Life as a Trevian

I'm sure most would agree that life at New Trier is not exactly typical high school experience. I mean, sure we have extracurriculars and classes and a social life to balance out. However, even though we have a student body of nearly 4,500 kids we have NO school spirit and have more divided "cliques" than most schools do (Mean Girls the movie is based on our school for all of you who didn't know). Of course, this is not what I would consider the bulk of the difference; it's the competition among classes that I consider our most distinguishing factor, and it's not always a good thing. Friday was the end of the first quarter for us, and so we have recently been receiving grades from our teachers, and you will come to understand how competitive people are when you learn that people are disappointed when they get B's. But why? That's above average, right? For most people, yes, but in a school bursting with genius', a B can look pale in comparison to another student's straight A report card. This may sound ridiculous to some, but comparing ourselves to others has come to part of who we are, and how are brain processes information.
I'll be perfectly honest; I try so hard to do well, and I get really frustrated when I do poorly (remember what poor means in this context). But when I try to look at it from an outsider's point of view, I really don't understand why we are all as competitive as we are. Is it because of the environment we were raised in or do we force this upon ourselves? I know we have pressure to do well from our parents, and an expectation to get into a good college, but is it subtler than that? Would we be as competitive without the pressure from our parents?

National Emergency

As of Saturday, the H1N1 (or swine flu) virus has officially been declared a national emergency by President Obama. This is due a rapid increase in cases across the country. The declaration allows Health and Human Services to aid local health care facilities that would otherwise be unable to deal with the pandemic themselves. Some people, however, seem to be slightly skeptical of the action. One administration official called Obama's action a "proactive measure that's not in response to any new development." According to CNN, since April, when the pandemic first hit, there have been millions of cases, at least 20,000 people have been hospitalized, and more than 1,000 have died, and it is continuing to spread. 46 states have reported widespread flu transmission; this would not be unusual except that it is extremely rare for the flu season to peak so early.

People lined up to wait for their vaccine

I understand that for the elderly and the young, especially, the virus can be deadly, but for the majority of the population, the swine flu is just a longer, harder version of the flu. So I start to wonder why this has been declared a national emergency. It seems to me like everything has been hyped up by the media to make it seem worse than it actually is, and I wonder why.
Does the media want people to think that it that much worse or do they honestly believe that the swine flu is so severe? And why might they want to think this pandemic is a bad as they are making it sound?

Fake veteran faces 'stolen valor' charges

How Richard Strandlof decided to construct a lie about surviving the 9/11 attacks and a roadside bomb in Iraq, no one knows. He even went so far as to say that he had a metal plate in his head from the explosion that he escaped. He now claims he didn't mean to cause any harm, but there are certainly plenty of repercussions for lying that you are a military veteran. According to the FBI "the penalty for his crime is up to one year incarceration and a $100,000 fine."

Before his lies were discovered, he stood by politicians and spoke on behalf of veterans. He even created a group called the Colorado Veterans Alliance. Now we know the whole thing was a lie. He wasn't at the pentagon, he never served his country, and his real name is Rick Duncan. According to CNN, he denies being a pathological liar, but claims he suffered from "some severely underdiagnosed mental illness". Doug Sterner has catalogued numerous people claiming to be veterans who have never served in the military, and he says it is not unusual for those people to claim a mental illness in order to cover for themselves.

What he has done does not only affect himself, but hundreds of others. The group that he created took money away from legitimate causes for veterans. Also, any person who claims they are a veteran is going to be questioned and come under the scrutiny of the media because people know that others have lied before. I know he claims he didn't mean any harm, and this may very well be true, but the fact is, lying almost never has positive outcomes.

Personally, I don't believe that he has a mental illness, so why would someone lie about something as big as this? Did he really think he could do any good or get away with it forever?

Do numbers lie?

Today in American Studies class we started off with the significance of numbers, and we got into the matter of whether or not numbers could lie. One classmate said that she had heard the quote, "The figures can't lie, but the liers can figure." This really got me thinking... Can numbers lie? While I completely agree with the second part of the statement, and know that people can pick apart the data to get the answers or conclusions they want, I'm still not so sure about the first part. The numbers can be influenced by someone's bias, even if they are real numbers, but what if they make up the numbers? Aren't the numbers lying if they are completely made up? In some ways I think that they are, but I also feel like it's the person who made them up who's the liar and not the numbers because the numbers came from somewhere, even if it was just inside that person's head. This to me is that hardest part about figuring out whether the numbers are lying or not...
In class it seemed that we came to the decision that the numbers couldn't lie, but a bias could be applied to the way they are presented or even the way the data was collected, but I still don't know. What do you think? Can numbers lie?