Ed. 97 - Press Start

OUR MISSION

SUBMISSIONS

Published monthly, The Talon strives to be an innovative student magazine that is entertaining, intellectually provocative, and visually engaging. We are conscious of the responsibility of writing and publishing, and we seek to create a dynamic magazine that is worthy of its readers. We show respect for our readers by exposing them to a variety of perspectives.

Ultimately, The Talon seeks to bring Graded to the world and the world to Graded.

The Talon wants to hear from you! We encourage submissions and ideas for articles and themes from all members of the Graded community. We publish in English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish. We reserve the right to edit submissions for length and clarity. The opinions expressed in the articles are those of the writers and not necessarily of The Talon. For this reason, we do not accept anonymous submissions. Send submissions, ideas, and themes to talon@graded.br.

TALON STAFF 2013-2014

About the Cover

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF: Adam Hunt & Mariana Lepecki LAYOUT: Nicole Vladimirschi (Editor), Fernanda Fiszner COLUMNISTS: Daniel Almeida, Fernão Mesquita, Julia Abreu, Lucas Zuccolo, Luiza Gundim, Mendel Schwarz NEWS: Andrea Ferreira (Editor), Annie Groth (Assistant Editor), Paula Schulman, Faria Nasruddin, Pedro Werebe FEATURES: Clara Bezerra (Editor), Pooja Singhi (Assistant Editor), Karen Kandelman, Ariel Goldszmidt, Sylvia Yang ENTERTAINMENT: Kevin Bengtsson (Editor), Felipe Marquez (Assistant Editor), Bella Shim, MC Otani, Michael Borger BLOGGERS: Paty Kim, Carol von Mutius, Catu Berretta COVER ARTIST: Alejandro Torres PHOTOGRAPHER: Rafaela Goldlust ▪ ▪ ▪

For my first cover, and the 97th edition of the Talon, I took inspiration in the clear direction provided by the theme: retro video games. There are references to Space Invaders, Pac Man, and Mario. The Numbers in the background refer to binary code, the base of all coding language and therefore videogames. On the front I created a representation of a handheld game console roughly based of the widely unknown Game Boy Micro. I call it The Talon One. Feel free to pretend to play video games on it, I won’t judge. I also included both editors-in-chief playing video games, as well as myself—ironic, since none of us play video games very often. Nevertheless, for those stunning images I’d like to thank Matheus Lewis for staying after school to take pictures of Adam and me, Mr. Shackelford (Shack) for lending Matt batteries for his flash, and Mariana for sending a picture of her playing Wii on such short notice.

—Alejandro Torres

From the New Editors-in-Chief Hello, Graded readers! We are pleased to introduce the first magazine produced by the 2013-2014 Talon staff! We hope that you enjoy “Press Start.” We have a talented group of writers who, we assure you, won’t disappoint.

TEACHER ADVISORS: Josh Berg & Mary Pfeiffer And have a great vacation!

PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE CONSULTANT: Maggie Moraes SPANISH LANGUAGE CONSULTANT: Guillermo Loyola Ruiz ▪ ▪ ▪ E-mail: talon@graded.br

—Adam Hunt & Mariana Lepecki

How in the World...?

We invite you to use some of your long holiday to write a piece that you can contribute to our next edition. Although you do not need to write on our monthly themes, if you would like to, our theme for the next edition is “How in the world do you...?” For example, you could write about anything you are curious or puzzled about, or an experience when you jumped into something new, Articles are due by Monday, 5 August, 16:00; send them to talon@graded.br. Length is between 700900 words.

A green magazine, five years and counting! Since August 2007, The Talon has been printed on recycled paper.

editors-in-chiefs

Don’t Touch That!

The temptation to push the big red button Adam Hunt Fertig

A

s if you didn’t have enough to worry about, here’s a frightening little tidbit of tech philosophy. The inevitability thesis, also known as the technological imperative, is a philosophical proposal saying that if a culture has the technological capacity for something, it will inevitably create it. Once we had the ability to make a nuclear fission bomb, for example, we were bound to make one. Now, the thesis has its flaws—we know about alternative energy, but we haven’t come up with sustainable energy sources yet— but it’s an interesting proposal nonetheless. It gets more interesting when you consider that someone’s got to set off those inevitable machines somehow. How about a new thesis derived from this one, the inevitability corollary: if a culture has a button, it will inevitably press it. This creates a problem for the survival of the human race. If our nuclear-capable society is going to go around pressing big red buttons all day, we’re not going to be around for much longer. So how can we avoid the inevitable button push?

Ritual might provide one solution, however brief. For Jews, Friday night to Saturday night is Shabbat, a day of rest.

During that time, they aren’t allowed to work or participate in rigorous activity. That includes flipping a light switch or pressing a button. Inventions like the Shabbat elevator (which goes up and down automatically) or the KosherLamp (which is a bulb that twists on and off) have become more popular in the past few decades, but the older and more intriguing solution to the issue is the Shabbat goy. Basically, a goy, or non-Jew, can do work on Shabbat for a Jew, as long as he isn’t explicitly getting paid. Throughout Israel, non-Jewish technicians, hospital workers and security guards are designated goys.

Even Elvis Presley supposedly acted as a goy for a while.

But not everyone can afford to be Elvis, or Jewish.

There must be other ways to avoid this corollary. This was the issue that troubled a programmer from the 1980s. The story goes that a programmer’s daughter named Molly kept hitting the big red off switch on his mainframe. To keep his computer safe, he mounted a plexiglass shield over the switch so that one would have to flip it to turn it off. The name stuck, and nowadays the term molly-guard is used for a cover over a button. In a broader sense, though, a molly-guard could be considered any safety measure preventing an accidental blunder. In our informationally linked world where a slip-up can ripple globally, we could definitely use more molly-guards, both physical and metaphorical.

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And what happens when we’re missing the mollyguards and someone presses the wrong button? This is the subject of the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This wonderfully black comedy takes place during the Cold War, and begins when a US Air Force commander orders an officer to put his base on alert. The bomber planes then take off towards Russia, causing a crisis in the War Room, with US and Soviet officials bickering over how to resolve the issue. The Soviet ambassador reveals that the USSR has built a huge nuclear “doomsday machine” that will go off automatically if an attack is launched against it. And while US troops recapture the base in time to issue the stand down order to their bombers, one plane doesn’t receive the message and drops the bomb. The film ends with the discussion of doomsday procedures and footage of nuclear explosions. It’s a ridiculous satire, but still frighteningly possible. It’s particularly worrying because one misunderstood command led to the deployment of a massive military force, and one technical slip-up led to the annihilation of the world as we know it. Dr. Strangelove is narratively complex and thematically rich, but if there’s one thing it all boils down to, it’s that we need to be more careful around big red buttons.

Maybe Judaism is on to something with Shabbat. A day of rest, free of switch-flipping, is a day without the ordinary frenetic pace and imminent danger, without the feeling that we’re walking on thin ice. It’s a relief, but only for a day. After Saturday, Jews get back to pulling levers like the rest of us.

But why do we have to go back? If buttons are such inevitable devices, why not just make everything automatic? All that a button’s going to do is tempt someone to press it. Perhaps it’s only human, if you stretch the definition of a button. For Frodo, the Ring of Power is a tempting “do not press” button.

The same goes for Pandora and her box, all the way back to Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit. There’s an argument for buttons right there: no matter how inevitable something is, a button gives us the illusion of making a difference in the outcome. No molly-guard could prevent us from eventually pressing that button; it’s human nature. Still, it’s an eloquent way to pretend we’ve got a choice.

Sheesh, too many button quandaries. No wonder Elvis was all shook up.

Sources: aber.ac.uk; chabbad.org; youtube.com; urbandictionary.com

editors-in-chief

Science Has It...

Should we be “pressing start” on our video games?

Mariana Lepecki

W

ith the technological advances that of the start of the twenty first century, the gaming industry has been expanding more than ever before. In the US alone, the computer and video game software market grew by 22.9 percent in 2010. Yet with this increase in video game popularity, has also led to more heated debates about its effects, both positive and negative. Can video games really increase hand-eye coordination? Do violent video games really ignite aggressive behavior? And should we be encouraging or discouraging their use?

Positive Effects According to cognitive scientist Daphne Bavelier from the University of Rochester, video games can help the brain to think faster and increase its ability to process visual information. Bavelier, along with her research team, conducted a study in 2003 in which they tested the ability of gamers and non-gamers alike to detect details in flashing objects. After months of testing they found that those who regularly played video games performed significantly better in the tests, being able to track 30 percent more flashing objects than non-gamers.

They also found that gamers who often played action-related games were also able to make decisions more quickly.

Furthermore, recent research has shown that video games can affect hand-eye coordination and spatial skills. For example, in some shooting games, gamers must keep track of the position of their characters, guide them through the game and aim their weapons at other characters. In order to do this, gamers must coordinate the brain’s interpretation of information in the game with the movements of their fingers, thus stimulating hand-eye coordination and spatial skills. Because of this development in coordination, some neuroscientists have argued that one of the reasons why today’s fighter pilots are more skillful than in the past is because this generation has been more exposed these types of video games.

Finally, some video games, such as Sim City and Age of Empires, can also help develop logistic and resourcemanagement skills. By forcing players to handle limited resources efficiently while satisfying the needs and demands of a population, gamers are able to develop management skills that are highly applicable to their own lives and even careers.

Interestingly enough, The American Planning Association (a trade association of urban city planners) as well as gaming company Maxis have claimed that SimCity has inspired many gamers to follow a career in architecture and urban planning.

Negative Effects Though video games can stimulate brain develop in different areas, some neuroscientists argue that they can

also have negative neurological effects. According to a study conducted by Akio Mori, a professor at Tokyo’s Nihon University, video games can alter the level of activity present in the prefrontal cortex of the brain1. In his study, Mori divided 260 volunteers into three groups ranging from those who rarely, moderately and frequently played video games. He then monitored both the alpha and beta brain waves emitted by each subject2. After the study was conducted, Mori and his research team found that “beta wave activity in people [who played video games up to 7 hours per day] was constantly near zero, even when they weren’t playing, showing that they hardly used the prefrontal regions of their brains.” According to Mori, these results could show how this lack of use of the frontal cortex caused by the constant playing of video games may trigger mood swings as well as account for aggressive and reclusive behavior in some gamers.

Nevertheless, the relationship between violent video games and gamer aggression is still a subject of debate. As MIT Professor Henry Jenkins points out, there was a decrease in the rate of juvenile crime in the US during the time in which games such as “Death Race,” “Mortal Combat” and “Grand Theft Auto” were most popular. He concludes that “teenage players are able to leave the emotional effects of the game behind when the game is over,” meaning that the connection between some cases of juvenile violence and video games may be purely coincidental.

While studies this past decade have determined multiple positive and negative effects of video games on gamers, scientists still have a long way to go to fully comprehend the neurological impact on our generation. So, if you are a gamer at heart, do not be alarmed just yet, because you probably have some decades of gaming fun before neuroscientists, psychologists and parents can finally begin to reach a consensus on whether or not we should really be “pressing start” on video games after all.

Footnotes: 1. The prefrontal cortex of the brain is in charge of a person’s personality expression and moderation of social behavior.

2. The alpha wave is a type of wave that is usually emitted in areas of the cortex when the brain is resting. The beta wave on the other hand, is a type of wave that is usually emitted when the cortex is most active.

Sources: serendip.brynmawr.edu; raisesmartkid.com; news. nationalgeographic.com; ithp.org; colloquy.law.northwestern. edu

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editors-in-chief

Recently @ Graded Events that marked the end of this year News Section rom Decorated with roses, draped cloth, and blue and red lighting, the black box theater was the perfect setting for a great prom night. Well dressed upperclassmen, teachers, and guests all enjoyed a wonderful night put together by this year’s Prom Committee (Giovanna Regis, Mila Lara, Gabriella Marrufo, Laura Fiuza, Matt Lewis, Gui Maranho). Between the delicious sushi and crepes, the DJed music, and the dance floor, people had a hard time deciding what to do next. If this alone did not convince you of how great prom was this year, perhaps the fact the Prom Committee arranged for a photobooth will. After a night of eating, dancing, and taking funny pictures, guests were sure to agree this year’s prom was an amazing event.

P

Graded Film & Jazz Festival After an event on Facebook was instituted to promote the Grade Film & Jazz Festival, students are anxious to see what the IB Film and Graded Jazz Band students have been working so hard at this year. Based on the trailers released on the event page, this year’s selection of movies will be nothing short of great. If the trailers themselves were not convincing enough, the description on the Facebook page is sure to clarify what the night of Tuesday the 28th will include. To quote the organizers, “You may think you’ve seen films, even good films, but you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen the masterpieces being displayed at this festival. Come bring your friends, family and loved ones — witness history in the making.”

Senior Sleepover/Prank It was clear to every student who arrived at school on Wednesday, May 22 that it was Senior Prank day. It is hard to say whether any student managed the day without touching a lubricated lock, door knob, or even rail, or whether they missed the drag queen or the “Seniors 13oss” sprayed all around the high school hallways. It was clear the seniors were having a great time pranking everyone else, though it is important for the 2014 Senior Class to keep in mind some of the consequences a prank can have. Clean-up is definitely something to keep in mind for the years to come, though the sleepover and the prank can always be something enjoyable for any class when done responsibly.

Athletic Night After a reception in the cafeteria, junior varsity and varsity athletes headed to the auditorium. Here, after the opening speeches, the audience paid tribute to the three leaving coaches: Ney, Mr. Bair, and Ms. Bree. In addition to the video of messages from the community, these coaches were awarded with a Golden G for their time at Graded. Afterwards, the student athletes and coaches headed to separate rooms for the MVP and MIP awards. There was then a parade of winners and pictures taken, followed by the big annual awards: female and male athlete of the year, student athlete of the year, and the David Tully Award of Excellence.

Festa Junina What could be better than an event that celebrates culture and has great food in it? Not only that, but one that allows guests to come dressed up, too? A great event for families to come spend time together while enjoying traditional foods like pastel de queijo, pamonha, and paçoca, the Festa Junina this year was a fun experience for everyone who came to it.

Besides eating, girls in boots and puffy dresses and boys with straw hats and checkered shirts all enjoyed the many games set up on the covered court. Fishing plastic fishes, playing the ring toss, and trying to bring down a castle of cans with a ball were all included in the list of games to play. After the games, the fun did not quite end as children would receive goody bags as prizes for playing. The Festa Junina was a lot of fun for the younger ones, but the food definitely made it a great time for everyone.

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Senior Awards/Graduation Ceremony On the Friday before Graduation, seniors followed tradition, wearing funny hats with their robes and ringing the bell. All students proceeded to the auditorium for the ceremony to honor Class of 2013 students who had excelled in academic subjects, as well as those deserving of the Superintendent’s award, the PTA scholarship, Neelman Memorial Award (a.k.a. the “Unsung Hero” award), and the International Understanding award.

Departing teachers were also honored. Graduation was the following day. In a beautiful ceremony, the senior salutatorian, Mie Mizutani, began with a heartwarming speech. Following her was valedictorian Pollo Suarez’s speech. Commencement speaker Prof. Maggie Moraes followed, delivering a touching poem to the soon-to-be graduates. Then the eighty-seven seniors received their diplomas followed by balloons and confetti.

