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The idea
of UFOs
and intel-
ligent life
on other
planets
has always been considered an idea
of science fiction, ever since science
fiction has existed, anyways, and for
most people, it still is. If you pick up
a book and start reading about a civ-
ilization of aliens, that discusses
their strange way of life, what sec-
tion of the library did you most like-
ly get it from? Science fiction, right?
However, soon a very similar book
could be found in the nonfiction sec-
tion, perhaps with a title like, A
Guide to Life in the KIC 8462852
Solar System - When in KIC
8462852, Act Like the KIC 8462852-
ians.
Recently, NASA’s Kepler
space Telescope has shown that a
star called KIC 8462852, which is
about 1,500 light years away from
Earth, has faded largely, and then
regained its light, several times over
the past few years. It has been
dimmed by up to 22% at times,
which is an extremely large amount,
especially considering how much
light the star emits in the first place.
Currently, there are two major theo-
ries - a large group of orbiting com-
ets, or a structure created by intelli-
gent aliens.
The more realistic scientists
believe that their idea, saying that
the light was dimmed by a crowd of
comets that orbited KIC 8462852,
is much more likely. How could
aliens possibly build such a large
structure that orbits the sun, and
why? Besides, the Allen Telescope
Array, also known as the ATA, has
not been able to pick up any signs
of life from the planets circling this
star.
The ATA is a high-tech ar-
ray of telescopes that has been de-
signed to detect life and examine
events in space that could advance
the human search of space, or other
human technology. They can pick
up signals to a high level of accura-
cy, and have a much wider view
than can currently be seen with a
single telescope. Although the array
is very large, and is considered cut-
ting-edge technology, it is really an
innovative and inexpensive collec-
tion of small radio dishes, and it
can easily be upgraded as comput-
ers and telecommunication technol-
ogy advance.
Evidence of Intelligent Aliens?
By: Emma G.
I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :
The Hyperloop 3
2015 Shopping Guide 4-5
Smoking illegal? 6
Strongest Material 8
Pencil Tech 9-10
Phobias 11
New Dinosaurs 12-13
Movie Puzzles 15
Google Self Driving Car 16
WINTER ISSUE - VOLUME 13 FREE E-VERSION WINTER 15’-16’
Page 2
The intelligent-life-theory critics also provide another piece
of well-supported evidence - according to Occam’s razor
method, the simplest theory is often the correct one, and the
theory of intelligent life is not the simplest. Really, how
likely is it that an advanced alien civilization built a mega
structure, such as a solar panel, and then somehow blocked
all evidence of life on that planet from the ATA down on Earth? According to these researchers, not very
likely.
However, hopeful scientists suggest that it could have been caused by a man-made (or, rather, alien-
made) structure, such as a gigantic collection of solar panels, even though most of the evidence points against
it. Although the ATA is not able to pick up signals of life from this planet, that doesn’t necessarily mean
there has never been life on this planet. For example, the life forms may not emit signals that the ATA is able
to pick up, or they may have gone extinct years ago, or traveled to a different, more favorable planet, and left
the mega structure behind. Even though the correct theory is often the simplest, it isn’t always correct.
This mystery is really just a complicated probability problem. How likely is it that aliens are or have
been on this planet? How likely is it that they are advanced? How likely is it that they built a collection of
solar panels, or some other structure that would dim the star’s light so greatly? How likely is it that those al-
iens do not emit signals that our Allen Telescope Array can pick up? If you add in all of those variables, it
doesn’t seem very likely, does it? However, there is still a chance.
Although this possibility seems unlikely, scientists continue to investigate it, trying to collect evi-
dence of this theoretical civilization that may have caused this odd wavering in KIC 8462852’s light. Wheth-
er they find life on this planet or not, humankind will surely learn lots about the universe, and collect more
evidence to where another species might be. According to Seth Shostak, “It almost doesn’t matter where you
point your telescope, because there are planets everywhere. If there's somebody out there, there are going to
be so many of them out there that I do think there's a chance." Before we know it, the idea of aliens will be-
come a reality - everywhere we look, there is a chance some other being on another planet is looking right
back at us, wondering if there is such a thing as aliens.
EVIDENCE OF ALIEN LIFE(CONTINUED) BY: EMMA G.
Imagine zooming from Madrid to Barcelona in half
an hour, That’s 385.9 miles, and would take 5 hours
and 53 minutes by car. And you travel it in half an
hour. Isn’t that amazing? It will revolutionize travel
and commute and will reduce car accidents. Let me
tell you all about it.
The Hyperloop has not yet been made, but a test track is scheduled to start in 2016 and finish
in 2017. When the system is finally made, here is what the Hyperloop routes will look like.
We will be able to travel across the country very quickly, with stops at most major cities. The
Hyperloop will be most likely built in countries without deeply embedded transportation
systems first. It will be mostly in developing countries in Africa and Asia before U.S. or Eu-
rope.
This will revolutionize travel because instead of having to drive or take a plane, they can go
there much faster with the Hyperloop. There will be less crashes, and people will get to
where they need to go much quicker. But the downside is that we will not be seeing the
Hyperloop connecting the U.S. for a long time, but systems within states and cities might not
be that far off.
So in conclusion, Hyperloop will revolutionize travel. It will let us travel the country very
quickly(when it comes out). It will take a long time to get to
U.S. and Europe, but a test track and transport systems within
smaller cities and countries are not that far off. It also looks
really cool! In short, the Hyperloop is the future!(in the future).
Page 3
THE HYPERLOOP
BY: MOHAMMAD K.
Page 4
As the 2015 holiday season rolls around the corner, everyone is putting the finishing touches on their pre-
sents. And so should you. But if the holiday hustle and bustle is just a tad bit too stressful, here are some top
picks for gifts that have got you covered!
The Bookworm
As 2016 rushes in, help a bookworm get a head start on their New Year’s Resolution. Conveniently located
in downtown, Barnes & Nobles as well as Anderson’s Bookshops are stocked with all the latest best sellers in
the literature industry.
The Fashionista
For the person who knows the ins and outs of fashion 24/7, you really want to gift them
something classic and timeless that will never go out of style. Thinking a bit out of the box
than just apparel, you may want to venture out into accessories, shoes, handbags or jewelry
shops to find something to keep your favorite fashionista warm and cozy this winter.
2015 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE BY: ESHANI R.
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The Makeup Guru
When someone knows how to take a face and turn it into a masterpiece, gifting is a breeze
when you know just where to look. Whether your budget fits high street or the drugstore,
there are rows of endless options to give your blooming Picasso the perfect present.
The Foodie
Always the first to spot the hottest eatery in town, surprise and treat your foodie to a delec-
table (local) restaurant this holiday season. And remember, gift cards are always an easy alter-
native if you’re not one to go all out.
2015 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE (CONT) BY: ESHANI R.
Page 6
Yes There are many reasons why smoking should be
illegal. First, there are health issues. Smoking
causes cancer, heart disease, and respiratory
diseases. Every year, over 480,000 people in
the U.S. die because of these reasons. Not only
can the people who smoke die, anybody
around them could be affected as well be-
cause of the smoke. That is called second-hand
smoking. But what is the cause of all these deaths? The main
“ingredient” in tobacco that causes this is nicotine. Nicotine is a
drug that can lead to seizures, vomiting, and more unwanted side-
effects. Without nicotine in tobacco, many would not smoke. Any-
ways, smoking should be illegal since it has many health issues that
can lead to sad endings.
No
Smoking should not be illegal for a couple good reasons. Even
though it can cause many different issues with your health, if smok-
ing is banned there will be many economic problems. First, tobacco
will be put in the black market, just like all of the other illegal sub-
stances. Next, even if the law is issued, people will continue smoking
because they are outlaws; that’s what they do since their “job” is to
break the law. Government officials would argue about this and
worst comes to worst, there could even be physical battles about it.
All in all, if smoking is banned, the world will be worse than it is right
now.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/10566.php
SHOULD SMOKING BE ILLEGAL? BY: UJU K.
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When taking pictures or videos, there is sometimes an elongated object zipping across the screen
when the file is viewed back. Also known as skyfish, air rods, and solar entities, these creatures have wings
that move like waves and go through the length of the entire body. Seen in videos of planes taking off, war
zones, caves, and even tornadoes, to some people they feel like something from the fourth dimension. People
speculate that this is part of a larger craft or creature that can at will take any part of itself out of the fourth,
and into the third, dimension. However, we’re not even to the craziest part.
They are invisible to human eyes. In every single video where we can see a rod, the people claim they
didn’t see anything unusual. Their length varies between inches and feet. They are harmless and are non-
sapient. Their diet, lifespan, and subspecies are unknown. They have also been seen flying into water without
slowing down. Skyfish were first documented by filmmaker José Escamilla, who discovered them by acci-
dent. In 1994, Escamilla had videotaped a "conventional" UFO near Midway, New Mexico. Fourteen days
later, while seeking to photograph the UFO again, he instead captured a flying object that was not a vehicle
of any kind.
At first he thought it was just an insect or bird. When he examined the film frame by frame, however,
it became clear that what he had captured on film was something unknown. Later, more distinct images were
captured while Escamilla was filming cliff jumpers at a deep cave in Mexico. When he developed the film,
small flying things could be seen zipping around the divers at a high rate of speed - so fast that they weren't
seen with the naked eye. However, in many experiments, crypto zoologists and photographers have tried to
capture a skyfish, with surprising results.
Photographers set up a slow motion camera and a regular camera. The light revealed that what looked
like a golden shining rod was actually a moth that shined because of the light. So why didn’t people see
them? you ask. This is because people see birds and insects as birds and insects, not rods, and when they say
they didn’t see anything, that means they didn’t see any rods. Thank you, and have a nice kitten day. Tune in
on our next article on AWESOME QUOTES!!!
RODS BY: DANIEL B. AND JAMES S.
Page 8
The strongest material on earth. Sea snail teeth
are the strongest material on earth. It beat the spider
silk. The teeth of the common limpet species (Patella
vulgata) are tougher than Kevlar. Limpets are tough
little snails that live everywhere in the ocean. Barber
and his research team tested microscopic pieces of lim-
pet tooth. Each curved tooth is about 1 millimeter long (0.04 inches). These fibers are much
smaller than man made Nano fibers. Barber's next challenge lies in recreating the mecha-
nisms these tiny creatures use to make their tough materials. Though spider silk has proved
notoriously difficult to mimic in an artificial setting, Barber said it might be possible to 3D-
print limpet teeth fibers. The strongest silk ever found is made by the Darwin's bark spider in
Madagascar, which spins silk that is reportedly 10 times tougher than Kevlar, thanks to its
elasticity, or ability to stretch without breaking. The secret to the tooth strength lies in the size
of the fibrous structures that form each tooth, Barber said. "Nature's kind of clever, because it
figured out millions of years ago that if you grow these fibers below a critical size, even if
you have flaws in the material, it doesn't affect the strength," Barber said. "I think the poten-
tial for growing these crystal fibers is much higher [than spider silk] because it's just about
growing them to a particular size," Barber said. "I think this is going to be a much greater op-
portunity for materials that have high
strength." These limpets have the strongest
material on earth I wonder when they can re-
produce them.
Limpet teeth (left), A Limpet (above)
THE STRONGEST MATERIAL ON EARTH BY: CALEB Y.
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What if we could make pencils in a few seconds by using paper
that you would have otherwise thrown away? All you would need
was a little glue, some wastepaper and lead and you would have a
pencil!
This new gadget is very useful, since if your pencil breaks, a sec-
ond later, you have a fresh new one coming. It can also save space
and save paper, since a pencil takes less space than a crumpled
piece of paper. If some bully who sat behind you kept breaking
your pencils, you could generate new ones immediately. If a
friend wanted to borrow your pencil, you could make one for them.
