving Back” Poetry Competition–a valley-wide competition held in honor of Caroline Kennedy, former ambassador to Japan and daughter of John F. Kennedy. Kennedy is a longtime advocate and editor of poetry. Her family is known for its dedication to service. The compilation of poems was a gift to Kennedy when she spoke at the Desert Town Hall Forum last month.

 

The celebrities,

The athletes,

The CEOs,

The lawyers.

These aren’t the

True heroes

(Especially the lawyers).

Rather,

Blessed be

The organ donors,

The charity givers,

The teachers,

The soldiers,

Those who give their time, money, and life

To giving back,

For they are

The true heroes.

Editor: Renée Vazquez

We met Caroline Kennedy

by Leave a Comment

By Shelby Armor

On Thursday, March 8, a team of our Upper School students went to see former US Ambassador to Japan and daughter to John F. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy. Desert Youth Town Hall hosts four such events each year at Indian Wells’s Renaissance Esmeralda. Leo Milmet, Shelby Armor, Andrew Zhu, Renée Vazquez, and Jordan King were all in attendance and enjoyed a great night of talk on foreign policy with Japan, Caroline Kennedy’s life, and JFK!

Renée, Andrew, Jordan, Leo, and Shelby all pose for a photo before they go to see Caroline Kennedy.

Caroline Kennedy addresses Coachella Valley high school students before she enters the main ballroom at the Renaissance. She welcomed questions from the crowd.

Leo Milmet, at the request of Caroline Kennedy, shares inspiration for his poem he wrote for the “Giving Back Poetry Contest.” The contest was a tribute to Kennedy, to her love of poetry, and to her family’s dedication to service.

Next Wednesday, the Town Hall Forum hosts the final speaker of the 2017-18 series, journalist Chris Wallace. Our own Jordan King is tasked with introducing the Fox News commentator.

Editor: Makena Behnke

Over 10,000 Views!

by 3 Comments

Shelby Armor marks our milestone.

Our blog, The Bird On Fire, recently reached a huge milestone. For the first time ever, we reached 10,000 views! The Bird On Fire was formed in 2014 as a Winterim course on how to create a blog. The first post was on December 18, 2014, stating how we have many fun posts to come. When Blog became an elective offering in 2015, we landed on our motto: “Sophisticated Schoolyard Shenanigans” (Thank you, Gaige Griffin). Now look how far the blog has come! As we hit 10,000 views, we go back and remember the fun times that have happened since its formation. Who could forget Brennan’s exposé on the Doomsday Clock? Or Makena’s comforting poem on “Comfort”? Or Gaven Li’s famous recorded Blog-sponsored ping-pong competition? (280 views on YouTube!) We thank each and every reader for coming back time and time again to read our posts. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, and we are excited about where we’ll go in the future.

Pictured above is the very first post of the blog.

Editor: Claire Jenkins

The 2018 Lunar New Year is Soon!

by Leave a Comment

Graphic by Harlow Berny

By Harlow Berny

Hello, Palm Valley Students, and Happy Valentine’s Day! As many of you know, the Lunar New Year/Spring Festival/Seollal is this Friday and will mark the start of the 2018 Year of the Dog. There will be an Advisory presentation and activities based around it today. Have a good day!

Editor: Claire Jenkins

FYI: For those interested in the personality and characteristics of those born in a Dog year, chinesenewyear2018.com says,

Men born in the Dog year are straightforward and genuine. They are energetic, though they’re more pessimistic inside. . . .

Women born in the Dog year are very cautious. They are indifferent towards people they don’t like, and don’t trust easily. But once they do, it’s permanent. They are intensely protective of their friends and family.

 

Be Careful Out There

by 2 Comments

Advice of the Week from “Dear Claire”

According to Medical Daily, 24,000 people per year die from being struck by lightning, so obviously you should consider carefully before leaving your house. A BuzzFeedYellow article says 450 people die per year falling out of bed. So, the risks of getting out of bed should also be considered carefully–maybe just stay there and hide from whatever objects could kill you. Our day-to-day activities clearly are an adventure in living dangerously. Claire’s compiled some interesting, unexpected, and worrying ways to die. Watch out for the following.

