College flags rank among the most collectible of memorabilia, with a wide variety of styles that reflect the unique heritage of each individual institution. Officially licensed college flags and pennants ensure authentic insignia as well as quality design, and they provide a source of revenue that goes back to support the school. One may purchase flags or pennants to hang by the door of one’s house or show in one’s garden as well as banners that could be streamed over an entrance or across the yard. Two-ply constructions allow designs to be seen properly from either side.
But most varieties of college flags are most often to be found at intercollegiate games, especially football games. They are used by the fans to cheer on their team, and waving them is symbolic of the school spirit. One popular activity while waving them is to sing the school’s fight song en masse. In fact, it is hard to conceive of a college flag apart from that college’s fight song. One would seem incomplete without the other.
Thus, there are hundreds of fight songs, just as there are hundreds of flags. At times both are equally old and hallowed, and sometimes each is of vastly different vintage. The earliest fight song in generally recognized to be Boston College’s “For Boston” of 1885, but it is not certain which is the oldest college flag. Indeed, it is not certain when the tradition of college flags and pennants began, although one may safely imagine that their origins roughly coincided.
Speaking of origins, many flags have changed over the years owing to cultural advances that made it unacceptable to feature mascots based on racial stereotypes or designs integrating the old Confederate Battle Flag. Many alumni protest, but ultimately new generations of students with no sentimental attachment to old symbols make the revised designs their own.
Get out of the rat race and onto the fast track by means of affiliate marketing on the internet. Thanks to the power of the internet, offering unprecedented scope and reach, you can find now a few new ways to generate income from the comfort of your own home. Best of all, unlike old-fashioned medical billing or envelope stuffing schemes, these modern day techniques actually work! Affiliate marketing is the roadmap to 6 and 7 figures – if you know what you’re doing and you are doing something valuable.
Now let’s pause right there for a moment, because lost in all of the hooplah over making money online is that fact that you are only going to be rewarded for adding something of value to the internet. Yes, internet marketing equals residual cashflow, but that only occurs when you are really supplying something that contributes positively to someone’s life!
For example, teach enough people something they want to know and enough of those people will help make you rich – not by having to pay you any money themselves, but by clicking on any number of advertisements you can host on your attractively designed, easy-to-navigate information-rich website.
Every mouse click can be anywhere from a few pennies to a few dollars for you by the business that’s chosen your site as the venue to advertise their merchandise or service – and, as previously mentioned, with enough people browsing your website odds are that enough of them will click on an ad, translating to hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month!
However the trick is to provide something of value and market it right. Without proper marketing, no one will actually hear of your wonderful website, even if it contains the answer to life, the universe, and everything. But all the advertising in the world isn’t going to help folks want to come back or even stay on your site if there is nothing there of value to them.
Virtual reality tours have come a long way since something like the New York Skyride of serial entrepreneur Zalman Silber, which is an IMAX-like cinematic experience located at the city’s world-famous Empire State Building. Contrast that with the United States Army’s Virtual Army Experience, or VAE, which is an interactive multimedia virtual tour of what it’s like to be an American soldier in the 21st Century.
The VAE was developed to capitalize on the appetite of today’s American youth for electronic entertainment. Rather than continuing to run television commercials as was done previously, it was decided to support conventional forms of outreach with one that a lot more immediately and forcefully resonated with today’s young males. Something like the aforementioned Skyride by Zalman Silber is family entertainment and totally innocuous, G-rated to seat as quite a few as possible. It is mildly educational although the VAE is meant to showcase the most positive aspects of modern soldiering to action-oriented youths. The VAE presents a life-sized networked environment for guests to obtain a little taste of soldiering and battle. With a complicated setup that involves computers, video, motion sensors, and full surround sound, the VAE is definitely an engaging way to both entertain and educate, not to mention recruit. Through the use of classic storytelling alongside familiar videogaming conventions, the VAE has been hailed for its innovative use of cutting-edge technology to inform as well as to sell.
Visitors gather inside “Assembly Area,” whereupon uniformed VAE staff shepherd site visitors on towards the “Joint Operations Center.” There they meet former soldiers, now employees of Army partner Ignited Minds, a marketing firm, who serve as “team leaders.” An intelligence briefing ensues, which covers the upcoming virtual mission. Time is also taken to introduce Army rules of engagement and also suitable use of simulator equipment and proper deployment of Army tactical doctrine. Then it’s on to the mission itself, which takes place within the “Mission Simulator” proper. The objective would be to evacuate civilians, an unassailably righteous scenario that critics contend mask the much more likely and less innocuous duties of Army life and death in a time of war.
Upon completion in the mission participants are debriefed in an “After Action Area” where Army values are introduced within the context on the mission, values for instance duty, honor, respect, and camaraderie. At certain venues, an actual war hero is on-hand to speak with participants, lending an inspirational air of authenticity that has many VAE guests applauding.
It’s all really beguiling, specifically for young men still trying to prove themselves to themselves.
