IT IS TIME THAT WE FIGURE OUT WHAT WE ARE EATING!

Do you know what makes up the food you're eating? The beans that you ate. Are they really beans? The tomato that you put in your sandwich. Is it really a tomato? The chicken burrito you had for lunch. Can we really even call it chicken? These are the questions that I've been beginning to ask more and more after I read the book Food Inc. It reveals the lies that almost every division of the food division uses to trick you into buying their product while they still make the maximum profit. Almost every single thing that we eat is no longer genetically the same as it was a few decades ago because of the science of genetically modifying crops. Several food companies modify everything we eat regardless of how fresh it looks. Why are they doing this? Simple. By inserting a hormone into a corn crop or a chicken or a cow, like rBGH, they are able to speed up the process of growth by nearly double. But, with the shear amount of antibiotics, hormones, genes, and chemicals they are using, you can't really be sure if you're even eating a chicken sandwich or a pill that you'd normally have to get at a drugstore.  You've gotta ask yourself, are you ok with this?

If you're like me, and want to know what's in your food, then you're going to have a tough time figuring out because the government has made it legal for these multi billion dollar corporations to not have to mark which foods have been genetically modified. Why? Because if they were to have to label every food that they genetically modified, every single thing in the food market would be labeled from the carrots to the pizza to the milk and even the cookies. But for all the people who are wondering why these chemicals, GMO's and overall the current state of the food industry are bad, let me unveil to you something that you may not even want to know.

By a independent study, they found that 88% of all the food that we eat is GMO and we don't even know what food makes up that 88%. The thing is that genetically modified organisms are still somewhat experimental, still have plenty of flaws, and have major drawbacks in the over dosage way that the food industry is using them in. When plants and animals are flooded with antibiotics, this not only harms the animals. No, it also harms us. This overuse allows bacteria to evolve and adapt to become immune to the most modern antibiotics we have. Along with this, a lot of the food we eat isn't being properly investigated for bacteria before they send it off to the consumer, The FDA has been very lenient on this, and because of it the number of food poisoning incidents and recalls have gone up drastically. However, these factories that continue to destroy our immune system, our health, and our ability to live don't receive much more than a warning letter after possibly giving someone a fatal disease.

However, this draws the question, how is it possible that our government agencies aren't upholding to their duty to serve and protect the health of the people. Well, this is because there are several congress men and women, several agency heads, several government workers who are also affiliated with the food industry, and because of it make profit off of the cheap food they're selling you.


On this note, it is also important to tell you how the FDA also doesn't accurately show the nutrition labels on food. According to several sources, about 24% of tests show inaccurate labels on food. Along with this, there are several chemicals in the food that are being used to make it taste sweeter while not having to be recorded as a "sugar" but continues to destroy our bodies from the inside.


It is time that we find out what our food is really made of. It is time that we take the power of CHOICE is brought back into our hands. It is time that we get the right to know what we are eating. It is time that we know if we are eating a tomato or if we are eating something that looks like a tomato but is actually just a slime of chemicals that we have never heard of. It is time that we find out the composition of our foods, the truth about our foods, and the only people who can help use do this is us.

Over the next few years, I intend to break down as many foods as I can to truly figure out what they are made of, where they come from, how far they have traveled to get to our dinner tables, if they are really what they are said to be, if the nutrition label on it is right, and a host of other important details.

How Long is Pine View Going to Stay Segregated

When I first came to Pine View about seven years ago, I saw something extremely different. It was a gaping hole so apparent even a third grader could see. I saw that there wasn’t a single African American student in my entire class. Actually, there weren’t any African Americans in my entire grade. I didn’t mind it, but it was definitely something everyone noticed.  This past summer I decided to put in a bit of time to figure out if what I saw was really true. It was disconcerting just how right that original observation was.  I found that Pine View had a total of about 17 African American students out of the 2180 total students. This is in a school district that has over 4000 African American students.  No, that is not a typo. There are seventeen African American students at Pine View!

This is a baffling, infuriating and horrifying fact in the 21st century. Students are taught from childhood that they live in a time when segregation has been crushed and schools are no longer segregated but instead separate and equal. So why does it feel like we live in a time that the doors to Pine View are not being opened fairly to all students as if there is some kind of lock on it. There are arguments against this statement saying that there are many schools around the nation that have similar problems, but that does not justify anything! How could it ever be OK to do an injustice to thousands of our own students just because some other schools decided to shun their students? We have to be the ones that other school and districts will look to when they decide it’s time for them to fix this diversity problem too. 

