6 Books, Budgets, and a Narcoleptic

As you can see by the title, recently, my school life has been revolving around my huge English project, the recent NJ budget cuts, and my insane lack of sleep (as I'm sure many of you can relate). My project basically entails reading a high level world lit novel every week for six weeks, then doing a project on each novel. My six books are: The House on Mango Street, Les Mis, Night, The Good Earth, Dr. Zhivago, and Bridge Over the River Kwai. So far, I'm only on Dr. Z, and I must say that The Good Earth has been my favorite thus far. My project grades have been good, and the best part is I havent been redlined yet! (Redlining means you have to revise it or drop down to a B). However, this all comes with a price: my sleep and my sanity. My life literally revolves around these books now, and sometimes, the stress is just too much. For example, for Les Mis, I locked myself in a basement and read for 4 hours straight. Luckily, I'm in the home stretch with two books to go, so hopefully life will be forgiving. As for the budget crisis, I have literally lost my after school life. No more Sci Club, ESCAPE club, Academic Challenge...but luckily my fav club Key Club was reinstated, so that;s good news. And with my huge loss of clubs, I will likely be joining Debate next year, since I love to debate and do Model UN. At the last board meeting, I spoke on behalf of Sci Club, so hopefully I made somewhat of a difference. We shall see what happens....

All of this has seriously been taking a toll on my health though. I fall asleep so much that it looks like I have narcolepsy or something. Literally, yesterday, my mom dropped some clothes on my bedroom floor, and I fell asleep while trying to pick them up. I somehow need to fix this, because it is severely hurting my math grades, for some odd reason. But I don't want to bore you with my problems, so that's all I'm going to rant about.

Johns Hopkins Model UN and DCON

Wow, so I haven't posted in a while, and I've missed a lot of stuff since my last post in like January, so here is a long overdue post about JHUMUNC and DCON.

Well, JHUMUNC was, to say the least, an interesting conference, and my fellow delegates can vouch for me when I say that. I thought it would be cool if I shared some fun(ny) stories about my experience there. But before that, I just wanted to give some background.

JHUMUNC is a 3 day model UN conference for high schoolers hosted by Johns Hopkins University. The topics were really cool and challenging, and committee was really fun and engaging. I was in NATO, which was a total blast, but I'll get to that later.

First off, I roomed with some of my good friends, so that wasn't a problem. There was plenty of snack foods, a late curfew, and mostly freedom to leave the hotel and go to Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Food at Inner Harbor was awesome, because we had choices to eat at Hard Rock Cafe, Chipotle, UNO, and many other places. However, Baltimore isn't exactly the safest place out there, so we had some "encounters" with shady people and a couple of rap battles. In committee, we had a lot of fired up debate, and we even tracked and blew up Osama! In the end, I won Honorable Mention, which was great. So overall, I really got to bond with my fellow delegates, make new friends, snag an award, and really have a blast.

Now on to DCON. DCON is Key Club's New Jersey District Convention, where all the Key Clubs in NJ meet to share ideas and do workshops. Mostly, I just had a party. First off, my room with Aaron and Tanay was huge, and everyone wanted to hang out there. We all had a blast, and for anyone that is involved in a Key Club, you should definitely go there. One downside was the food, because it was pretty bad, but we did get to visit King of Prussia mall to get Taco Bell! Anyway, I dont want to ramble, so just check out DCON one year if you get a chance.

Small Arms, Big Problem

A while ago, at World Affairs Council of Phila, I did a Model UN with the topic of small arms trade, and I won Best Delegate. I thought I'd share my thoughts on the topic...

Almost everyone knows that Sub-Saharan Africa is filled with wars, conflict, and genocide. There's civil war in Uganda, genocide in Sudan, pirates in Somalia, and instability everywhere else as a result. What most people don't know is that most of these conflicts are either caused or perpetuated by the small arms trade. Think about it: without small arms (rifles, pistols, machine guns), how would these terrorist groups, rebels and pirates force their way? How would they combat the police, armies and citizens? Weapons of mass destruction, huge tanks, copters and naval ships are expensive, easy to detect, inconvenient to use and hard to maintain. Small arms, on the other hand, are light, cheap, simple to operate and easy to smuggle. In fact, in regions of southern Africa, AK-47 automatics are readily available for as little as $6, mainly because they are so light. Most African rebel groups use these specific guns for child soldiers, as they are so easy to handle that even children as young as 8 years old can fire them.