The teary-eyed graduates hugged and then joined their families and friends to take pictures outside as new alums. Congratulations, Class of 2013!

point of view

The Talent Mind-Set

A rewind on one of the biggest myths of the modern world Daniel Almeida

O

nce upon a time, leaders of their respective fields did not make a lot of money. In these postwar years, Fortune 500 executives, actors and professional athletes made a fraction of what they earn today. By the mid-1950s, baseball had seen a decrease of more than a third in its lowest and highest salaries, while by 1958, lawyers made just twice as much as the average American citizen, as compared to four times as much in 1935.

An era that is a complete reversal of our own, this was a time when society gazed upon the leaders of industry and commerce and were surprised at how ordinary these individuals were.

But, the world changed. Marginal tax rates on incomes began to fall, and salaries paid to high-level professionals started to rise. Basketball players became millionaires. CEOs began to afford private jets. Against all expectations, from the depths of the 1980s, salaries began to rise. As salaries rose, the super-rich became those who had “talent,” and there was an observable shift in society’s esteem for these “talented few.”

At the height of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, McKinsey & Company, America’s largest and most prestigious management consulting firm, launched the “War for Talent.”

Thousands of questionnaires were sent to managers across the country, trying to document how the top-performing companies in America differentiated from their peers. Eighteen companies were singled out for special attention. As consultants meticulously sifted through these eighteen companies, they were convinced that the difference between the winners and losers was more profound than they had anticipated.

Those at McKinsey & Co. became convinced that the top companies were those who were hiring as many top performers as possible, singling them out, rewarding them for their achievements, and pushing them through the business hierarchy. Thus was born the “talent mind-set.” This new orthodoxy of American management dictated that the only way to outperform one’s competitors was by having better talent at all levels of your business. This mindset ideologically justified the high esteem placed on MBAs from top-tier business schools, and their lavish compensation packages, and why the modern corporation’s strength could only be measured as far their weakest link.

No company seemed to take this “cutting-edge” ideology more to heart than Enron. In the ultimate “talent company,” Enron’s top two executives, Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, had decided that they should bring in a “steady stream of the very best college and MBA graduates” they could find to “stock

the company with talent.” By the mid-1990s, Enron was shipping in 250 cream-of-the-crop MBA students a year. Once they arrived at Enron, top performers were disproportionately rewarded and promoted; Enron nurtured a system that cared less for seniority or experience as compared to the emphasis they placed on risk-taking and innovation. According to McKinsey & Co., Enron had developed the perfect star system, doing exactly what they thought they had to do to succeed in the modern economy.

But even after Enron hired and rewarded the best and brightest, by 2001 the company lay in ruins and bankruptcy. Setting aside the complex financial mismanegment that led to Enron’s demise, it is interesting to question whether their failure was an abnormality in a sea of possibilities, or if the natural process of the talent system doomed them to fail. What if Enron failed despite having religiously followed their Star System, because, at the end of the day, smart people are overrated?

Enron took pride in its promotion of risk; top executives were pushed to try out new ventures, to not worry about the details as long as they were spearheading something.

Enron was the first to advocate for “human asset fluidity,” the ability of their top executives to completely drop one project overnight in favor of another. This concept, what McKinsey called “open market,” was an assault on the very idea of the fixed organization. No one thought about the damage this had on the company’s stability and existing businesses. Enron executives legitimately believed that their organization’s success was simply a reflection of the boundless, frameless, and evershifting intelligence of its employees. No one thought that if everyone was busy thinking outside the box, no one would be left to hold the box steady.

When we rewind back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the talent myth was at its strongest, we see the first signs of the development of narcissistic corporations. These corporations took more credit for success than was legitimate, did not acknowledge responsibility for their failures, and substituted disciplined management for a self-congratulatory system of bonuses and packages. The trickling effects of such a system would resonate, most notably in the real estate bubble of 2002 to 2007, culminating with the crisis of 2008. This illustrates how this talent mindset is not only impractical, but dangerous.

Source: What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

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point of view

Kick Start My Heart When did love start for me?

Mendel Schwarz

M

ost things do not have a definite start, and love is not that a way either. It is very awkward for me to write about such a thing, especially being from an age where the word has lost its value. It is being overused and trivialized. Even more awkward is trying to identify the beginning of love. I am definitely not talking about that kind of sensation you feel towards your parents or your friends, I am talking about the unprecedented uproar of attraction towards someone else.

For me, it all began at Graded. I spent my whole life here, being enrolled as a student since early August 1998. The initial memories I have of my first love come from the playground. It was a hot day. I was hanging out with Max, while the sun blazed above our heads, when he noted, with an obvious tone of reluctance, that a group of girls led by Aninha was approaching us. I’ll never forget her name. Maybe because of how much it meant to me or simply because of the innumerable times my sisters repeated it whenever I was around. They thought it was cute. I didn’t. I thought it was confusing.

That day she was wearing pink suspenders with a striped blue and white shirt underneath.

From afar, I recognized her. She was the cutest thing. I must have really been in love because I cannot recall anything about her friends. Not their hair color, not their names, nothing. She was all that mattered. Or at least a good deal of it because I remember glancing back at Max’s face, swelling up with contempt, as I left the swing and hurried in her direction.

I did not and do not resemble a romantic in any way and certainly hormones were not a driving force back then, but something attracted me to her. Teachers really helped in that regard. I recall we had this baby doll in our classroom, which she adopted without my permission, and usually when we returned from recess our teacher would assign us to take care of it. We would bathe the baby doll and later sing a lullaby or something,. My horrid singing skills were already notable and,

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therefore, she would sing solo throughout the whole song. In truth, I am not sure whether I was horrified by the sound of my voice or whether I preferred to keep quite so I could hear her melodious crooning. Maybe she did not sing well at all but I was definitely mesmerized by her. I was a horrible father to the baby, though.

These short scenes have stuck to memory for fifteen years now. I think I might have been pursuing that feeling of being with her ever since.

There was this one girl in second grade that my friends and I were all fanatical about. My feelings towards her were hidden for a long time until I started suspecting that she liked me back. Now 17, and having experienced some of the minor intricacies of being in a relationship, I cannot image what makes any 7 year-old boy reach the conclusion that a girl likes him. But I think I do remember what made me think that way back in second grade.

We were in Art class. I got expelled from it early on because I had refused to draw and instead was dirtying others and myself with paint. Moments after I stepped out of class, my love interest forced an expulsion, as well. Or at least Bernard Moss that is what I believed. As a result, we started chatting and soon after we were secretly dating. She would phone me everyday and I phoned her back. That was our relationship.

Love is one of the most abstract feelings one can have.

If you think you can define love, you do not know what love is. I do not know when it started and why. But I have these memories I cannot forget, in which love, or something very near to it, was alive and present. Having experienced what I think is such a dense, complex feeling at such an early age allowed me to live it fully and to enact it innocently, truly. Those were the good times. How bad is it to be 17 and already nostalgic as I am? Not bad, really. I lived through something that was worth experiencing, and I miss it.

point of view

The Big Red Nuke Button Do all nations deserve to have it?

Ariel Goldszmidt

I

n 2010, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, voted the third most-hated nation on Earth in a BBC poll, announced that it had developed a nuclear weapon. Iran, the most-hated nation, is widely cited as being less than a year away from building its own atomic bomb.

It is circumstances like these that force us to question the very existence of such destructive arms. Our minds conjure images of burned wastelands and radiation poisoning—not pretty sights. Experts almost unanimously agree that 27,000 nuclear weapons are more than enough to destroy our species.

Most also agree that the use of one weapon would inevitably lead to a chain reaction, ultimately resulting in complete mutual destruction.

Of course, complete mutual destruction is rather counterproductive to both North Korea and Iran. Thus, we can say with some degree of certainty that nuclear weapons will not be used any time soon. Historical context fits this theory perfectly, as nuclear weapons have only been used twice in man’s history, and when only one nation had them. Some recognize this and use it as an argument for disarmament: if no one’s using them, we might as well lose them.

But we should consider an alternate perspective. Since the development of nuclear arms in 1945, there have been no major global military conflicts. Yes, there was the Cold War, and while it was frightening and damaging, it bore nowhere near the amount of death and destruction of the World Wars, and the main reason for this is nuclear fear. Of all emotions, fear is perhaps the most basic, and one of the most influential in our actions. Fear created by the presence of nuclear weapons has stopped global war, and clearly nukes have ironically done more for peace than for conflict.

That said, war still obviously exists in the world. But upon closer examination, one sees that today’s wars are fought between two small nations or a large nation and a small nation, but not two large nations directly. This is significant. In the past, wars were very often struggles for power between two already powerful countries. When one won, it would gain an incredible amount of strength and dominance in global affairs. It is these conflicts that have painted the image of war as something catastrophic and life-changing; for evidence, think of how fighting between France and England completely shaped the histories of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Today, these “big players” never come face to face in war—and for this, we must thank the nuclear weapons they have.

Not only does this system of mutual fear prevent war, but is also ensures an important balance between global powers.

Because no nuclear nations will (or can) bring war against each other, there will continue to be an unbreakable equilibrium of strength between them. Powerful nations, in their natural, peaceful state, are already balanced; it is only through war that they are disrupted. In the past, nations grew by conquering enemies, while today, they grow through omnibenevolent social and economic development. Nuclear weapons, then, in addition to preventing major war, have effectively ended the threat of extreme power and conquering. Never again will the world see conquerors like the Mongolian, Roman, and French Empires or Nazi Germany.

It is evident that nuclear-armed superpowers are important peacekeepers over the modern world; but what is to be made of nations like North Korea and Iran, where unstable leadership have been known to act malevolently and illogically?

Should they, too, be allowed to develop an atomic armada?

In the spirit of equality, I tentatively answer yes.

First off, in terms of freedoms, equality is the best solution. All men and woman are born with the same set of inherent human rights; why should nations not have the same?

One could argue that nations, like humans, should lose certain rights as punishment for crimes—but this is not practical.

Most nations, even our beloved USA and UK, have committed numerous deplorable acts (many even worse than those of Iran and DPRK) in their pasts and yet are free of nuclear restrictions.

Thus, the main reason that so many are opposed to these countries gaining nuclear weapons must be ideological differences. This, realistically, is fair—no one would ever want his enemies to gain weapons of mass destruction—but, philosophically, it is not. As I have discussed, the real value of nuclear weapons lies in their balancing abilities; and what better way to ensure balance than by giving both sides equal opportunity?

By no means do I support the regimes of Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Un, but at the same time, I do not fully endorse Obama and Cameron. All I can hope for is equillibrium. History has shown that nuclear weapons create and sustain such balance, and thus, if we are to ensure a more perfect tomorrow, we must continue to allow all nations to (reasonably) maintain and develop their atomic arsenals.

Sources: un.org; brookings.edu

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point of view

Are You Sure it’s “Gay”?

The twenty-first century approach to perpetuating discrimination Michael Borger

I

n the sandbox during kindergarten, everyone was equal. We all had the right to build sand castles, to build little sandcookies, and to cry if we wanted to. On the jungle-gym in fourth grade, a hierarchy started forming. Some people would assume authority, trying to dictate who could and couldn’t sit with them. In the hallways in eighth grade, hierarchies and equality vanished, leaving only a bunch of little factions, all of them bent on destroying one another. I cringe when I think of my grade now, how when I walk down the hallways the factions are still there, and are now sometimes spewing racial and homophobic slurs at one another, either as jokes or insults or mixtures of both. The words in my grade no longer promote equality—the sandboxes of acceptance—but breed havens of hatred, conversations of ill-will, lunchrooms of discrimination.

The moment I walked into my first class the other day, I heard someone call their friend the r-word (the one that’s casually thrown around but meant to identify people who are mentally handicapped). In that same class, I heard another person use the f-word, the word rooted in prejudice against gays. Two minutes later, I heard the n-word, the one commonly heard in times of slavery. Had my peers seriously managed to use all three of these hate words in a mere five minutes? I tried to speak to the person who said the r-word, the person that more or less spurred this chain reaction of hate. However, he told me to shut up almost immediately. The exact moment I opened my mouth, the person said, “I don’t need a lecture.” Really? Of course, this little conversation got me thinking, “Does anyone actually have to put up with this?”

To be honest, no one has to. I feel as if we all know what discrimination is by definition, but some of us forget what it is in a real-life setting, what discrimination is in the hallways, on the bleachers, on the field. Discrimination is a when a person says “That’s so gay,” when they actually mean, “I don’t like (insert object here).” Is gay supposed to be synonymous with something we don’t like? Discrimination is when a person calls something the r-word to actually mean “stupid.” Discrimination is when a person tells a girl to “go back to the kitchen” when she scores higher on a test. All of these words and phrases are rooted in prejudice, even if we’re just joking around or teasing friends when we use them. Discrimination is not something to be taken lightly, as a simple misuse of the word “gay” is still

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perpetuating homophobia or a vapid misogynistic joke lending itself to keeping sexism alive.

As a global community however, we are pushing forward. As humans, as equals, we are taking the initiative to make this world better than the world to which we all arrived. As a whole, we are progressing into a world where each child can live without the fear of being mocked or worse for something they never had a choice over, be it race, religion, gender, or sexuality, etc.. That’s not to say, though, that’s there not a lot of work still to be done, that’s there not a lot more we can do. Instead of creating a world where a gay child does not have to live in fear of being harmed because of his sexuality, we can create a world that embraces this child’s differences. Likewise, we can create a world where women are not just allowed to attend school, but are encouraged to do so.

The question is: how do we get there? We get there when we all take steps in our lives to promote equality. Steps can be as simple as not using the “n-word” to as elaborate as organizing fundraisers to donate money to shelters for victims of prejudice. Each step, though, truly makes a difference in the grander scheme of things, Bernard Moss because each time we refer to each other using discriminatory language, even if it’s just a joke, we preserve the ideas behind racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice. Most of the time, we unwittingly perpetuate discrimination that actually affects people’s lives, since we usually don’t think we see the effects.

I know that most of us don’t actually mean what we’re saying when we call someone the n-word or call something “gay,” but that doesn’t mean that our words do not have an impact.

Our words end up spreading the ideas behind discrimination, the same ideas that lead to mass genocides in Africa, lack of women’s suffrage in the Middle East, and death penalties on homosexuality that span the globe.

I know that we live in a country where we have freedom of speech, and believe me, I’m thankful for that. But the next time you start to call something the r-word or the n-word, try to remember how it might actually have an impact on others, how it might actually affect the girl with the speech impediment or the African American boy, how calling something “gay” might just be another one of the reasons the gay kid in the room might rather lie in the Earth than on it.

point of view

A Few Wrinkles to Iron Out? The life of Margaret Thatcher Pedro Werebe

M

argaret Thatcher, also known as the Iron Lady, was one of the most influential prime ministers of her time, targeting inflation in ways no politician had before her. She arguably preventied World War III by breaking the Soviet Union economically and allying with the U.S. by making a deal with its most beloved actor, Ronald Reagan. But how successful were her ideas and policies?

To many suporters, Margaret Thatcher has been viewed like a major celebrity who died smelling of roses. But the truth is that, although Margaret Thatcher can be seen by some as an ideal prime minister, or simply as the epitoure of an Iron Lady, she opposed the creation of many laws that would promote equality, policies some politicians are trying to implement today. The popular example of this is Thatcher’s own views and policies on gay marriage. Seemingly ironic, Margaret Thatcher supported gender equality though she was against any type of gay rights; a perspective which to many today appears primitive. She took measures to solidify this view when she commissioned a law known as Section 28 under which all schools in the United Kingdom were prohibited from even discussing topics regarding gay people or anything with the word gay in it. No books containing any references to homosexuality could be published. Although the matter of mentioning homosexuality was never a case that was officially prosecuted, many schools banned gay papers and removed any books with gay content. This law led to more discrimination of gays and lesbians, so much so that in 1988 three-hundred schools were assessed on bullying and surprisingly 82% of the teachers were aware of verbal bullying regarding homophobia and 30% knew about physical fights linked to homophobia.

