1. Elephants 2024

  When most people are asked for their favorite sport, the answer is pretty much unanimous: Arm Wrestling. A pure exhibition of grit and willpower, arm wrestling is more than a test of the body, but a test of the mind as well. The best of the best are both physically dominant and mentally sound. This is certainly the case for John Brzenk. Nicknamed “The Perfect Storm” and “G.O.A.T.” by his large fanbase, John Brzenk is widely considered the greatest arm wrestler of all time. Beginning his professional career in 1982, Brzenk won his first arm wrestling championship streamed live in 1983 on ABC. This absolute beast of a human only lost one supermatch in his 33-year-long career, spanning from 1982 to 2015.  Brzenk’s arm wrestling journey began as a wee lad in his early school years, where he would continually challenge and beat fellow classmates in the combat sport. That was until he suffered an injury and broke his arm in a match, reportedly against another student’s father. Brz...

Image Credits: Running Heartless      Power is an extremely complex topic, and one cannot fully explore it without acknowledging the lack of power in many aspects of life. Where we, as teenagers, do have some autonomy over our own life, there are many things which we do not have control over.      Being a teenager nowadays means being bombarded with assignments every day. These tasks continue to add up until one no longer has any time to do anything other than schoolwork. The worst part is that some of this work is actually from classes that we never chose or wanted in the first place. Our school's way of building schedules is so unfair because they have no transparency about how they actually choose who gets to be in the class and who doesn't. Plus, when they make a mistake in the schedule, if you are in any grade other than 12th, they will not even listen to your complaint.       I went through this last year when instead of getting th...

It’s April 3, 2016, and the ICIJ has just opened public access to a database containing information on 214,000 offshore companies worldwide.  Called the Panama Papers , this is a huge international investigative journalism project, a collaboration of 370 investigative journalists, and resulted in one of the biggest leaks of confidential papers in history. In the papers are descriptions of how the law firm Mossack Fonseca—the fourth largest law firm in the world, based in Panama—had assisted companies and individuals from over 200 countries around the world in illegally siphoning their money into offshore accounts, tax havens, and shell companies, exposing the sheer scale of a system that operates in the interest of the corrupt elite. The papers detailed how the wealthy illegally concealed their wealth, escaped public scrutiny, and avoided paying their taxes, in addition to revealing the use of offshore accounts by criminals to launder illicit earnings and to escape sanctions. The s...

  A few weeks ago I watched a Food Theory video that explained how bread rules the world. It detailed how bread was created from being just flat and burnt in caveman times then got more and more complex with time and new inventions. Bread was used as currency in the old days since food was sparse and bread was convenient and light to travel with and was something everyone desired. Similar to the bread craze in the west, in the east they used rice in a similar way since it was an abundance of food.  Now in the twenty-first century, I was going to my friend’s house for lunch and we had a mixture of some kimchi triangle kimbap that I brought, tofu fried rice with Indian seasoning my friend’s mom made, and Trader Joe’s chicken egg roll. While enjoying our lunch, my friend’s mom and I started talking about how similar Asian cultures are. She had never had kimchi before but my friend explained to her that it is close to the Indian pickle paste they use however with different seaso...

       T.V. shows always have the most interesting examples of unique power dynamics. Last week, I was watching  "The Big Bang Theory", an American sitcom centered around the lives of six scientists: Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter, Amy Farrah Fowler, Rajesh Koothrappali, Bernadette Rostenkowski, and Howard Wollowitz along with a waitress/failed actress turned pharmaceutical sales rep, Penny. The scientists are book smart, while Penny is street smart, and it is fascinating to see how their different aspects of intelligence create a power dynamic within the friend group.       Sheldon is a genius, thereby holding the most intellectual superiority over the other characters. He has a strong adherence to logic and reasoning, and his confidence in said abilities allows Cooper to exert his dominance over the group despite his faulty social skills. One prevalent example of Sheldon's tremendous power is in his relationship with his roommate a...