The main issue with small arms in terms of use is their value and effectiveness. For cheap prices, these guns last long and can be easily used to kill many people. Face it, one man armed with a FN MAG machine gun stands a pretty good chance against even 10 unarmed people. Maintaining this 1:10 ratio, and assuming that each gun costs $20, that means that a group of 10 able-bodied individuals who have $200 to spend and are willing to get dirty could take out 100 civilians. Although slightly exaggerated, those numbers are startling. The rampant proliferation of illegal small weapons is like fuel to an already raging fire. The only way to stop the fire is to cut off the fuel.

The problem with simply ending the weapons trade is that many economies in Western Africa will be severely hurt by this. So, a complex solution must be devised to compensate for this. We will just have to wait and see what happens...

Hall of Fame*

Recently, yet another baseball player clouded with suspicion confirmed our greatest fears by admitting to steroid use. Yes, we all knew Mark McGwire was guilty, but its difficult to hear it from his own dejected mouth. Its so sad that baseball players go out in shame like this. Seriously? Are you too lazy to work out with the rest of the team? Not satisfied with 39 homers when your pal got 40? Greed is getting the better of these people and I am losing respect for the sport as a whole. I really feel that professional sports players that are unconfident about keeping up fitness should take some examples from us high school students. High school athletes are ripped and ready to play while balancing school, athletics, and even work. Granted, we have growth on our side, but for men who got into the majors because of their fitness should really be able to keep up fitness during team practices. They even have the advantage of trainers, private gyms, and team regiments to keep them up. And if this doesn't help, then you are obviously not fit for the MLB, so get out.

As for the punishments for the violators of the steroid and drug policy, they deserve all out embarrassment and isolation. The sport should take it upon themselves to ban these players from the baseball world. No hall of fame, no coaching, no nothing. Out. Forever. Take Barry Bonds, for example. He used steroids to get his record. Is it his to keep? Absolutely not. If he gets disqualified, then the true record holder, Babe Ruth, can be recognized for his talent and not be overshadowed by this juicing up disgrace to baseball. I really hope that the MLB takes into account the degree of these players' violations and makes sure to give them the punishment they deserve.

Green Team!

The chatter of the lunchroom is deafening. Chewing, eating, buying, smelling. The amount of food in that room during a single lunch mod is unthinkable.Now the students go to AH Chemistry. Packet after packet after packet. 90 pages per packet, per unit, per student is...whoa. And where does it all go?

Transport yourself to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. You see a clump of dirty paper bags and scrap papers. You look closely and...its last week's lunch, mixed with your Algebra packet. Now, of course this is an exageration but the message is clear: the "meaningless" trash you throw away everyday has a huge impact on places that are unthinkable for you. Rising sea levels. Could've been a result of the incinerators burning your trash and emitting CO2. This needs to be stopped. Eastern needs change.

So since December, Aaron Bhatt, Jugal Lodaya, Rishi Chauhan and I have been quietly starting a huge reformation at Eastern High School. Before you know it, your trash will be recycled, your classrooms will be bambooed and your paper will be compacted newspapers. That's right. Mission greenify is underway.

Basically, our goals our to raise awareness about going green, make classrooms more green, create an eco-friendly atmosphere for students, and to do an energy audit of the school. What's an audit, you may ask. Basically, we find out how much energy the school is using. And I can tell you, its way too much. But hopefully with our audit, we can smack some sense into the Board of Ed, a group that hasn't been too responsive to students in the past. They're the board of Education, for God's sake! Shouldn't they listen to the students? But that's another story. For now, lets see how our green movemnet works. Hopefully it can stir up some big changes...