However, this pencil-maker has a downside. People will start making too many pencils, and
then even paper that has not been used will go in the machine. People will start turning others’
homework into pencils. Also, graphite is expensive. The machine does the work, you provide food.
The machine will only work if it has 3 types of food; graphite, glue, and paper. Paper is easy to get,
but graphite is not. Glue is okay, but how many times would you have to go and buy graphite and
glue, and buy extra printer paper? This machine could put pencil factories out of business and graph-
ite businesses in huge business.
Also, most people now type on computers. When they print, and then they are done with it,
they will make a pencil from that paper. That means that some people will print extra paper on pur-
pose just to make pencils because it is addictive. That leads to the waste of ink, meaning people also
have to buy ink. Maybe some people may not realize it, but it takes pencils to make pencils. You
have a clean sheet of paper. You get a pencil and write on it as scratch paper for your math home-
work. When there is no space left on either side, your pencil is already pretty dull. You insert your
sheet into the pencil maker for a new pencil. So what do you do with the other one? You throw it in
the trash? You stick it in a pencil case and keep it there for the next five years? What a waste of
graphite. Now you have to spend money for more even though there are about 20 forgotten pencils
waiting to be sharpened and used.
As you can see, this pencil-making machine is helpful, but there are too many bad things that
can happen for this to actually come to be. No matter how much people want it now, when they get
it, they will complain and it will be their own fault and they don’t even realize it. This will impact
our society heavily on the negative side, and the negative overpowers the positive. Even if there was
one thing wrong with the machine, people would not buy it anyway. Then the manufacturer would
be out of business within a year, maybe less.
PENCIL TECHNOLOGY BY: HELENA H.
Page 10
U.S. businesses use about 21 million tons (19 million metric tons) of paper every year -- 175 pounds
of paper for each American, according to the Clean Air Council. This has led to office recycling programs,
"please think before you print" e-mail signatures and printers that offer double-sided printing. Now a trio of
Chinese inventors hopes to add another device to the cubicle environment: the P&P Office Waste Paper
Processor, which turns paper destined for recycling into pencils. The machine, looking a bit like a three-hole
punch crossed with an electric pencil sharpener, was a finalist in the 2010 Lite-On Awards, an international
competition that seeks to stimulate and nurture innovation.
Here's how the pencil-making gadget works: You insert wastepaper into a feed slot. The machine
draws the paper in, rolls and compresses it, and then inserts a piece of lead from a storage chamber located in
the top of the device. A small amount of glue is added before -- voilà -- a pencil slides out from a hole on the
side. It's not clear how many pieces of paper form a single pencil, but you figure the average office worker
could generate a decent supply of pencils in a month.
And that seems to be the biggest drawback to the pencil-producing gadget. How many No. 2 pencils
can an office really use, given that most workers take notes on their tablet PCs or laptops? And how much
glue and lead core do you need to buy to keep up with the overflowing paper recycle bin? Too much, we
would suspect, which is why you may never see this gadget in your office supplies catalog.
PENCIL TECHNOLOGY (CONT .) BY: HELENA H.
RBI BASEBALL GAME—A REVIEW BY: JAMES S.
RBI Baseball is a game published by MLB.com and is rated E for everybody.
The game compares favorably to the great Madden football series of games.
In this game you may either start a season or do an exhibition game. For an
exhibition game, you get to choose 2 teams, one that you are and one you
want to face. You can be a legend and play against the team that you want to
wreck. You can also do a season as the team of your choice where you have a
schedule and can change your roster to improve your playing. If you can get
to the world series, you will have to blow away the other team because from
my experience, your opponent plays well. When you complete the season, you get to start a new season with a
new team or continue with the same team. The all-star game is almost as tough as the world series. The game
overall is actually amazing and you need to try it!
Page 11
PHOBIAS OF THE WEEK
BY : ETHAN X. Phobias are an extreme fear of something very random. Don’t laugh, you just might have one to.
Here are a few of the most specific phobias out there. Still, don’t laugh, this might be you.
Somniphobia: Fear of sleep. Can you imagine??
Nomophobia: Fear of not having a mobile device on hand 24/7. Over 50% of the
world has it, so you’re not alone.
Ergophobia: fear of working and being in a workplace environment. this may build up from early fail-
ures on assignments.
Ablutophobia: fear of taking a bath or shower. AKA fear of cleaning yourself.
Heliophobia: fear of the sun. No more sports outside!!(actually no going outside in
the first place if the weather is sunny)
Haphephobia: Fear of being touched
Aurophobia: Fear of the Northern Lights
Barophobia: Fear of Gravity
Aurophobia- Fear of gold
Chrometophobia or Chrematophobia- Fear of money (didn’t think GOLD was enough??)
Atomosophobia- Fear of atomic explosions, most people had this during the cold war
Automatonophobia- Fear of ventriloquist's dummies, animatronic creatures, wax statues - anything that
falsely represents a sentient being.
Autophobia- Fear of being alone or of oneself
Batrachophobia- Fear of amphibians, such as frogs, newts, salamanders, etc
Ballistophobia- Fear of missiles or bullets, AKA don’t go to war if you have this
phobia
Catoptrophobia- Fear of mirrors, creepy…
Cathisophobia- Fear of sitting, my, tiring
Chronophobia- Fear of time
Chronomentrophobia- Fear of clocks (didn't think TIME was enough??)
Phonophobia- The fear of Phobias
Page 12
Dreadnoughtus
The biggest and baddest dinosaur ever discovered is on the
block. Weighing nearly 70 tons, and almost the length of a
whole Boeing 737-900, this creature dwarfs even one of
the most famed of dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus, Brachio-
saurus- and even, of course, dwarfing a modern day ele-
phant, which is one of the largest animals on our Earth
right now. What is this new dinosaur? Well, the name giv-
en to this giant by its founders, is Dreadnoughtus Schrani, or simply Dreadnoughtus in short. The largest sau-
ropod up to date, it would have been a terrifying sight up close if you were, say, another dinosaur.
“Shockingly, skeletal evidence shows that when this 65-ton specimen died, it was not yet full grown,” Says
paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara. “It is by far the best example we have of any of the most giant creatures to
ever walk the planet." As scientists begin to uncover more about this amazing creature, it seems that before,
on the farthest reaches of our young Earth, there was more giant creatures than we thought. Considering this
animal wasn’t even fully grown when it was found,- and also considering that it’s 65 tons, we can’t imagine
how big it would have been when it was alive. Something that amazed scientists more than the giant sauro-
pods bulk and brawn, was how complete the skeleton was. When they uncovered it, more than 70 percent of
it were complete. The dinosaurs daunting size and the giant whip like tail made nearly every threat in the area
nothing but an annoyance. Because of this sauropods large size, it must have eaten a ton of food during its
day. “Imagine a life-long obsession with eating.” Says Lacovara.
Of course, an area with such a giant plant eater has to have a giant meat eater too. This is a true state-
ment. In every area where a large sauropod found, whether the sauropod is Argentinosaurus, Paralititan, or
Diplodocus-and much more- there was always a giant predator that came along with it. Whether it was Ma-
pusaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, or Allosaurus. As a matter of fact, these meat eaters actually depended on
these dinosaurs as a major food source. A study shown that whenever these massive sauropods died, these
carnivores died out as well. The carnivore that must have preyed on Dreadnoughtus is still in the midst of
being discovered, but in the meantime, all we can do is wait.,
NEW DINOSAURS ON THE BLOCK BY: JEFFREY H.
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Wendiceratops
A distinct ancestor of triceratops, discovered recently.
This was discovered pieced together with 200 bones-
along with 4 other skeletons. Since it was a herbivore, its
leaf shaped teeth weren’t made for slicing through flesh.
It would lower its head to thick vegetation and naw of a
chunk with it parrot-like beak. These teeth were made for chewing. But the one thing that made wendicera-
tops pinhornensis such a distinct relative of triceratops however, was the curvature of the horns protruding
from its skull. A large frill that protected its neck, and three forward curling horns, would have been a fright-
ening sight, but it probably wasn’t used for combat. The reason being, an attacker would have to be stabbed
quickly, and give the dinosaur enough time to run away. These horns were curved, meaning the hook shape
would instead of releasing quickly, it would stay grappled to the skin in any attempt. This would give the
predator enough time to simply finish it off. It would have instead been meant to fend off predators, in a non-
physical way.“Beyond its odd, hook-like frill, Wendiceratops has a unique horn ornamentation above its nose
that shows the intermediate evolutionary development between low, rounded forms of the earliest horned di-
nosaurs and the large, tall horns of Styracosaurus, and its relatives,” said Ryan, co-author of the study. “The
locked horns of two Wendiceratops could have been used in combat between males to gain access to territory
or females.” This distant relative of the ceratopsians would have been a daunting sight in its glory days, but
now, it’s nothing but bones.
DINOSAURS (CONT .) BY: JEFFREY H.
Page 14
“Wait, 0+0=2?”
“If space blows up, then we have less space :( “
“People are definitely humans.”
“Well that was a waste of a foot.”
“When I have nightmares, I eat them.”
“That makes perfect cents.”
“Tardy waffles are here because you exist
“You have pizza. Eat him->.”
“I am the most elegant creature that ever refused to survive.”
“Every once and awhile you need to daydream .”
“Don’t quote me on that.”
“That is what you think but not what you know.”
“I agree(n)”
“No comment, wait that is a comment.”
“Why did you inflate a giant rubber glove?”
“The meat should be as big as meat.”
“Hey. It’s Ireland today.”
“You are a slightly acute triangle.”
“The glove attacked me.”
“This is?”
“Let me be a Kangaroo.”
“I have giant moose ears.” “Take cover, their gonna
blow!”
“You want me to call you James Bond!?”
“Why did you hit me with a giant inflatable
balloon?”
“Salamander bacon tomato flavored soup.”
“Truth is subjective. Reality is not.”
“The names Batman. Bat. Man.”
“Deal with it”
“I’ve found the biggest cause of death. Life”
“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In prac-
tice, they’re not”
“Life is good. Sometimes”
“Bob the Builder is busy right now”
“WOMBATS!!!”
“But I’m busy looking for images of gophers!”
“Somebody got hit by a bowling pin...in sixth grade!”
“Never fall into a pit of lava.. Just saying”
“Bert the turtle reminds you that ducking and cover-
ing and seatbelts save lives”
“And there was a bright flash …”
“Anonymouse”
“Life is a good thing. With the power of our new MRIT machine, standing for Magnetic rhochermatic
(It’s a real thing) ichnomatic techotic processor, we
can increase short term mem… Wait, what was I saying?”
“Wait, when did my folder die?”
“It’s a drum, you hit it with a stick.”
“Two men walked into a bar. The third one did too”
“The apocalypse has come! Oh look, a pancake!”
“It’s Jeff the Evil Roomba!!!
"Do not take life too seriously. You will never get
out of it alive."
“Ebooks, Email, EVIL.”
“Then he slayed the mighty, oh look, a squirrel”
“Pigs are made of water, Chickens are made of bone, Cows are made of pig, goat, banana, crickets.
(Artificially flavored.)
“Stop smashing your keyboard!”
“WOMBATS!!! AGAIN!!!”
“What’s a question?”
“I promise I have never sworn in my life.”
“I like Minnesota because it tastes like orange juice.”
“Or did I?”
“FLYING WOMBATS!!!”
“He just didn’t have that green thumb, so he painted
it purple..”
“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No! It’s a FLYING WOM-
BAT!!”
