Current Events – Page 2

Winter Break Movie Ideas!

By Audrey.
Ready, set, no work! With winter break coming, most of us are going to stay home. With our Netflix subscriptions paid, Amazon all ready to go, and Hulu purchased so we can binge our favorite shows, we can’t wait to go on break sooner. But here’s the hard part: figuring out what to watch. If you don’t want to spend your break surfing through the endless amounts of shows, movies, and documentaries, this guide is for you.

New Releases:

Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Can’t get enough of the Star Wars fever? Look out for the newest edition of the 8-movie saga. Join Rey, Finn, Poe, BB-8, and an assortment of new and old characters in a great adventure across the galaxy. The movie picks off straight after The Force Awakens (aka the 7th movie in the saga), and keeps viewers on their toes the entire time.
Genre: Sci-fi, Action, Adventure
Rated: PG-13
Haven’t Seen The Series: The entire Star Wars saga is on Amazon, and it’s free on Xfinity On Demand until New Years.
Where to Watch: It’s still in theaters, but tickets are sold on Fandango.

Wonder
Based on the award-winning book by R.J. Palacio, this movie is one for the whole family. August “Auggie” Pullman is a normal kid, except for one thing: his face is not-so-normal. When he is faced with the challenge of going to school for the first time, he makes some friends and likes his classes, but will it last? This movie is a definite tear-jerker, but its positive message and happy ending overcome the sad parts.
Genre: Family
Rated: PG
Where to Watch: It’s still in theatres, but tickets are sold on Fandango.

Coco
In this animated celebration of Mexican heritage, music, and culture, a young boy named Miguel has a passion for music, despite his family’s disproving nature over the subject. Join him on his journey of self discovery packed with action, fun, and laughs.
Genre: Fantasy
Rated: PG
Where to Watch: It’s still in theaters, but tickets are sold on Fandango.

Best of 2017

Wonder Woman
This epic movie tells the backstory of Diana, a woman from a mythical world sent to help the world handle WWI. Action-packed and fast paced, this movie is a treat for any Wonder Woman, superhero, or even adventure movie fan.
Genre: Action
Rated: PG-13
Where to Watch: It’s on Amazon, Xfinity On Demand, and almost any other streaming application except for Netflix.

Beauty and the Beast
This remake of a classic brings a new, live-Action twist to an old classic. Emma Watson stars as Belle, a young woman looking for adventure outside of her small village in the 1700s. When she stumbles upon a cursed castle while looking for her missing father, she may just get what she wished for.
Genre: Fantasy
Rated: PG
Where to Watch: It’s on Amazon, Netflix, Xfinity On Demand, and almost any other streaming application.

Fuller House Season 3
The 3rd season is out, after months of waiting! The modern spinoff of the 80’s classic Full House has received a huge fan base, and you might be the next one to join it! The show pick up about 30 years after the original show. Packed with nostalgia, jokes, and drama, this third season bring new fun—and new problems—to the Tanners. Part 2 of the season is released on December 22 of this year, which is right before break for binging.
Genre: Sitcom
Rated: TV-Y7
Haven’t Seen The Series: Season 1 AND 2 are available for you to binge.
Where to Watch: It’s only on Netflix.

Stranger Things 2
Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will and all your favorite characters are back in the second installment of the binge-worthy Netflix original. Set 1 year after the first season, the crew is still trying to recover after the almost-death of Will Byers. Yet, is the past really gone? Is Eleven really dead? And most importantly, is the gate still there? The season dropped in October, but it’s still there to watch.
Genre: Sci-fi, Thriller
Rated: TV-14
Haven’t Seen The Series: The first season is available to binge for however long it takes you to watch it.
Where to Watch: It’s only on Netflix.