To some the idea of the first female prime minister going in favor of sexually oriented discrimination may seem hypocritical. At the time, and for the first time, the Labor Party of England acted with more effectiveness than it had shown in addressing England’s inflation. They opposed the anti-gay Conservative law and allowed any school funded by their party to reinstate books and papers promoting sexual diversity.

Along with the discrimination of sexual orientation, Thatcher was also seen as discriminatory toward minority groups. In the 1980s she supported leaders of the South African Apartheid, which killed many South Africans over decades of oppression. Apartheid was so violent that it was seen as terrorism, according to the Washington Post. Nevertheless,

she sympathized with the white population, and one of her many spokesmen scoffed that it was “cuckoo” to suggest that the black activist Nelson Mandela would ever gain power.

Thatcher even said that the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s liberation movement was a “typical terrorist organization.”

However, after most countries had applied economic sanctions to South Africa during the mid 1980s, the Prime Minister began to change her views regarding foreign policy, thus joining many in the international community in the advocation of Mandela’s release.

Although there are mixed views Thatcher’s social policies, she may have had more support for her economic policies such as harsh measures that ended up saving England from runaway inflation by requiring unions to hold a ballot before calling strikes, which reduced strike levels to their lowest in 30 years and cured wage-driven inflation. Those tied to labor unions, however, say the measures devastatednorthern working-class community as she did little to curb teh recession that hit the North.

Most agree that her strategy in regards to the Cold War was brilliant. There was no bloodshed, though intense threats were exchanged. The Soviet Union threatened to “nuke” the United States and the UK, hoping to scare them. But Thatcher had a strategy in which the US and the UK came together and as a result piled up more nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union was capable of developing, given the economic and budgetary limitations under Communism. In the end the Soviet Union withdrew its forces from all European satellite states. Thus, Thatcher is credited not only with preventing a third world war but also liberating countries such as Poland and Hungary from Soviet dominance.

Margaret Thatcher, who helped establish greater economic tranquility in the UK, who spared the world from WWIII, also the leader who abided by sexual and racial discrimination. A Soviet writer came up with the nickname “Iron Lady” as a way to show her uncompromising leadership style, but does that nickname apply to someone who embraced discrimination? Is that what uncompromising, ironclad leadership is? Should Margaret Thatcher still be considered the United Kingdom’s greatest prime minister?

Sources: wikipedia.org; washingtonpost.com; theglobeandmail.com; guardian.co.uk; economist.com

the talon • 9

point of view

Perda e aprendizado O legado de um jornalista e avô, acima de tudo Fernão Mesquita

J

á perdi algumas coisas na vida. Coisas fúteis, pretensões que almejava, pessoas relativamente importantes, amigos queridos (seja por distância ou por afastamento). A perda, em seu sentido abstrato, não é estranha para mim. Mas nunca tinha lidado com a perda. Perder não é a parte difícil: convivemos com isso quase todos os dias. O difícil é lidar com ela, coisa que nunca fiz, ao menos não como agora.

Pela primeira vez na vida, nesse último mês, tive que lidar com a perda de uma pessoa querida e admirável. No dia 21 de maio de 2013, perdi meu avô, Ruy Mesquita, diretor de opinião de O Estado de São Paulo e eterno defensor da liberdade de expressão. *

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Ruy foi um dos poucos “proprietários” de veículos de informação em massa, no Brasil, que realmente tinha paixão pelo jornalismo, e não pelos benefícios supérfluos que ser “dono” de alguma coisa poderia lhe trazer. Tinha o dom do jornalismo objetivo e, ao mesmo tempo, convicto. Um homem de caráter e ideais, mas que também aceitava a opinião alheia e não tinha vergonha de admitir seus erros.

Era um homem humilde e um jornalista exemplar, que, com um texto claro e factual, mas também convicto em suas opiniões e respeitoso para com a dos outros, revolucionou o jornalismo brasileiro com a criação do audacioso projeto grá-

10 • the talon

fico que foi o Jornal da Tarde, em 1966, e com sua ferrenha defesa da liberdade de expressão, marcada principalmente em sua incansável luta contra regimes autoritários e à favor da democracia.

Muitos consideravam-no um conservador, reacionário.

Eu, como neto e admirador, posso dizer que Ruy Mesquita era, assim como seu pai, Júlio de Mesquita Filho, irredutivelmente liberal. Acreditava na imprensa como um instrumento de reformas, tanto sociais, quanto políticas. Em seu famoso artigo “A liberdade, antes de tudo”, já dizia, “o jornal tem de cumprir sua função social de contar a verdade para seus leitores, sem abrir mão de funcionar como arma na luta política na defesa dos nobres ideais da liberdade”. Não acreditava no jornalismo “Murdochiano”, como chamava o atual processo de conglomeração das mídias mundiais e o imediatismo sem aprofundamento da Internet. O jornalismo de Ruy Mesquita e, por extensão, de O Estado de São Paulo, era, nas palavras do próprio, não só uma narração de fatos diários, mas também uma “arma política na luta pelo aperfeiçoamento das instituições democráticas”.

E assim sempre foi o Estadão, ao ponto de muitas vezes parecer sempre “do contra”. Apoiou Getúlio Vargas em 1930, mas rompeu a aliança em 32 quando viu que a esperança de uma democracia plena se esvaía com o fascismo autoritário de Getúlio, sendo um opositor ferrenho do regime ditatorial.

Tal oposição culminando no exílio de meu bisavô. Ruy e O Estado apoiaram o Golpe de 64 na esperança de conter o que acreditavam ser uma ameaça de regime comunista nos moldes de União Soviética, mas romperam com os Milicos no ano seguinte, com o estabelecimento do Ato Institucional Número 2, que acabava com o calendário eleitoral e indicava a perpetuação de uma photos from the Mesquita family ditadura não provisória, mas sim efetiva. A partir daí, tornaram-se ferrenhos combatentes do regime, sendo o jornal o primeiro alvo da censura prévia após a publicação do famoso editorial “Instituições em frangalhos”, de Júlio de Mesquita Filho, em 1968. Mais uma vez, Ruy lutava não pelo conservadorismo,

point of view mas pela democracia, não se importando com equívocos (dos quais todos admitiu, como por exemplo ter apoiado a Revolução Cubana, em 1959), contanto que estivesse lutando pelos ideais democráticos que sua família tanto presava.

Ruy seguiu esse ideal até o fim da vida, carregando esta convicção até o último de seus dias e seguindo o legado de sua família a cada editorial que escrevia. Um jornalista, acima de tudo. *

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Sentado à frente da tela do computador, máquina a qual ele sempre fora avesso, lembrome dos singelamente irônicos versos de Elizabeth Bishop em “One Art”: “the art of losing’s not too hard to master / though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster” (“a arte de perder não é difícil de dominar, mesmo que a perda pareça um desastre”, livremente traduzido do inglês).

Ruy conviveu com perdas desde a infância, quando perdeu o movimento da perna esquerda em decorrência de uma paralisia infantil. Perdeu o pai para os anos de exílio, e foi praticamente criado pelos tios por grande parte de sua infância e adolescência. Perdeu o jornal para regimes autoritários duas vezes. Perdeu mais uma vez o pai, para sempre, em 1969 e os dois irmãos posteriormente. Perdeu a capacidade de andar por completo aos 80.

Mas nunca encarou nenhuma perda como “desastre”.

Sempre levou a vida na esportiva; um verdadeiro boêmio e ávido torcedor do tricolor paulista, gostava era de cantar com seu vozeirão característico e de navegar os mares no seu querido Albardon. E de escrever. E de trabalhar. E como escrevia. E como trabalhou. Nunca deixou que nenhum problema o derrubasse, nem as doenças, nem as desavenças, nem mesmo as perdas. Dava mais aos outros do que a si próprio e, por isso, essas perdas não podiam feri-lo. Ele tinha mais o que fazer a que se remoer. Tinha pendências mais importantes para com a família e para com o país. Tinha batalhas a travar, batalhas

estas quase impossíveis de se vencer. Ruy Mesquita não tinha tempo para perdas, e por isso sabia domina-las como ninguém.

Para mim, ele nunca fora “doutor Ruy”, como era conhecido, apesar de nunca ter completado a faculdade de direito. O nome soa austero, intimidador, imponente; o que, para muitos, pode até ser como ele será lembrado. Mas Ruy Mesquita, foi, antes de tudo, um ser humano, e dos mais altruístas. Dedicou sua vida à mulher, Laura, aos filhos, aos netos, ao jornal, ao Brasil, à democracia. E por isso é também um jornalista, e dos melhores.

Foi, e sempre será, Vovô Ruy. E está na hora de começar a aprender a dominar a “arte de perder”, tarefa a qual, ao contrário do que dizem os versos da poetiza, é muito difícil e demanda uma vida inteira.

Uma perda não é o suficiente para domina-la.

Mas também não é um desastre. A vida, e não a morte, de vovô Ruy, o homem que definitivamente dominou a “arte de perder” com aquele sorrisão bicudo estampado no rosto, é um aprendizado que carregarei comigo para o resto de minha existência. E que o Brasil também carregará. Do vovô Ruy que perdi, do doutor Ruy que o Brasil perdeu.

the talon • 11

point of view

A Different Approach Learning from failure Paty Kim

A

s the Rolling Stones once wisely said, you can’t always get what you want. There are many points in one’s life when we just end up failing. This past year, as you can probably guess, has been a challenging one for me. As turbulent as it was, though, this tough journey was replete with lessons I will now keep in mind. Many of these lessons, in fact, didn’t come from successful endeavors but from failed ones.

Any student will tell you that there are quite a few opportunities at Graded. From soccer to choir, there is an almost overwhelming amount of things to do.

Whatever the benefits of this, we students invariably spread ourselves too thin. Encouraged by the “colleges like students who are involved in 53 extracurricular activities” argument, we can’t help but feel like getting involved with these groups is actually an obligation. While there’s a good chance we’ll enjoy these activities, there’s also a chance we’ll fail.

This failure, however, can be constructive. When you try out for the Varsity basketball team, you might discover that basketball is not really the sport or activity you are most gifted at. Instead of putting yourself down for not being a basketball superstar, why not think, “Super! Now I know that basketball is not my strength; now I can try something else like softball or dancing!” Failure is what you make of it. Why not think of it as an opportunity to find the right path, instead of dwelling on the inaccessible one, one that might not even be the best for you?

By failing many times this past year, I also learned that enthusiasm is essential. Of course not achieving a goal can be discouraging, but the process of overcoming that discouragement is quite valuable. Letting bad experiences impede you from doing what you love or what you think is right is a sheer waste of opportunity and potential. Winston Churchill once said that “success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm,” and I couldn’t agree more with him.

Another aspect of failure that I learned about recently is that it doesn’t define you. Not achieving a certain goal or

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not getting what you wanted doesn’t mean you are a failure as a person. In other words, we often think it is personal when it really isn’t. Just because your dream college rejected you doesn’t mean you’re any less capable. Just because you weren’t selected as the varsity futsal team captain doesn’t mean you are less of a futsal player. Just because you weren’t selected as the GEE leader doesn’t mean you are not a great entrepreneur.

There is so much more to an individual than leadership spots and grades, but in Graded’s competitive environment we often think that these factors define us as people or how successful we will be.

At Big 4 this year the varsity girl’s futsal team lost a game to EARJ. We were obviously disappointed after the match, but one thing we all agreed on was that we wouldn’t have learned as much if we had won. I was very proud of my team for playing fairly, enthusiastically and together. When we win, we often forget Catu Berretta about the mistakes and think of them as irrelevant because “winning is all that matters.” Winning, I can assure you, is not all that matters. The journey, the preparation, and the relationships I cultivated are priceless, and the fact that we didn’t win didn’t make my futsal season any less amazing.

Yet we still automatically associate failure with weakness. When we fail we think it was a weakness on our part. More importantly, we think other people perceive us as weak when we fail. Even though we want to appear strong in front of other people, there really is no fault in demonstrating weakness. For my “This I Believe” Theory of Knowledge project, I chose to do a podcast on vulnerability. To prepare, I watched a TED Talk by Brené Brown, who studies vulnerability, authenticity, courage and shame. At one point she said one of the most striking and wonderful lines about vulnerability: “Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and struggle of worthiness. But it is also the birth place of joy, creativity, of belonging, of love.” Weakness, just like failure and almost everything in life, is what you make of it. Not making the most of it is the true weakness.

news

Arab Winter Has the spirit of revolution cooled off?

Annie Groth

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n January 2011, many countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya experienced history in the making as hundreds of people joined protests against their governments. Corruption, human rights violations, large income gaps, and even dictatorships were some of the reasons why a person could have chosen to join what were beginning to be described as “revolutions.”

For many months, the news media focused on covering stories of what appeared to be a new form of patriotism: instead of fighting for their country—or rather, the government—people were fighting for their rights. But what end did the Arab Spring have? Did the revolutions slowly die off? Pressing start on the protests came fairly quickly, but the real difficulty seems to come now from successfully finalizing the changes so many had strived for.

Though news has lost a lot of its interest in the Arab Spring in general, ongoing revolts still occur.

The first country to overthrow its leader was Tunisia.

Unfortunately, this two-year-old news is the most recent account a lot of us have from the country. Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly was created as a result of the initial protests, which like other post-revolutionary governments, was meant to be provisional and set up a (hopefully) permanent government. Last March, the proposed cabinet of Tunisian Prime Minister-Designate Ali Laarayedh received approval from a majority of the Assembly. This means that this cabinet is now the official government of the country. Their promises included improving security in Tunisia and jumpstarting the economy by bringing down prices and decreasing unemployment. So far, the revolution seemed to accomplish what it wanted: a new kind of government that was ready to take on the needs of its people.

Why then, did a 27-year-old set himself on fire in protest the day before the Assembly vote?

The truth is, the revolution brought many people together who are set on an idea of change, but exactly how or who should bring on this change raises heated debate amongst the Tunisian population. Personal acts of defiance such as selfimmolation have become more common since the start of the Arab Spring, though their effectiveness is debatable. Many Arab countries now see themselves facing the difficult task of leading a people who sometimes have polarized political opinions.

Egypt is another country that continues to struggle with popular discontent. Though the first-ever democratically

elected president, Mohamed Morsi, has been in power since 2012, many people are still concerned with what will happen to their former leader, Hosni Mubarak. In power for almost 30 years, Mubarak was initially convicted for the killings of about 850 people during the revolutionary uprisings. However, he now faces a retrial due to a successful appeal from his lawyer based on procedural failings. It appears as though fast change called for a fast trial. Now, Mubarak is also being retried for various corruption charges from which he was previously acquitted. On April 13, the judge assigned to the case also decided to withdraw from the trial. The official reason behind this comes from health issues seemingly associated to his eyes, though the judge has also received heavy criticism for acquitting former government members who worked for Mubarak. The court now has 60 days abc.net.au to appoint a new judge, and until then nothing can be done but wait for the judicial process to re-initiate.

Again the population is torn over whom to support.