Suppose that there is a hurricane that smashes through your roof, but also happens to break your neighbor’s roof too.  Are you simply not going to fix it until your neighbor does it too? Either way, our neighbors have already started building, so we better get working immediately.

The number one school in America according to US News Rankings is School for the Talented and Gifted. They are very similar to Pine View with a 100% gifted population, and the top test scores in their state. However, there is one thing that separates this school from Pine View. Their minority population is about equal with the minority population of their school district. Along with this 25% of their school is economically disadvantaged and on a free/reduced lunch plan.  

“The root cause is resource and book deprivation,” said Mrs. Kingsley, the superintendent of elementary schools in Sarasota County who is also very passionate about solving this problem. “The problem isn’t being addressed openly. We have to speak about it openly if this problem is ever going to be fixed.”  She went on explaining how the blame begins with parents and schools. It is their job to strive for their kids and students to have the brightest futures possible, but often poor African American kids are given a poor education at sub par pre-k and elementary schools and aren’t ever given the chance to take an IQ test to prove their intelligence. Yet, we can’t simply expect parents to know how and why they should provide their kids with the best education possible or expect teachers to be able to fairly identify kids of all ethnicity as gifted if we have bring it up anywhere.

The chart above portrays how troubling this problem truly is, but the chances are that many people have never been introduced to the data in this chart and many people never will as long as we as a community continue to shun the problem. But every day we continue neglecting it, there are hundreds of talented African American kids not being recognized and are losing out on a chance for brighter futures that Pine View has provided their students for decades.   

  

A lot of people may be thinking, “This problem doesn’t affect me so why should I have to take any part it fixing it.” Yet that way of thinking is what kept this problem snowballing for generations. Also, it is dead wrong. A lack of diversity is such an important problem for students because they are the future. The efforts thousands of civil rights rallies and hundreds of lives are all in vain if we choose to be separated. That is the road we are taking as we continue to give different levels of opportunity to certain ethnicity. Along with this, the lack of diversity also leads to great loss of bonds and friendship between people of different ethnic backgrounds. The dream of millions of Americans over the last century has been to have a society where people of all ethnicity can share culture and be friends. However, this dream is crushed when we decide to forget about keeping diversity in our schools. For example, I am genuinely saddened to say that I haven’t talked to even five African American kids since I came to Pine View. This is a problem that has to be solved now, or may one day cause us to fall back onto the horrific path that America just crawled off of a few decades ago. If we don’t solve it, who will?

 “It’s a critical issue that needs to be fixed,” told Mr. Largo, the legendary former principal of Pine View. He had been keeping track of this problem and had dealt with it for several years, and thus he had a lot of input on the issue.  He showed the efforts of a few initiatives that occurred over the course of Pine View’s history, but they generally didn’t have much of an effect. This just proves that regardless of what a few people do, it will take the cumulative awareness and hard work of everyone. Nobody can neglect this problem anymore, but instead we must bring it to light and show others the necessity of fixing it. 

Dr. Covert, the current principal of Pine View, is putting his highest efforts into fixing this problem. He has been dedicated to it since the day he became principal three years ago. We should all take this issue with the kind of determination and seriousness as Dr. Covert has in order to fix this problem. 

It is dire that we fix this problem. If we don’t, everybody in the community will be losing out. We will lose out on the acceptance diversity, on brighter futures, and on an overall more successful society. It is our duty to break the lock that is causing an unequal flow of kids and open the gates to Pine View to everyone in order to create a more equal society for the future just as every generation before us has done.  It is a job that is so tough that it can’t be done by a single person even if he spent his entire life time trying. However, it is one that can be accomplished in a few years with just the awareness and the genuine concern of everyone.

What would a Villager do with a Ball of String?

Let’s say I hand you a ball of string and ask you, “Think of the most creative thing that you can create using this.” The first things I think of include the string for a kite, a piece of art, or for the more adept, a nice Christmas sweater. However, about a month ago on a trip to my father's village in India, I was blown away by what the Western world would deem as “uneducated” villagers in India had done with this simple thread. They were able to fashion one of the most comfortable, elegant, and seemingly simple cots I’d ever come across, and these craftsmen did it all in just a couple of hours. Yet, I was about to find out that its simplicity is quite deceiving.