Despicable Me 3
The much-anticipated sequel to the first 2 Despicable Me movies came out this summer, and now it’s come to your favorite streaming platform. Gru, Lucy, Margo, Edith, and Agnes are back, and so is the action! With new villains for the Anti Villain League to battle, overworked Gru and Lucy need a vacation. But when a shocking letter from a brother Gru didn’t even realize he had comes in the mail, that vacation might just be overlooked, especially with Balthazar Bratt, a former 1980s child star who seeks revenge against the world, on the loose.
Genre: Action, Family, Sci-Fi
Rated: PG
Haven’t Seen The Series: The other 2 movies are available to watch on Amazon and most streaming applications besides Netflix.
Where To Watch: It’s on Amazon, Xfinity On Demand, and other streaming applications besides Netflix.

Classics
Singin’ In The Rain
This classic from the 1940’s tells a story that will delight all viewers. Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont are 2 hit stars from acting in silent pictures, but when new “talking films” come around, Lina’s squeaky voice might be the end of her career. But with the help of a talented actress named Kathy, the show will go on!
Genre: Romance, Musical
Rated: G
Where to Watch: It’s on Amazon and Xfinity On Demand.

Jaws
When a mysterious shark lurks around preying on the citizens of Amity Island, the mayor and a group of sailors band together to stop the evil fish. But will they be able to? Steven Spielberg brings man and nature into an epic battle that will keep you on your toes.
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Rated: PG
Where to Watch: It’s on Amazon and Netflix.

The Indiana Jones Movies
A skilled archaeologist named Indiana Jones must solve the most challenging puzzles in his movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Fighting for the USA against the Nazis in WWII, he continues to win over the hearts of the many generations that have helped him along his artifact-finding journeys.
Genre: Adventure, Action, Mystery
Rated: PG, PG, PG, and PG-13
Where to Watch: The movies are all free on Amazon.

Enjoy your holiday break and having fun binge-watching your favorite shows!

A Project Rebuked

by: Brady Rivkin

In schools in 2017, one would expect teachers to give projects that are clear, straightforward, and comprehensible to students so that the students have some challenge, but still can succeed if they put in the work. However, the recent science project on natural disasters did not follow this criteria. Many students, myself included, worked for over two weeks, putting in their best efforts to create concise but information packed presentations. We found plenty of data from reliable sources, each of us with well over ten, and made inferences when necessary. Despite this, we were critiqued on data interpretation even when the data was completely understandable as it was. A vivid example showed up in my project because it included a chart explaining the wind scale, and I explained how as the wind speed increases, the hurricane category changes and the damage increases. Later, on the rubric, “What are the points of the chart” was written without explaining which chart or what it was categorized under. Shockingly, after I presented my project to Mr. Duffy and he explained what I could fix, which I did, I discovered that the methods of grading were completely vague and not focused on what we had been told to modify. Having worked independently, we were expecting to be graded differently based on our style of presentation, but we were all subject to the same square peg breaking the pegboard of circles that were our projects when we had been given the tools to create the circle peg and gave it to Mr. Duffy so that the grading would be as we expected. Two days after the first presentations, those who had presented were given their rubrics back with no explanation of why they were graded how they were. All of us want to have professional presentations, but we are not being taught how to do so. It is the teacher’s duty to establish a positive learning environment that allows students to contribute, but the current environment bars students from effectively contributing. Before we move on to anything else in the science curriculum, we must address this and create a win-win situation for all involved. If anyone involved steps back from addressing the students’ concerns, a coalition will form to address the concerns. We are coming to create change, and we will ensure that it happens.

A small but noteworthy note: I wrote this with the intent of a protest during my science class when I was to re-do my project because I would rather argue for reform that is possible than try to read Mr. Duffy’s mind, which for me, is impossible.

Opinion: The LGBTQ Community is Wrongfully Attacked

The one who accepts all for who they are – Hatred Reversal News

Published on October 11, 2017

L. G. B. T. Q? Across America, people have been gradually exposed to the LGBTQ spectrum and some have affirmed it, while others are highly critical of it. Those who are critical usually either cite religion or that being a part of it is “abnormal”. This leads to hate and violence against LGBTQ citizens, and an astounding rate of suicide among them.

