F E AT U R E S
The Campanile
November 18, 2011 • B3
Paly student helps teach abroad in Uganda
The Art of BS
Senior Greg Dunn improves community through education By Matt Morton Staff Writer
To many of us, community service means picking up trash or planting trees. It might be helping the elderly, holding bake sales or volunteering at any of a number of different community organizations. Although helping the community is beneficial, some people view it as a chore rather than an opportunity. To Palo Alto High School senior Greg Dunn however, community service was none of these things. For Dunn, community service was an adventure. It meant flying through Istanbul on the way to a month-long stay in Uganda, where he taught underprivileged children English and debate skills. Driven by the desire to really make a difference and positively impact lives, Dunn traveled to a small town named Kukanga, where he taught and helped remodel his host’s home, among other community projects. “The Kukanga school is a combination middle and high school in eastern Uganda, attended by the children of the area’s subsistence farmers,” Dunn said. “My main job was to teach English and debate at the school.” Before teaching English and debate, Dunn taught the school children something more entertaining. “Kids took naturally to Ultimate [Frisbee],” Dunn said. “They have good hand-eye coordination and form, they just need to read the throw a bit better. They have no balls, and discs do not break. I think it is a good fit.” Language barriers and the lack of materials made teaching classes difficult for Dunn.
“Teaching was an interesting experience,” Dunn said. “The only materials I had were a blackboard, chalk and sundry urine-smelling books. The pupils were attentive, but English is their second language. I likened it to teaching Spanish during a power outage.” The language barriers made debate even more of a challenge. “My speech was somewhat chaotic—I could not understand the chairwoman, so I failed to heed my cue until [the principal] clued me in,” Dunn said. “Apparently, I was supposed to provide feedback on delivery mechanisms, but instead I gave the reason why I thought doctors won. I used the phrase
‘madam chair’—I think they interpreted it literally.” Despite his challenges, Dunn ultimately had a rewarding experience. He introduced a new game to the students, taught English and debate to students who otherwise would not have learned about it, and assisted in renovating his host’s home. “My trip was not only a way to do real education, but also be a part of a change that I believe will be what history will remember about my lifetime,” Dunn said. “My stay in Africa resulted in learning, cultural understanding and development by both me and people around me, making it a success.”
Thedunns.com
In addition to encouraging and teaching Ugandan children abroad, Paly senior Greg Dunn helped with other projects in his community, including remodeling his host family’s house.
Bottle cap necklaces and keychains support athletics
Paly mother manufactures trinkets for cheerleader funds By Charlotte Barry Staff Writer
Linda Cullen, mother of Palo Alto High School junior cheerleader Fiona Cullen, spends her free time helping boost funds for the cheer team by making bottle cap necklaces and key chains. This idea sparked two years ago when she was giving out bottle cap magnets and necklaces with the logo of her thenjob, Pacific South West Airlines, as a present at a P.S.A. reunion party. When she showed the idea to fellow Paly mother Tina Bono, Bono immediately told her to start crafting them for Paly.
As a result, Cullen created them for her daughter’s frequent cheer competitions and for her oldest son and 2011 Paly graduate, Michael Cullen, for football. “Michael wanted [a key chain] with his jersey number on it,” Cullen said. “When he brought it to school, everybody wanted one, so I made them, then [started] giving the money toward the cheerleaders as a fundraiser.” Fiona does helps her mom with designing the numerous bottle caps they make each month, though she does not actually aid her mother in the making of them.
CHARLOTTE BARRY/CAMPANILE
Viking bottle cap necklaces and keychains help fans show Paly pride and help support the sports teams as all proceeds go to Paly athletics.
“I help her with the designs, like the parts that go into the cap,” Fiona Cullen said. “I don’t help with the process as much.” According to Linda, the process is very tedious and takes days to finish. There are eight steps to the finish line; the first step is to find the design of the inside part of the bottle cap. The second major step is to layer it with the epoxy glue, the clear substance that goes over the design and that takes about 24 hours to dry. The Cullens originally started selling their bottle caps at cheer fundraisers. The Cullens sell them at the Friday night football games and also take in orders from people to make their jewelry as unique as they want it to be. As the football season is coming to an end, Linda Cullen wants to expand the business to the Paly Associated Student Body and sell to students. “Matt Hall just bought 20 to sell and will keep ordering them from me through ASB,” Linda Cullen said. These caps are also very popular among younger and older generations. “The parents and football players love them, and the little kids love to wear them too,” Linda Cullen said.
Linda also makes these accessories available to other Paly athletes for $10 each. “For the water polo team, I would [design] a water polo player silhouette then have the number above,” Linda said. Linda is able to customize the necklaces and keychains for any person, activity, or occasion. “I’ll do [any design],” Cullen said. “I have done ‘Paly 2012’ for the seniors, nickname bottle caps like ‘Kimboslice’ and add any background to it.” Junior Micayla Brewster bought a bottle cap with the letter “P” to show her Paly spirit. “I bought [the bottle cap necklace] at a football game freshman year where they had certain designs layed out on the table,” Brewster said. “I wasn’t able to pick my own design, but it made it easier for me. I let the pros figure that out for themselves.” Brewster believes that making these bottle caps is not an easy process. “I have never heard how to make [bottle caps] or anything like that,” Brewster said. “But I know that it takes more effort than just throwing some tape, designs and a bottle cap together.” The bottle cap necklaces are sold in a variety of colors and designs.