After the announcement of a second trial, protestors gathered outside the court. Some were part of groups called “We are sorry, Mr. President” and “Sons of Mubarak,” while others are simply family members of those killed in the 2011 demonstrations. Magdi Fouda, the main organizer of the pro-Mubarak protest, said, “We are sure Mubarak will be pronounced innocent.” On the other hand, Galal Faisal Ali, whose brother Naser was killed in the uprising, says, “We were hoping for a death sentence, but the way it’s going, we may see Mubarak free, and his sons free, which means my brother died for nothing.”

Personal motives and ideologies are mixing to form opinions in Egypt, which makes it almost impossible for there to be consensus on such debates on what needs to happen to Mubarak.

Though other Arab countries besides Tunisia and Egypt also face their own political struggles, it is evident all these countries face the challenge of adapting to some kind of change demanded by their populations. It may have appeared as though these often violent, large-scale revolutions were a promise of immediate progress. Now, however, the Arab Spring seems to have turned into winter, when change may still come, but because of political disagreement, will do so much more slowly.

Sources: cnn.com; bbc.com; tunisia-live.net

the talon • 13

news

Saying Goodbye This year, nine beloved teachers leave us Andrea Ferreira

T

he month of June is bittersweet. While many Graded students are rejoicing the end of the year and the start of the summer vacation, it will also be time to say good-bye to some of our favorite teachers.

Before the community can press start on a new school year, we must say good-bye to the nine faculty members that are leaving Graded.

The Talon decided to sit down with them for a quick interview.

even more places—at four months he already has traveled to four countries.

Ms. Pool A favorite teacher amongst the upperclassmen, Ms. Pool has been in the Graded community for a total of seven years.

After spending a year interning here teaching math, Ms. Pool returned to the US for a year before coming back to Graded (where she has spent the last six years teaching both math and science). One of her top memories was when Mr. Marques and Ms. Baratta danced on stage—an image she says “may be burned into [her] brain forever,” along with Ms. Petersen’s rap and her time spent in SAB, Habitat, and laughing with the students and staff every day. She says that she will miss the fun-loving culture and the warmth of the Brazilians, the level of conversations at Graded, and the effort put out by students and especially the teachers; the level of conversations at Graded. Though Ms. Pool says she is “happy to not Ms. Mears Rafaela Goldlust have to say ‘tchau’ to Brazil forever, as she assures us that Ms. Mears has been in the she will be back to visit, her future plans involve the Jakarta Graded community for three years, joining the English department in 2010. Since moving International School in Indonesia, where she will teach Environto Graded, she was known amongst many other things for her mental Science and her husband, Mr. Eduardo will be teaching creative costumes, something she lists as one of the highlights middle school ESL. of her time here. She loved to dress up as both a literary zombie and a rabbi, and be with her husband, who dressed up as Ms. McClelland a priest for one Graded performance. When asked what she Coming to the Graded community in January 1984, Ms. McClelwould miss the most here, Ms. Mears found it hard to choose land has been part of the Graded community for twenty-eight between the lunch (especially fried chicken day), morning years. Having served in a number of positions and played a coffee delivery, “pointless banter in the English office which number of roles in those years, she is currently the IB coordioften becomes poignant,” and Mr. Stephenson’s bear hugs. Her nator. Ms. McClelland lists her years as middle-school principal future plans include moving back to Washington D.C., where and the creation and development of many of the school proshe will be teaching and taking classes while being a mom. She grams offered today as highlights of her time at Graded, most notably PGC in 1991, which she said had a huge impact on the hopes to start a Graded refuge there. high-school experience and culture. The three things she will miss the most are Dona Emelia’s cooking (she calculated that Ms. Gonnerman Ms. Gonnerman has been in the Graded community for two she has eaten over 6000 cafeteria meals), the movement and years, working in the high school’s ELL department. She says pace of Graded, and the school’s spirit. that her all-time favorite memory was during the class trips, when she got to travel with the ninth graders to Iguaçu Falls. Ms. Bree She will miss the friendliness of the community and the warmth A Graded alumnus herself, Ms. Bree has been teaching in the of the school the most. Having recently gotten married and History department for seven and a half years. Amongst her welcomed a baby, Feliz, Ms. Gonnerman plans to move to Aus- favorite memories of the school, Ms. Bree lists meeting her tria and be a mother, and in a few years return to teaching. husband (Mr. Bair) in room D5, visiting her mom in her kinShe plans also to travel with her family, taking her son to see dergarten classroom, a surprise baby shower celebrating baby

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news Nina’s arrival, and the pre-game ritual at important matches with her varsity girls soccer and futsal teams, singing “Dynamite.” Amongst the list of things Ms. Bree will miss the most about Graded (besides the students and staff) are the Graded field, the beautiful oak tree in the senior lawn, Tuesday night soccer games, hot chocolate served at breakfast, and taco day at lunch. Ms. Bree is Brasilia bound, and plans to work at Escola Americana de Brasilia (EAB) as the CAS coordinator while at the same time being the mother of Kaya and Nina.

Mr. Bair Currently vice principal, in the eleven years Mr. Bair has spent at Graded he has also worked as athletic director and in the History department. Mr. Bair states that his favorite memory of Graded was when he met his wife (Ms. Bree) on a June day in room D5. Another favorite came as a coach, when he watched player Sam Tully walk off the basketball court and hug his dying father, Superintendent David Tully after winning the championship Big 4 game.

A championship coach of the boys basketball team, Mr. Bair states that he will miss being coach of the Graded Eagles the most. In July, Mr. Bair will be heading with Ms. Bree and Nina and Kaya to the American school in Brasilia as Rafaela Goldlust the new upper school principal.

Ms. Peterson Ms. Peterson has been in the community for four years, joining the History department the in 2009, the same year that this year’s seniors were freshmen. Known in the community for her fun personality, Ms. Peterson says her favorite memory at Graded was rehearsing with the other teachers of the History department for their YMCA performance in the air band competition last year. Ms. Peterson will be teaching at Concordia (an international school in Shanghai), something she is very excited about because she will be teaching a course there that combines History and English, from the “dawn of time to the Renaissance.”

Mr. Dwyer Mr. Dwyer has also been involved at Graded for four years.

While he began teaching in the History department just this year, Mr. Dwyer had already been an active member in the community, including an assistant coach of the girl’s futsal team.

His favorite memory of Graded was his first Big 4 coaching experience with Coach Bree in 2010, something he says was very special because it was his first Graded trip and the first Big 4 tournament. Another memorable moment was anytime Ms. Peterson would dress up in the eagle costume. Next year, he will also be teaching at Concordia in Shanghai, as a physical education teacher.

Ney An icon here at Graded, Ney has been a part of the community as a physical education teacher and a championship soccer coach. He started here in August 1977, left Graded for a half year, and then returned in August 1978, and he has been teaching ever since. Ney has taught at Graded now for over 35 years, teaching generations of students. He lists the graduation ceremony of Rafael and Julia, his children, as his favorite memories amongst many here. After this year, Ney plans to continue working in athletics, running his own sports business company that manages sports trips, sports consultations, and the coordination of intermural sports activites.

Rafaela Goldlust

Thank you so much, teachers, for all you have given to our community! Graded will miss you. Best of luck on your future endeavors.

the talon • 15

news

Saying Goodbye to the Iron Lady An overview of modern history’s most powerful woman Paula Schulman

A

s has been planned by her most strident critics for years, hundreds of opponents of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher gathered in Trafalgar Square in London on the Saturday following her death on April 8. They rejoiced her demise by drinking champagne and chanting lyrics such as “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead.” While 23 years have passed since Thatcher was in office, opinions on Thatcher and the changes she implemented in British politics still remain deeply divided, as is evident by the demonstrations on April 13, and also by the nearly 12 years she spent at 10 Downing Street. One thing is certain, Thatcher left behind a legacy that not only transformed Britain’s economy, but acquired for her an international reputation matched only by the likes of Winston Churchill.

The daughter of a grocery man, Thatcher was born in 1925 in the town of Grantham. She studied chemistry at Oxford University, and was politically active in her youth, becoming president of the Conservative Association in the university. After graduating in 1947, Thatcher made her first bid for public office, earning the respect of her peers although she was defeated twice.

In 1952, Thatcher decided to study law and qualified as a barrister a year later. In 1959, she won a seat in the House of Commons, representing Finchley. In 1961, she was appointed parliamentary Under Secretary for pensions and national insurance. Soon after, the Labour Party assumed control of the government, and Thatcher became a member of the Shadow Cabinet—a group of politicians who hold Cabinet-level posts when their party is not in power.

Commenting on women in politics, Thatcher said in 1973, “I don’t think there will be a woman prime minister in my lifetime,” but was proved rather wrong as her rapid ascent up the political ladder proceeded. In 1975, Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party, becoming the first female opposition leader in the House of Commons. The Conservatives regained power in 1979, and in May of the same year, Thatcher made history as the first and only female prime minister in British history.

At the time, Britain was dubbed the “sick man of Europe,” with a crippling economy due to inflation, punitive taxes, and a hefty levy on investment income, forcing the nation to accept aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1977.

This economic recession also spurred numerous citizens to go on strike—including nurses, ambulance drivers, electricians, and garbage collectors; over 29 million working days were lost in 1979, power cuts became standard, and industries faced limits

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to working weeks of three days in order to conserve energy.

The situation reached such an extremity that “the candle was almost a unit of currency.” One of Thatcher’s more controversial actions was the disbanding of labor organizations such as the miner’s union. Following riots against her policy in 1981, the media suggested a “policy U-turn,” to which Thatcher responded, “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning!”

Although opinions were mixed, hard-line Thatcherism seemed to be working by 1982, as the UK experienced signs of economic improvement—inflation lowered to 8.6% from a previous 18%, yet unemployment was still was up, at over 30 million people for the first time in 60 years. By 1987, however, unemployment was falling, the economy was stable, and inflation was low.

Thatcher also faced a military conflict in April 1982, when the Argentine military junta invaded the Falkland Islands, a piece of British territory located off the coast of Argentina that had been a point of conflict between the nations. Despite advice to the contrary, Thatcher sent British troops to regain the territory, resulting in hundreds of deaths on both sides, the majority of which were Argentine soldiers. An ultimate victory for the British renewed faith in Thatcher and is widely believed to be one of the prime factors that won her another term in office from 1983-1987.

The ultimate downfall of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister came with the loss of support after her efforts to implement a new tax called the “poll tax.” The policy became widely unpopular, resulting in public protests and disagreements in her political party. Despite her determination to retain leadership of the party in 1990, she was challenged by party member Michael Heseltine and came up four votes short. She announced her resignation on November 22, 1990, regarding her ousting as a betrayal. Thatcher left Downing Street in tears, having been torn down by her own political party.

Not long after leaving office, Thatcher was appointed to the House of Lords, becoming Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven.

After this, she wrote two memoirs, and gradually disappeared from the public eye. Following several years of deteriorating health, Thatcher passed away at 87 years from a stroke. Many dignitaries attended her funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral, including Queen Elizabeth II (it was the first funeral of a prime minister she had attended since that of Winston Churchill). Regardless of one’s political views, there is no doubt that the Iron Lady has left her mark.

Sources: telegraph.co.uk; wikipedia.org; huffingtonpost.com

news

The Cuban Expressway The story of the journalist who found abducted kids Faria Nasruddin

A

pril 3 The boys sat on the blue and white striped sofa, and munched bowls of popcorn, their eyes illuminated by the glow of television screen. They were at such an innocent age, two and four. This typical scene was disrupted by the sound the doorbell, nothing too strange for suburban Florida.

The fragile old lady, content and joyful because her grandchildren were safe, went to answer the ring. The man at the door parked his silver 2009 Toyota Camry at the sidewalk, and looked oddly familiar.

He greeted the old lady with a simple “Hello,” and quickly took out a rope. The old lady stood in shock, as the familiar man tied her up. He took her arm with such a firm grasp, pulling her towards the kitchen. He led twitter.com/CNN_Oppmann the old lady to a chair, took the rope, and tied her up. He maintained a firm grasp on her, rendering her incapable of warning the children.

The man went away and the door slammed. He left with one child in his arms and the other walking by his side holding his pinky finger.

April 9 The Hemingway Marina dock in Havana was full of boats, floating upon a calm sea. These boats varied from luxury liners used to ride through the gulf to the smallest of fishermen’s boats. Amongst all of the boats, there was one named “Salty.”

Unbeknown to passerby, hidden inside the 25-foot interior was a family of four: Sharyn Hakken, her husband Josh, and their two kids: Chase (two years) and Cole (four years).

This scene was not stumbled upon by the authorities, but rather a journalist, CNN’s Havana correspondent, Patrick Oppmann. Soon after the journalist found the family, Cuban authorities came rushing in and ordered them out.

April 10 The Cuban authorities handed over the case to the US Interests Section in Havana, and the press was allowed to release information. According to the Florida police, custody had been granted to the children’s grandmother earlier that year. They stated: “When police arrived, both Mr. and Mrs. Hakken were acting in a bizarre manner that alarmed officers.

They were talking about ‘completing their ultimate journey’ and were traveling across the country to ‘take a journey to Armageddon,’” the Slidell police statement said, adding, “Let it be noted that both of their children were present in the hotel room at the time.”

Because of the bizarre nature of the case, Patrick Oppmann decided to search for answers. These answers would not be found in the US, so he began to look elsewhere. First, any knowledge that the U.S. or Cuban authorities already had which pointed at the marina as the most logical place to start looking. Oppmann and his crew went to the marina and searched every boat until they found Salty. He stated that the on the deck of the boat stood a family resembling the Hakkens. He saw a man leave the boat and asked him his name to which the man responded Joshua Hakken. When Oppmann confirmed his identity, Hakken took off running. Oppmann said at this moment the Cuban authorities came out of the corners, and this was the moment that Oppmann knew he had found the place.

The role of journalists in our current era of social media is often questioned, and the image of journalism is growing worse. This is a story that has demystified the image of journalists, and been a turning point for the public’s understanding.

More journalists now seek the news, instead of waiting for it.

This story of one journalist going out of his way to gain answers brings a sense of hope to those who still hold on to the value of journalism. It is a compelling tale of the accomplishments of journalists. Answers behind the North Korean missile crisis won’t simply present themselves, our journalists must uncover them. The role of journalists in our society is often underappreciated, and challenged by new technological advances. However, this example proves that there will always be a place for good journalism.

Source: cnn.com

the talon • 17

features

The Necessity of a Fresh Start The Israeli-Palestinian conflict begs for change Clara Bezerra “…Let us promise to make peace not just a priority, but a passion. Let us pledge to do more, wherever we are in whatever way we can, to make every day a day of peace.”

— U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

E

ver since its creation in 1948, the state of Israel has been engaged in a large-scale conflict against Palestinians over possession of territory considered holy by Jews, Christians and Muslims. After a death toll of 4,228 Palestinians, 1,024 Israelis, and 63 foreign citizens, it has become increasingly evident that change is necessity. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved once the endless cycle of accusations is broken, blame is set aside, and those involved in the conflict finally decide to embark on a fresh start.

After the end of the Second World War, the former British mandate of Palestine was divided and Israel was created, so that the Jews, who had been devastated by the Holocaust, could have a homeland. The conflict began when Israel declared its independence in 1948 and thousands of Palestinians were displaced. Israel’s politics and economy continue to be hindered by its long-lasting rivalry with Arab neighbors, while Palestinians in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem have been forced to live under Israeli occupation since 1967. Violence has continued due to overlapping claims on the territory and religious clashes, and in 2001 Israel decided to launch a war on terrorism. As a result, tensions increased, and in 2002 Palestinian militants began a series of suicide bombings that increased the death toll on both sides. Currently, violence continues within the nation and across its border for the same reasons, indicating a failure and reluctance to compromise and establish a new beginning.