The people who hate the LGBTQ community because of a religious ideal need to come to their senses and realize that their argument is highly hypocritical. They say that marriage equality is unconstitutional because it forces people with certain religious beliefs to comply with the wishes of “the gays”, as they often say. However, not allowing protection of marriage equality would cause the Bill of Rights to roll over in its place in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building. Not allowing marriage equality would force people to comply with religious belief shared by many major religions that homosexuality is a sin. Furthermore, they are indirectly broadcasting a message of “Because people of my religion believe that being anything on the LGBTQ spectrum is abhorrent, all of you other citizens must follow this belief.” The American people, especially the disenfranchised minority groups, deserve the right to chart their own path in life and should not be bullied by religion.

Everyone who believes that LGBTQ people are abnormal is overwhelmingly prejudiced, because there is no normal. Normality has been used to attack everyone who does not fit into the small hole of behavior that is how everyone is supposed to behave in society. They openly disclose that in their mind, “It’s not traditional to be gay”, and are shackling every gay, lesbian, and bisexual person alive to their strict idea of tradition. In case they haven’t noticed, hate in politics has been a tradition for as long as politics has existed, and nobody justifies hate. Nobody is able to, yet it still exists in shocking amounts. The idea of LGBTQ people being abnormal, that a group of people is abnormal for who they are falls into this category of hatred, and it is what everyone in the United States should try to eradicate. Belief that others are abnormal at every level is never excused from qualifying as hatred.

All people in the United States, and the whole world, have a duty of standing up to hatred. This means that despite their beliefs, they have a responsibility to stand with LGBTQ citizens. We have improved vastly across the centuries, but there is still more work to do. Everyone can help. If there ever was a time for it to be necessary, that is now.

Disclaimer: This article and any other opinion articles published by the Daniel Wright Voice are not endorsed by the Daniel Wright Junior High School, nor do they reflect the views of the school. These articles are solely the opinions of the students at the school.

Opinion: The Unseen Public Health Crisis

Brady Rivkin

In the 21st century, one would think that with the advanced medical science in the United States, the life expectancy would be more than 79. Yet it still stands at 79 due to the many industries that have promoted their products amidst health concerns. Think Big Tobacco, for example. It took until the 1964 Report on Smoking and Health by the surgeon general to fully open people’s eyes to the dangers of smoking, and until 2009 to regulate tobacco with the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. From this, one can see that the fate of regulations to help aid public health lie in misled public opinion instead of scientific research. Because first impressions have a very powerful effect on people, the misguided research on tobacco, and today, the research on the causes of heart disease and effects of fat, completely dominated the ideas of the people. Anything contradicting what they had first seen, in their minds, was invalid. Since this conclusion can be derived, the American people must look past this fog of a first impression and see that scientists were coerced into downplaying the effects of sugar on the amount of body fat and the risk of diseases, instead blaming it on fat.

Fat has been stigmatized and removed from many food products to please the public. However, “when food manufacturers reduce fat, they often replace it with carbohydrates from sugar, refined grains, or other starches. Our bodies digest these refined carbohydrates and starches very quickly, affecting blood sugar and insulin levels and possibly resulting in weight gain and disease”(hsph.harvard.edu). This replacement is clearly much worse than what fat does. “A 2013 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care tracked the dairy intake and obesity rates of more than 1,500 middle-aged and older adults. Those who frequently ate full-fat butter, milk, and cream had lower obesity rates than those who eschewed dairy fat”(Time.com). Another study published in the American Journal of Nutrition scrutinizing the link between dairy fat and obesity had 18,438 women participating and found that “those who consumed the most high-fat dairy products lowered their risk of being overweight of obese by 8%”(Time.com). Fat clearly does not have nearly as overwhelming an effect as its substitutes, so it should be placed back in every food product that it has been taken out of, and it should be cleared of all of the false effects that it has been blamed for.