“HAHA! EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!”
“I ate a blue pig named Fred.”
“It’s a turtle. His name is Tank.”
“THERE’S NEVER TOO MANY WOMBATS!!!”
“I keep dying from the hat!”
“Billy the sensei.”`
“This is the best quote ever!!!”
“‘Wut,’ said the chipmunk.”
“Kit Kats? More like Kit Kows!”
“Exactly.”
“‘I know what school you go to,’ he said in science
class.”
“Oh no, there’s a giant spider running after me!”
“Oh look, another giant spider!”
“Day to day.”
“I’m carrying a dead caveman.”
“I just threw a dead caveman at a living caveman.”
“NO! It lives in Antarctica.”
“It can be found in a wide variety of environments
such as hot springs, deserts, alpine environments,
and Pokémon.”
“The wind is tasty.”
“WHY DO WE LOVE WOMBATS?!”
Quotes made by James, Daniel, Scott, Holden, Eron, Ishaan, Anonymous, a wombat, and Anonymous.
Next time, we’re talking about cute baby animals!
A M IXED BAG OF STUDENT QUOTES
BY : JAMES S.
Page 15
Match each movie character to another character also played by the same actor/actress from the word bank. In the example, Saruman and Count Dooku are both played by Christopher Lee. Example: Saruman and Count Dooku_____
____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________ ____________________ and ____________________
Word Bank: Elizabeth Swann
Han Solo
Legolas Greenleaf Padme Amidala Will Turner
Cabin Boy (from On Stranger Tides) Nanny McPhee
Mumble (from Happy Feet) Queen Amidala (from Star Wars: The Phantom Men-ace) Indiana Jones
Dr. Schmidt (from Captain America: The First Avenger) Ella of Frell (from Ella Enchanted) Lady Rose MacClare (from Downton Abbey) Maria Von Trapp (1965 version of The Sound of Mu-sic) Professor McGonagall Uncle Foster (from The Adaams Family) Bellatrix Lestrange
Gandalf Maria Von Trapp (2013 version of The Sound of Mu-sic) Cinderella (2015 live action movie) Princess Mia (from The Princess Diaries) Frodo Baggins
Magneto
Peter Pan (from Once Upon A Time) Sarah Hill (from Soul Surfer) Elrond
Alan A. Allen (from Thunderpants) James Bond (from Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, and Diamonds Are Forever) Jane Foster Doc (from Back to the Future) Professor Trelawney
Ronald Weasley
Mary (from The Muppet Movie) Violet Crawley (from Downton Abbey) Mary Poppins
Jack Sparrow
The Fairy Godmother (from 2015 Cinderella) Ned McDodd (from Horton Hears a Who) Hermione Granger Dr. Henry Jones Sr. (from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) Giselle (from Enchanted) The Mad Hatter (from the 2010 Alice in Wonderland) Gru
Young Ila (from Noah)
*Answers on page 48*
MOVIE CHARACTER MATCHUP BY: EVELYN K.
Page 16
Crash! You are sitting in the car on the way home, and the car behind you
has just hit your car. Luckily, nobody is hurt, but what if somebody had been in-
jured? Car crashes, on average, happen over 5 million times per year worldwide,
including minor crashes and those that cause fatalities. This is much too high and
the number needs to be lowered. Luckily, Google has come up with a solution - the
self-driving car! The car would definitely be a benefit to our society, because there
would be fewer car crashes, less traffic congestion, and more human productivity.
The Google self-driving car is able to predict what cars and pedestrians will do next, and it will al-
ways be alert and paying attention to driving, unlike humans. Because of this, there would not be as many car
crashes - the self-driving car will never hit another vehicle. This could save millions of lives, and lots of mon-
ey, too. There would be no need to pay to get your broken car fixed because of a car accident, if you rode in
one of these amazing cars.
The reduced number of car crashes isn’t the only benefit. You would also have less problems with
traffic. Most traffic on the road occurs because of human selfishness and people not being alert. The Google
self-driving car would not have any of these problems, so it will help people have a fairly smooth and quick
ride.
Since the car is doing the driving, you can use your energy and focus for other things in the car. You
could read, get work done, text, or daydream - and maybe innovate more ideas to change the world. Whether
you sit in the driver’s seat or in the back, you don’t need to concentrate on the road anymore - just sit back
and enjoy the ride!
All in all, the Google self-driving car would have a major positive impact on our society. It would
reduce the number of car crashes, nearly eliminate traffic congestion, and give people more time to make
progress in both their lives and the world!
GOOGLE SELF DRIVING CAR BY: EMMA G.
COZYMELS REVIEW BY: JAMES S.
Cozymels is a restaurant with Mexican food that is actually not that spicy. I would
rate this restaurant a 3 of 5. The food is mainly tacos and fajitas, the typical Mexi-
can restaurant menu. You have two choices for tacos, hard or soft shell. The hard
shell tacos can be filled with beef, chicken, and pork. They are all good and have
great taste. They assume that you are a cheese lover and will serve everything with
cheese, so remember to ask if you don’t want cheese. The fajitas are ok. They have a bland taste and unless
you like soft shell taco and cheese and lettuce, I don’t recommend it. The restaurant is in Wheaton IL. My
family gave this restaurant an overall rating of 3 because the food was acceptable, but bland and safe. Don’t
expect the greatest food but it is still a casual restaurant with reasonable prices. Overall, the restaurant is a de-
cent place for a night out, but not for very fancy dinners.
You know that
a thick, greasy
burger proba-
bly won’t in-
crease your
lifespan. Yet as
many as 1 in 4
of us Americans sits down anyways at a
fast-food restaurant. Where is the discon-
nect? Why don’t people drive right by
these fast-food restaurants and find them-
selves something remotely healthy, like a
steak, or a bowl of noodles at an ordinary,
sit-down-order-and-eat restaurant?
The answer is what fast-food
companies have been working on for dec-
ades. They provide cheap, quick, filling,
tasty, food. Consider the difference be-
tween the fast-food restaurant, and the
ordinary sit-down restaurant. With the fast
-food restaurant, you drive through, place
your order at the speaker box, pay with a
credit card, and get your food. But at a
regular restaurant, you are seated, order
from a menu, wait for your food to be
cooked, and finally, you get your food.
The former takes two or three minutes,
while the latter takes as much as twenty
minutes or more. All this makes it appeal
to people who are busy, overscheduled,
and in a hurry, all of which describe peo-
ple today.
There is a dark side to this system.
These fast foods, which are easy to get,
are not healthy. Most fast foods contain a
lot of calories, fat, salt, and sugar, which
make them taste good, but also make
them bad for your body.
Take salt as an example. Salt is
absorbed into the blood, then, when it
hits the kidneys, causing the body to hold
onto more water, increasing blood pres-
sure. Increased blood pressure narrows
arteries, heart attacks, and dementia. Salt
is not something you want too much of.
What about sugar? Only eight
foods on the menu have no sugar. Eight
foods out of 168. Chicken nuggets, hash
browns, French fries, coffee, water, Diet
Coke, Dr. Pepper, and iced tea. Even the
burgers have sugar. So what happens
when you eat a lot of sugar?
First, a quick chemistry lesson.
Sugar comes in seven forms: Glucose,
fructose, galactose, lactose, sucrose,
maltose, and xylose. Of these, only glu-
cose, sucrose, and fructose are important
to us. Sucrose is made by joining glucose
and fructose together. Glucose is what
the body normally uses as energy. Fruc-
tose is produced by plants, and can also
be used by the body as sugar. However,
fructose is sweeter than sucrose. Thus,
fast-food companies use fructose instead
of sugar. However, fructose metabolizes
in a different way than glucose, which
makes it more likely to be stored as fat.
Fat can clog the liver, put pressure on the
kidneys, and increase your chance of a
heart attack. Added sugar is not a good
thing for your body.
(Continued on Page 2)
The Lure of Fast Food
By: Colin Y.
I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :
Doublets/Word Ladders 19
Arrow Mazes 20
Next Leap 22-23
Cow Problems 24-25
Animal Extinction 28-29
Food on your own 17-18
Up on Pointe 20-23
Apple iWatch 27-29
Media Reviews 30-32
SUMMER ISSUE , VOLUME 12 FREE E-VERSION SUMMER 2015
Page 18
Fats and calories are linked together. Fat is a source of calories, so eating more
fat also affects your calorie intake. As many fast foods are cooked with oil,
which is just fat, the fat content of food skyrockets. However, there are good
and bad fats. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are considered ‘good’
fats, as they decrease ‘bad’ cholesterol and increase ‘good’ cholesterol. Saturat-
ed and trans fats, on the other hand do exactly the opposite. Canola oil, which is
what McDonald’s cooks with, is one of the healthiest oils, with high amounts of good fat and low amounts of
bad fat. But even healthy fats face a common problem.
Fats are a main source of energy, measured in calories. Excess energy is stored away chemically as
body fat, which, as listed before, can cause a clogged liver, increased risk of a heart attack, and weakened
kidneys. And no matter what oil you consume, it still gets stored as fat. Unsurprisingly, fast food contains
high amounts of calories. Some menu options, such as the Big Breakfast, have half of your daily calories.
Eating too much increases fat, this in turn leads to obesity.
Besides causing high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease, and clogged liver, fast
food can contribute to diabetes. A damaged liver will not produce as much insulin. Not
enough insulin can lead to diabetes. Diabetes is the 7th biggest killer in the US, with over
75,000 deaths each year. Many times, this is preventable.
With all of these factors of fast food making it unhealthy, the worst one is what it’s not. Fast food is
low in most nutrients and minerals, making it a substitute for healthier food. Why someone would eat fast
food appears to be a mystery, until you look closer. As fast food is cheap and filling, it is very appealing to
poorer families. Poorer families are also more likely than others to be obese, diabetic, etc. They are also the
ones least likely to go look for fresh food to cook. Do you see where this is going?
Fast food is marketed highly to kids. When kids like a fast-food company, not only will they eat there,
their parent or guardian will also eat there. However, this trend is also not good for their health. Children who
are obese are more likely to have cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and bone problems. High-fat and high-
sugar meals help push them there.
Fast food companies continue to serve highly processed high-calorie, high-
sodium, and high-sugar foods, while describing them as healthy. Meanwhile, many of
the ingredients of these fast foods make them dangerous to your health. Fast food isn’t
good for you. So why sacrifice your body for convenience?
THE LURE OF FAST FOOD(CONTINUED) BY: COLIN Y.
Doublets are a type of word puzzle invented by the famous Lewis Carroll, which in-
volves changing a word to another word by changing a letter each turn. Each new word that
has been made by switching a letter has to be an existent word in the English language.
Change a DOG into a CAT - DOG, Dot, Cot, CAT
You see that you start with ‘dog’ and switch the G into a T to get the word ‘dot’, then
the D is changed to a C to make the word ‘cot’ (a cot is a type of bed), and finally, you swap
the O with an A to get the word ‘cat’. You could solve this doublet in a different way but this
is the shortest way to do it. Try solving the doublets below with the least amount of moves
possible, I have categorized them into 3 levels, easy, medium, and hard. The answer key on
the back shows the answer with the shortest way to do it. If you solve it with less moves then
the answer key shows then uh……… double check your words and if they are valid, you’re a
genius! But this will probably not happen. J
EASY 14.Take COAL from MINE
1. Put the TEA in the POT 15. Change a BIRD into a FISH
2. Change the MICE into RATS HARD
3. LOCK the DOOR 16. Make WHEAT into BREAD
4. Change LEAD into GOLD 17. Make NICE into MEAN
5. Go from COLD to WARM 18. Make the POOR RICH
6. Make a SICK person WELL 19. Swap ARM with LEG
7. Change OAT to RYE 20. Count from ONE through TEN
MEDIUM 21. Prove PITY to be GOOD
8. Change a HEAD into a TAIL 22. COMB your HAIR
9. Change HATE into LOVE
10. Touch FOOT with HAND
11. Change WET to DRY
12. DOCK a SHIP
Page 19
DOUBLETS / WORD LADDERS
BY: JUDSON L.