Until now, all international attempts at peace have failed to achieve their aims. The UN Resolution 242, passed on 22 November 1967, called for “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict [and] respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” The ambiguity of the phrase “from territories” allowed Israelis to claim that the resolution did not necessarily call for removal of the military from all territories. Resolution 338 then called for the implementation of 242 “in all its parts,” in order to fix this vagueness. However, it was equally unsuccessful: The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is now in its fifth decade, and military occupation and acts of violence on both sides

18 • the talon

violate articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that should, under the guidelines of the United Nations, be protected by a people’s government. Other peace agreements have been signed throughout the course of the conflict—such as the Camp David Accords of 1978, the Oslo agreement of 1993, the Saudi Peace Plan of 2002, and the Roadmap Plan of 2003—but have not been able to put a stop to the violence.

The religious, familial, and historical roots of the conflict have expanded and been blown out of proportion. Unless there is a change in mindset and a subsequent fresh start to negotiations, the issue will continue unchecked. * * * Recently, while reading an article regarding the current situation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I was approached by my five-year-old cousin, who wanted to know what I was doing.

Curious about her perspective on the issue, I proceeded to explain, the background and implications of the rivalry between the two nations. After a lengthy conversation involving lots of repetition and clarification, I asked; “Do you get it now?”

“I obviously don’t,” she answered flatly, “but in my defense, most of them don’t seem to get it either.”

“Who’s ‘them’?” I asked.

“You know, them,” she responded, exasperated.

“Everybody. You said more than five thousand dead because of something that started many years ago. If they understood that, it’d all be over.”

I tried to make my cousin understand the massive cultural, religious, and historical justifications behind this conflict, but she was determined. Maybe she had only been exposed to a fraction of the story, to condensed information susceptible to error. However, I realized that, much like many Israelis and Palestinians have valid premises behind their feelings of hatred, so does my cousin have valid claims underlying her argument. Although only given a general idea of the situation, the small information I offered was enough to allow her to understand that the conflict is not worth its consequences. I do believe that, like my cousin, the people in power will eventually “get it,” will understand that the cycle of anger and vengeance must be broken. Sacrificing a religious grudge and setting aside the issue’s history will be necessary to “reset” the conflict and, finally, press start for a new, peaceful beginning.

Sources: bbc.co.uk; guardian.co.uk; israeli-occupation.org; amnestyusa.org; un.org

features

An Estranged Generation How videogames create false human interaction

Pooja Singhi

I

f we flashback to around 2004, into what was elementary

over an hour or two at a time. After making Luigi jump around

school for most of us, we usually find amongst peanut butter

on mushrooms or petting a virtual dog, they want to go talk

and jelly sandwiches a Tamagotchi, a Gameboy Advance or, a

to their parents, siblings, or friends. But, today’s videogames

few years later, the highly anticipated Nintendo DS. These were

offer players a false sense of human interaction: it is easy

the videogames of that era. Videogames with dull, pixilated

for someone sitting alone in his bedroom for 14 hours playing

screens, and a relatively short battery life. Videogames have

Call of Duty to feel that he has some type of relationship with

evolved a lot since then, especially for our generation. Many

johnbrown53 in England or, in other words, the soldier stand-

teenagers now devote every moment of spare time to games

ing next to them. However, it is essential to realize that both

played on the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360, consoles radi-

gamers are alone. They are not experiencing any face-to-face,

cally different from the rudimentary handheld devices of our

real human interaction. The most threatening, dangerous, but

childhood.

also revolutionary aspect of today’s videogames is their ability

Growing up in Michigan, one of my best friends was

to cause the illusion of interaction with others from separate

my neighbor Joey. We would play outside every day for count-

systematic universes. This allows gamers to play for hours,

less hours; however, at the end of fifth grade, I started to see

because the need for human communication that drew me

Joey less and less. Countless hours became 30 minutes and

away from my Tamagotchi, that led to the wake up call that

everyday turned into once a week. Joey had been consumed

is so important, is falsely satisfied through the online network

by videogames, enthralled by the colorful screen, the small

that “connects” all gamers.

black controller, and the circular green light on the Xbox 360.

I am not suggesting that this is either the only or the

Initially, I was confused at Joey’s new craze: how

most compelling reason for the addictive power of videogames.

could he play videogames nonstop for such a long period of

Among others, experts have offered that gamers often have

time? By now, I had had my fair share of Gameboy Advance

a strong desire to evade reality. When individuals are unsatis-

and Tamagotchi; however, I could never play for more than an

fied with their mundane or unsuccessful lives, they often turn

hour at a stretch. I couldn’t understand Joey’s recent behavior

to videogames as a way to feel a sense of achievement or

because I missed a crucial part of the picture. Around his head

excitement. I fully agree with this reasoning, as well as with

was a pair of headphones with a built in microphone, which

many other explanations that have been offered. However, my

connected him to gamers all over the world who were engaged

argument concerning the false feeling of interacting with oth-

in the same virtual universe.

ers serves as another facet of the problem to be considered,

The difference between today’s videogames and those of the early 2000’s is the presence of human interaction. With

particularly one that differentiates today’s videogames from those of five or more years ago.

Sony and Nintendo’s early devices, gamers generally played

As technology advances, an increasing number of activ-

against the device itself or, at most, the friend sitting right next

ities and devices become “communal,” from the use of Google

to them. Someone playing Mario Kart in Japan would have no

Docs to the release of the Facebook Home phone. Therefore,

connection at all with me sitting in my living room punching

it is vital that we are careful when determining what consti-

away at my Gameboy. However, with the release of most third

tutes human interaction, creating distinctions between having

generation consoles, this changed. The Playstation 3 and the

dinner with a best friend and “whatsapping” a friend during

Xbox 360 allow users to interact with others all over the world,

dinnertime. Since blurry lines contribute to the rising danger

a development that paralleled the increasing accessibility and

of videogames to the new generation, we must reconsider our

usage of high-speed Internet. In this way, technology opened

choices before we press start.

a dangerous new door in the realm of videogames.

Human beings desire interaction. In fact, human be-

Source: miamistudent.net

ings thrive on interaction. I believe that a feeling of isolation is what stopped children from playing basic videogame devices for

the talon • 19

features

A Generation Lost in Japan The phenomenon of hikikomori MC Otani

T

hroughout the past two decades, Japan has faced a phenomenon unique to this current generation, known as hikikomori. Literally meaning “withdrawal,” this term is used to describe the estimated one and a half million 15-to-25-yearold Japanese citizens who, at a point in their adolescence, simply choose to lock themselves inside their rooms and refuse to leave. Completely dependent on their parents, these young people, who are usually men, stay locked in for years surfing the Internet, listening to music, reading, playing video games, or simply staring into nothingness. Hikikomori has become so common that it now represents about 1.5% of the population, which translates into 1 out of 100 Japanese citizens refusing to have any social contact, locked inside a room having their meals slipped in three times a day. That is a big number.

Considering the level of economic development Japan has reached, the necessary question is, what causes hikikomori?

A quality public education is available to all citizens, and majority of the Japanese people live in financially comfortable conditions. At first glance, this would not seem like a problem, but Japan is a homogenous society, not only financially, but also in terms of culture. In a country where immigrants are often rejected, attaining citizenship for foreigners can be very difficult, and where interracial marriages are rare due to a traditional, conservative culture, almost everyone in Japan is Japanese. Unlike the Graded community, which includes students from different countries, cultures, religions, and backgrounds, almost all of the adolescents in most Japanese schools and universities share the same roots, practice the same sports and activities, have practically identical financial conditions at home, receive the same education, and are given the same opportunities.

Most Japanese youths also already have in their minds a list of expectations given to them by their parents, relatives, and society, which includes the obligations to finish high school, attend college, and get a long-term job in a company, where they will most likely work until they retire. Those that fail to complete the smooth transition from school to college to a decent paying job have few chances of ever catching up, and are deemed as failures by most of society. The pressure put upon Japanese youth, therefore, is immense.

20 • the talon

This pressure is what causes and perpetuates the hikikomori. Mostly comprised of men, many teenagers who drop out of high school or are unable to attend a university simply give up. This occurs because, once these adolescents leave school or college, the prospects of lifting themselves up again and attaining a well paying job are very low. It is a form of protest to a set of principles and a system that have for so long ruled the lives of Japanese. Besides this, teenagers who choose to give up do so because they know their parents for can sustain them as long as they want. Consequently, it seems easy enough to simply shut oneself off from the real world and spend time in other worlds, such as the Internet, television, books, and music. This becomes a vicious cycle: humans are social animals, and months, not to mention years. of zero social interaction do negatively impact a person’s psychological health. Sociologists have shown that someone’s chances of living normally and finding a decent job after staying indoors for more than six months are almost nonexistent. Meanwhile, in a society which values pride and reputation, nytimes.com the families of these victims are always reluctant to seek for help, since having a family member in this situation can be a reason for embarrassment and a mark on the family name. Thus, most Japanese parents choose to sustain their “withdrawn” children. And in a decade this has not changed—the pressure, the competition and the numbers of hikikomori will continue to rise, some say, if the Japanese population and the system of social expectations stays as homogenous as it is today. But diversity will not come in a month, in a year, nor ten years.

Thus, for now, change is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Hikikomori is a great example of what a lack of variety and options can cause in a society. Living in one of the most racially diverse countries in the world and studying in a school that has both the words “diverse” and “pluralistic” in its mission statement makes many of us oblivious to issues such as these. Knowing more about them, however, helps us value this underrated asset that countries such as Japan lack.

Sources: bloomberg.com; mindthesciencegap.org; nytimes. com

features

Reinventing Education Growing out of archaic teaching methods Bella Shim

C

hanging the paradigm of education isn’t an easy feat, especially not when many schools worldwide follow the same orthodox methods of teaching, by categorizing children by age groups and placing them together in one room facing a teacher. If the teacher only follows one method of teaching and pacing, the students are forced to conform to these teaching procedures. They are compelled to abide by rules, regardless of their different optimal ways of learning.

Different people learn in different ways: some learn best at night, others are kinetic learners, and some might take longer to learn than others. Why is it, then, that these students are given the disadvantage of having to comply with teaching methods that don’t suit them? I believe this is a problem—students can’t be expected to receive high scores when they’re not being taught in ways that fit them.

It is most definitely a challenge to find a solution to these issues, but some of them can be addressed. Khan Academy is a nonprofit organization founded by Salman Khan, who initially decided to create a brief algebra tutorial video for his cousin. However, his videos received much positive attention, and years later Khan decided to quit his job to focus on creating more online tutoring lessons.

This effort later grew to become Khan Academy, which first started with a few thousand viewers and spiraled into four million every month through a span of a couple of years. As the organization grew even bigger, it began to elaborate on an innovative idea that could change education. Its goal was to implement a new system that would allow students to learn at home through the means of Khan Academy, and go to school to practice problem sets and ask questions. This plan would completely alter the role of the classroom. Students would learn at their own pace at home without the need to rush to catch up with the others. If there were any questions, they could go to school and receive more help from their teachers.

This system, if followed, allows fast learners to rush on ahead without having to wait for their peers. The concept of collaboration can also be enforced, since fast learners gain

the opportunity of helping slow learners, which leads to greater interaction and cooperation between classmates. Peer to peer teaching helps benefit both parties, since one is able to learn while the other masters the material.

Children are enabled to acquire knowledge of the fundamentals before tackling the more difficult subjects. It allows them to fully understand the material in an effective manner, rather than only attaining partial comprehension. The role of teachers, in this case, isn’t necessarily minimized, since this system provides them with much more flexibility and the opportunity of acting as a coach or a mentor.

Since students are stimulated to have ownership over their learning, they are not as heavily dependent on teachers. This learning system replaces traditional methods of education with an intimate environment in telegraph.co.uk which the teachers can give individual attention to those in need of help.

All this, however, is still a very basic step. I am not suggesting that our current system of education should be completely and immediately revamped. The model that Khan Academy represents is most certainly not flawless and it poses a lot of questions. It may not be possible, for example, to teach subjects such as English and ToK through the format of a video. Furthermore, the current available online Khan Academy lessons are not enough to cover all of the content in the entire school curriculum, and it would take quite a long time before we could have access to videos with all subjects.

There’s also the factor of the lack of motivation to actually work. How are students going to be placed in one classroom?

How is Khan Academy going to test a student’s mastery over a subject? These questions are still left unanswered.

Khan Academy’s educational vision, however, may be a possibility in elementary or middle school—the Los Altos school district of San Francisco, for instance, has established the Khan Academy pilot program. It may still be a long way from replacing our current high school curriculum, but new ways of approaching education are always worth pondering.

Sources: ted.com/talks; khanacademy.org

the talon • 21

features

Unearthing the Past The journey of Menachem Bodner to find his twin brother Sylvia Yang

B

eginnings come with new decisions and paths. Many people take advantage of these new starts by retracing what has happened in their lives as they face the future. Menachem Bodner’s approach was a combination of both. Bodner is a 73-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, one of the concentration camps built by the Nazi Germans during the Second World War. After people in the camp were liberated, he was separated from his brother, whom he only remembered from a faint memory of when he was three years old. At the camp, Bodner had approached a stranger and asked the man to adopt him, and when the family took him in he began a new life.

Transitioning from the cruel conditions of Auschwitz to the care of a loving new family was certainly a big start for the boy’s life. Although he was so young when the war ended, later he couldn’t help but want to locate his family by uncovering his past.

Bodner’s pursuit would be arduous and possibly result in disappointment, but he was determined to find out about his past life.

The search was quite difficult at first, considering all he had were a few pictures of his family and his unreliable and fading memories. Realizing this struggle, Bodner made the wise decision of posting pictures of his family on the Internet, hoping someone would recognize them. His pictures caught the eyes of genealogist Ayana KimRon, who, upon further investigation, came to the conclusion that the people in Bodner’s pictures were not actually Bodner’s family members. With this disappointing news, Bodner felt like his search was over. KimRon, however, helped establish hope by continuing her research on Bodner and his brother using her resources. With the idea of checking Bodner’s Auschwitz ID number, A7733, in the official Auschwitz records, she was able to discover his birth name, Eli Gottesman, and his birthplace, Ukraine. His twin brother, ID number A7734, was Jeno Gottesman, whose whereabouts were unknown after the camp. After this breakthrough, Bodner resorted to the Internet once more by creating a Facebook page named “A7734,” hoping they’d receive news about him from people around the world.

During KimRon’s research, Bodner gained additional knowledge about his birth mother and father and about what his life in the concentration camp had been like. His birth

22 • the talon

father passed away in the camp, but his mother, Roza Gottesman–Berger, survived and returned to her home village in Stroino, Ukraine. Unfortunately, there are no records of what happened to her beyond that. As other information continued to be uncovered and good news arose, bad news also began to surface. KimRon found out that Bodner and his brother were both part of an experiment performed

by Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who was known for his inhumane testing on twins. However, it is unknown what tests he conducted, and Bodner does not remember them. Though these new insights gave him more knowledge about his past and confirmed the existence of his brother, it also made him realize the torturous conditions he had faced in the camp.

This story is still waiting for an end as the search for Jeno Gottesman is currently still ongoing, and their story is spreading through news and social media, so that the two, with the help of others, can someday be reunited.

