Toy Drive for Janet Weis Foundation by Marcus Henry

I’m sure you’ve heard about the toy drive Cardinals Academic Literacy teacher Ms. Kissel started. But who were the driving force behind this?

Seven sixth grade girls started a club called GHTW, Girls Help The World, to prove that girls can make just as much of an impact as boys. The four girls who were able to give us the information about the Toy Drive, and why they wanted to do it were Bella, Hannah, Jossalyn, Anneliese. The motto they go by is “Be Kind to Everyone,” and they started the Drive mid-semester in February, and it will continue up until May 9, when they donate the 300 toys they have raised to Janet Weis Children’s Hospital. That’s right. 300 toys. 7 people. They said they don’t plan to stop at the toy drive, either.

GHTW plans to continue, and keep working to show girls are great. If you have an idea about a problem in society that needs solved email your idea to Mrs. Kissel. 

360 Google Doodle by Marcus Henry

On May 4, 2018, Google released its first ever 360-degree Google Doodle. What is a 360-degree Google Doodle, you might ask? Basically, it is an animation created so that you can pan the screen left or right, “look around,” and there will be animation everywhere as if you were actually looking at it! You can even watch it with VR goggles, and then it will look REALLY real.

What is the history behind Google’s latest creation? It was created in honor of Georges Méliès, and his film, A Trip to the Moon. He was basically the creator of special effects, so if you’re a Star Wars fan or a Marvel addict, you have him to thank. In the movie, Méliès tells a 13-minute story about a group of explorers going to the moon, finding a group of aliens, and bringing one back to Earth. Now you know the history, go watch that Google Doodle!

Google Doodle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=BEePFpC9qG8

History source: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/5/3/17311222/georges-melies-google-doodle-trip-moon-conquest-pole-effects

Real Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLZntSdyKE

Warped Tour Preview By Sam Wrbican

Vans Warped Tour is a multi-artist rock tour that has travelled across the U.S. and Canada since 1995. This year, 2018, it will make its last cross-country run. Originally, the tour was known only as Warped Tour, but after Vans Shoes became their primary sponsor, the tour changed its name to Vans Warped Tour.  The tour is held outdoors, with the exception of 1996 in Washington D.C. Occasionally, the tour has left North America and gone to Australia, Japan, and the UK.

The line-up of Vans Warped Tour has varied from year to year, but some bands keep returning.  The punk band Less Than Jake, holds the record for most Warped Tours played, with 14 runs this year. Simple Plan and Anti-Flag are runner-ups with 11 and 10 runs respectively.  One of the most popular artists to ever play Vans Warped Tour is Katy Perry, who was part of the line-up in 2008. Other more popular artists and bands to play Warped Tour are Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Green Day, The Used, All Time Low, and My Chemical Romance. This year, Warped Tour will have its youngest band ever, Color Killer, whose members range in age from 8 to 11.

Vans Warped Tour truly does go coast to coast with venues from San Diego, California to Hartford, Connecticut, and everywhere in between. This year, the only Canadian location is in Toronto. The Pennsylvania venues for the tour’s last run are in Burgettstown, a Pittsburgh suburb, and Scranton.

The tour doesn’t just have a plain line-up. It consists of six separate stages, each with its own set of artists. The stages are known as Journey’s Left Foot, Journey’s Right Foot, Mutant Red Dawn, Mutant White Lightning,  owly.fm, and Full Sail Stage. The first two stages are named after another main sponsor of the tour, Journey.

Journey’s Left Foot features artists such as Asking Alexandria, Black Veil Brides, Mayday Parade, Sum 41, and Waterparks. Many Warped Tour veterans such as All Time Low, Falling in Reverse, The Maine, and of course, Less Than Jake, are playing  Journey’s Right Foot. Sharptooth and Turnstile are just two of the 12 groups featured at the Mutant Red Dawn stage. Mutant White Lightning, among other groups, is starring Motionless in White and Crown the Empire. Owly.fm and Full Sail Stage have Palaye Royale, Farewell Winters, and other bands playing on their stages.