TEA, Pea, Pet, POT MICE, Mace, Race, Rate, RATS
LOCK, Look, Loom, Doom, DOOR
LEAD, Head, Held, Hold, GOLD COLD, Cord, Card, Ward, WARM
SICK, Silk, Sill, Will, WELL
OAT, Rat, Rot, Roe, RYE HEAD, Heal, Teal, Tell, Tall, TAIL
HATE, Have, Gave, Give, Live, LOVE
FOOT, Food, Fond, Bond, Band, HAND WET, Met, Mat, May, Day, DRY
DOCK, Sock, Soak, Soap, Slap, Slip, SHIP
FLOUR, Floor, Flood, Blood, Brood, Broad, BREAD COAL, Coat, Moat, Most, Mist, Mint, MINE
BIRD, Bind, Mind, Mint, Mist, Fist, FISH
WHEAT, Cheat, Cheap, Cheep, Creep, Creed, Breed, BREAD NICE, Mice, Mile, Male, Malt, Melt, Meat, MEAN
POOR, Pool, Tool, Toil, Tail, Tall, Tale, Tile, Tide, Ride, Rice, RICH
ARM, Aim, Air, Fir, Fig, Big, Beg, LEG ONE, Ore, Are, Ace, Act, Ant, And, Aid, Lid, Lip, Tip, Tin, TEN
PITY, Pits, Pins, Fins, Find, Fond, Food, GOOD
COMB, Come, Home, Hole, Hale, Hall, Hail, HAIR
Answers
Page 20
ARROW MAZES BY: HOLDEN M.
Difficulty:
Intermediate
The goal of this arrow maze is to
start at the letter “S”, the start, and
follow the arrows until you reach the
end, the letter “E”. Pick an arrow to
start at in the start zone, and then
follow the direction of that arrow
until you reach a new arrow. Once
you are at the new arrow, follow the
direction shown on the arrow. If
there is more than one direction,
then choose one to follow. Continue
this process until you reach the end.
Good luck!
Page 21
THE DIFFICULT ARROW MAZE BY: HOLDEN M.
Images were cropped screenshots of a program I made to design arrow mazes. Answers are expressed as series of arrows. The arrows tell you which pathway is the correct
pathway. Answers are upside down.
Easy: ←↑↗↘↓↘↓→↗↗←↗←↑↖→→→↘↓↙←↑ Intermediate: ←↓↘→↗↑↖↓↓↗↖←←←←←↓↓↓↓↓↓→→→→↑↖↗↑↖←←↑↗↑→→↘←
Difficult: →↓↘↗←↙↘↓←↑↘→↓↗↑↘↘←↓←↓→↓→↑→↑↖↓←↑↗→↓←↘↑→↓↙←↘→↑↘↑↑←↙↘←↘→↖↖↑↑↙←↓→↘↘
Page 22
On an early Saturday morn-
ing, about 60 adults had
gathered at George Wash-
ington University had gath-
ered to hear a man speak.
The man, a balding engineer
by the name of Bas Lans-
dorp, was already on the
stage, and ready to see the
reaction of the audience.
“How many of you would
like to take a one-way trip to
Mars?” he asked. Nearly
everybody raised their
hands.
Bas Lansdorp is the founder and CEO of Mars One. Along with his co-founder Arno Wielders, the Dutch
man had created a foundation with a goal of making the first permanent human civilization on Mars. In 2011,
Lansdorp had realized that if governments are too cautious to go to Mars, then maybe he should go. “I real-
ized that if it’s going to happen,” says Bas. “Then I’d have to do it myself.”
Now, in 2015, Mars One is based in the Netherlands, and has more than 200,000 volunteers. In 2014,
more than 80,000 people had donated more than $300,000, not much
compared to the needed 6 or 7 billion dollars. Luckily, they already had a plan. In 2020, the first unmanned
mission will depart to prepare the settlement. In 2026, crews will start to depart to their one-way trip to Mars,
and will continue leaving in subsequent periods of 26 months. Sadly for the foundation, NASA won’t allow
the expedition unless there is a guaranteed way back. “The tech to get you back from Mars simply doesn’t
exist,” said Lansdorp responded to NASA’s command. “We need to do this with the stuff we have today, and
the only way to do that is by going there to stay.”
By now, Mars One has spent billions of dollars, but they forgot one extremely important fact- deadly
space radiation. The government will only spend $29K to protect astronauts from the radiation, a small
amount compared to the billions the US uses for wars.
So now we get back to the University. For quite a while, Bas Lansdorp had been going around to uni-
versities and public places to find supporters. George Washington University was surprising, usually there
weren’t that many people to agree to go on a one-way trip to Mars. That brings us to the big question: Why
on Earth would anyone want to go to Mars?
THE NEXT GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND BY: DANIEL B.
Page 23
One man, Max Fagin, explains why. If technically it all goes right, he will go to Mars but miss out on
the feel of falling snow, the gentle breeze, or swimming on a scorching day. “I would feel incredibly sad
about missing all those things,” said Fagin, a master’s student in aerospace engineering. “But the whole point
of going to Mars is that you’d have better substitutes. Any human being can visit the ocean.
Anyone can visit the forest. These are beautiful things, but they are commonplace. I will get the chance to
experience a sunrise on Mars. I will get the chance to stand at the foot of Olympus Mons, one of the tallest
mountains in the solar system. I will get the chance to see two moons in the sky. I just can’t imagine being
nostalgic for a life that 6 or 7 billion people are experiencing right now.”
While Max Fagin explains why it might be an interesting place, other people explain why it’s safer.
Writer Tom Ligon, who publishes mostly in the magazine Analog Science Fiction and fact, pointed out that
while Mars has many hazards, it doesn’t have rattlesnakes, earthquakes, terrorists, or wars. "It's hard to have
forest fires over there," he said May 7 during a panel discussion at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washing-
ton, which was hosted by the nonprofit Explore Mars Inc. "The volcanoes are extinct, geologically pretty qui-
et. Mars is actually, in a lot of ways, a lot safer than Earth." Not only that, but thanks to the novelist Michael
Swanwick, we might solve Earth problems on Mars. ”We all are running out of a lot of different minerals,
some of which our civilization depends on," said Swanwick, who has won the Hugo and Nebula awards for
his work. "Strange[ly] enough, there is the possibility of copper going extinct. There is a science-fiction idea
for you.”
To make sure that Mars One didn’t also become a science-fiction idea, Lansdorp had to plan a very
important factor: technology. None of the tech will be built in-house. An expected rocket is an upgraded Fal-
con 9 from SpaceX, and a landing capsule from SpaceX or Lockheed Martin. Finally, the foundation will
have a pair of rovers not for science, but for moving Martian soil and laying sheets of thin-film solar panels,
to prepare for the arrival of humans.
Now, as Mars One grows, it proves even more that there are different humans. As Lansdorp said him-
self, the people who want to go to Mars and the ones who don’t will never really understand each other. Of
course, that doesn’t mean that not everybody wants to go even a little bit. It means that most people are
pulled back to Earth, instead of moving away to Mars. People think that the ‘Martians’ are running away
from Earth. Of course, somebody argues. Leila Zucker, a physician, is trying to show people why Mars One
is a good idea. “I can work to make things better on Earth while I’m here,” she said at an interview, “but I
could work to make things better on Earth while I’m on Mars. The idea that I’m
running away or something . . . no, I’m not. People who think that are small-minded and
scared. The whole idea is to expand the human race.”
Ever since Mars was discovered, people had wanted to go there. As Leila Zucker said herself, the
whole purpose (at least for some of them) is to expand the human
race. At the end of a session, she started to sing “I wanted to go to
the Red Planet Mars/but I didn’t get picked by Bas/I wanted to go to
the Red Planet Mars/now I gaze longingly at the stars/But I don’t
care I wasn’t picked for space/I’m cheering for the future of the hu-
man race/Someday we’ll all go to the Red Planet Mars/’Cause Mars
One leads the way to the stars!” Everyone on Mars One will, sadly,
also gaze longingly at the stars. Seeing space is the most amazing
sight that person will ever see, but it will also make them longingly
sad. These people won’t be able to share that experience with Earth.
So is Mars One really such a good idea?
THE NEXT GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND BY: DANIEL B.
Page 24
Recently, studies have shown that livestock pollutes the environment more than cars, planes, trains, and other
transportation combined. And standing alone, out of all the millions of livestock raised by farmers across the world, is
the one animal that pollutes most. The bovine terror, the cow.
Just preparing livestock for growth and health produces nine percent of all carbon dioxide in the world. The
waste and wind of cows alone produce more than one third of all methane, which warms the Earth 23 times faster than
carbon dioxide. Cows stink.
Experts estimate that by 2030, the pollution by cows will increase by more than 30 percent. Cattle farming is
responsible for over 18 percent of all greenhouse gasses released. Cows release methane through burping and flatu-
lence, and they are overgrazing, resulting in even more burping, flatulence, and excretions. Biodiversity is being re-
duced heavily by cows. 2/3 of all ammonia comes for cows. Think about it. Just one cow releases between 70 and 120
kilograms of methane per year. And in just 2011, there were 30,056,000 beef cows and 9,085,000 dairy cows. And
there are way more now. Cows are slowly taking over the world.
The fast food industry is huge right now. 2/3 of the population of America is obese or overweight. Increasing want for
food means increasing want for cows. The fast food industry gets more money from fast food; they kick out small cow
breeding companies. Only big ones are left. These big cow industries don’t care about the care of their cows, like the
little ones do. The cows are dumped in a truck, if they survive the feedlots, dairy sheds, and veal farms. They go with-
out food and water for days. Cows die from heat or are frozen to walls. Many cows are too weak and tired to walk,
from the journey, so many are dragged off. Then they are dumped into what is essentially a big cage, to await their
slaughter. All this time, the cows are burping, farting, and pooping. On other cows. The ones that are going to be eaten
by people.
The need for fast food makes big industries need to produces healthy cows as fast as possible. So scientists use
growth hormones and stimulants to make sure cows grow fast. They are mistreated because taking care of them is a
waste of time. Whenever a cow gets sick, cow factories either put it in with the other cows and cook it, transmitting the
disease to other cows that people are going to eat, or they give it medicine. So many antibiotics are used on cows that
many types of strong bacteria have evolved, leading to many diseases that humans catch and are harder to cure, or
more animals catch them, leading to more antibiotics and creating a devil’s triangle. Is the devil a cow?
Cows pollute the environment, yes, but let’s take a closer look. When they are slaughtered, this is done by hand, unlike
chickens. Many workers are poor, and get sick. Also, the chance of injuries by knives, cows, and machines are very
high. One time, a person fell into a meat grinder and ended up as lard that people ate. Also, much of the cow waste that
is produced is stuck onto the cows and people. With very little time to slaughter, cows are often turned into hamburg-
ers with large amounts of cow waste stuck on them, causing E. coli, a type of bacteria which causes diarrhea. Remem-
ber that all the time, the cow waste is polluting the environment by sending methane and C02 into the air. Even in
death, cows harm the environment.
Yes, it’s true. Cows can even pollute the water. They get to seas, rivers, and lakes. No, the cows do not swim
over and fart in them. But, tons of water is used to water plants that feed livestock, and tons of cow manure comes out.