Whilst reading about Bodner’s story, I realized its valuable lessons. Bodner should be admired blog.eogn.com for being brave enough to dig through his painful past when he could have just been content with a comfortable present or future having survived the Holocaust. Without his determination, he would have never known where he came from and whether or not his twin brother is still alive. It was worth unearthing his past, even though it was most definitely difficult for him to so. Although, as he said, “there were so many years that I was afraid of even touching the subject [of my past]” and that the search for his family brought him both joy and pain, he still carries on with it.

The bottom line of this story is that if Bodner hadn’t dedicated himself to this search and taken advantage of the opportunities he was presented with, he would have never been able to discover significant details regarding his past life, which are part of his identity. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to revisit a painful past, as long as there is acceptance of the fact that what has happened cannot be changed. The past is not meant to be reconstructed, but remembered.

Source: cnn.com

features

Step into a Nightmare A real-life horror movie Karen Kandelman

D

avida, a young African-American woman, was raped when she was a teen. She became pregnant but had no way to care for her baby, so she decided to get an abortion at a clinic she had heard of, located at 3801 Lancaster Avenue. When she entered, little did she know that its seemingly pleasant red brick structure hid stories of incomprehensible brutality and suffering.

She proceeded toward the counter, which had the name of the doctor she was coming to visit, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, displayed. She approached a woman behind the cash register, who stared at her with a detached look. After handing the cashier the money she had brought, Davida proceeded towards the waiting room. When they called her name, she walked past women who appeared half-dead. She saw blood on the floor, but chose to keep going.

The nurse strapped a heart monitor around her chest and inserted a needle into her arm. Perplexed and scared, Davida regretted her decision. When she protested, however, Gosnell called in assistants, trapped her ankles in his unprotected hands and sedated her against her will.

When Davida woke up after the surgery, she didn’t know where she was. She felt groggy, knowing that the abortion had been executed, she began to cry and beg for her baby. The clinic’s staff ignored her.

Now she wishes she could give her husband’s daughter a baby brother or sister, and she regrets her abortion at Dr. Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Center because now she can’t conceive. She looks back at that day frequently, thinking about the baby that she could have had.

This is based on an account by Davida Clark. She is one of the many victims of a man who, for four decades, performed illegal abortions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Kermit Gosnell’s case has only been recently unveiled in the media and has not yet been completely divulged, primarily because many of his patients will not report his crimes to the Department of Health. Since 1979, the Women’s Medical Center was only inspected five times by authorities in charge of ensuring that proper health conditions were maintained. The clinic was administered by Gosnell himself, who was the only registered physician. None of the employees had a medical degree: two were former medical students and the assistants lacked any kind of health education. In addition, Gosnell was “training” a 14-year-old girl to work at the clinic. The surgical apparatus was either permanently damaged or unused, and a grand jury report on the crime refers to the presence of urinating stray cats, blood-stained sheets, and a refrigerator where the aborted fetuses were kept.

Gosnell, according to the grand jury report, usually used a pair of scissors to snip the vertebrae of babies who were still breathing. After the baby became immobile, his or her body would be placed inside a disposable bag, which would then be added to a refrigerator that contained other dead bodies that had been aborted.

Gosnell was accused of failing to abide by standard regulations legally imposed on abortion clinics, such as the requirement of judicial or parental consent for minors and extensive counseling before the procedure. Furthermore, conducting an abortion after the fetus has reached 20 weeks of development involves life-threatening risks, and the owner of the clinic would carry out the procedure with women who had been pregnant for more than 30 weeks. According to a patient interviewed in the documentary, the clinic’s counselor stated that having numerous abortions would not diminish the possibility of having children. The woman in the documentary explained that the counselor “had coached her into thinking that [abortions were] the norm”; the patient had eight abortions in fourteen years.

Besides the complete disregard for the safety of patients, Gosnell’s clinic was also implicated in drug trafficking and racial discrimination. Gosnell handed out pre-signed prescriptions, or illegally distributed pain medication to patients, and treated white women better than he treated AfricanAmericans. While viciously exploiting his patients, the majority of whom were uneducated, low-income women, Gosnell was receiving $1600-$5000 per late-term abortion.

The accusations against Kermit Gosnell include approximately 250 charges, the most startling of which is the murder of nine mothers and babies. Although he was found guilty on May 13th, 2013, the death penalty was not issued and instead Gosnell will face two life sentences without parole. This case has provoked discussion between pro-choice advocates, who argue that new legal measures should be instated to avoid a spreading of such clinics, and pro-life activists, who want to impose rules of a more restricting nature. As stated by Michael Gere, president of the Pennsylvania Health Institute, Gosnell’s case has “resurrect[ed] a debate about the humanity of the unborn child.” Today, leaders face the extremely difficult challenge of considering the implications of abortion in order to come to the conclusion on whether or not they should press start for its legalization.

Sources: 3801Lancaster.com; cnn.com; nytimes.com; kidshealth.org; thebrennerbrief.com; breibart.com; foxnews. com; myfoxphilly.com; bloomberg.com

the talon • 23

features

Kick Start

How to begin your day in the right way Nicole Vladimirschi

A

pril and May were considered “hell months” by most High School students. IB Extended Essays, final exams, and standardized tests all impacted many people’s moods. In an attempt to help with Final Exam week, I came up with a few ideas on how to start your day in a way that will improve your mood and allow you to tackle difficult tasks. Please note that these are suggestions that work for me, and might not be suitable for everyone.

You should focus on the beginning of the day, because its first hours have the tendency to strongly impact your mood.

As suggested by a Portuguese saying, it is necessary to “acordar com o pé direito,” or to start your day on the right foot. As a student, it may seem like there is no time for many of the steps listed below, but keep in mind that, although it may seem like it, ten more minutes of sleep, for example, are not that much, especially considering that there are 24 hours in a day.

1. Wake up early. This doesn’t mean wake up three hours before you leave your house, but staying in bed until the last possible moment leads to a feeling of being forced out of bed and into the day against your will. Give yourself some time to wake up earlier in a more relaxed way, instead of rushing to get to school. Personally, I prefer going to sleep early and waking up early, which gives me time to finish any homework, eat a healthy breakfast, and go to school.

2. Have a good breakfast. I promise I’m not trying to sound like your parents, but a healthy breakfast gives you energy to kick start your day, provides nourishment, and positively influences your mood. According to LiveStrong. com, “not eating a healthful breakfast can lead to reduced cognitive function. In other words, you may experience difficulty concentrating, learning or recalling information or performing well at work or school.” There is no need to eat a lot, but healthy eating is key. A few ideas for a practical breakfast include berries, cereal, eggs, green tea, oatmeal, fruit smoothies, and whole-grain bread. There is definitely a wide range of options, and the breakfast you choose depends on your personal taste.

3. Exercise. Stretch, do some yoga, go for a short walk. If you have time to do something other than that, great.

If not, any simple exercise in the morning will do. This is important to get your blood circulating and to really

24 • the talon

wake you up. Find something you enjoy and that fits your schedule. I know my grandparents stretch for at least 10 minutes every morning, and they’re never in a bad mood.

4. Meditate. Or, if you’re like me and haven’t quite gotten the hang of meditating, simply sit quietly. The most important thing to do is to attempt to clear your mind and focus on your breathing. It makes a huge difference if you take at least five minutes of your day to disconnect yourself from the world. It is also a great mental exercise, which prepares you for a long day of learning and combating stress.

5. Create a to-do list. I learned this trick from a friend. He writes down everything he needs to get done for the day when he wakes up, which allows him to feel better prepared to face the day. Start by writing a simple list with only a few tasks and complete them. A small action like crossing out an item on your list can give you great feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment. Have realistic goals and keep your schedule in mind. It is important to remember, though, that not accomplishing the tasks you set out for yourself may have a negative effect.

6. Focus. Pay attention to details that can potentially make a difference. To me, for example, noticing how my pug wakes up with a ridiculous amount of energy allows me to start my day in a pleasant manner. This is more of a mindset rather than an action, but beginning your day in a more focused and prepared manner gets rid of any unnecessary stress that may come your way. Developing the habit of focusing on one thing at a time and completing it not only gives you satisfaction, but also makes you ready for facing new tasks.

7. Promote positive thoughts. Don’t think about all the things that need to be done and how little time there is to do them. Instead, think of all the things you will complete, and the good day you will have. Find small reasons to be excited for the day, such as the weather, a friend, your favorite class or an afterschool activity. Knowing you are strong enough to accomplish any difficult task makes a difference in kick starting your day.

Sources: livestrong.com; workawesome.com; realsimple.com

features

The Power of Smiling Start the practice of making happy faces

Stella Park

Guest Contributor

W

e are almost at the end of the school year—an extremely busy time for many of us. Loads of work burden our shoulders and it becomes harder to find a balance between academics, social life, and sleep. Our faces are marked with tired expressions and smiles fade away.

However, according to William James, “we don’t laugh because we’re happy, we’re happy because we laugh.” It is important to remember that we should never underestimate the power of smiling. It generates a feeling of happiness because facial expressions send signals to the brain that can determine emotions. But, how do we feel happy when we smile or laugh?

When someone attempts to judge the feelings of a dog, for example, it is likely that that person will look at the dog’s face. While one might be able to determine the dog’s emotion by observing how it acts, looking at its facial expression is the most effective way of obtaining information about its feelings.

In other words, we generally try to read the minds of others, whether they are humans or animals, by analyzing their faces.

But how are our feelings truly reflected in our facial expressions?

Here are some facts that allow for an answer to the question.

In 1872, Charles Darwin introduced a theory that suggests that facial expressions are vital to the understanding of the human projection of emotions. In his book The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin states that specific gestures of humans and animals allow them to communicate with others. He claimed that emotional expressions always have the same meaning independent of who displays them. A smile, therefore, would be an indication of joy in any community.

So, although it might be difficult for someone to distinguish the faces of different individuals of unfamiliar ethnicities, it is still possible to differentiate and interpret their facial expressions. The natives of Papua New Guinea, for instance, lived completely disconnected from outside civilization and were still able to recognize and correctly interpret the smiles and frowns of Americans. Darwin also suggested that we have an innate ability to project facial expressions. Even blind men and newborn babies smile when they are happy and frown when they are upset.

We are used to thinking that our emotions affected our facial expressions, but it is our facial expressions that influences our emotion. This is consistent with Darwin’s hypothesis, which states that facial movement can influence emotional experience. A person who is coerced to smile during an event will find him or herself to be more entertained than the people who aren’t.

Research conducted in a French university regarding this topic displayed interesting results. Half of the students

who were instructed to hold pencils sideways using their teeth reported feeling happier than students of the other half, who were told to hold the pencil straight out using only their lips.

The facial expression of the former group of students, which required the use of the same facial muscles attributed to smiling, caused them to have an emotional experience of joy.

But how did this result come about? The brain perceives the muscular structure of a smiling face as a signal of emotional fulfillment. Because grinning is tightly connected with a feeling of joy, the brain is not able to distinguish a smile that is fake from one that is not, and endorphins are released just as they would be for a real smile.

In a similar study in Germany, researchers used MRI imaging to measure brain activity before and after injecting Botox to suppress smiling muscles. The results of this research further supported Darwin’s theory, proving that facial expressions modify the neural processing of emotional content in the brain, in a way that helps us feel better when we smile.

Smiling stimulates the brain to be rewarded in a way that even chocolate—the type of food, at least in my opinion, that is the most effective in giving pleasure—cannot match. In Britain it was found that smiling once can generate the same level of brain stimulation, or satisfaction, as two thousand bars of chocolate, and that one smile is as rewarding as receiving about US $24,500. That’s not a bad reward to receive in exchange for only one smile.

Smiling can also positively impact the feelings of others. A study conducted in the Uppsala University of Sweden revealed how it is difficult to frown when looking at a person who is grinning. This phenomenon occurs because smiling is so contagious that it hinders our control of our own facial muscles.

So your smile not only has the power to make your day better, but those of other people as well.

Our facial expressions determine what and how we feel. Smiling, even in a fake manner, stimulates brain cells and evokes feelings of pleasure and happiness. It can also be transmitted to others due to its contagious quality, which spreads pleasure and satisfaction. A single laugh is a very small price to pay for so much happiness in return. So, although this time may be stressful, don’t wait for a special or funny moment during your day to grin, but press start on the practice of putting a little effort into smiling. This small start is guaranteed to make your day, and those of people around you, a lot better.

Sources: youtube.com; googleblog.blogspot.com; knowledge. sagepub.com

the talon • 25

features

Press Start: A Game about Games “The problem of puzzles are very near the problems of life” — Emo Rubrik Features Team

F

or this edition, the Features Team decided to create a gamethemed crossword puzzle. Our hints contain fragments from the history of games—from Ancient Egypt until today. Note that there are no spaces or hyphens in the words.

ACROSS 2. Four-person game that uses tiles called Red, Green and White Dragon, developed by Confucius.

4. American adaptation of a board game created in India in 500 A.D.. The United Kingdom also adapted the game and called it Ludo.

6. Fictional character Sheldon Lee Cooper of the television series The Big Bang Theory adds two elements to the tradition al game of rock-paper-scissors, which are, in alphabeti cal order ________ and _________.

7. Also called the “game of passing,” this game was first played in ancient Egypt. Its objective is to be the first player to remove all pawns from a board.

8. The rules of this game include calling out _________ when you have one card left.

10. On December 21, 1913, journalist Arthur Wynne published this type of puzzle in a Sunday newspaper called the New York World.

11. While referring to this video game console device, American animator Donald Bluth stated: “I have never seen a game’s graphics look so sharp and clean. The sound de sign for the game is also unique on the __________. The memory on this system allowed us to provide the user

26 • the talon

with 5.1 Dolby surround sound for home theatre own ers.”

14. First sold in Japan in 1996, this electronic game involves be coming the caretaker of a digital pet.

15. This is a paper-and-pencil game played between two people that involves crosses and circles.

16. A good strategy for this game is to always start with the vow els.

DOWN 1. The _________ was originally a weapon thrown by hand for battles and hunting, but became the main tool of an Olympic sport.

2. Combines music and sitting but is not particularly relaxing.

3. This game is played on a checkered board with 64 squares of alternating colors, organized in an eight-by-eight grid.

5. This game is based on the concept of “exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concert ed action” (Merriam-Webster).

9. Chain reaction; also called the __________ effect.

12. Directed by Robert Luketic, the movie 21 is based on the true story of six MIT students who learned how to count cards in order to win millions at the game of ____________.

13. This game can be called “Double Zig-Zag”, “Heaven,” or “Snail,” but is most commonly known as ___________.

Sources: ancientegypt.co.uk; legacy.mos.org; merriam-webster. com

features

A New Beginning Not relying on luck or superstition

Carolina Lengyel Guest Contributor

R

emember that time of the year when everyone writes an enormous list of things they wish to change in themselves?

I have written an almost exact replica of that same list over and over again for each of my New Year resolutions for as long as I can remember, each time making a promise to myself that I would finally change. However in just a few months, weeks, days or even hours later, as happened this year, I manage to break just about all of these promises.

Because of this, I have come to the realization that there are some things that I just can’t change in myself.

It’s simply unrealistic to believe that I am going to wake up one day and become a completely different person than I was the day before.

