March 2019
Suicide Awareness by Anonymous
Suicide is one of the most grossly overlooked and miscommunicated issues faced by middle school and high school age students. It is a matter often joked about, but it is a serious subject, the tenth leading cause of death in the US, and some may be very sensitive about it from prior experiences, such as myself. It is a matter that is unfortunately common, and sometimes unsuspected. However, there are ways to predict and prevent suicide and attempted suicide.
One of the most commonly overlooked signs of suicide are threats of suicide. A victim will often joke about or even directly say that they are suicidal, but these threats are often brushed aside as mere jokes. If you see anyone acting this way, immediately tell a teacher or counselor, regardless of whether it seems like a joke or not. You are helping to keep that person safe.
Suicide is commonly linked with depression. A common misconception about depression is that it is just being very sad. Depression is a severe mental illness that negatively affects your actions and thoughts. Be aware of the signs of depression because it could very well lead to suicide. Some signs of depression; Loss in interest of activities, social isolation, mood swings, insomnia, and agitation.
If you know anyone who has made jokes about commiting suicide, this could mean that they have considered it and you should alert a trusted adult immediately, if you are a person who has never considered suicide and think suicide jokes are funny, they aren’t. So DON’T MAKE THEM!
If you or a loved one need help with self harm, call the suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-273-8255. If you have lost someone to suicide, have considered suicide yourself, or just want to support the cause, there is a prevention organization called AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention), who hosts walks and other events for those affected by suicide. Find an upcoming walk at https://afsp.org/our-work/chapters/
Is Fortnite Losing Its Thunder? by Kavya Kolindala
If you’ve been on streaming sites or social media lately, then you know that Fortnite is all the talk. With it’s addicting battle royale plot line, hilarious dances, and multi-platform availability - this game took the world by storm (no pun intended). Well known gaming icons such as Ninja and Tfue, took the video game under their wing as it began rising. But like every other great trend, Fortnite is beginning to die, and is possibly being taken over by a new game that goes by the name of Apex Legends.
Created by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts (EA), the recently launched Apex Legends amassed a whopping 25 million players in its first week alone. This new video game stands out from Fortnite, and other battle royale games such as PUBG, by focusing on team play and delivering a wide variety of characters with different backgrounds and abilities, with a similar playing experience to other games like Overwatch and League of Legends. Still remaining a game where players are dropped out of the sky into a battlefield, there have been a few major changes to the normal style of battle royale. The game is team based, with players placed into chosen, or randomly placed trios. The game rewards teams who stick together with minimal dysfunction. The utilization of a microphone, isn’t as important as it is in Fortnite. The feature to talk is still there, but experiencing the toxic culture of chatting online with strangers, isn’t needed. There is no building aspect, unlike Fortnite, in which building is a key skill to having a chance at winning the game. With these few changes out of many, Apex is quickly growing among gamers as a new, alternate choice to Fortnite. And, did I mention, that it’s free? Like Fortnite and PUBG mobile, Apex is free of charge to download, but in-game purchases are available. With more updates and better features to come, there is still a lot more to be discovered with Apex Legends, the new fire...that Fortnite might not be able to put out.
Airpods: The Real-Real Truth by Dwight Thompson
(Follow-up to a February article, see February's Archived Section)
Airpods were recently shown to be not causing of cancer - and here's why.
In the previous article, sources weren't given, and to clarify, here's to calm down worries of cancer. So, naturally, I led myself to eventually dig up information. I got to a dailymail website *Link will be at the bottom of this page*. This website an infintessimal amount of ads and has recent history to take up information from somewhere else. Second, the date it was published was in September 8, 2016. The author is Mia De Graff, a Daily Mail editor. In your own time, you can do some digging on her. The picture of the guy with the airpods in his ear was also from a reddit post. Third, the website has absolutely, no links of where this interview took place and where they got the information from. I tried doing some searching on wikipedia, and another website, but I only found her accomplishments. Next, I got information from https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/sources.html and it showed that only 2% of consumer products make up the background radiation that humans recieve. On top of all of that, airpods operates at a 2.4 GHz frequency. The same as remote control cars and Helicopters, drones, and your wifi. Airpods actually are less that 1% microwave radiation. According to the LA Times, Kenneth Foster, a University of Pennsylvania bioengineering professor, "It's transmitting at quite a low power level." The article also says that other Wireless headsets sold by apple have an output of 10-18 milliwatts and because they transmit in short, quick bursts, less than 1% of that energy is in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Kenneth Foster also admitted that the radiation -"is absolutely minimal — smaller by a huge amount than the exposure of putting a phone to your ear".
Lastly, the article says: However, if the lack of a headphone jack causes people to go old-school and hold the iPhone 7 up to their heads, they'll wind up increasing their exposure to electromagnetic radiation.
This, proven by Dr. Leif Salford, a neuroscientist, weakens the Blood-Brain Barrier, a special barrier that prevents (most) bacteria and viruses from getting inside your brain, because there are always pathogens in the bloodstream.
This website was also published, ironically on September 8, 2016.
To read about the opposition: https://sites.google.com/students.wcpss.net/pantherpapers/airpods-the-real-truth-about-them
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-apple-airpod-safety-20160907-snap-story.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22310164
And I'll leave you with this: How many lives have been saved by using technology?