This manure is washed down through rivers, into the drinking water and into lakes and oceans. Cows have wiped out
entire reefs, and their manure causes algae to bloom, majorly decreasing oxygen levels. And, due to all the cow ma-
nure washed into the drinking water, hundreds of people get sick, and hundreds more die. Cow poop is deadly.
Basically, cows can harm people in many ways. By harming the environment, they destroy the means for people to
survive. They also harm people directly. Although you could argue that it is the people’s fault that cows harm us, they
do harm us. Although it is true that we have brought this upon ourselves, there is nothing that we can do to change the
fact that cows harm us. Or is there? We can change now. Change for the better. Cut the fast food. Use home owned
farms. Stop using growth hormones and stimulants. Harness the power of farts!! Or in other words find a way to use
methane as energy. There is a way. Many ways, that we can change this. But we cannot do this alone. Every single
person. And it all starts with you. (See the next page for this article explained through diagrams)
ARE COWS CAUSING MAJOR PROBLEMS?
BY : W ILLIAM M.
Page 25
HOW COWS POLLUTE AND HOW THEY WORK
BY : W ILLIAM M.
Cows eat grass. Then they poop and fart
which releases carbon dioxide and methane,
which pollutes. Also, nitrogen, which rains
and grows more grass that cows eat.
Cows eat plants that contain carbon. They
respire and give of carbon dioxide. Com-
bustion gives off carbon dioxide. Plants ab-
sorb carbon dioxide.
Basic cow anatomy.
Diagram of
how cow ma-
nure gets into
oceans and de-
stroys fish and
plants.
How cow manure works its way into the The effect of cows reducing biodiver-
sity.
Page 26
Every day our brains are striving for perfection and that goal of perfection is something that helps us survive
from day to day. Our brains need something to focus on and cultivating it with ideas and thoughts is a good
way to keep our brain active. In many ways school helps us like this and also in many ways, so does the tests
that school hands out to the students. Many of the tests in district 203 has a singular goal of keeping the
brain going, and the PARCC tests is one of that many.
The PARCC test is an individualistic test and every student WILL take a different time amount to
finish it. While waiting for other students to finish, people might be talking in small groups or reading. Dis-
trict 203 definitely encourages social relationships and reading, but after taking a PARCC test, maybe there
needs to be a better way of keeping the mind active. Because the PARCC test already gets your brain fired
up and ready for action, we should utilize this brain boosts and use it on subjects that require extra brain
thought. School was made to help you learn things, and that’s what this issue of Eagle Eye magazine is all
about; keeping your brain learning in a fun way.
How PARCC works
Originally, the Illinois state was taking Illinois standardized tests such as ISAT (Illinois Standard
Achievement Test) and PSAE (Prairie State Achievement Examination) and each of these were tests taken
by hand, by circling in bubbles and writing in essays. The PARCC test is a completely new way of industri-
alized testing because it uses computers and technology to understand the many ways students think and un-
derstand things. Obviously, because it’s technology that is grading these tests and printing out the answers,
there has to be some way of understanding what students are writing. The answer is neural networks.
Neural networks are what most word recognizing machines use to interpret your words that you say.
A few examples of these are Siri (what I-phones use), some auto-message systems and etc. The Neural net-
works are basically a student (in a way) and each new word is “taught” to it. The networks in neural net-
works is all about words and connections to words: It’s just like our brains. Our brains connect things to dif-
ferent things in groups, like actors on a stage; you can’t have too many actors on one stage. Every actor does
a scene with another actor or acts alone, and our brain is just like that, grouping together things. Neural net-
works use this once hearing a word and transferring it into information, it uses a network of data to see
which word/data has the best relationship to the data entered.
Maybe though (most likely), all essays are submitted to an Illinois group that grades the essays,
though that would take A WHILE.
Some other problems that technology tests can give us is glitches; lots of glitches. Some of these
many glitches can include: screen crashes, CPU overload, fuzzy texts, bobbing symbols and etc. These are
all problems that can happen and will happen to someone: how does PARCC stop that?
There are TOO many glitches that relate to the computer CPU system that there can only merely be
some suggestions as follows: restart your computer, close everything out and reopen it, or just restart the
page. In the middle of a test, all of these are not an option so what can we do about this? At the moment it
seems that nothing can be done about this. What PARCC could do though is somehow reduce the amount of
FPS and CPU usage of the webpage, through many little edits.
Technology is complicated and like all complicated things, it comes with many problems: why not
cool your brain off from all that technological stuff? Read on…
PERSPECTIVE ON PARCC
BY : ERON R.
Page 27
Random Stuff
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
The most money ever paid for a cow in an auction was $1.3 million.
It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King
James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th
word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last
word is spear.
Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones
crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.
The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleve-
land's baby daughter, Ruth.
Babies have more bones in their bodies than adults. As the babies
grow older, some bones eventually fuse together (like in the skull),
resulting in fewer bones as an adult.
Brett Favre's first completed pass as a Green Bay Packer was to him-
self.
The word "laser" is an acronym. It stands for "Light Amplification by
the Stimulated Emission of Radiation."
The first seedless grapes were kind of an accident. Thousands of years
ago in the Middle East, a random genetic mutation caused a group
of grapes to spontaneously abort their own seeds before the seeds
could develop hard casings. The result: seedless produce. To repro-
duce the fruit, a sly farmer simply cloned the vine (with no seeds,
there’s nothing to plant)—meaning that all seedless grapes today
are direct descendants of that one mutated grape vine.
In Ireland, Jack O’Lanterns were once carved from turnips
RANDOM STUFF
BY : ERON R.
Page 28
THE ANIMALS
BY : ELIZABETH L. 99.9% of all animals have gone extinct. 99.9%.
There are about 8.7 million species left on earth
which means there was once 8.7 billion animal
species on earth and about 8691300000 animals
have gone extinct! And then every day about 200
animals go extinct. That means in the year 2135 all
the animals would be extinct (if it continues at the
same rate)! Why? Because of humans. Every time
you use your phone or ride in a car you are helping
the environment kill itself and the animals and
species left on earth. The endangered turn extinct
as we continue to live. But sometimes things hap-
pen. Sometimes the extinct come back.
Animals have gone extinct because of us or things that we bring upon them. The do-
do bird for example. They were flightless birds who lived on the undiscovered island of
Mauritius until Dutch sailors discovered the island. The dodo birds were easy to catch and
made an easy meal for the Dutch sailors. After a while the Dutch sailors might have
stopped eating them (because they tasted bad) but the dogs and rats and pigs that the sail-
ors brought developed a certain taste for dodo eggs and began to destroy the habitat of the
dodo and other animals of Mauritius. That ended the life of the dodo bird that to this day,
we still don’t know exactly what they looked like.
Another animal that became extinct was the Yangtze River dolphin. It lived exclu-
sively in the Yangtze River of China and was the first known dolphin that humans drove to
extinction. Harmful fishing practices like gill net, rolling hooks, and electrical stunning
led to their extinction. Fishermen did this to get food on their table to survive but ironical-
ly this will eventually lend a hand in the downfall of the animals that the fishermen eat.
Some animals are just hardly getting by while their numbers get lower and lower.
These are called endangered animals. Snow Leopards are one. There are about 4080-6590
left in the wild. Threats to the Snow Leopard are farm-
ers and hunters. Farmers hunt the Snow Leopards be-
cause they want to keep their livestock safe. Hunters
want to hunt them for their coat. Then there is climate
change and habitat loss that drives the Snow Leopard
out of it’s home and proud rule of the mountains.
Page 29
THE ANIMALS
BY : ELIZABETH L.
But there is still hope with or without people helping. Animals can and have
reappeared before. Take the Black-Footed Ferret. Once they were considered ex-
tinct but now there are nearly 1000 Black-Footed ferrets in the wild. What hap-
pened? It could have been people or it could have been that people stopped inter-
fering with the land of the Black-Footed Ferret. But now they are endangered due
to habitat loss and disease.
There is another animal, the Tasmanian Tiger or the Tasmanian Wolf. Inter-
estingly it isn’t a tiger or a wolf but a relative of kangaroos. They are considered
extinct but there are some unconfirmed sightings of them and enough that zoolo-
gist are having doubts. A research team has been sent to find the Tasmanian Tiger
and many reliable locals say that they have seen the Tasmanian Tiger. So there is a
possibility while we consider the Tasmanian Tiger as still extinct that they are liv-
ing in secrecy behind the eyes of humans.
Overall some animals have or are going
through cases like this where we consider them
to be extinct while they live in secrecy but un-
fortunately many species' stories don’t end like
that. Many die out so we need to help save these
animals before they disappear forever.
Top Five Most
Endangered Animals 5. Axolotl
4. Javan Rhinoceros
3. Siamese Crocodile
2. Brown Spider Monkey
1. Northern White Rhinoceros (This is the most accurate that could be found so the
actual top five most endangered animals are unknown)
Page 30
S IMPLE AS SALT
BY : AERAHAN S. If you think salt tastes good with some foods
you are not alone. Almost everyone has access
to salt and they usually start liking it if they
eat it regularly. There are many theories that
explain why most people with access to salt
develop a taste for it. Some of these theories
are that we adapt to it and end up liking it and
this might be passed on through genes, we
lose salt when we sweat and our body needs
more so we would like salt, and the taste buds
with the salt on it will send a message to the
lower part of our brain which gets our neurons
moving and we will be happy. These theories
are the most likely ones that exist yet scien-
tists are not completely sure why we like salt.
There is probably a point for salt where we
can have the maximum taste for salt. They
will grind salt into extra thin powder to make
the taste very good. This is what we usually
know salt as. This will make the chances of us
buying more of that type of food very high.
The most likely theory right now is that we
like salt because of a variety of factors like the
Another theory about why we like salt is
that the love of salt is caused by genetic
makeup. This is very likely because an
experiment was done in a lab where
some scientists found rats and gave them
salt. Some like it some did not. This evi-
dence seems like an interesting lead but
we are only similar to rats and we are
obviously not exactly alike. Also the rats
could be different to other rats. Even if
we did try this on other humans we
would have to conduct several tests on
different types of people to be absolutely
sure. With the rat evidence it would be
hard not to be biased because we will
naturally try to shy away because we
will be embarrassed if we were similar
to rats
One theory that seems very likely right now is the theory that we adapt to start liking salt.
This seems very similar to how animals adapt to their surroundings. Most people have access
to salt because it is very cheap and plentiful. They start using it and they will start to adapt to
it like animals do to their habitats and they will start liking it. This has some solid evidence
but it is not enough. The evidence is that studies have been done that say that some tribes who
live deep in the Amazon rainforest who don’t have access to it hated the taste of salt when
they first tried it. Also kids who first start eating salt like it faster than most other adults. We
know this works the other way around because a study was done using many different people
and they were on a low sodium diet and they said that the low sodium foods tasted just as
good as the high sodium food they ate before and some said the low sodium food tasted even
better. This seems like the most likely single theory that was devised so far.
Page 31
S IMPLE AS SALT (CONTINUED)
BY : AERAHAN S.