What’s so special about the last day of the year that makes people reflect on all they experienced throughout the year and examine everything they don’t like about themselves? No one can say for sure why this happens, but it sure triggers a lot of people to come up with a list of resolutions for the new year, where they establish their aspirations. And with this touch of magic that the holiday brings, what could possibly go wrong? Of course as the new year commences, within the first few weeks or months one might take those resolutions seriously; for most people, though, they eventually end up giving up on their plans to perfect themselves quite easily.

The most common resolutions people make are to go to the gym, to stop smoking and of course, the most popular one at our school, to bring their grades up. Hence, right at the beginning of the year one may notice the gyms packed with people eager to either lose weight or build up some muscle.

However, a few months later the gyms are not as packed as they were, and that’s when I start wondering what happened to all those people. Similarly, in the first couple of weeks one may find some cranky people in desperate need of nicotine, but eventually most of them, just like those people at the gym, also give up. Likewise, every year students from all over the

world make the same resolution of earning better grades at school. The thing is, once the school year starts, though we try to do whatever it takes to stay true to our resolution, in just a few months, when our agendas are packed with tests to be taken, papers to be written, and projects to be finished, some of us end up overwhelmed, and see no other alternative but to go back to our normal procrastinating selves.

A similar misguided belief is seen with with shooting stars, 11:11s, fallen eyelashes, chicken bones and four leaf clovers.

We have a tendency to rely on superstitions to fix our imperfections, but we sometimes forget the starting action has to come from ourselves. There is certainly no scientific theory proving that these lifehack.org traditions actually grant our wishes, but people still prefer relying on these random symbols to simply changing whatever they want in themselves.

Yet, even though I am aware of what it takes to go through with my resolutions, sometimes I still catch myself wandering in the fields looking for a four-leaf clover.

Nonetheless, if you still enjoy having the chance of starting all over again, I guess this is your time. In just a few months you will get the chance of restarting an entire school year. That’s right, no more unwanted grades holding you back, no messy notebooks or disorganized school agendas. You get a blank piece of paper and can do whatever you want to do with it. But that’s the point — you are the one in charge of making that change. Because I’m sure of one thing: although 11:11s, fallen eyelashes and New Year resolutions may not be able to do much for you, you have all of that power in your hands. It is up to you to make that change, and you don’t have to wait for a whole new year to start, you can begin getting organized . . . today! So what are you waiting for? Stop leaving all the work to those poor shooting stars and just press start on yourself.

the talon • 27

features

Big 4 Backlash How I took my finger off the pause

Alex Ramos

Guest Contributor

A

s I stepped onto the bus that would take me to Big 4, I tried to convince myself I would be able to get some work done while away at NR. However, the truth is that I have never been more wrong. As some of you know, events such as Big 8 and Big 4 contain activities that take up every moment of the day, especially since we are required to either watch or play in all thirty of the Graded games. It is also nearly impossible to find a cellphone signal or get a connection to the Internet, so even if you did have time to work, only “offline” homework would be possible.

On the Monday before I left for the trip I read through The Talon, and decided that it was about time that I tried to submit an article myself. Later that day, I learned that awaiting my return from Big 4 were the folowing: History and Biology tests, an English in-class essay, a Geometry quiz, and homework for all my classes due within three days of getting back to São Paulo.

Although that made me a little stressed, I was sure I would be able to get it all done if I worked hard. And besides, I thought, since the trip gave me a whole week to study and prepare for school, why should I worry about everything before I even got there?

As the only freshman on the futsal team, my main goal at Big 4 was to socialize and have fun. So, I spent my time talking to my teammates, playing futsal, and cheering on other Graded teams. I had the best time possible, and by the end of the trip I was ecstatic. It was definitely an incredible experience that allowed no room for boredom.

Returning from Big 4, however, was not all fun and games. Besides having a sore throat from screaming for my teammates for four days straight, I arrived back from the trip sick. By the time I got to my house at 8 p.m. on Saturday I was already asleep, and there was no way I would be able to do any assignments. So, I went to bed hoping I would wake up the

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next day energized and ready to tackle my work.

Unfortunately, I did not; I woke up at noon feeling worse than I had the day before. Knowing I had to start my homework, I spent hours trying to come up with an article topic that would fit into the theme of “Press Start.” I pondered writing about the next generation of video games, the history of the remote control, and many other things, but could not come up with anything I liked. I decided to start doing other work, hoping that perhaps an idea would come to me in that process. After a long time no possible topic came to mind, and so later that day I was forced to start writing about something that I was not interested in, about Ines Gil something my heart was not into. After writing 400 words, I read what I had so far and was not at all proud. I went to bed that night still without a clue as to what my article was going to be.

On Monday, I went to school to attend parent-teacher conferences and to do my Biology test. When I got back home at 3:30 p.m. I was feeling depressed; I had two days until my article was due and I had absolutely nothing done. I kept trying to work my previous idea and crank out at least 700 words, but wasn’t able to. Later that night I wondered whether or not I should just give up and study more for my tests and better prepare for my in-class essay, but decided I would wait until the next morning to make such an important decision.

I went to school doubtful that I would be able to complete a strong article that properly reflected my writing talent and passion. Before my classes started, I talked to my English teacher about what she thought I should do, and she encouraged me to push myself and write the article. I went home with almost no confidence that I would be able to come up with a good idea. But, I am proud to say that I did, and if you have made it this far I guess you know how it turned out.

entertainment

Light at the End of Darkness Musings on posthumous success Kevin Shimba Bengtsson

W

e fear death. Death is the end of life, a brick wall blocking any path that we could take while we were alive.

The idea that one day our very existence might come to an end is frightening, and rightfully so: we’ve never experienced the lack of life, after all. The unknown, more than anything, is terrifying. But what if death comes with any perks? To many, death has had an opposite effect of what one would expect—it managed to be beneficial. Of course, they weren’t alive to witness how their life would change post-mortem, but it did.

Unable to achieve prominence in their (living) life, some solace was found in their successes after passing away.

“And it’s not a cry that you hear at night / It’s not somebody who’s seen the light / It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah,” Jeff Buckley sang on his 1994 debut, Grace. These words, first uttered by Leonard Cohen decades before, seemed to fit to Buckley’s angelically soothing yet sorrowful voice. His crooning, which echoed feelings of heartbreak and desolation, foreshadowed events in his life: three years after the world first heard his gutwrenching rendition of “Halellujah,” he died. On May 29, 1997, while recording the follow-up album to his unsuccessful debut, he took a spontaneous dive into the Wolf River in Tennessee. A month later, his body was found. Strangely enough, though, Jeff Buckley encountered most of his success from beyond the grave: Having done poorly both on the charts and critically, Grace began to garner attention from all parts of the globe.

Today, it has sold over two million copies worldwide.

Oddly enough, Buckley is not the only one to have encountered this kind of situation; he is just a modern incarnation of a phenomenon that has occurred throughout history. Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh, for example, now one of the most celebrated artists of all time, did not live to see the full extent of his influence either. During his lifetime he only sold one of his 900 paintings. Depressed and frustrated that nobody appreciated his work, he took his own life in 1890.

Just like everything in his life, his suicide nearly went unnoticed. One hundred years after his death, however, his tour de force, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, was sold for 82.5 million US

dollars, making it one of the most expensive works of art of all time. Van Gogh is now something of a household name, a feat I’m sure the man himself could never even imagine happening.

The world of literature offers a similar story. Born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, poet Emily Dickinson lived a quiet life, choosing to spend most of her time within the confines of her home. Despite composing almost 1100 poems from 1858-1865 and nearly 1800 in total, she published only less than a dozen while she was alive. She did send poems to an editor, but preferred to share some of them with family and close friends. After she died, however, her sister believed that her poetry was special enough to be read by the masses. And the masses did in fact want to read her work, as she is now one of the biggest figures in American poetry.

Have you ever read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? This might come as a surprise to you, but the author of the Millenium series, Stieg Larsson, is dead. No, he didn’t die after its publication; rather, he died before anyone ever read the novel.

He had a heart attack after having to climb up seven flights of stairs blogspot.com to his apartment when his elevator did not work. This unfortunate and bizarre death would precede the publication of three novels that would become some of the most lucrative and notable of the early twenty-first century.

All these people share a distinct similarity: after death, success came. It was the end of their lives, but, in a way, the beginning of a new one. The recognition they never achieved came in full force after they passed away. It could be said that there’s no point in succeeding if you are not there to witness it, but I disagree. I would rather be recognized as I rot in a coffin than never at all. I would rather be given a fresh start as a memory than to never be remembered. So, folks, if you ever feel like no one appreciates you or your work, just think that you still have a chance after you’ve died.

Sources: emilydickinsonmuseum.org; jeffbuckley.com; vangoghgallery.com; wikipedia.org

the talon • 29

entertainment

New Game + Once more, with feeling Felipe Marques

I

t was around five years ago when I finished Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates for the Nintendo DS. It took me approximately that same time to finish it, too, considering the nearly insurmountable difficulty of the game, but after spending nearly a year attempting to beat the last dungeon, I finally defeated the final boss and read the credits with a sigh of relief. As much as I liked that game I really didn’t want to play it again–I thought that, like most Role Playing Video Games (RPGs) in the Final Fantasy tradition, the game would start up again from where you last saved, before the final boss. The credits ended, the title screen showed up for the millionth time since I started the game, and to my surprise, my save file had only an erased total playing time and the words “New Game +.” Eleven-year-old me was perplexed at that new, mysterious message the game had left me, so I started the save file, and to my amazement, I was watching the intro cutscene again—and to my even greater amazement, my character had none of the equipment he had when I finished the original game. Once I got to the first dungeon, the enemies improved in quantity and difficulty, set to the skill level I had when finishing the game. Heck, I even got beaten by the first boss around five times.

I quit playing by then, but wondered if the same thing happened to other RPGs, so I tried out a few more of my old favorites, some of which I had even finished years prior. Sonic: Dark Brotherhood had an ending that resulted in a “New Game +,” as did Chocobo Tales. This continued for the rest of the number amount of RPG games that I had until, ironically, the one I expected to actually have a decent “New Game +”: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for the Game Boy Advance. It was one of my favorite games as a kid, is one of my favorite games of all time, and yet it just brought me back to the last save point.

This was a game that I considered a journey—it took me about a year to beat, but it gave me no reason to go back to play it.

It struck me then that my fascination with the notion of a “New Game +” wasn’t just due to my extreme liking of video games—rather, the fact that a game would start me off

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“at [my] beginnings” (to borrow a quote from Rudyard Kipling) and still give me all that experience and satisfaction for having beaten it once tied into my life itself. Back when I finished Crystal Chronicles I considered that life, in a way, functioned like its “New Game +”: I’d finish a school year, be happy that I finished it, then start another one, with no real difference from the last one save the difficulty. I also considered Mario & Luigi to be a lesser game as well as a lesser life lesson: back then, for me, it was better to start again with some changes than to just relive a glorious moment from my past over and over again.

Looking back on it now that I’m nearing my final year of high school and have played more games without a “New Game +,” I noticed how immature and naïve my views on life were. Mario & Luigi wasn’t a lesser overall gaming experience because it had no blogspot.com “New Game +,” nor was Crystal Chronicles a better one because it did, and the same applied for me comparing both games to the way my life was going. See, Crystal Chronicles was the one making me relive my past over and again, while Mario & Luigi’s ending gave me a sense of closure. Sure, I could go back and beat the final boss, but I already finished the game; there’s nothing else to do but move on.

And then it hit me: maybe having that sense of closure and subsequently moving on from my past was better than just doing the same thing over and over again. If I kept looking at every incoming new school year as a “New Game +” and didn’t do anything to change it, I’d end up in a monotonous, sedentary rut. So, by the time I reached tenth Grade, I decided I’d stop treating every year of school the same way Bill Murray’s character treated his days in Groundhog Day and take every day of every week of the next three years as my own new individual challenges. Instead of playing a “New Game +,” I just decided to play a new game.

So what will you do when “New Game +” shows up on the title screen of your life? Will you play the same game, or change the cartridge?

entertainment

Justin Bieber’s Series of Unfortunate Events The most interesting downward spiral you might ever see Catu Beretta

A

s of April of last year, Justin Bieber had sold 15 million albums and his face had been plastered on billboards worldwide. He has risen to fame faster than you can say “Bob’s your uncle” ...and now we get to watch him crash and burn. The following is a detailed timeline of the events that lead me to believe that Bieber is losing his cool swag status.

The Breakup After dating for two years, Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez broke up in November of 2012, reigniting hope in many Beliebers that Justin would see them and fall in love, the way he was supposed to all along. According to many “sources,” Selena was very happy with the break up while Bieber was left hanging and now wants to get back together.

Smuggling A Monkey In March, Justin landed in Munich, Germany with his monkey, Mally, where he was detained. Due to the lack of papers for his monkey, Bieber had to leave his pet in quarantine. “He and Mally go everywhere together,” a source told NY News Daily, “he will be heartbroken.” He was given one month to pick up his capuchin monkey.

“Swaggy” Tattoo Last summer, after having the word “Believe” tattooed on his forearm by Bang Bang (Keith McCurdy), Justin Bieber returned the favor by tattooing a muscular mouse and the word “swaggy” on the tattoo artist. According to the New York Daily News and the New York City Health Department, Bieber could be facing a $2000 dollar fine for operating without a license.

The Birthday “The worst birthday ever,” as Bieber himself would have it, took place in London, while celebrating his 19th. An $8000 party had been planned to take place at the Cirque du Soir club in Soho.

Apparently someone let it slip that his best friend, Jayden Smith (who happened to be 14 and underage), was at the club. He was not the only minor present. Within minutes, the party was busted and the Biebs was escorted out of the club.

Arriving Two Hours Late…On A School Night A concert taking place in London’s O2 Arena was supposed to begin at 8:30 p.m. but was pushed back almost two hours to 10:10 p.m. Angered parents took to Twitter where they complained about the delay, since most of them were with their children and it was a school night.

The Photographer Incident A few days after the concert, Bieber pushed a photographer as he made his way to his SUV. The photographer claimed that the pop star had assaulted him, which Justin Bieber did not take too lightly: “What the f– did you say?” Bieber shouted.

“I’ll f–ing beat the f– out of you.” He then attempted to punch the paparazzi but was held back by his bodyguard.

An Unapologetic Letter To The Public To vent his frustrations, Justin wrote an open letter on his Twitter feedand here is a snippet: “I’m 19 with 5 number one albums, 19 and I’ve seen the whole world. 19 and I’ve accomplished more than I could’ve ever dreamed of, I’m 19 and it must be scary to some people to think that this is just the beginning.” At the end of his rant, he added, “…and to those comparing me to Lindsey Lohan, look at her 2012 tax statements ;).”

The Gas Mask As a joke and a way to hide from the cameras, Justin Bieber was spotted wearing a gas mask as he returned to his hotel after dinner in London. According to what he told USA Today, his friend got it as a joke since he “likes messing around”. He also said, “I’m young and I want to have fun. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.”

Anne Frank Would Have Been A Belieber Upon visiting the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, where he was scheduled to perform, Justin was gracious enough to leave a note reading, “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a Belieber.” The Anne Frank house posted this note onto their Facebook, and Twitter immediately erupted with responses from bursts of outrage to proud Beliebers who defended their idol. “Bieber did the right thing. Proud of him.” “At the first moment I was also shocked about his words. But why shouldn’t he hope that this great girl would have been a fan of him?”

Meeting the Prime Minister of Canada When meeting with Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada, he wore overalls. That is all I have to say.

Sources: wikiepedia.com, The Daily Beast, The Sun, USA Today, Rolling Stone

the talon • 31

entertainment

Press Stop!