To get involved, contact me or Aaron at: ramesh.prashant@gmail.com and bhattman79@gmail.com

We Survived!

There have been many scares and events in the past decade that we have survived. In lieu of H1N1, lets look back at all the weird things we've gone through...

1. 9/11/2001 - The terrorist attacks

If there was any one event that shaped our lives in the past 10 years, it was 9/11. The shocking terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, Stonycreek and Flight 93 were a slap in the face to the US government and the world. I can tell you for one thing, 9/11 changed my life. Tight airport security, the Bush Administration, and Barack Obama probably wouldn't have happened without 9/11. So let's take something away from this decade, and make sure this never happens again.

2. HIV/AIDS - Human Immunodefiency Virus/Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome

AIDS, which stems from HIV is a disease spread through blood and as an STD. The disease really came into the spotlight in the 2000 decade, with Project (RED) and other organizations emerging with a global effort to fight AIDS. Currently one of the biggest worldwide killers, AIDS basically creates white blood cells that attacks your own immune system and make it possible to die from simple viruses like colds. AIDS is coming close to a cure though, so lets keep our finges crossed in 2010.

3. H1N1 - The Swine!

Its a worldwide phenomenon. Swine flu has taken the world by storm with 15 million cases in the US alone over the past 3 months. Although not virulent, H1N1 spreads like wildfire, and people are scared to death by it. Like the Henshaws in Texas, bus riders in Chile, and Egyptian pigs. And we're just getting started...

4. 12/20/2012 - Apocalypse?

Will the world end in 2012? Oh, paranoia crap. Absolutely not! The legend, apparently predetermined by the Mayans and the Hindus, was actually that 2012 would bring the end of anera. So what exactly is ending? Definitely not the world. Both cultures specifically say that a new era begins in 2012 as the old one ends. This apocalypse stuff is balderdash procured by uneducated British and European explorers unarchiving the remains of Hindu and Mayan spiritual and cultural artifacts. So rest assured, class of '12. You will go to college. (I hope)

5. Y2K - Year 2000 problem

We knew this decade was gonna be crazy when at the minute 2000 started, we had a problem. A large scale data informatics event was to occur right when the clocks turned 2000. All data systems were built to store info coded with 2 digits (94, 99, etc). Computer experts believed that when system clocks turned to 00 for 2000, all data would be wiped out. So at the turn of the millenium, data and computer experts around the world encoded new programs and saved our data. Whew!

6. HPAI - Avian/bird flu

While H1N1 is known to spread rapidly, bird flu was known for its virulence. 60% of the few bird flu cases became fatal. The disease basically starts as influenza then progresses to destroy the lungs and cause respiratory arrest, resulting in death. Although there were no confirmed cases of HPAI in the US, paranoia gripped the world after many human cases emerged in 2006. The first cases started in China as early as 1995, then spread to nearby East Asian countries. Birds, pigs, cows...thank god I'm vegetarian.

7. WNND - West Nile Virus

Mosquitos are everywhere. Mosquitos spread West Nile. So is West Nile everywhere? For the record, only the Asian Tiger Mosquito spreads the disease, and this type of mosquito is only found in Sub Saharan Africa and West Asia. However, its the migration that kills us. Mosquitos bite birds, which migrate. The virus starts undetectable, then becomes a strong fever, then becomes neuro-degenerative. But, only 1:110 infected people progress to the third stage. At one point, people were calling the CDC every time a dead bird appeared in their yard, for fear of a bird killed by West Nile!

8. BSE/vCJD - Mad Cow disease

Not virulent, not highly transmissible. But the nature of Mad Cow was just too scary and ugly to avoid. The disease (BSE), which spread mainly in the UK, degenerates the brains of cows, making them go "mad." It spread from unsanitary meat feed for the cows. The disease is highly unlikely to get to humans, but the fact that beef was such a large meat product and that the disease was so scary was enough to sell the paranoid American public. The disease in humans (vCJD) basically incubates for 4-5 years, then strikes and degenerates the spine and brain. Ugh.