Warped Tour will be traveling for the majority of the summer, and tickets are available at the door. If you have the chance to, and are interested, this is your last chance to see Vans Warped Tour. The tour suggests that you pack plenty of water and sunscreen, and to have lots of fun! Have a good time this summer, whether you’re going to Warped Tour or not.

This Day in History: April 10th, 2018 By Gabbi McVey

On this day in 1972, the U.S. Air Force started using the B-52 Bombers on northern Vietnam at the peak of the Vietnam and Cold Wars. The Bombers struck within the vicinity of Vihn, approximately 145 Miles from the Demilitarized Zone. It was then later publicly acknowledged that the target priority was the SAM-2 Missile Sites, which made flying over northern Vietnam increasingly more hazardous. U.S. Officials said that Hanoi’s defense system was “one of the most sophisticated air defenses in the history of air warfare.” The defenses were made up of advanced radar and highly accurate lethal air-defense missiles.

The Consequences of Increasing Tariffs by Milo Schmitt

As a civilization, we tend to keep records of everything that happens to our individual lives, our towns, our countries, even our world as a whole, be it through photographs, videos, or written accounts of events. We keep a record of our history and our past mistakes as a species in order to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes over and over. One such example of a mistake made in the U.S. Congress is the Hawley-Smoot bill.

The Hawley-Smoot bill was a simple bill - it raised tariffs on about 900 imported goods. The main goal of the legislation was to encourage companies to buy local goods, in turn helping the U.S. economy. What Smoot and Hawley didn’t realise, however, is the effect it would have on the consumers. When companies had to pay more for imports, it meant that they had to increase the prices of their products to maintain a steady profit. This made prices for everything go up, making money worth close to nothing.

Recently, President Trump has made a proposal to increase steel and aluminum tariffs to 25% and 10%, respectively. Although not as big a change as the Hawley-Smoot bill, these tariffs can cause backlash from other countries affected by it. Many European countries and China have threatened to increase tariffs on their products substantially, meaning we could be headed towards a trade war. A trade war could, over many months and years, have the same effect as the Hawley-Smoot bill. Each country will continue to increase their tariffs in retaliation to prior tax increases, and eventually, we could end up with another depression.

In conclusion, it’s questionable how good these tariffs will really be for our economy. It’s impossible to predict what will happen if we start a trade war. Taking the consequences Hawley & Smoot faced for their bill, what will happen to us if we finalize this change?

Viola Desmond: Canada's Rosa Parks and the new face of its $10 bill. By Jane Bolton.

A decade before Rosa Parks, Viola Desmond fueled the start of the Canadian Civil Rights Movement. This year, she has been chosen from over 26,000 submissions to the Bank of Canada to be shown on Canada’s new ten dollar bill. She will be the first Canadian woman and first black person on a Canadian bank note. The new bank note was revealed on March 8th, 2018 and will be in circulation by the end of the year.

Viola Desmond was born in 1914. After training in Montreal, Atlantic City, and New York, she became an entrepreneur by starting her own line of hair and skin products. Because few beauty schools accepted black women, she also opened a beauty school in Halifax for black women.

While on a business trip to Halifax, her car broke down in New Glasgow. While it was being repaired, she went to the local movie theater which was divided into a ‘white’ section on the main floor and a ‘black’ section in the balcony. Refused a floor seat, she was forced to buy a balcony ticket for one cent less - but she sat on the main floor anyway.

Soon after, the police arrived. “The policeman grasped my shoulders and the manager grabbed my legs. They carried me from the theater out onto the street,” recounted Viola Desmond. She was put in jail for 12 hour and charged with tax evasion for the one cent difference in ticket prices. She fought her case in court but in the end was convicted and fined twenty-six dollars (Canadian money).

This case, though, was not about tax evasion but about color. Because Viola Desmond was black, she could not sit on the main floor seats. And when she did anyways, she rebelled against segregation and fueled the Canadian Civil Rights Movement.

Viola Desmond died in 1965. In 2010, Nova Scotia pardoned her. And on March 8th, 2018, the new bank note was revealed. Her sister, Wanda Robson, who is in her nineties, was there when the bank note was revealed in Halifax. “It’s beyond what I ever thought,” Wanda Robson said. “It’s beautiful.”