Movies and (the lack of) gender equality Luiza Gundim

H

ave you ever heard of the so-called Bechdel Test? If not, don’t worry—it’s simple. Originally titled “The Rule,” it was popularized by cartoonist and writer Alison Bechdel in 1985. In the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she suggested that a movie is worth watching only if it follows three basic requirements: 1. It has at least two female characters 2. They engage in conversation at least once 3. Their conversation is about something other than men.

It sounds easy, right? Yet, as you go through your list of favorite movies and TV shows, you will find that very few pass this simple test. It is estimated that roughly 50% of all movies actually comply with all the requirements. If we take a look at this year’s Oscar nominees—Lincoln, Django Unchained, and Life of Pi—none of them pass the test. Other famous works that received an F according to Bechdel’s grading rubric are Avatar, The Social Network, The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, Indiana Jones, and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. The list seems endless. Even some of our all-time favorite Disney movies, like Wall-E, Toy Story, and Up fail to pass it. That shows that the absence of well-rounded female characters in movies is not a sporadic happening, but rather a systemic problem that is everywhere in the entertainment industry.

The test, though astonishing and exasperating, is not perfect and is frequently misinterpreted. Contrary to public belief, it was not created to measure gender bias in film. How can we possibly measure something so abstract? Also, it refers to men in general, not only the characters’ male companions—it does not make any difference if the women are talking about their fathers, brothers, friends, or even their archvillains. If they are talking about men… then the movie inevitably fails. At the same time, the female characters can chatter about something as futile as buying new shoes—as long as it is not about men, then the movie passes.

Another misconception is that the movie is automatically anti-women just because it did not pass the test. However, there are several movies that have legitimate reasons for excluding women from main roles. Take Dead Poets Society or Twelve Angry Men, for example. The first one, from the late 1980’s, is set at an all-boys’ school and the latter, from 1957, was filmed at a time when only men were allowed on juries.

In situations like these, it is perfectly understandable that the main characters are not females. There are also cases like Disney’s Mulan, for instance, which does not pass the test, in

32 • the talon

spite of its feminist leitmotif, simply because the protagonist is generally surrounded by men.

At the same time, people also assume that all movies that pass the Bechdel test are necessarily over-the-top feminist masterpieces; in fact, most the time they aren’t, and some of them can be unbelievably misogynistic. The most common example of a movie that passes the test is Alien, which, regardless of its feminist undertones, is mainly just another sci-fi/horror picture. The American series Sex and the City, despite its title and plot, surprisingly passes the test as well. It’s true—Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha do not talk solely about their significant others. They also talk about clothes, shopping, weddings, travelling, and so on. You know, pretty important stuff.

Thus, passing the Bechdel Test does not lead us to any conclusions about the degree of feminism present in the film at hand.

Clearly, the Bechdel Test was not created to rate a work’s level of feminism. Feminism is not something that can be measured so easily; it is not a “pass or fail” kind of thing. The problem arises, however, when most of the works published recently fail the test—that tells us awkward things about the way Hollywood treats women and about Hollywood as an institution.

The industry seems to be almost entirely based on films that serve and are about males. It is, without a doubt, a formula that works, seeing that the movie industry makes billions of dollars every year. That said, showing more multi-dimensional female characters would further enrich the business—not with money but with diversity.

As we delve deeper into the issue of feminine representation in Hollywood, another question arises: is simply passing the Bechdel Test enough? Well, that’s up to one’s individual interpretation. But from now on, try to pay more attention to the movies you watch and how women are portrayed in them.

In one episode of Sex and the City, Miranda admits, “How does it happen that four such smart women have nothing to talk about but boyfriends? It’s like seventh grade with bank accounts. What about us? What we think, we feel, we know, Christ! Does it always have to be about them? Just give me a call when you’re ready to talk about something besides men.”

I wish I could not watch any more movies until they stopped showing one-dimensional female characters. But, that is going to take a while to happen. I might as well wait by having some popcorn and watching another male-dominated movie.

Sources: feministfrequency.com; bechdeltest.com; voice. scrippscollege.edu; tvtropes.org

entertainment

Talon Toon More cartoon fun Felipe Marques

Monthly Update Honestly, I don’t know why I still do this Adam Hunt Fertig

The class of 2013 graduation ceremony went off without a hitch. Finally, they’re gone.

As we say goodbye to an excellent Talon staff, we welcome the most viciously superb staff of all time.

Finals week is coming up. Administration has notified us that playing “The Final Countdown” will result in suspension.

the talon • 33

viva voice

Nubes de fotos Más un cuento...

Fabio Rocco

E

l hombre había caminado por el parque, y ahora transpiraba como un chico después del recreo. En verdad, él todavía era un niño. No tenía familia ni empleo, y sus amistades eran breves como los veinte minutos de fútbol que les daban en la escuela. Aún así, no era completamente triste. El hombre tenía sus fotos.

Eran fotos de su infancia, fotos de un chico sonriente, dientes blancos y saludables, y ojos tranquilos, sin preocupaciones, ambiciones, prioridades... Fotos de juguetes coloridos, de la casa en el árbol (una hermosa casa de madera), de su habitación hace cuarenta años. Y siempre que miraba las fotos de su cuarto, sentía un vacío incontrolable, un dolor agudo que penetraba por su insignificante existencia, hasta que taladraba, como una aguja, su corazón (un sensible corazón de niño). Las fotos eran para el hombre como amuletos; le daban a él lo que quería pero no podría tener. Pero, al mismo tiempo, las fotos le causaban daño. Eran memorias de una vida que no era más posible. Eran fotos de una realidad que, al pasar de los años, años vacíos de caminatas por el parque y almuerzos en el bar, de los funerales de sus queridos, y de pocas otras cosas que ni yo recuerdo ahora (de tan insignificantes), había quedado obsoleta.

Cuando se dieron cuenta de que el problema de su hijo era casi como crónico, los padres hicieron todo para ayudar.

Llevaron al joven a los mejores especialistas, a los psicoanalistas más renombrados. Y nada...

Era una enfermedad compleja, le dijeron. El chico no tenía ganas de vivir un futuro, sólo de revivir su pasado. Era más fácil, más cómodo, y más triste también. Triste porque mientras todos caminaban adelante, él caminaba para atrás. Así

34 • the talon

se fueron sus amigos, como el viento que soplaba en los recreos del colegio abandonado de sus sueños. Y su familia no tuvo otra alternativa. No podría parar de vivir por causa del chico problemático. La casa necesitaba dinero, y dinero, como sabemos, se gana con trabajo, y mucho trabajo.

Como era hijo único, estaba solo en la casa, la vieja casa de la infancia de las fotos.

Estaba solo en el mundo. Tenía, sin embargo, sus fotos. En medio de las ruinas de la casa había un álbum. Un álbum sagrado. Y estaba el hombre mirándolo, transpirando después de la gigaom.com caminata por el parque, atento como siempre. Era un viciado, un preso. Vivía una vida mecánica, de caminatas sin objetivo (que el médico le recomendó) y de una soledad amplificada por las fotos de un pasado distante. Mientras miraba una foto de su primer cumpleaños, empezó a llorar.

No era un llanto de descubrimiento, ni un llanto diferente. Infelizmente, era un llanto igual al llanto de todos los días, sin ambiciones. También es infeliz el final de este cuento, porque es como el llanto del hombre, sin descubrimientos. La verdad es que la monotonía de las fotos, día a día, mataba al hombre un poco más. Hasta que nada restó de él. Solo sus lágrimas, evaporadas en un cielo infinito, en nubes de sueños que flotan para siempre, rápidas como el viento del recreo de las fotos.

viva voice

Wander The long, winding road Lucas Zuccolo

R

eally? I thought I’d filled it just this morning...” I mumble to no one in particular.

I smile slightly as I realize I’m thinking out loud. Again.

Well, at least I think I smiled. Hard to tell when there’s no one around to see it. Experience tells me my expression is likely a grimace, but by this point, it’s as good as I can manage. Not that I used to be particularly readable anyway. I always took a certain fatalistic pride in being inscrutable. Rational, cold is what they told me I was. Emotionless, brutal when they thought I wasn’t in earshot. I didn’t mind. Or care. Maybe that just proved them right, but there’s purpose in why I am as I am. There’s a reason I act like I act. As far as they know, I’ve been like that since we met. Not far from the truth, but only a fraction of it. Being indecipherable doesn’t mean there’s nothing to decipher. Being quiet doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be said.

But I admit I’ve been especially reserved. That’s why I find it particularly amusing that now I talk even to myself. Not madness, no; a safeguard against it. Even desert plants require water to survive. I don’t mind, though; the conversations I held with others rarely proved much more interesting. I’m sure at this point I have much still ahead of me. I’m not going out any time soon. No need to rush anything. “...and I got myself distracted again. Come on, stop babbling and go find a stream.”

There’s one four or five kilometers westward; I’d have to sidetrack to pass by it, though. If I continue on the path, it’ll probably be over twenty before the next. Not to mention around the chasm, which will likely take a good hour or two.

At best, I’d make it by nightfall. I know I can make it that long without refilling, but I’m getting sloppy. I’ve been sleeping most every night, savoring the sun-dappled landscape throughout the day, and I haven’t exercised in a few weeks. The trek is more than enough to keep me fit, but without my suit, I need to be at my absolute best form if anything comes along. Not to mention my aim was a bit rusty even before. I’m loathe to admit it, but my second skin is just as useful as my first. If not more.

“Eh, I won’t get dehydrated. Might as well save myself a few more hours. I’ll make them by trying a scenario tomorrow.”

And with that I set off with renewed vigor, already running through ideas of what I could set up. I’m thinking long range is better suited to the dense foliage high canopy. Some of the water will probably be frozen; might take some slabs as

makeshift targets. The shattering is a bit louder than I might like, but not terrible. There are lots that could crack ice besides me. Much more fulfilling than the leaves I’d used last time, anyways. Those just crumpled.

Soon enough I see the chasm on the horizon. It’s not particularly deep; I can see the river at the bottom, fed by a mixture of groundflow and rainwater, and enough light filters through the gorge to support some low-hanging plant life. The walls are composed of streaks of stone-grey rock and earthy red clay, pockmarked with dozens of small crags and crevices, more than a few of which I guessed contained nests. I never had much trouble, though; they’re low enough that my crossing generally doesn’t disturb them. The chasm is reasonably wide; my best estimate was about seven kilometers. There’s an overhang about halfway down that I can use to get across, though. I angle my path towards where I think it will be.

I haven’t been making good progress. It’s already beginning to darken, and camping by a gaping hole in the ground is not on my to-do list. I’m not afraid of heights, I just prefer to avoid ones that can kill me. Which, unprotected as I am, is pretty much anything beyond a few dozen meters. This drop definitely qualifies.

“Gonna have to go at least an hour after sunset. Heh, Imagine if Mara were here. She–“ Was that...? No, I must be imagining things. I’m jumpy is all. But the tingling sensation on the back of my neck remains.

I quicken my pace, straining my ears to verify if I can hear it again. And I do; the heavy thud, the whispering swirl of air.

There’s no mistake this time. I glance ahead: the overhang is just a few hundred meters away, and the underbrush is gradually clearing. I’ve still got some explosives in my pack; if I can just get across, I can close the path behind me, maybe get it off my trail. It would buy me a few hours to slip away.

I’m almost there. I can feel its presence bearing down on me... but I reach the chasm. As I sprint across, I fish a charge out of my pack, flip the switch and I lunge to the other side, clumsily rolling to absorb my impact.

The explosion reverberates along the canyon with a satisfyingly loud boom. It’s done. I’m home free, for the time being. I take a minute to catch my breath. The next twenty-four hours are going to be tense, but, deep inside, I feel a growing excitement. I hope it does follow me. It’s been too long since I’ve had a real challenge.

And the best part of living is feeling alive.

the talon • 35

viva voice

Living Paradox A fictional exploration of identity Julia Abreu

I

seemed older than I knew myself to be. I was different. I was running fast through tall, prickly bushes yet every step I took forward sent me two steps back. The bushes grew shorter and the path suddenly split right in front of me, and I stumbled on a thorny rose patch. Its thorns perforated my skin, right below the knee. I regained my balance and saw a road completely covered by a heavy fog, adjacent to another one, which was as bright and sharp as a still-life painting. I didn’t know what I was even running from, but I was short of breath and my heart danced around in my chest. My feet and head hurt but it was a soothing pain, a sort of numbness from all the fear.

As I caught my breath, there it was—the foggy path. I dragged myself along the road, trying hard not to deviate from the straight line of my vision, for all the rest was covered by the thick, white clouds. But at that moment my imagination exploded, and with my mind I painted a face across the fog as if it were paint on canvas. I recognized the face, and my eyes bulged, witnessing the painting as it condensed into a tangible being, a bodiless head, supported by the heaviness of the air around me. I tried to speak, but nothing came out.

Her eyes, though, spoke loudly. They pierced through me, smiling, and I was breathless once again. I shut my eyes, my lips, and my soul, and tumbled to the ground, hitting a soft rock, which broke my fall, or maybe I just was numb. As my eyes parted and allowed for light to shine through, there she was, head tilted, staring at me with those eyes. They were now beginning to form a catlike shape, thin at the width and beautifully expressive. At this point my eyes were more open, in clear contrast to hers. I wasn’t sure where I was, or what she was doing there, but I could taste curiosity as if I were somehow destined to uncover an unknown secret, a key to reality.

The girl wouldn’t speak, for I had forgotten to draw her lips, so she conveyed everything with her eyes. I spoke.

Where am I? Who are you? She shot a glance directly behind me, and as I turned I saw a brook, clear, and sparkly. It looked

36 • the talon

like it was made of diamonds of the most exquisite kind, the ones extracted with bloody hands. I was sure that I had gone mad. Why hadn’t I seen the brook before? Then I remembered: the brook was there all along; it was the force pulling me back as I tried to move forward. It was a clue. I heard a voice, but it was nowhere to be seen. It felt like it was coming from myself. “Go towards the brook,” it told me, and I did. At the edge of the water, I could see myself, a pale face with these deep, dark circles under my eyes, and I couldn’t understand how I’d gotten so old, so dead. I squinted at my own image, closed my eyes for a second or two, but it felt like hours, and the blood running through my veins felt dry for those two endless seconds.

I was half-dead.

Then, in a sudden flash of desperation I dove into the water, and it felt so warm against my skin that I winced.

But I wasn’t warm anymore, I was freezing. Something about that brook made me denser. I was transformed into a tough fragility, like an ancient Mesopotamian vase, uncovered after centuries of burial under thick, dry soil. As my body sank to the bottom of the brook, I felt free. And, right at that moment, I saw her face again, the same painted face with the smiling eyes. She was inside the water, Rafaela Goldlust her calm expression reflected off the surface, and then I knew exactly who she was. She was the one who took away my youth; she was all that I had once been; she was all that I still was; she was me. But it was also her, a fascinating mirror of duplicity, of disclosed identity. An odd symbiosis: she took away my smile, and I took away her voice. We fit into an existential puzzle, a contradicting image of one being. Then it all made sense: the bushes, the paths, the fog, the face, the smile, the silence, the brook, and me. I was on a path towards finding my own identity, and that could only be accomplished if I saw myself for who I wasn’t as well as for who I was. I was that face, but at the same time as I wasn’t. At that moment, I was awake, but I was dreaming. I had the answer but it slipped through the cracks of my bony fingers. I was that “she” and I was this “I,” a living paradox, a double being.