So, until the summer begins and I’m able to start posting regularly again (again? Perhaps for the first time), I figured I’d post a list of my favorite Daily Sun articles so that visitors have a chance to actually read something that might convince them to come back in the summer when said updates are taking place. That said, here is the list:

Burn This Book
Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That
I Want Candy
On the Other Hand
Choose Your Own Election
Greetings From Earth
Notes from the Interstate
Are You Pro-Choice?

As you can probably tell, the new version of this website is currently under construction. Once Systems is no longer running my life, I’ll be able to make this actually function. In the meantime, please stand by…

Yet another paper for my Semiotics course last semester. We had to analyze an advertisement from a semiological stance. I chose a Botox advertisement. I don’t have it anymore (my professor has it) and I couldn’t find an identical ad to scan in, but I found a copy online which is almost identical, save the first line or so. You can download it (in pdf form) here.

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“It takes 43 muscles to frown but only 17 to smile,” or so says the oft-repeated statistic. Though this aphorism is certainly not grounded in medical research, it deals with a concept around which much research has revolved: the role our faces play in conveying emotion. A week after birth, the average human infant is capable of imitating facial expressions; within six months the “social smile” emerges. Seeing only a ten-second clip of someone speaking, the average person can easily identify how the speaker is feeling. Furthermore, the arsenal of facial contortions to which each person is privy seems to be one of the few universal human characteristics — a smile means the same thing in essentially every culture. The muscles of the face are capable of incredibly fine contractions, and the precise synchronization of these contractions is what enables us to so accurately convey that which we have no exact words for: the nuances of human emotion.
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This essay was written, as usual, for my Semiotics class. We were supposed to write about museums in the form “I used to think _____, but now I think _____”. I didn’t really follow those directions. It’s not exactly my most cogent piece of writing, but I think it’s interesting that I, a usually avid supporter of museums, came down so hard on them in this essay. I knew everyone else in the class was going to write the stale “I used to think museums were boring, but now I think they’re swell!” essay, so I decided to go with something a little different.

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In an article entitled “‘Privileging’ Postmodernism,” George F. Will relates an event at a museum wherein a worker covered a bronze sculpture with burlap and duct tape to protect it from damage, only to inspire a heated artistic discussion among visitors when wind blew a corner of the burlap free. The visitors “discussed the deep symbolism and implication of the artist having covered his work in burlap and why he allowed the public only partial access… the appropriateness of the texture of the burlap in relation to the medium used… and the cosmic significance of using degradable materials to hide the true inner beauty.” Will finds this scene laughable, presumably because, unbeknownst to the museum visitors at whom he pokes fun, there was no artist, no person who sat down and deliberately created this spectacle.

What have we come to that we have to rely on people manipulating the world to make it interesting for us? In the movie American Beauty, Ricky Fitts, a troubled teenager, shows footage he taped of a plastic bag being tossed by the wind–”dancing with” him, in his words–and he remarks, “Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” This is precisely the concept that Will lacks. He is wrong in his assumption that there is no artist; the artist is nature, the art a happy coincidence. Beauty does not have to (and perhaps cannot) be created; it is all around us, in the world we inhabit. Most museums assume us incapable of noticing this beauty. The problem is that we live up to only what is expected of us.
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It was 9:50 when I arrived at the road test site in Fresh Meadows this morning. My appointment was scheduled for 10. We had just gotten our car washed, and I had then squeezed in some last-minute practice, doing some parallel parking (which I was very anxious about) and three-point turns. My father pulled up behind the last car on the surprisingly short line. There were five cars ahead of us.

Nervousness set in. My hands were shaking and I felt like I was going to throw up. I kept visualizing the correct way to pull away from the curb: signal, check the mirror, check the blind spot, step gently on the gas pedal. If I did that right, there would be no problems; I was prepared. I’d been driving for two years, and had been practicing every day for the past two weeks, perfecting my technique.

It was ten o’clock. There were three DMV workers there. One got into the car in front of us. However, shortly after she did, one of her coworkers, a strange-looking man in ugly sunglasses, beckoned her out of the car. They joined the third off in the distance, under the shade of a tree. They then got into a small red car and drove away.
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8 screenshots from movies, minus bodies. It’s your job to identify the movies. Harder than it sounds.

I wrote the following sonnet as my “final project” for AP Physics.

Ode: Intimations of Physicality from Recollections of Early Seniordom

(After “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” by William Wordsworth)

There was a day when matter, space, and time–
The earth, and every common sight–to me
Seemed vacant of all factuality;
Possessed no reason, human or sublime.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;
No matter whereupon I lay my eyes
(Though this should come as little/no surprise)
It seems that Physics has unlocked a door.

The rainbow is refractory delight,
The moon is falling always through the night
And pulling, pulling, pulling on the earth
Through gravitation (weak, for what it’s worth).

So while the textbooks tell their joyous tales,
And vectors point, and soundwaves sing their song,
And tension pulls in both directions long,
And airtracks glide along their polished rails–

Of all things–matter, space, time–this I know:
They’re all connected; Physics told me so.

My Physics teacher gave us the assignment, one weekend, of writing about how the law of Conservation of Energy relates to methods of paranormal investigation. This was basically a “let’s give the people who are failing a chance to pass” assignment. As you can imagine, I did not take this assignment seriously.

In the beginning, there was nothing.

Then lots of stuff happened, and there were people. And with people came death, and with death came feelings of insecurity and fear. So these people invented ghosts and spirits, as a way of calming themselves and providing a sense of safety and knowledge of the great beyond.

Then science was invented. The people were very angry. They screamed and yelled and cried. They marched with torches. They occasionally took showers, but very occasionally.

Then, one day, a man realized that he could make science work for him; he could pretend that it proved everything he stood for– after all, science was made for manipulation. So he did this, and claimed that it was indisputable, because it was science, and science is indisputable. Years later, he was hit by a meteorite which was then struck by lightning from a storm which caused flash flooding, which was exacerbated by the tsunami that was caused by an earthquake.
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One day I had a SS test. SS is not my best subject. So, when it came to the essay, “Write about three differences between the Massachusetts Bay colony and the Virginia colony”, I got a bit creative. Hey, at least I passed the test (by 1.5 points). For the full effect, you can see the actual test here (p1, p2), including my teacher’s “comments” (which consisted mostly of “?” and “Get to the point”).
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In ninth grade, I got in trouble in gym class for talking (oh, the horror). As a punishment, I had to write a two-page essay on the epitome of all Olympic sports; the high jump. Being one to never pass up an opportunity, I decided to share my essay with all of my dear cyber-readers. Oh, and I got an A+ on the essay, in case you were wondering.

The High Jump perhaps represents man’s ascent into greatness. One second you are soaring through the air with the grace of an eagle, the next you are falling, a frenzy of arms and legs, and finally, you hit the ground like a sack of beans.

It was Neil Armstrong who best summed up the symbolism of the high jump when he said, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Of course, as most anybody with half a brain knows, he said that when he became the first man to walk on the moon. Which leads me to wonder… What would the high jump be like if it were held on the moon? Better yet, Pluto?
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