The scientists who study the causes of obesity and related diseases had a major conflict of interest when they were researching. Documents from the sugar industry indicate the effect of the bribes on decades of research including that of today. “The documents show that a trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 in today’s dollars to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat and heart disease. The studies used in the review were handpicked by the sugar group, and the article, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart health and cast aspersions on the role of saturated fat”(nytimes.com). A bribe highlights in an extreme fashion the corrupt methods of the sugar industry that hijacked public health and caused lasting effects on the American population. Since that happened, the scientists’ research is no longer credible and their studies showing fat as a cause of obesity should be disregarded.

When people have fat debunked as a source of obesity and related diseases, particularly cardiovascular ones, they often turn to another less researched alternative that is cholesterol. They argue that dietary cholesterol has an impact on bodily cholesterol and that overall cholesterol is a trustworthy measure of a person’s risk of disease. According to Harvard University, “scientific studies show a weak relationship between the amount of cholesterol a person consumes and his or her blood cholesterol levels”(hsph.harvard.edu). Furthermore, “the association between dietary cholesterol and CHD risk is, if anything, minor in nature”(ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). (They use CHD as an abbreviation for coronary heart disease.) This renders the arguments that cholesterol in the diet is harmful invalid. Many health professionals like Chris Kresser have picked up on this and expanded on it. According to Kresser, who has a Master’s degree in science, “on any given day, we have between 1,100 and 1,700 milligrams of cholesterol in our body. 25% of that comes from our diet, and 75% is produced inside of our bodies by the liver”(chriskresser.com). Also, “the body tightly regulates the amount of cholesterol in the blood by controlling internal production; when cholesterol intake in the diet goes down, the body makes more. When cholesterol intake in the diet goes up, the body makes less”(chriskresser.com). This secures the fact that the body is entirely responsible for the amount of cholesterol inhabiting it unless a person consumes such an extreme amount of cholesterol that it is over the amount that people should have in their blood. It is astoundingly well supported that blood cholesterol is not altered by dietary cholesterol, so cholesterol is back. Feel free to eat whole eggs!

This expedition into the causes of obesity and coronary heart disease, among other illnesses, is far from over. There is still much research to be done on the effects of fat, sugar, and cholesterol, but there is plenty of evidence already to draw some conclusions. For now, though, health recommendations should be updated to the current research, not the faulty studies from the bribery era. Hopefully, this will cause a downward trend in obesity in America, and people will open their eyes to all research, not only what supports their beliefs. With the proper outlook on food, the public health landscape can be revolutionized easily for the benefit of the world.

Bibliography

https://chriskresser.com/the-diet-heart-myth-cholesterol-and-saturated-fat-are-not-the-enemy/

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/fats-and-cholesterol/

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16596800

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/cholesterol/

http://time.com/4279538/low-fat-milk-vs-whole-milk/

http://time.com/3734033/whole-milk-dairy-fat/

500 Paper Wishes

by: Maff

Over the last few months, our section hasbeen folding 500 paper cranes out of colorful Post-It notes. What’s special, however, is that we compiled a number of positive messages, and hid them in the folded cranes. They would be donated off to a children’s hospital to support the patients.

This project was inspired by the Japanese story where a girl named Sadako was hospitalized after the bombing of Hiroshima, and she spent her time folding 1000 paper cranes. There was an old legend that if one folded 1000 paper cranes, he or she would get a wish granted. Unfortunately, she only got to 644 cranes before she died; however, her friends completed the 1000 afterward.

Since we were on a time limit, we only folded 500 paper cranes. These 500 cranes would be donated to Advocates Children’s Hospital in Park Ridge. Along with the 500 cranes, we also donated 500 half-sheet instructions on how to fold paper cranes if the patient wished to fold one because they would have to unfold the original cranes to read the messages.

The editor of our section exchanged a few emails with the hospital, and on Monday, May 22nd, some of our section members headed to the hospital for the crane drop off. There, Kayleen Egan from the hospital, met us at the “Discharge Doors.”

This project wouldn’t have been able to be made into a reality if it wasn’t for the help of many of our section members who all helped fold the paper cranes, and our advisor for supporting us through the process. Most importantly, we thank those from the hospital who cooperated with the plan, and we wish to bring smiles to all the patients who receive cranes!

Many thanks from the members of the Anime Section!