  Week 12 Politicians and Promises– 2/28 [12:47 AM] [ IMGSRC ] As the United States trudges forward into a new election season, expect the spiel. Expect the lies. Depending on who you ask, presidents, politicians, and other public officials have had a bad rap for not adhering to their campaign promises for the last 10, 15, 20, and maybe even 40 years or more. Some of this divide may be due to the personal opinions of voters, but this issue is hardly a new one.  In the United States, many people feel more and more downtrodden by decreasing job opportunities and increasing inflation . They feel that the economy has become unsustainable, and that the government has not done its job in alleviating these issues . In the pursuit of votes, politicians usually try to appeal to voters by stating confidently that all of their woes would be addressed and eliminated under their “ helpful hands ”. It seems that the campaign trail is a theatrical stage where grand pledges are made to win v...

 How did the fall of Constantinople in 1453 lead to the creation of American High School? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_High_School_(California)) The fall of Constantinople in 1453 annihilated the Silk Road trade and caused many scholars to seek sanctuary in Italian city-states. This led to the Renaissance, which emphasized secularism, and art. Developments during this period led to the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Exploration, leading to the discovery of America. Then, the Industrial Revolution spawned Marxist thought, while strengthening the countries that had first industrialized.  These powerful countries soon discovered and exercised their newfound economic power, creating a new era of imperialism. The acceleration of power led to the acceleration of militarism, tension, and alliances.  Going back a little, colonialism led to France and Britain fighting over colonies, and tensions sparked the French and Indian War. Higher costs to Britain led to th...

 It’s interesting to live in a world where virtual reality, augmented reality, spacial computing, and artificial intelligence are rapidly improving as we speak. From the Meta Quest 3 to the Apple Vision Pro, the topic of spacial computing is becoming more and more prevalent, and because of this, it’s important to evaluate the impacts new technology has on our lives.  It’s impossible to focus on all the spacial computing research being done today, so I’ll focus on Meta’s Meta Quest and Apple’s Vision Pro. The Vision Pro and Meta Quest are similar products: they’re both VR headsets that can be used for gaming, work, and entertainment purposes. The first Meta Quest came out in 2019, called Oculus Quest. While the product was advanced for its time, it didn’t gain much traction, and the only people buying these VR headsets were gamers. Meta did not focus on rapid improvement as much as they should have, since the Meta Quest has since then become an “entry-level” VR headset. Apple r...

If I was ever asked the question, “If you could have any superpower, what would it be,” I would answer with super speed. Note: This is not due to my childhood obsession with the Flash. However, my reasoning does come from scenes in the show. I often find myself thinking, “If I had super speed right now life would be so much easier,” or,  “I wish I was the Flash so I could finish my entire to-do list in one minute.”  The countless benefits super speed possesses outweigh any other superpower. Just think about it. Imagine finishing all your homework the moment you get home. Better yet, at school as soon as it was assigned. Think about reading the chapters of Everything I Never Told You in a few seconds or even the whole book. While your brain is functioning equally as fast as you are, you don’t have to worry about your brain being unable to catch up to your reading. Imagine finishing POAS in a day and receiving the early submission credit. Imagine reading entire textbooks in a m...

  Legally, the answer to this question is simple: No one. By international law, no nation can “own” space, the moon, or any other celestial body. With the technology and access to the moon we currently have, this is an easily accepted reality for basically all countries, regardless of the country’s interest in space or the colonization of it. The ISS (International Space Station) is under the same jurisdiction as the moon, in that anyone from any country is permitted to enter, and no one can be rightfully denied entry. However, eventually, colonies on the moon will begin to appear as space travel becomes more widely available and accessible. Once this happens, will the moon still be in a state of international neutrality? Probably not. If space travel really takes off and becomes an incredibly profitable industry, countries will want to get themselves in on it, and colonizing/setting up camp on the moon will be essential to their success. It’s likely that something similar to...

Europeans living in the Middle Ages were culturally steeped in religion; the medieval relationship with Christianity was entirely alien from that of modern culture. As a result, Christianity pervaded all aspects of life in this era, with spirituality and superstition imbued in everyday life. To these people, spirituality and logic were one and the same — for instance, medieval scientists were often monks, nuns, and priests, and spiritual assistance was hugely important in every aspect of life, from bread baking to medicine. Starting with bread baking, the paternoster — the lord's prayer — was a method of reckoning time, a prayer and a timespan. This resembles how church bells were used as timekeeping, only in this case, the timekeeping regarded how long baked goods needed to bake. Prayers used for timekeeping were often in Latin and had a cadence similar to counting seconds ticking down, making them effective devices for measuring time. An example of this has to do with ovens — bef...