Penn State Dance Marathon by Jacob Will

Penn State’s Dance Marathon (Thon) is a 46 hour no sitting no sleeping dance marathon. Thon is the largest student run philanthropy in the world. Thon raises money for families whose children have pediatric cancer and can’t pay the bills that they would have. The whole dance marathon though isn’t even the start. There are three big parts that go into Thon, the Four Diamonds Fund, fundraising and then the event itself—which occurs each year in mid-February. 

Four Diamonds Fund

The Four Diamonds Fund is an organization that raises money for families whose children have pediatric cancer and their insurance or they can’t cover the expenses. The Four Diamonds started when Chris Millard a child with cancer in the 1972 was supposed to write a an autobiography, but instead he said “I am going to die, and I’ve been in and out of hospitals. I’m not going to write about that.” So then he wrote about the four diamonds that describe what you need to have to be a cancer survivor. He passed away six months later.

The four diamonds stand for Courage, Honesty, Wisdom and Strength. The way you become a Four Diamond family or child is that first your child needs to be diagnosed and treated in Penn State Hershey Medical Center. Second the child must be diagnosed before his or her 22 birthday. Third the child must be in the hospital’s service area (in the state of Pennsylvania).

When a child has cancer the average cost for treatment is $500,000. The cost of newly approved cancer drugs are $10,000 dollars per month. The average cost for a child to stay in the hospital with cancer is $40,000 dollars per day. Nearly five times as much the cost for a child with another pediatric condition. The Four Diamonds Fund goal is that a family NEVER has to see those bills.

Fundraising

Thon’s main fundraising kickoff is the Thon 5K, which is a three mile kids race, fun walk, competitive run and more. One of the biggest take-in’s is the canning weekends. Canning is where college students raising money for Thon go out on the streets with big metal cans and raise money. People dress in funny clothes such as tank tops and shorts in the middle of December and January. I interviewed a friend back in third grade and he said that his committee of 90 people raised $30,000 in one weekend! In 2016 the canning weekends were decreased because a young student was in a car accident and passed away. Another way of raising money is Thonvelopes. Every person who is trying to dance gets a certain amount of Thonvelopes to send to family, relatives and friends. The people who are generous to give some money (which everyone should be) they send them back with the money and then it gets put to your orgs or independent earnings.

THON

Even though Thon is raising money and their mission is being spread all year round, the big conclusion is the Dance Marathon. There is an overall committee of 15 students. Each overall picks 22 captains who then pick about 30 committee members. This leads to over 16,000 student volunteers making Thon the largest student-run philanthropy in the world. Dancing is in my opinion is the best part of Thon. There are two main ways to dance. One is that you can dance with your Org. whether that's an athletic organization, a club or a Greek Org. Each Org. gets a certain amount of dancers based on their fundraising efforts. The other option is to be an independent dancer.To become an independent dancer you need to enter a lottery. For your first lottery ticket, you must raise $2,800, and for every other it’s $600 an extra ticket. After that it is all luck.

Thon as I mentioned is a 46 hour no sitting no sleeping dance marathon. That means the dancers and spectators who are staying the whole time are there for 46 hours. All of the money that Thon raises throughout the year goes to the Four Diamonds Fund.

About three weeks before Thon the Dancer Relation Captains make the “line dance.” The line dance is performed about every hour during Thon weekend. It contains of university, political, and pop culture references. It is a fun dance to learn and everyone can do it.

Some people who don’t want to stay the whole 46 hours can go through the spectator entrance. You can stay in as long as you want.

The dancers stand at 6:00 PM on Friday and dance until 4:00 PM on Sunday. After the dancers sit down the part everybody looks forward to is the revealing of the total. In Thon 2018 they raised $10,151,663.93. Thon has raised over $157 million dollars since 1973. My friend Kayla and her friend Zach were a dancer couple and they raised the fourth most money in all of the independent dancers. They raised $16,325.55. Speaking of Kayla and Zach I interviewed both of them before and after Thon. The after interview will come in a separate article.