A cot, for anyone who is not familiar, is a type of bed that is made in a similar fashion as a hammock, but can be very convenient in the sense that it can be folded up and moved around very easily. This allows for the capability to sleep among the stars one night and sleep next to the AC unit the next. In the US, they are generally used for camping due to it's versatility and sturdiness, yet in Indian villages, they are commonly used as beds and are used for a variety of other uses also.

Twenty hours. That’s how long I spent creating a cot with my brother. Between the both of us we had spent nearly two straight days building the same cot that should’ve been done in the time it would take to watch a movie. So why did it take so long?  Simply put, it's not as easy as it seems, and I understand if how you're feeling if it seems hard.

An example of a cot (this one is smaller than usual)

My dad pointing out a mistake...again

Made a mistake (the green cot on the left is 50 years old)

DAY 1- HALF WAY DONE!

As you can see, the creation of a cot is not just the tedious and boring job it appears to be. Instead, it is a skill that has to be trained just like any other skill. The level of mastery over the art that some of the villagers had attained took them hours of time and dedication. The one who taught us, a relative of my dad, had said that he'd made over fifty cots by the time he was eighteen. Incredible.

It was 1 AM when we tied the final string to the cot. Over the longevity of the project, we had gotten better and better and began making fewer and fewer mistakes. Although you may think that I would be ecstatic to have finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel, but instead I was thinking about the trying question of why. Why had we just spent countless hours on building a cot? Why was anyone spending their time building a bed made out of string when they could simply buy a bed of the same quality in the town just 10 km away. However, I was too tired and exhausted to continue thinking about this thought.

As I plopped down onto my own creation, it was as if I had just put on a pair of glasses and everything became clear. It was like an epiphany when I realized that I had just created a cot out of a ball of yarn, a couple twigs I found outside, and an old frame, and it was competitive to my own bed in every sense. It was just as comfortable. It was just as if not more sturdy and equally beautiful. And with the total cost of the entire project coming up to a grand total of $5, the cost was about $1495 cheaper than my bed. Along with this the versatility of the cot that allows people to adopt it for camping significantly increases the size of your bedroom by simply folding it up. This is a luxury that the owner of a conventional bed can never claim. Aside from the inconvenience of creating it, the idea of a cot suddenly seemed ingenious.

The more I looked, the more benefits arose. I noticed how Indian homes generally seem very small with only 2 to 3 rooms for an entire family. In a similar family, there are commonly at least 6 rooms. How? Cots weren't only being used as beds but also as couches in the living room and seats in the dining room.  In every house I went to, there was always at least one cot in almost every room in the house. The space efficiency brought by the convenient ability of cots to be able to be removed after your done with them allows for smaller and less expensive houses.

Along with this, they are also very eco-friendly for those looking to decrease their "footprint" on the world or simply go green. The reason for this is the fact that that they are created without the use of any machinery and not having to be imported from other countries. So for all of the adventurists and risk-takers out there I urge you to try this bed.

But in the end, it's something that you're going to be sleeping on after a hard day's work, so you obviously want something comfortable. Fear not. As I stated earlier, even though they are just made of string, cots are possibly even more comfortable than a conventional bed. Imagine sleeping on a hammock every night. Also, with the holes made by the gaps between the gaps in the strings, it eliminates the common problem of your bed getting too hot decreasing the need for expensive AC charges.The cost efficiency brought by cots not only suits poor farmers in third world villages, but also anyone on a budget who isn't willing to sacrifice a comfortable night.


I will write a tutorial in the next article for anyone who wants to try it out, or you could just buy one online. However, they may be expensive due to import costs, so I recommend building it for both the eco-friendliness and the joy you get from creating your own bed with your own bare hands.

The Exterminator of Youth

         At teen court, I constantly get cases about kids who are addicted to marijuana, and have been using it for years prior to the time they were caught. They're completely addicted to it, yet ironically many of them are well versed on the consequences that the drug can have on their body. They realize that it can destroy their entire future and know that it will destroy their aspirations. Yet they continue to illegally waste their money buying marijuana under the counter, and consuming it as if it were a candy bar. This raises the question in my mind of why teens are willing to drop everything in their lives to have something they know isn't right.  I would spend a year designing a social experiment to try to find the answer to this question that floats in my mind without respite.