One of the widely believed theories by the public is the theory
that our taste buds simply just like the taste of salt. Once our
brain detects that the salt is near us it sends a message to the
saliva glands to start creating saliva. We will want the food
with salt in it and we will eat that food. As soon as our taste
buds detect the taste of the salt in the food we are eating it will send a mes-
sage to the lower part of our brain. Our taste buds will take the good taste of
salt and compare it with the bitter taste of salt if the good taste of salt is
stronger than the bad taste of salt our taste buds will just take out the bad taste
and only send the good taste to the lower part of our brain which will make us
want the taste of salt again. Again this is not solid evidence because there is
not actually a way to test this theory. We do know for sure we have taste
buds ,
We know little about why we like salt one of the only things we know about
salt is that we love salt for sure. There have been many theories about why we
like salt. Some of them are we adapt to it, we simply like it, and that we like it
because of genetic makeup. The hardest things about determining why we like
salt is simply because we still don’t know how we can test one theory. For ex-
ample the theory about the taste buds with the technology we have today is al-
most impossible to test without nanotechnology tracking the signals of our
taste buds to our brain. The theory of our genes is also impossible to test be-
cause we don’t even have a picture of what they look like much less find what
types of genes have the taste for salt in them. The theory where we adapt to
salt is hard to keep track of because we don’t even know how our body adapts
to salt. Scientists should stop coming up with theories and instead they should
come up with ways to test those theories.
Page 32
ABSENCE OF SODEXO— F R O M L A S T S U M M E R
BY : M ICHAEL J . It’s summer! No more letting Sodexho dictate what you can and can’t eat. So now if you want that doughnut, eat it!
(On the first Friday of June) or if you want that Jelly-filled doughnut, eat it! (On the eighth of June) Because now
you can let the national official and unofficial food holidays dictate what you can and can eat!
In June you can enjoy many delicacies (such as the already said doughnut); on the first have Hazelnut cake!
(Make some yourself, click here for a recipe!), on the second of June, cool off in the heat with the easy to find
Rocky Road ice cream! Just walk over to your local grocery store and pick some up! (Or beg your mother or father
for it). On the third of June its National egg day! So have some eggnog, eat an omelet (or scrambled eggs) and ei-
ther egg someone’s house or just egg someone on! On the fourth of June get some cheese. If you have any leftover
omelet from yesterday, turn it into a cheese omelet! Or get some nice water crackers and eat some! (Click here to
make your own cheese).
And already I’m on my third paragraph for the Fifth day of June! Nope! The fourth of June is also national
cognac (alcohol) day and frozen yogurt day. But no matter what please don’t have cognac, and especially not in
cheese frozen yogurt, but please sprinkle cheese on frozen yogurt. On the fifth you can reminisce about those good
old days of winter. When you remembered that recipe to make gingerbread. (Please click here to remember that rec-
ipe). But please get these ingredients from an environmentally friendly source, because it’s also World Environment
day!
And (although people disagree about when national applesauce cake day is) please eat some of this (cake?)
between the fourth and the sixth (Please click here to learn what applesauce cake is). And if you think, that by now,
after 6 days of freedom that you want Sodexho, then don’t fret! Today (June 7th) is Chocolate Ice cream day! So sit
right down with a big bowl of chocolate ice-cream…and look at this article!
On the eighth, jelly-filled doughnuts run amok, for the eighth is national jelly-filled doughnut day! So
please, don’t eat a bagel on the 8th, eat a doughnut! And on the ninth, there is a pie that many of you love, hate, or
never heard of… the strawberry rhubarb pie! So just hunker right down inside that bunker (you may be in) and eat
some pie. Or please read this recipe for it… and if you are inside a nuclear power plant, please do not try to make
this recipe, heated up by nuclear power. Or if you do, please keep a safe distance away from the radioactivity! On
the tenth, there is a triple whammy! So please enjoy your black cow (root beer float) with iced tea ice cream, and
plenty of herbs and spices! Because on the tenth of June it is Black cow, herbs and spices, and iced tea day! So
please have plenty of those. But all at once might be a little eccentric…
On the eleventh, you might fare a little better if you eat this all at once, because today is national German chocolate
cake day! So please, make some of this cake and SHARE WITH ME! If you would like to make one from scratch
please click here. And the next day, while you are recovering from your tummy-ache (did you eat too much cake?
Please give some to ME!) Enjoy some tasty delicate peanut butter cookies!* (Warning: may contain peanuts) Just
munch on them all day long to get a new tummy-ache! (Because you should share some with me too!)
The twelfth of June is like a weekend to you. Because you get to choose what to eat today, just as long as
you are klutzy… (It is kitchen Klutzes of America day…). And on the thirteenth have some Strawberry shortcake
(and watch some too) (IF you watch strawberry shortcake please watch the old kind)(Also play strawberry short-
cake video games)*(And play with Strawberry shortcake merchandise…)(Here is the recipe for strawberry short-
cake)(Here is a link to Amazon.com to buy strawberry shortcake merchandise strawberry shortcake merchandise).
On the fifteenth have some lobster! Maybe go to the fanciest place in town and order some lobster! I know nothing
about lobster, but please let me dictate what you should eat! And now we return to a topic that I know about…
Page 33
SUMMER ABSENCE OF SODEXO ( C O N T I N U E D )
BY : M ICHAEL J . …Fudge! Because the sixteenth of June is national fudge day! So please beg your parents for fudge and do
nothing else but that today. (Unless you know how to bake fudge, then click here). And if you feel sick the next
day (on the seventeenth) then just eat your fresh veggies! Because it’s national fresh veggies day. Hopefully that
will revive you enough so you can eat strudel! Because the seventeenth is also national apple strudel day! (Click
here if you want to make apple strudel) (My birthday is during the summer; please send me a gift-basket with the
following items: apple strudel, cash, apple strudel, apple strudel, apple strudel, and 10 German chocolate cakes.
Thank you!).
On the eighteenth, after you and I have eaten our fill of strudel you should have a delicious picnic with
homemade cherry tarts and sushi. Because the eighteenth is national picnic day and sushi day and cherry tart day!
(I wonder how cherry start sushi during a picnic will taste like) (Please click here to find out a time-consuming and
sticky way to get sushi). You should know how to make cherry tarts. So I am not including a recipe for that. Every-
one should know how to make cherry tarts. I like sweets. (In case you can’t tell).
On the nineteenth you are free to have whatever you want! (Excluding alcohol and other inappropriate sub-
stances…) And on the twentieth is one of my favorites. Vanilla milkshake day! (I like all sweets days) so walk out-
side to your nearest steak and shake and order yourself a comically large milkshake today. And on the next day
(the twentieth) don’t touch those strawberries and cream (that day is on the 21st of May, not June) because today is
peaches and cream day! So get out that whipped cream, cut a few peaches up and enjoy some whipped cream cov-
ered peaches.
On the twenty-second try wrapping a succulent chocolate éclair (yummy) with onion rings (yummier) be-
cause it is chocolate éclair day and onion ring day! So have that chocolate éclair for breakfast, that chocolate éclair
with onion rings for lunch, and those onion rings with a chocolate éclair and those onion rings for snacks. Nothing
will go wrong! A perfectly nutritious meal! I have no idea what this is and you probably don’t know either but (as
long as you are not allergic to nuts, in that case you are free from the troubles of food days for today!) but please (I
implore you to make these) make or find out (at least) what a pecan sandie is. Ice cream? Cookie? An unconven-
tional way to eat nuts? No one knows! (At least not me) and if you would like to make it please click here.
On the 25th please enjoy some catfish with your strawberry parfait (or a strawberry catfish parfait) because… (You
know why). Just grab your fishing rod (or your pocket fishing rod) and hunker down to the bank to waste your day
trying to catch the elusive catfish! And on the next day after you are really tired from trying to catch those fish
enjoy some chocolate pudding, and some more and some more! (Perhaps a barrel or two of it). On the twenty-
seventh it is Indian pudding day (I have no earthly idea what it is) and Orange blossom day (is it a flower or a
food?) Either way please click here if you are crazy enough to try Indian pudding and for orange blossoms… I
think it’s a day to celebrate the orange blossom by eating orange foods? (I still have no idea).
On the 28th I know what this food is… Tapioca pudding! (The food I always ask my mother for and she
says no) So don’t let your mother say no to it. Say you must eat it because its tapioca pudding day! So secretly
walk to the nearest convenience store or grocery store and steal (or buy) all the tapioca pudding in the store (and
send one barrel of it to me) Please. I need it. I like tapioca pudding.
On the 29th it is almond butter crunch day. I have no earthly idea what that is either. But on the 30th (my
sisters birthday!) I don’t know about you but my sister and I are going to have delicious ice cream floats instead of
birthday cake because… Its Ice cream float day!
This was 3 pages of food-filled fun. And that was only June. Imagine what it would be if I did all the months of the
year!
Gluten is innocent (and not yet proven guilty)
By: Saachi K
Gluten:It is in your toothpaste, your
bread, your cosmetics, salad dressings, andeven stamp and envelope adhesives. But
despite its popularity, many people havedecided to live without this protein, not
realizing the consequences. Going gluten-
free is necessary for people with glutenintolerance and celiac disease, and there
are easy ways to bake gluten-freeif you need to. But, what if you
are not allergic to gluten? Is
it good for you to gogluten-free?
Over 18 million Americans
have gluten sensitivity. 3 million of those
people have celiac disease. This leaves 302 million Americans who have a choice of
whether they want to go gluten-free or not. Many of these people bite the bait and go
gluten-free just because their favorite
celebrities are doing it too. Is it possible that even the rich and famous don’t know
about gluten-free secrets?
Gluten-Free Baking for Gluten Intolerance: Gluten is a gas-retaining protein that
provides food with nutrition, moisture, flavor, and texture; so your bread rises because of gluten. Baking
gluten-free is especially challenging because you have to get the goods vitamin-packed and healthy,
and also flavorful and tasty so that you cannot taste
a very significant difference between gluten-free and regular baked treats. If you are gluten-intolerant,
gluten-free baking can help you enjoy the variety in products you are missing out on.
Most baked treats require you to make the
batter or flour. To do this, you need to blend all the
gluten-free starches and flours together. These grains include amaranth, arrowroot, bean/legume, buckwheat,
chia, corn flour, corn meal, flax, millet, montina, nut, quinoa, potato flour, potato starch, rice, and rice bran. If
you look at the following table of grain characteristics,
you can choose which grains suit you.
Did you know? Sometimes, a gluten-
free diet can treat autism.
Do “gluten-free” and “good choice”
really go together in this puzzle? Maybe
not…
Gluten intolerance limits you
to gluten-free food, and you can’t
prevent it. But if you are one of the 302 million people who aren’t allergic, you
can either eat the expensive, fiber and
vitamin deficient foods, or eat regular
enriched food that helps your immune
system, gets you fibers, and moisturizes
your food. Gluten provides you with
vitamins like B9, fibers, and less
expensive food. The
average American is
already fiber deficient. Going gluten-free and
taking that small quantity
off worsens the situation.
Gluten-free seems like the way to go,
but you might never
realize the real issues.
First of all, gluten-free
food costs exorbitant
amount of money. Most
gluten foods are 30%
more expensive than the
Same food with gluten.
Why would you purposefully
want to spend extra money on
unhealthy food instead of eating
nutritious food that you need to have?
Also, recent scientific studies are
showing that there is no significant
benefit from this limiting diet, although
if you are allergic, there any many
ways to fix your predicament.
Gluten is, overall, a
marvelous protein that helps us fuel our
bodies for the better. It doesn’t make us “fatter” ; carbohydrates and sugars do,
and both of these things are more
common in GF foods. So, if you ever hear
your friends thinking about changing to a
GF diet (if they don’t have an allergy) you
know how to prove Gluten innocent!