Jacob (Me) “What was you main connection to Thon?”

Kayla- “My biggest connection to Thon is my best friend Sophie who is a four diamonds child, and I’ve been coming to Thon with her since I was in middle school.”

Zach-  “When I was a freshman I joined and it changed my life so I wanted to be involved as long as I could because it’s the best organization I’ve ever been a part of and I love it so much.”

Jacob- “What was your main motivation for dancing?”

Kayla- “I feel like being involved in Thon as a committee member and a captain is such an awesome way to give back and help people but at the end of the day dancing with such a goal for me because to show families like hey we know that you go through something that is so difficult so terrible and we can’t fix it but we can stand for this amount of time and show you your not alone and there are people willing to go through this fight with you that want be be here with you and support you in any way that we can.”

Zach- “I think that my biggest motivation for dancing in Thon is being friends with Kayla because she’s such a great person and she really made this whole thing possible for me so I’m so lucky to know her and her strong connection tho Thon so I’m blessed to be here.”

Jacob- “What is the thing you are looking forward to the most this weekend?”

Kayla- “I really excited to learn the line dance I heard it’s supposed to be really good-that's the rumor. There are so many little moments in Thon that we’ve got to see from different perspectives and so to get to experience all those little moments as a dancer and know how much they mean to other people and know how much it means to us to other volunteers and to our friends just to be able to experience all of it from this new perspective that is why I’m most excited about.”

Zach- “I’m so excited to meet as many families as I can and hear as many stories as I can because that’s why we’re here for the families and I think that will be the driving factor for both of us to finish the weekend stong.”

This year I spent the most time I have ever spent at Thon. Thon is such a great organization and has impacted me in ways I can’t explain. Overall, Thon has had such a positive impact on me and I hope on you to. I hope that everyone in the world could be like the students of Thon. I want to give a very special thanks to Haley Staub, Maddy Hughes, and the rest of the Public Relations Captain and Committee members.

To find out more and donate go to thon.org

Amelia Earhart by Tanner Mona

Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas on July 24, 1897. She wasn't the type of girl to be wearing dresses or playing dolls with other girls.  She was the adventurous one and enjoyed climbing trees and shooting rats or other rodents with rifles-- different things that you could do at any age in early 1900s.

During World War I, she was a Red Cross nurse in Toronto, Canada and grew up watching the planes fly. After the war, she returned to the US and went to Columbia University in New York as a pre med student. She took her first plane ride in in California in December 1920 with a World War I pilot, Frank Hawks. About two months later, she started flying lessons with Neta Snook as her flight instructor. She, of course, had to pay for the lessons, so she worked as a filing clerk at the LA Telephone Company. After the lessons she bought her first plane and named it “ The Canary”. In December 1921, she passed her flight test, earning a National Aeronautics Association license. A few days later she went into her first flight exhibition in Pasadena, California.

Amelia Earhart set some aviation records: her first one was the first woman to ever fly solo above 14,000 feet! Shortly afterwards, she became the first woman to ever fly over the Atlantic Ocean. She left from Newfoundland, Canada and arrived the next day in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. When she came back to the US, Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross, which is a military decoration awarded for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight. In doing so she was the first woman to ever get that award.

On June 1, 1937, Earhart was going to be the first pilot ever to ride around the world. This was her second attempt because the first attempt didn't go as planned. The plane was just didn't want to take off, but then she took off to be the first person to fly around the world. She took off from Oakland, California riding a twin engine, it would be her and Noonan, another good pilot of their time. The next stop she made was in Lae, New Guinea, and when she landed she would have flown 22,000 miles! She would still have 7,000 more miles left, but that is far.

After Earhart and Noonan departed from Lae, their next stop was at a Tiny Howland Island on July 2, 1937. That date was the last time she would ever be seen alive. She lost radio contact with the U.S coast guard and was running low on gas. In order to find Earhart and Noonan, President Roosevelt put on a two week search to find them, but on July 19 they were declared lost at sea. Shortly after, Earhart and Noonan were lost at sea, people have theories of what had happened to them. The big theory that has been going around is that the Japanese found them, brought them back to their base and executed them. Another one that is, in my opinion, a little more odd says that Earhart and Noonan served as spies for the Roosevelt association and when they returned to the U.S they got new identities, and it was as if they had never even been born.