The reason why I want to get to the bottom of this is because I’ve seen so many kids walk through Teen Court who are gifted and talented, but succumbed to the ruse that is marijuana that lead to their downfall. Imagine a world where drugs didn’t exist. This isn’t the case, but what if it was? We’d be in a world where people with addictive and curious personalities put their genius into their passion rather than into figuring out how they can get their next supply of weed.  This is why I would want to spend a year trying to figure out what the source is for millions of kids to be willing to destroy their lives over a plant.  If we can learn this maybe it would be the first step to day where we can completely end one of the evils that the world presents.

There were 19.8 million people consuming illicit marijuana in a single month in 2013 in the United States according to www.drugabuse.gov, so why am I focusing on teens rather than everyone. The reason is that if we want to end marijuana permanently we have to find why kids are abusing it, because if a 15 year old is smoking marijuana once a day, in 10 years there will be yet another adult who is teaching their child bad habits through example. Also kids are a lot more impressionable, so stopping a kid from a future with marijuana will have a much bigger toll on his perception than it will have on a 40 year old addict. Kids are the future. If we find the answer to this question, then the future will get a lot brighter for them.

If given the opportunity, I would spend a year of my life to discover why teens destroy their lives to get an allegedly good feeling for a few minutes. With the answer to this question, we could end the reign of the greatest mass murderer, depressant, and destroyer of millions of families, otherwise known as marijuana. One year of persistent searching is minute in comparison to possibly discovering the first step to the answer to a great problem that tries and haunts all of us every day.

The Heart vs The Brain (Inspired by Exeter Mission Statement:Non Sibi)

What do Malala, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela have in common? They all follow a common way of life that has inspired me. Non sibi, not for oneself. This phrase brought these people to be the greatest figures in the history of our world. When many people hear of these people they think of them as the figures of intellect and genius. However, none of them accomplished their monumental feats purely with their mind. They were able to do it because of a drive to help others and advance the human race as a whole.  The drive to do things for others instead of for themselves pushes people to new heights. This is the Philips Exeter Academy mission statement, and the drive for millions of doers everyday throughout history.

The American government was the trailblazer of the democratic system in the modern world with Thomas Jefferson as the vanguard of this revolution. He took his pen and wrote word by word a liberation all people that made up something that is still looked at as one of the most important documents in history. He showed the feelings, emotions, struggles, distress, pain and anger for the people who couldn’t do so themselves in a work he called the Declaration of Independence. He wrote every word with his heart as a declaration for the millions of people being oppressed by the king. Thomas Jefferson wrote for the religious freedoms, civil rights and well-being of all people. He didn't think of just himself and the rest of the rich, educated, Christian male population with his words, but also the poor, uneducated Jewish woman who was looking for a better life in the new world. His goal to achieve the freedom of all people caused his words to be immortalized as the core ideals of our country. Thomas Jefferson had a brilliant and well-educated mind, but his heart, that wished for the future of something beyond himself, is what made him the father of the USA.

Similarly, Mahatma Gandhi is the epitome of non sibi. He started off from humble beginnings in India, but he went on to defeat the country, Great Britain, that had an iron grip on them for two centuries; he did this without laying a single punch on anyone.  However, that does not mean he didn't take a few hits himself. He went through hunger strikes, marches, and was put into jail. Gandhi took all of this to stand up for what he believed. He believed in the freedom of India. However, he also genuinely believed that all people should be kind and love one another. He believed in giving what someone can. He was known to be extremely greedy but not for himself; he was greedy for others instead. He loved the people of his country and sacrificed everything he had for people he didn't know.  Gandhi was not trying to free himself from Britain's clutches. He wasn't trying to free India from Britain's clutches.  He was trying to free the people of India from Britain's clutches. Gandhi had once said that we should thank people for giving them the opportunity to give. He had made it his life’s mission to help others in every way he can, and, in turn, he felt that he was helping himself.  He had a sharp mind, but he had an infinite amount of love and passion.

It is conspicuous who made a difference in the world, but it is hard to see why there are so few people who were able to do so. There are millions of smart people in the world, but only some of them are remembered as being a hero of their time. In the fall of 2014, there were 24 million people who attended a university.  It is recorded that 6.4% of the population is gifted intellectually based on their IQ score.  It has been proven time and again that there are myriad intellectual and creative people everywhere, yet the one thing that marks them from the Gandhi's, Malala's, and Tesla's of the world are the goals they seek. When people aim for money, power and their own well-being nothing is accomplished in the grand scheme things. When everyone lives for the happiness of each other, this happiness is found in everybody.