Up on
Pointe: Dancers of Note
A Clements Corporation Project
Inside this issue
Early Life ................................. 1
Spotted .................................... 2
Teenage Life ............................ 2
Law, Dance, and Publicity ...... 2
Found Again ............................ 3
For A Second, It Could Have Dis-appeared ................................. 3
Symbol .................................... 3
You Can’t—Oh But You Can .... 3
Misty Copeland The lights beam down upon the face of a dancer. She leaps through the air, her
wings spreading. The firebird has awakened. Her strength lifts her into the air, a
streak of red against the black backdrop. Spinning, she entrances the audience
with her story. The graceful and empowering firebird finishes with a flourish and
the show continues. But the audience doesn’t forget the firebird. In fact, she’s
what everyone remembers.
Misty Copeland. A firebird for the American Ballet Theatre, one of the most
prominent dance companies in the world. She inspires everyone who watches
her. When she dances, she makes the audience believe her story. However, her
story is not as great and uplifting as her dancing. In fact, it is as almost as dark as
the ending of Swan Lake.
Early Life Misty
lived
in
Gar-
dena,
Cali-
Misty Copeland with siblings Lindsey Monique Brown, Erica
Stephanie Copeland, Christopher Ryan Copeland, Douglas
May 2015
More About the American Ballet Theatre (The ABT)
The American Ballet Theatre, or the
ABT, was founded in 1939. They
perform for over 450,000 people.
This is the only large cultural insti-
tution that does this. It makes ABT
unique.
At the time of ABT’s launch in 1939,
the newborn company was directed
by Oliver Smith and Lucia Chase.
Succeeding Chase and Smith in
1980, Mikhail Baryshnikov stepped
up to the director’s position. Under
Baryshnikov, ABT flourished. Many
new classical ballets were refined
and modernized.
In 1990, Oliver Smith and Jane
Hermann became the directors of
the company. They made an aggres-
sive agenda that brought old tradi-
tions and modern ideas together to
prepare for a great future.
In the October of 1992, Misty
Copeland’s life-changer Kevin
McKenzie was given the role of
Artistic Director.
The ABT has been up and going for
nearly seventy-five years. In that
period of time, they have performed
in forty-three countries, in a total of
one-hundred thirty-six cities. Out of
those cities, the ABT has performed
in all fifty states of the USA. Most
recently, international success
reaches out to Hong Kong, Havana,
Moscow, and Beijing.
NEAT FUN FACT!
On April 27, 2006, an act of Con-
gress changed
Spotted
Misty set off into the powerful world of dance. She filled every minute of
spare time she had with dance. Misty is a ballet prodigy; if she saw a step she
could do it. While it takes most dancers three years to get up on pointe, it took
Misty a mere three months. But her mother was overwhelmed. One fateful
evening, she called and insisted that Bradley take her daughter home and that
the dance lessons had to stop. Misty was devastated.
Bradley dropped Misty off at the motel, and started to drive back home to her
house. Halfway home, Bradley turned around and drove all the way back to
the motel, where she knocked on the door and asked if Misty would come live
with her and her husband Patrick and son Wolf. Misty reminisced the events.
“And I remember it so vividly, just Cindy coming and speaking with my moth-
On one school day when Misty was
thirteen, a teacher noticed her move-
ment. It was fluid and graceful, like
that of a dancer’s. She carried herself
with elegance. The teacher recom-
mended
her to a
dance
teacher at
the San
Pedro
Boys and
Girls
Club,
Cindy
Bradley.
Later,
Bradley
said,
“The first
time I saw her she was sitting high
on the bleachers and I had ...I asked
her to come down and join us. And it
Misty Copeland dancing in her early years
Law, Dance, and Publicity
Teenage Life
One day, when Misty was fifteen, her mother insist-
ed that Misty come home. Misty was frightened, not
wanting to lose ballet. “I did not want to lose ballet,”
Misty recalls, “And the thought of losing that and
coming back and living at this motel was something
that I just couldn't let happen. It was like watching
my future slip away.” So, she entered court to try to
separate from her mother. It was horrible, and very
public. It made headlines. After two months, Misty
finally stopped fighting and moved back into the
dreary motel.
“I knew that she was
“I did not want to lose ballet.”
“She has a proportion to her body and she has a response to music a visceral response to music, and a coordination that are all the ingredients of a major ballet dancer.”
Misty continued dancing and achieved many different feats. At fifteen, she won
1st Place in the Music Center Spotlight awards. She studied at the Lauridsen
Ballet Center. Misty later studied at the San Francisco Ballet School. But her
life really changed when she went to the American Ballet Theatre Summer In-
tensive.
Again, she was spotted by a life-changer. Kevin McKenzie, the director of the
American Ballet Theatre, saw her and her grace. “She has a proportion to her
body and she has a response to music a visceral response to music, and a coor-
dination that are all the ingredients of a major ballet dancer,” McKenzie said,
stating why Misty caught his eye.
McKenzie shared how important
Misty could be in the ballet commu-
nity. “You know, if she goes where
she can go, she's going to be a very
big symbol,” he said, “This is a very
big deal here.” It’s a big deal because
rarely do African American dancers
participate in big dance companies.
Misty, if she gets the role of
Principal Dancer in the American
Ballet Theatre, will provide inspira-
tion for everyone who was told they
can’t dance because of their race.
“They're being told they don't fit in,
they won't have a successful career,
they don't have the bodies...” Misty
said, “Even to this day, I hear that I
shouldn't even be wearing a tutu. I
don't have the right legs, my mus-
Misty Copeland—Under Armor
Misty Copeland as ABT’s Firebird Found Again
Symbol
For A Second, It Could Have Disappeared
Misty was ecstatic when she got the legendary role of the Firebird in the show
Firebird. But, her leg was really hurting her. However, she wanted to dance the
role. She ignored it and didn’t tell anyone. By the day of the show, it hurt just to
walk. But Misty knew how many people from her African American communi-
ty were coming to support her, so she hid it. Critics applauded her spectacular
performance, but something worse was happening. It turns out Misty had six
stress fractures in her leg. She was told she would never dance again. But here
she is, working hard and still stunning audiences with her ballet skills.
Misty Copeland
recently fea-
tured in an Un-
der Armor ad.
At the begin-
ning of the ad,
she reads her
rejection letter
into a ballet
school that she
applied to. It
tells
her
that
her body isn’t
right for ballet.
But then she
dances, leaping
through the air,
spinning across
the stage, the
inspiring danc-
er. It ends with
the powerful
quote “I Will
I Will What I Want
cles are too big. There are times when
I believe it, when I start to question,
you know, maybe it - maybe I'm see-
Misty found her happily ever after. She’s currently thirty two, living a happy
life with her lawyer boyfriend Olu Evans. She still lives and breathes dance,
and is making history. Misty was appointed to the President’s Council on Fit-
ness, Sports, and Nutrition by President Obama in 2014. Recently, she made
history with a fellow African American dancer by performing the lead roles in
Swan Lake. Misty started from nothing and fol-
Happily Ever After The Dancer of Next
Month Another ABT dancer… this is part
of her biography on their website.
Guess who it is!
Born in Sun Valley, Idaho, she
began dancing at the age of three.
While training at the Academy of
Colorado Ballet, she won the gold
medal in 2001 at the Youth Amer-
ica Grand Prix Finals in New
York City. In 2002, she began
training at the Harid Conservato-
ry in Boca Raton, Florida, on a
full scholarship.
"Misty Copeland on Love, Life, and Leaps of Faith." ELLE. N.p., n.d. Web. May 2015.
"ABT: Dancers." ABT: Dancers. American Ballet Theatre, n.d. Web. May 2015.
"Under Armour's Stunning Ballerina Ad Aims to Lure Women From Lululemon." Time. Time, n.d. Web. May 2015.
"Kam Williams Celebrity Interview: Misty Copeland." The Skanner News. N.p., n.d. Web. May 2015.
"Misty Copeland." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, n.d. Web. May 2015.
"Our June/July Cover Is Making Waves." Pointe Magazine – Ballet at Its Best.N.p., n.d. Web. May 2015.
"ABT: Inside ABT." ABT: Inside ABT. N.p., n.d. Web. May 2015.
"Jos Gandos Coloring Pages For Kids." Ballet Shoes Easy Drawing. N.p., n.d. Web. May 2015.
"ABT: Dancers." ABT: Dancers. N.p., n.d. Web. May 2015.
Bibliography
About the Author
Elliott Clements, a twelve
year old dancer herself,
goes to Kennedy Junior
High School and takes her
LA class with her awesome
Page 40
GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS
BY : RACHEL S.
What are genetically Modified foods If you were a farmer, beetles would attack your tomato crops every year. You
have to buy gallons and gallons of pesticides to battle the beetles. However, you heard
that there were scientists that created a kind of tomato plant that could produce its
own pesticide, you wouldn’t have to buy your own, and you only had to get your own
pesticide producing tomato plants.
These tomatoes are like the fruits and vegetables that carry vaccines and the
rice that can grow in saltwater. These are very helpful, but they could also carry allergens. Long term
effects might not have appeared. The tomato plant relies on a gene that comes from bacterium, which
is what scientist put into the tomato plant’s genome.
How to create an insect resistant tomato plant There are 10 steps to make an insect resistant tomato plant. First, you have to cut out the
gene. Next, put the gene into a vector with a selectable antibiotic resistance marker gene. Third, copy
the vector in the bacteria. Fourth, coat the tungsten or gold particles with the DNA vectors. Fifth,
load the vector-coated particles onto the Teflon bullet. Sixth, load the gene gun. Seventh, shoot, and
the gene gun releases particles at a high velocity, which penetrates plant cells. Eighth, when he vec-
tor enters the cell, the genes are incorporated with the vector will grow. Ninth, the cells are plated on
a selective antibiotic media, and only the cells that have been incorporated with the vector will grow.
Tenth, the cells are transferred to medium which contains plant growth factors. Now, you have a to-
mato plant that produces its own pesticide.
The risks and benefits of GMO’s
Other plants that have been modified are
potatoes, squash, corn, and soybeans. In Uganda,
people eat a lot of bananas. However, bananas
don’t have a lot of vitamin A. There are many cases
of blindness, because bananas don’t have vitamin
A. Too much vitamin A is toxic to the body, so
there wasn’t an easy solution. Super bananas
would help prevent blindness.
Genetically modified foods could
help fill the gaps in nutrition and minerals,
but they could also harm the environment. If
a genetically engineered plant became inva-
sive, that would be a problem. There are
risks with the possibility of fixing health
problems for people who don’t have access to a
certain nutrient. If a genetically modified plant
caused more problems than it fixed, people proba-
bly wouldn’t bother to care for it. Genetically mod-
ified foods could do great things for us, but they
should first be thoroughly tested for safety.
Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of. — Steven Hawking
PRISON BREAK MAZE
BY: KRISTIN C.
DONUT PUZZLE
BY: NANDINI K.
Start here
Page 43
APPLE IWATCH
BY: HARRISON Z.
The Apple Watch has stirred up frenzy within the Apple fans. The
question is; does it really have potential? Decide for yourself with the
following arguments.
Page 44
APPLE IWATCH (CONTINUED)
BY: HARRISON Z.
This is the time where everyone is
starting to exercise in order to stay fit.
The Apple Watch provides numerous
things for exercise, like a heart rate
monitor, records of your steps, exer-
cise, and standing time. The Apple
Watch will even tell you when you
have to stand up because you
were sitting too long. The Apple
Watch doesn’t even need your
iPhone for the fitness app unless
you want to record your daily
fitness. The Apple Watch
even supports Apple Pay,
and you don’t even need your
iPhone to use it, except for the
first time, to link your Apple
Watch to your Apple Pay
account.
This story can fit 75-125 words.
Selecting pictures or graphics is an im-
portant part of adding content to your
newsletter.
Think about your article and ask your-
self if the picture supports or enhances
the message you’re trying to convey.