NASA internships provide research opportunities outside of school Students interning outside of school gain valuable scientific work experience By Gavin Chan Staff Writer
Have you ever wondered what the universe is made of? Or what it is like to build a lunar base on the moon? In order to answer questions like these, Palo Alto High School senior Alex Liu and junior Daniel Fischer have been conducting their own research experiments at NASA Ames Research Center. “Our main goal is to verify different theories on the overall chemical makeup of the universe,” Liu said. There are two main theories about this, but they clash with each other. “The ratios of chemical substance predicted by the two theories is around
5:70, so we don’t have any answer yet,” Liu said. Liu’s supervisor at NASA, Dr. Rubin, gives them a chance to write their own programs. “We get to reduce and analyze data from the Herschel Space Observatory by modeling it with equations on the distribution of elements, [which] depends on the distance from the central star in that planetary nebula,” Liu said. The Liu brothers work weekley with Dr. Rubin, programming for the Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (HIPE) which processes the images from the space observatory.
“Every week, we program HIPE with javabased Python codes to analyze the images of emission lines coming
“I [learn] applications of computer science in different fields of work,” Liu said. “Actual research is really different from reading stuff out of a textbook.” Junior senior Daniel Fisch“I feel like actual reer interns at search is really differ- NASA for a purent from reading stuff different pose. out of a textbook.” “I’m experimenting by combinfrom the nebulae,” Liu ing different chemicals said. with lunar soil to see if By interning at cut- they are viable for a stating-edge research insti- ble building material,” tutes like NASA, high Fischer said. “We’re tryschool students are pro- ing to find a substance to vided with a unique expe- build a lunar base out of.” rience working with proHowever, Fischer’s fessionals in a high-tech line of work is not alenvironment. ways safe, as the lunar
Alex Liu
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nanoparticles are toxic if inhaled and working with them is not taken lightly in the science community. “I had to go through nanoparticle safety training to work at NASA, and if this is successful, we can use [the synthesized lunar material] to make future lunar bases,” Fischer said. Fischer and Liu are two of many students who have had the opportunity to research at high-tech institutions like NASA which allow students to delve deeper into a subject that interests them. “[This] was a great opportunity for me because I may want to go into research one day,” Fischer said. “It’s probably a good idea to get familiar with the science field.”
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yasnahaghdoost You’ve been there. Don’t lie. Procrastinating all day long, and now, five hours and ten chai teas later, it’s two in the morning and there’s a history paper due tomorrow. Oh wait, that would be today. And you haven’t even started. So you call your friend, and ask her to email you a copy of her paper, ya know, just to get ideas. Of course, your ulterior motive is to take the document she emailed you, change a few words here and there, put your name on the header and turn it in. Bam. Instant A, if your friend is good at history, anyways. Tempting, right? Until, of course, your teacher finds out you copied off someone else, in which case... You. Are. Screwed. So don’t go there. Don’t even think about it. There is, however, an alternative solution: Bulls**t. It’s defined by Yasna’s unabridged collegiate dictionary, 1st edition as: (noun) The fine art of writing as though the subject matter is one’s area of expertise even when one has no effing clue what one is talking about. I hereby officially encourage all desperate students to BS their way through sticky academic situations in lieu of plagiarism. You won’t regret it. Why? Because it’s totally legal. And it totally works. In fact, part of why BS is so successful is because teachers often spend so much time honing their plagiarism-radar that they forget to get an upgrade for their s**t-detector. As such, BS is an attractive option for students who want to maintain a squeakyclean academic record and receive good grades without having to break their balls. For something to be classified as effective BS, it must sound professional. You need to rely on the complexity of your sentence structure and the elaborateness of your word choice to mask the fact that you really don’t know what you’re saying. Writing such a polished and convincing piece of crap may be difficult at first, but all it takes is a little bit of practice and before you know it, high quality BS will be cascading rapidly out of your fingertips and onto your word processor. For example, you have a history paper due about how Nixon was a power hungry moron who didn’t give a $&@! about right or wrong. Well, you can’t just say it like that. No sane teacher will give that an A. Or a B. Or a C. Maybe you’ll scrap a D... IF YOUR TEACHER’S ON CRACK. So instead, how about: Nixon was willing to overstep his presidential powers by disregarding the concept of separation of powers and incorrectly citing executive privilege as justification for his retention of incriminating evidence. Tada! I’ll willingly stake my life that any teacher would give that an A. No bribery involved. No crack either. See, it’s all about presentation. You’ve got to sound confident, assertive and sophisticated. You can’t waver over the legitimacy of you claims: you have to give the impression that you’re absolutely convinced in how amazingly brilliant and correct you are, even if you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. In other words, be a one-man version of Fox News. You also don’t want to be the person whose vocabulary goes no further than Sesame Street; use refined language, and use it correctly. The easiest way teachers can detect BS, though, is if you use all these fancy words incorrectly. So maybe double-check the dictionary to see if the context makes sense, and don’t make the prose too flowery. But once you get the hang of it all, no teacher, I guarantee you, will be able to detect BS, even if they possess a cutting-edge, state-ofthe-art s**t-detector. Take it from someone who’s had years of experience. I’m not saying that BS is going to be easy at first. After all, it is, according to the dictionary definition, a fine art. But there’s no denying that with a bit of patience and practice, BS will be your best friend in high school, college and throughout the rest of your life. It’s a useful, powerful and lawful talent, and I want to see every Paly student trying out and honing this immortal skill when confronted with dire academic circumstances. Trust me, it works BIG time.