Every day we as a society glorify intellect, education and genius. We encourage kids to learn as much as they can and to challenge their minds. Every day we convince ourselves that being smart will bring us the success we want. Non sibi takes a different stance and teaches us something different. It teaches us that a kind heart is what drives sharp intellect to reach greatness. It teaches us that our brain isn’t the panacea to all of the problems in life. It teaches us that intelligence is overrated while the role of heart is underrated or even completely overlooked. The greatest leaders, the most passionate activists, the most influential vanguards in history all realized their gifts and worked and worked with their kind hearts for the benefit of others and for humanity as a whole. Thomas Jefferson fought passionately for the freedom of Americans. Malala put her life on the line for the girls of her country, and persevered for them in the face of adversity. Nelson Mandela worked tirelessly for the end of apartheid and the safety of millions of South Africans. The leaders of tomorrow can't be judged by their intelligence, but instead they can be judged by what they'll do with the gifts they've been given. Non sibi is not simply another lofty ideal; instead it is a statement that shows us something remarkable. The mind is simply an axe; it can be sharpened infinitely, but it is useless without a compassionate helping hand to guide the way.

Can Donald Trump be Trumped?

Donald Trump seems to be unstoppable at this point. He has the majority of the delegates, and the people are with him. However, the problem arises because the party itself is not. They doubt his ability as a president without any prior political experience. At this point, they are throwing everything they have in their pockets to stop him from winning the candidacy. What will happen if the candidate isn't who the people chose? Well havoc happens.

With the two opinions in the Republican Party, the political leaders of the party are on the losing side of the deal. The voters are on Donald Trump's side, while the other have only have the political powers. If Donald Trump is not given the nomination during the Republican National Convention, the odds are that he will run as a successful third party candidate. With the voters on his side, he will most likely aquire a vast number of electoral votes during the general election. Does this mean Donald Trump is the winner regardless of the outdoors of the Republican primaries?

No, it actually means the opposite is true. A Republican will most likely not win in 2016 if Trump decides to run as a third party candidate, because without the large number of voters who are steadfast Republican voters he will have insuperable odds to beat the Democratic candidate. This leads to the conclusion that the Republican Party must choose between losing the election or winning with a candidate that you don't agree with.

This is a tough choice to make for them because many of the Republicans opposing Trump dislike many of his policies nearly as much as they dislike those of the Democratic Party. Many people are also offended by the sexist and racist stereotypical comments he has made over the last year. With all this, the line between winning and losing becomes much more vague.

Everyone has their own opinion on this issue, but I believe that it would be best for the Republican Party to follow their voters because that is their base. This will allow a stronger hold im the 2020 election compared to having to reunite two different types of voters. The choice simple, but the choice is theirs.

Why Don't We Just Recycle the Green Stuff?

What is money? A social status? A median of trade maybe? Well, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary money is a generally accepted median of trade.  In layman's terms, this basically tells us that money is anything that can we use to exchange for goods. Yet, why do we want it so bad. Humans have been known to do anything for money from working our entire lives to grand theft to full on war. Why are we so obsessed with some piece of paper? This is where it gets complicated.

The human mind has an urge to always want more of anything, whether it's cake or ancient castles, we want more. This is generally accepted to be present to satisfy a desire for security and confidence. If we have more of anything that is desirable than anyone else, we tend to think that we are better off than them, thus giving us this security and confidence. Yet what if we look the other way. There will almost always be someone with more than you in just about any field. So if we feel triumphant over those below us on this ladder, than how do we feel in comparison to those above us. Well, we'll have to think about our own experiences to get an accurate answer. Think about the last time someone did something better than you even though you gave it your all. How did you felt at that exact instant. Dissapointed? Envious? Inferior? Well no matter how you felt, you probably weren't happy about your loss, but you can take it several different ways. Often, you know that you are not as good as those above you, and it is evident to them too. However, you want to go up. Everyone wants to go up the ladder, and nobody wants to be pushed around and overtaken. Well, that's quite the predicament that falls into place. So what's the solution? Competition.

Competition is the solution of our need to keep rising and taking more and more. What's the ideal thing to compete for in a capitalistic world where money can buy practically anything, tangible or not. That's right. Money!

Money is the fuel that drives us to compete against one another to be the best. Along with this comes social status, security, confidence and anything you can desire.
So why don't we just shred the green stuff? Because we as humans strive to win, and if we shred all the green stuff, all we'd has would be quarters. Who likes loose change anyway.