Avoid selecting images that appear to be
out of context.
Microsoft Publisher includes thousands
All you have to do is open up the app, scroll through the
credit cards, select one, and scan it onto the scanner. This means that if you by accident left your wallet at home, you
have a virtual one slapped right on your wrist. This makes your pockets free of everything ex-cept an iPhone if you want to
access the other features of the Apple Watch. The smart watch
isn’t a pain to lug around ei-ther. It weighs less than an ounce, for the Apple Watch
Sport, which is the most common. The watch is also attrac-
tive because it makes new ways to interact
with others such as sending
your heart beat to your friend. It also uses the haptic engine tech-nology to notify you by making it
feel like a gentle tap on your wrist. The Apple Watch even can use the haptic engine to notify you when
to turn by tapping you ten times if it wants you to turn right, and 6 taps to turn left. This means that you can disable sound from maps
if you want to listen to music while driving to a new place. The
smart watch has a battery life that
is supposed to last for up to 18 hours. As Apple CEO Tim Cook
said, “We were-n’t first on the
MP3 player; we weren’t first on the tablet; we weren’t first on the
smartphone. But we were argua-bly the first modern smartphone, and we will be the first modern smart watch—the first one that
matters.”
“We weren’t first on the MP3 player; we weren’t first on the tablet; we weren’t
first on the smartphone. But we were arguably the first modern smartphone,
and we will be the first modern smart watch—the first one that matters.”
YES! IT HAS
POTENTIAL!
Page 45
APPLE IWATCH (CONTINUED)
BY: HARRISON Z.
The Apple Watch Sport 38mm size is the cheapest Apple Watch model, and it costs $349. That is an extremely expensive price to pay just for a phone accessory. The better the model, the more expensive it gets. Who would care if their phone accessory was made of gold? Also, the amount of RAM that the Apple Watch has is only 512 MB, while the Samsung Galaxy Gear S has a RAM of 1 GB. The Bluetooth pro-cessing speed is very slow even though the iPhone is right in your pocket. The Apple Watch
doesn’t even have a camera, so you will still need your iPhone or camera to take pictures anyway. Also, unlike the Pebble Time, or any other smart watch created by Pebble, the Apple Watch only has compatibility with an iPhone 5 or later phone. It can’t even be compatible with the iPhone 4, forcing people still with a previ-ous iPhone to buy a newer phone, putting another couple hundred dollars to waste. People with Androids, Blackberries, Nokia, Fire phones, and other phones would have to forfeit
them in exchange for an acces-sory. So to others, the Apple Watch would be worth over $500 with a contract. The Pebble Time, has compatibility with An-droid also. The Apple Watch also relies heavily on the iPhone, which is ironic because the Apple Watch is meant to free you from a phone, but instead, is tying you more to your phone. If you wanted to save time and text on your watch,
NO! IT DOESN’T HAVE POTENTIAL!
You would be left as a frustrated person. The watch would leave you with the question of why you didn’t actually just take out your phone to text anyway. Also, iPhone users can become frus-trated because they are used to using the normal methods for zooming in and out, and other
things. The new method imple-mented into the Apple Watch called “Force Touch” takes a while for iPhone users to get used to. Also, Apple’s popularity and reputation won’t save the smart watch. That is because people who already have bought it will realize that they just
bought something not worth the money they paid.
West of the Moon by: Margi Prius
Review by: Elizabeth L.
West of the Moon is about a girl named Astri and her sister. Their father is in
America trying to get rich and when he gets enough money, he said that he would
ship the money over to the girls for them to use to get to America. Meanwhile, the
girls were staying with an awful aunt and uncle that sold Astri to a wicked goat
farmer so that they could get money. Astri lived there for a little bit then meets the
spinning girl. They escape together and then get her sister and try to go to America.
They hit a lot of bumps along the way and tell a lot of lies and do a bunch of bad
things (ex. Chopping off fingers, stealing). But they still set out to meet their father.
I think this book is ok but not very good. I was expecting a happy nice fantasy
book but no. Everything in this book can be explained and there is nothing that magical in this book. I also
never thought that is would get violent or inappropriate like cutting off fingers or letting a man die. I also
thought the sisters would be nice and good and try to outsmart people but apparently not. Astri does sort of
outsmart the goat farmer but mostly cutting off his fingers got her free. I didn’t like the ending either. Astri’s
sister gets sick then gets claimed by someone else as their own child and them Astri gets a great job offering
from a parson’s (priest’s) wife. I think that this book would be more enjoyable for adults than kids but that’s
my opinion. Overall though, this book was a pretty good story and yet very sad and frustrating. It has a nice
plot and storyline so if I were to rate it along with all the bad things I would rate it three stars. I think the next
time I want to read a book from the Mock Newberry list, I should probably choose a fantasy book instead of
a realistic fiction book.
Page 46
MEDIA REVIEW Magyk Book Series: by Septimus Heap Review by: Kristin C.
Have you ever wished you could master the lost art of human Flyte? Or use the Un-seen spell so that no one will hear or see you? Well you can in the Magykal series of Septimus Heap. Boy 412 is part of the Young Army. He is the 412nd boy in the Young Army, and has been sent to “guard” the wizard tower, but in reality, is spying on the Ex-
tra~Ordinary Wizard, and before he has even been introduced to Magyk, he can see the Magykal Haze rip-pling off the wizards doing Magyk. Jenna Heap is the Princess. Who would have guessed? She has lived with the Heaps’ ever since her mother, the queen, was murdered. Ten years she thought she was the twin sister of Septimus Heap, who died at childbirth. As soon as she figures out who she is, the assassin is after her, forcing her to flee the on-ly home she has know. Marcia Overstrand is the Extra~Ordinary wizard. She needs an apprentice soon, and is eyeing Septimus, because of his ability to see Magyk before he has been introduced to the art. Embark on a spectacular journey with Boy 412, Jenna, Marcia, and the rest
of the Heaps as they discover Magyk, and find out who they are.
Page 47
MEDIA REVIEW (CONTINUED)
Chirp or Naomi’s mom has a leg problem. It doesn’t work like a leg should and it drags along
useless. Chirp and her sister dance for her mom because her mom can’t dance with her paralyzed leg.
When Chirp just can’t handle everything going on at her house like her sister not believing her mom could
dance again, she goes to her favorite place, the salt marsh. She watches birds there and learns more about
the pattern and lifestyles of the birds there. One time, she meets a boy from her class named Joey, who comes from a
family with “significant issues”. They become friends despite their differences and help each other when they need to.
But Chirp lets him down once and Joey begins to bully her until he *spoiler alert* finds out how her mom had just left
her. Joey helps Chirp through it and they go on an adventure together.
I do not like this book because it does not describe a 6th grade very well. The girl Chirp is way too dumb and
acts like a 3rd grader in some parts and older at other times. The overall story is creative but the characters are unrealis-
tic. I do not think that 6th graders would cry so much or would make a play about the turkeys and pilgrims and need to
learn about them or need to know what a prefix is. Joey acts too unforgiving and harsh at some points but too nice and
kind at other points. And the only reason I thought the book was going to be good was because of the description on the
back but that is barely accurate. It says “Chirp loves to explore the bird-filled salt marsh near her house. But when life
feels too hard, she and her friend Joey crate their own private world and come up with the perfect plan: Escape. Adven-
ture. Discovery.” It only happens twice in the book, and for a short period of time. This book is impossibly sad, sad
enough that you can’t even cry and has an okay ending. There is still a lot of questions left hanging at the end but then
again a lot of books have that. I think if I would rate this book I would give it 2 stars for having horrible characters do-
ing unpredictable actions that do not make that much sense.
Nest by Esther Ehrlich
Review by: Elizabeth L.
The Turtle of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye
Review by: Elizabeth L.
Aref is leaving his home in Oman and going to Michigan to live for 3 years. His father went
early to prepare their home in Michigan. Everyone is telling him how lucky he is to be going there but
he doesn’t feel that way. He has to say goodbye to everything he loves. His cat, his friends, his school,
his rock collection, his grandfather Sidi, the turtles, just all of Oman. His cousins and their parents are
moving in to his house when he leaves so he needs to clean and pack. But instead he mopes around to
house until his mom calls Sidi over to get him out of the house and make him go somewhere else. They go the Night of
a Thousand Stars camp and stay there for a day. Aref meets a falcon there and some other people there. They return the
next day but Aref still mopes around. His mom calls Sidi over again and they go to his house and play games and spend
another night there until he is ready to leave.
This book was not what I was expecting. I was expecting a book on the trip over to Michigan and how Aref
adjusted to life there. Instead I got a book on the days before Aref leaves. This book was bad because A. It could not
keep my attention for more than 5 minutes and B. It was incredibly cheesy. The characters talk very weirdly with sen-
tences without proper grammar and without much sense but that was probably intentional because they live in Oman.
The book was boring because the days before a trip are always boring! It might be exciting to the person doing it but if
you write it out it surely has to be boring. This book just feels too happy and has no especially sad parts so it feels
cheesy. This author should probably have chosen a different topic to write on than this. Also I just need to point out that
foxes are in the dog family and also turtles are barely a part of this book. It has a horrible ending (I think so at least) and
I would give it only one star because this was a bad subject to write about in the first place.
Page 48
MEDIA REVIEW (CONTINUED)
Half a World Away is about a boy named Jaden who was adopted by a family
when he was 8. His real mother who was the only person who he had loved and then she
left him to fend for himself out in Romania. He never loved anyone after that, or that’s
what he thinks and after that he was left damaged. His adoptive parents Penni and Steve
take him on a trip to Kazakhstan to adopt another child named Bahytzhan. But when they
find that their “reserved” baby was already adopted by another couple they have to decide
on the spot which baby they want. Jaden though doesn’t like any of the babies and espe-
cially not the one his parents chose. Instead he had his eyes on a toddler named Dimash
who was also a special needs boy like Jaden. Jaden tries to love the baby that his parents
chose but the baby, Ramazan, just seemed so lifeless to Jaden and without emotion.
I thought that this book was great because it has emotion and voice with a great
cast of characters. Each person is crafted perfectly with their own ups and downs like a real person would be
like. Jaden who is the main character has a lot of downs and has some special needs. He sets fires, steals,
hoards, lies, and runs until he falls. He has no love for anyone until he met Dimash the little toddler who also
has some problems. It’s so moving and heartrending and shows that love can be given to someone, anyone and
change someone completely. It is a lovely book and amazing plot. It has a great ending and it left me wanting
more on Jaden and his new family members. I would give it five stars if I were a rater. I would recommend Half
a World Away any day over a book like Harry Potter (no offense).
Half a World Away by Cynthia Kadohata Review by: Elizabeth L.
Answers to the Movie Matchup from Page 15
By: Evelyn K.
Answers:
Elizabeth Swann and Queen Amidala
Legolas Greenleaf and Will Turner
Indiana Jones and Han Solo
Mumble and Frodo Baggins
Gandalf and Magneto
Dr. Schmidt and Elrond
Peter Pan and Cabin Boy
Maria Von Trapp (1965) and Mary
Poppins
Cinderella and Lady Rose MacClare
Professor McGonagall and Violet
Crawley
Ella of Frell and Princess Mia
Gru and Ned McDodd
Maria Von Trapp (2013) and Sarah Hill
Padme Amidala and Jane Foster
Jack Sparrow and The Mad Hatter
Hermione Granger and Young Ila
Giselle and Mary
Bellatrix Lestrange and The Fairy God-
mother
Ronald Weasley and Alan A. Allen
Nanny McPhee and Professor
Trelawney
Dr. Henry Jones Sr. and James Bond
Doc and Uncle Fester