That is the story of Amelia Earhart and Death Mystery. Until this day, no one knows exactly what happened to her on that flight.

Sources: http://www.history.com/topics/amelia-earhart

Why are Tigers Endangered? by Ashlyn Edgar

Everyone knows about the great striped cat that walks the Asian forests, but most people don’t know that there are less than 4,000 tigers left in Asia. In 1970 their population was up at 40,000,  but over the past 48 years the population has decreased more than 90%.  This is a very high percentage to begin with, and even though it has been almost 50 years it still isn’t right for any species to decrease that much.  Another fact about population is currently, three of the nine subspecies (specific species) are extinct. That list includes Balinese tigers, Caspian tigers, and Javan tigers. Just think that those tigers walked the earth, breathed the air, and enjoyed life 30 years ago. The numbers are declining fast, and we never know which one is next.

The tiger’s main threats in the wild are poaching, loss of habitat, conflicts with humans, and climate change.  Poaching is the illegal hunting of an animal, in this case the tiger. The cause of poaching is because tiger parts are rare and valuable and can be used for many things, which makes it worth all the more money. Another threat is habitat loss which is when humans are cutting down the forests to either use the wood or to build houses and buildings there. Conflicts with humans is another threat. If humans are spreading across the forests, there’s more of a chance for a misunderstanding.  The most common forms of a conflict between a human and a tiger is whenever there is something wrong with the tiger such as the tiger being hungry, weak or sick and either attack someone’s livestock or the person. It attacks the livestock because it must be easy prey because it’s domesticated and doesn’t know the fear of wild prey. However with such an easy kill for the tiger, the owner of the livestock doesn't appreciate a tiger killing his money. So then the owner of the livestock might try to kill the tiger to avenge his lost animal.    

There are many threats to the tiger and the numbers are disappearing many organizations are trying to fix this problem but this task is close to impossible. However if we all try to help and do something small then perhaps the tiger can make a comeback. There are many ways to help such as adopt a tiger (online), be aware,  donating to zoos, sanctuaries (tiger) or to  big organizations that are really trying to help.

Using Robots For Wildlife Conservation by Stella Gregor

  Hark! A deer! Oh wait, it’s actually a decoy to trick poachers! American Wildlife Law Enforcement workers are now using realistic robotic animals to fool people that are hunting illegally. The decoys are remote controlled and equipped with video cameras. They are deployed in places where officials have been tipped off about illegal hunting and the information decoys provide can be used to identify the poachers.

These robot animals help to preserve and protect the creatures they are built to imitate. Poaching is a big problem for the safety of animals, particularly if the species is at risk, so these models are very useful to those who strive to conserve wildlife. The robots decoys are made by suppliers who craft them from legally acquired animal hides so that they appear more realistic. Robot animals are in very high demand by game wardens and Wildlife Law Enforcement officers and can cost a few thousand U.S. dollars.

Another way to use robots for wildlife conservation is to place them in the natural habitat of the species they are modeled after. Equipped with video cameras and sometimes audio recorders, these robots can gather key information about the way animals behave. This is especially useful with groups of creatures who are hard for humans to track, observe and protect. Reviewing the audio and footage from these robot animal spies, researchers can uncover previously unknown facts about creatures that are not otherwise frequently seen or heard about. In this way, more information that will help protect elusive animals from poaching, disease and extinction can be safely gathered. So, animal robots do not only act as decoys, they can also be educational spies for wildlife conservation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/02/24/quiz-can-you-tell-a-real-deer-from-a-robo-deer/?tid=a_mcntx&utm_term=.97966956778d

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/12/30/nine-great-news-stories-about-animals-in-2016/?utm_term=.b9e67d0d983a

https://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/spying-on-wildlife-with-a-herd-of-wild-robots