You’ve probably never been told that, but you’ve also never been told
that GMOs, or Genetically Modified Organisms, are actually a good thing
— not a harbinger of some extraterrestrial crop.
The saying, “there’s plenty of fish in the sea,” may not always ring true. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, we need to choose our seafood carefully in order to lessen the damage cause by overfishing and habitat destruction. Luckily, the Aquarium’s latest attempts at educating the public about the virtues of sustainably-caught seafood have helped push the program out of obscurity and onto your dinner plate.
Many people hope to leave legacies behind when they die—to immortalize themselves in a symphony, paint and canvas or the great American novel. As they live their day-to-day lives striving for this goal, people unwittingly create another, less positive legacy, one that can be measured in pounds. Specifically, 90,000 pounds, the amount of trash the average American creates in his or her lifetime.
Senior pranks have been a national tradition for decades, and no less at Lowell. Although school pranks in the past have been praised by the student body for creativity and planning, such as the ‘07 Christmas tree forest and the 60-degree tilting of the flag pole by ’06, up-and-coming senior classes are running low on innovative spirit. The senior pranks have begun to tread a fine line, which has become even thinner through the years, between class pride and full-blown vandalism.
Just days after news broke that a potentially dangerous pandemic had begun, every major newspaper and network were plastered with images of masked people in the streets of Mexico. “U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu,” crowed an April 27 New York Times headline. “WHO Raises Global Threat Level As Reports of Swine Flu Increase,” then announced the Washington Post on April 28.
In Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott’s 2003 documentary The Corporation, filmmaker Michael Moore is quoted as dismissing large businesses as caring only about “how to make as much money as they can in any given quarter.” Is it fair to lump all big businesses together in this degrading category?
In the current financial crisis, third world countries are in even more danger of sinking further into poverty, as inflation increases and prices go up. This is on top of problems with the current system of aid, in which wealthy countries donating large amounts of money, food or supplies.
No one remembers, or wants to remember, the suicide that disrupted Lowell seven years ago. Did the memory of yellow and blue suicide-prevention ribbons really pale with each successive graduating class? Four weeks prior to the end of the 2002 school year, then junior Thomas Hoo shot himself. A wrestling champion and captain of the football team, he had appeared to be an unlikely victim. If anything, Hoo’s death shows that high-achieving teens can also be at risk for suicide.
A recent court ruling raises questions about the state’s place in restricting the sale of violent or sexual video games to minors. State legislators are scrambling to respond.
Most students who have received their college acceptance letters are thrilled. All those SAT prep books, nights of cramming, and flashcards must have paid off. The thrill, however, is tampered economic reality; these students are going to be paying off debts and college loans for years to come.
On Feb. 24, the Hearst Corporation announced plans to possibly sell or
close the San Francisco Chronicle within weeks if little profit is
made. According to a Feb. 25 Chronicle article, the newspaper “lost
more than $50 million in 2008 and is on a pace to lose more than that
this year,” in addition to having “major losses each year since 2001.”
If the Chronicle is closed, readers can expect a great loss — not only
one of the nation’s historical newspapers, but also the in-depth news
that the printed press fights for.
On Nov. 5, 2008, the night after Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential election, a Gallup Poll measured its record-breaking high value on the following: 67% of Americans agreed that “a solution to relations between blacks and whites will be eventually worked out,” while more than two-thirds believed that the election itself was one of the most important advances for African-Americans.