(A list of “Unexpected Ways to Die” on Valentine’s Day? “Dear Claire” says, “Death can be romantic. Haven’t you read Romeo and Juliet? Thanks, Mr. Griffin.”)

Top 5 Unexpected Ways to Die:

  1. Eating a cherry pit: The inside of the cherry pit is lethal! Don’t eat it!
  2. Elevator crash (cdc.gov says 30 people die annually by elevator): If the elevator seems unstable or old, maybe don’t get in it!
  3. Vending machine falling on you: Even if a bag of chips is stuck on the other side, do not rock the machine; it may fall, and you will DIE.
  4. Electrocuted by a toaster: Don’t touch a toaster with wet hands; it increases your chances of getting electrocuted. Also, don’t put any metal in the toaster to fish out your toast (forks, knives, etc).
  5. Hippo attack (bbc.com says 500 people per year die in Africa via hippo attack): Hippos are more aggressive than they appear, and they are known for charging at smaller boats and capsizing them.

Editor: Brennan Nick

*Medical Daily referenced.

Why California was once known as an…   Island???

by 1 Comment

By Brennan Nick

 

Once upon a time when the Spanish were first exploring the Americas, there were tales of “an island called California very close to the side of the Earthly Paradise” that was inhabited entirely only by black women with no men. They were great warriors with golden weapons for “there is no other metal on the island other than gold.” These quotations come from Las Sergas de Esplandian, a Spanish novel published in 1510 by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo.

 

It was this story that drove Hernan Cortes a few decades later to send an expedition to California led by his cousin, Diego de Bercerra. He landed on the southern tip of Baja California and saw water on all sides. Now, thinking they had found the fabled island, Cortes sent further expeditions. Shortly after, explorer Francisco de Ulloa followed the coastline northward until he reached the Colorado River, discovering that Baja California was, in fact, a peninsula, not an island. On maps, California enjoyed the privilege of being drawn as part of the mainland for sixty years after the first map in 1562 represented California as connected.

 

Then something happened. In 1622, on the title page of a Dutch map book, California was drawn as separate from the mainland. This reinvention of the status of California can be traced to the journal of an obscure friar who described California as being a separate island. He then included maps that he himself made and sent them to Spain to be examined and potentially published. The Spanish wouldn’t have found these maps credible due to their prior knowledge of the area. However, the ship these maps were being transported on was hijacked and the bad maps were taken seriously by the Dutch who proceeded to publish them as their own.

 

This mistake was reproduced for decades. Many well-known cartographers of the time, mainly in Northern Europe, had better access to Dutch maps rather than Spanish maps and gave the incorrect maps more credence than the correct ones. This misconception even penetrated into Spanish cartographers as they saw what their northern counterparts were doing. 249 maps showed California as an island from the time of this first Dutch map until 1747 when the King of Spain finally made a formal decree stating “California is not an island” (that’s word for word by the way) after someone bothered to actually remap the area of California (Esplandian). Ever since then, all the maps have shown California once again as part of the mainland–except for a single Japanese map made in 1865.

 

Editor: Charles Schnell–Formerly of Blog Class

Doomsday Clock

by 2 Comments

By Brennan Nick

 

Just yesterday, the annual movement of the Doomsday Clock occurred,… and it just moved ½ a minute closer to midnight.

 

For those who don’t know, the Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by a group of scientists– many of whom worked on the atomic bomb–as a symbolic way to show how close we as a planet are to nuclear war. Since 2007, however, it has been expanded to also reflect how close we are to unalterable climate change, and new developments in science that could cause irreversible damage to humanity.

 

When the clock reaches midnight that means that Doomsday has occurred. The lowest the clock can go to is 9:00 PM to signify how far the world has come from a 0% chance pre-humanity. Just as a reminder, we’re at 11:58 right now, the highest it’s ever been–tying with 1958. To put this into perspective, however, the furthest from Doomsday the Doomsday Clock has been since its inception was 11:43 in 1991 right after the fall of the Soviet Union.

 

The group that manually changes the time on the Doomsday Clock moved the clock ½ a minute closer to midnight because of “the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change.”

 

Now, hopefully we won’t be heading towards the apocalypse anytime soon… hopefully.

 

Editor: Shelby Armor