What is “empathy” in the first place? Empathy has several meanings. It is most commonly used to describe a wide range of experiences. Psychologists claim the term empathy is defined as the ability to sense other people's emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. Then, why is empathy important?  By connecting with friends and loved ones' thoughts and feelings and having them connect with yours, empathy enables you to strengthen your bonds with them. Empathy can extend to strangers as well. If you saw someone sitting by themselves, disheveled, you would go up to them and attempt to lighten their mood. This act of empathy can not only strengthen bonds but create new ones as well. Empathy is also the basis of a healthy relationship. It allows us to understand and connect with others on a deeper level and fosters trust, compassion, and mutual respect in relationships, whether they are personal, professional, or social. Empathy also...

Image Credits: The Guardian       Social Media is the invention that took the world by storm in the late 1990s, and it has grown immensely since then. Nowadays, it is the main source of influence in regards to pop culture, and basically everything else. Generation Z is the generation that has revolutionized the ways in which social media can be used and for what purposes it can be used.     It is a common stereotype among parents (Generation X and older) that social media is only a waste of time that causes their teenagers to lose focus on day to day activities and ruins their mental health, and while this is definitely true in some cases, social media has also been playing an extremely important role recently.     Ever since the Palestinian Genocide, that actually began in 1948, escalated on October 7th, 2023, individuals from all around the globe have utilized social media as a tool to raise awareness about what is actually h...

There is an enemy. Long, tubular shape, like a venomous serpent with a single eye, glaring into the abyss.  Do you know of the inferior vena cava? It is the largest vein in your body, sporting a diameter of up to 20 mm. Perfect size. The enemy is just small enough to slither into your mouth, slide down your throat, dig itself into your windpipe, and infiltrate the insides of your veins.  Imagine a foreign object inside of you: sharp and stiff like a toothpick, viscerally scraping its way through you. Through a haze of pain, you watch the enemy force its way down your arm, tearing muscle, piercing cartilage, and drilling bone. It’s now inside of your wrist. It’s large enough to expand your veins, its walls pushing out as if to escape the horror, like a balloon about to burst, but its hydrodynamic shape allows it to push further and further. You scratch at the protrusion, but your flesh protects it. A fingernail bends backward as you attempt to dig the object out of your skin, b...

  my baby, camera I use for casual picture taking not for yearbook  I have always appreciated taking a good picture. Whenever it is to celebrate a big day or to document something cool I spotted, I have my phone ready to snap a photo. Despite my love for preserving memories via my phone camera roll, I never had the urge to dabble in the world of cameras.  That was until my brother got into yearbook at school. Unlike me, he always been interested in the more professional side of photography. I remember in quarantine my brother pulled out my dad’s little camera and started playing around with it. Eric (my brother) always had a keen eye for how to execute his creative endeavors, excelling in drawing, singing, and now photography. Throughout the year he had yearbook, he would occasionally pull me out of class to accompany him on his journey to find people to cover. Through this experience, I got to see my brother capture moments in high school that aren’t necessarily the ...

     I can still feel the roaring drums ringing in my ears from my uncle's wedding three days ago. It was my first time experiencing a proper Indian wedding, as well as a lot of Indian culture. In fact, as I am writing this, there are multiple street vendors outside our building projecting their advertisements along with the consistent honks from cars, Activas, and Rickshaws. The second I stepped off of the airplane, I experienced a tremendous culture shock with the language, mannerisms, and sights of Ahmedabad, India, so rippling, they allowed me to truly understand the power of culture.      The official wedding started the day after we arrived, and our family ensured the entirety of Ahmedabad knew my uncle was getting married by hiring a band of drums to play outside our building, during the photoshoot, as we drove to the venue, and while we danced at the baraat. Each and every family member danced to their full capabilities and carelessly thre...