Fall's Here

Fall's Here 

Lucas Blackmore 

10/11/16

APW

During the Fall I've noticed that I really struggle to stay on task in school. The reason is so simple. It is that there are too many things going on at once during that time. I have soccer everyday and on top of that, theres so many sports to watch. Football is in full swing. I swear I spend more time watching football and setting my fantasy lineups than I do on school work. It's an addiction that I cannot escape for the weeks between September and December. Its so much fun playing fantasy football, however, my grades have payed for it in the past. Its going to different this year though. I am going to find a balance where I can have fun playing fantasy/watching football - and hockey for that matter. While also spending lots of time getting ready for college by working on my common app and getting great grades. 

This year has been stressful so far and there is a lot more work than I anticipated. The college application process is terrifying, thinking about where I'm going to go and getting everything polished before the due dates that are fast approaching. I cannot wait for February break, when, hopefully, I'll know where I am going to go and where I have gotten into. The stress is killing me but I know that in a few short months the whole process will be finished and I can relax a little bit, and take advantage of senior spring. This year is going to be great even with the ups and downs that it has in store for me. 

Atlantic City

My parents received some free tickets to a resort in Atlantic City for Thanksgiving break.  It was supposed to be the off season, but there are always people at resorts no matter when you go.  The resort was on the beach front and would have been crawling with tourists in mid July.  Now there was nothing but the long, weathered boards that made up the boardwalk, and the empty ocean rolling in.  You were supposed to be eighteen or older to stay in the resort, but since we got the tickets from family friends we embodied their family and left our identities back home.  My parents snuck my thirteen year old sister and I in every day without managing to get caught.  The resort was spectacular.  The outside looked weathered from the salt water but the inside was a blur of different neon colored lights with gold hardware everywhere.  The hallways had floor-to-ceiling mirrors that sparkled in the warm light, inviting you deeper into the resort.  There was a beautiful restaurant that overlooked the beachfront, but since we were staying hidden my parents ordered us room service.  Our breakfast would come in silver platters and our orange juice in champaign glasses.  When we would leave the den of our king sized suite, we would stand up really tall and my mom would put her red lipstick on us.  We walked around the casinos like we were already eighteen, and when we saw security guards coming my dad would always push us towards the stairs.  The casino machines glittered and their names popped in all different color schemes.  Each machine had a different theme.  Some were beach themed with women in tiny bikinis on the screens, and others were car themed with different expensive race cars swooshing by.

We lived like different people for four days, pretending to be our perfect selves with no worries.  When tuesday came and we were back in Hanover, I could sense everyones sparkle had once again left.

Trades

In fantasy football there aren't that many ways to improve your team, especially when you lose a player because of injury or a player with a lot of expectations busts. The first way is through the draft. Every league has one draft at the start of the season where members systematically go through and pick players. Most drafts are snake drafts; meaning the person who has the first pick one round has the last pick the next round and so on. This evens out the draft a little bit so that having the first pick doesn't mean you automatically have the best team. Another common way to gain an advantage in fantasy football is to pick up players off the waiver wire. The best situation to pick up players is when a key player is injured (specifically running backs) because their back ups will have to pick up some of the slack. The problem with the waiver wire is that most leagues have some sort of system to allow lower ranked teams to have higher priority, so if you have a good start to the season and you start slumping it may be hard to pick up players.
By far the most interesting method of improvement is trades. Trades are fairly self-explanitory, two people exchange players. In most cases, trades are made when one member wants to improve a certain area of their team and are willing to give up something the other member wants in return. In my experience, trades are usually a toss up and you can't see whether someone has gotten the better of a deal right away, you have to wait a few weeks to see how they perform. One of the worst feelings in fantasy is when you trade away a solid player, and the player you get goes out for the season with a torn ACL. Come on Keenan Allen.

Lost in Space

"Neural Connection Established... Loading stored memories..."
"Memories loaded... Waking..." I woke. In a flash of panic, I tried to move my body. Nothing responded.
"Waking body senses... " I relaxed, comfortable with this ritual, as my sense of touch returned.
"Body senses woken..." I felt familiar sensations rush back to me.
"Scanning for mutations... Green. Awakening physical systems... Opening cryostasis hatch." I sat up, feeling weak, and more importantly, thirsty and hungry. However, that could wait.
"Computer, location and time." I stated. I wanted to know how long I had been in "deep sleep."
"Error, data not found," it replied. I resisted the urge to swear, settling for a loud and long "GRAAAAHHH!"
"Estimates?" I asked, hoping, in vain, that the computer had tracked our drifting through space.
"Error, data not found," it replied again. I dropped to my knees. I was lost in space, with a limited food supply, an unemotional ship computer, and no means of contacting help. Could the situation get any worse?
"Broadcast SOS signal." I ordered.
"Broadcasting." I got up, and hobbled towards the pilot's controls. I settled in my chair, and looked around me. My helmet was on its hook where I left it before going into cryostasis. How long had I been adrift? Days? Weeks? Years? The multi-display turned on, panels of the walls changed to show space in front of me. "Food. Water," I ordered. A dispenser to my left shot out an insta-meal and a bottle of water.
"Artificial gravity. Off. Computer, are there any planets nearby?"
"Negative."
"Asteroids?"
"Negative."
"Power levels?"
"50% Currently charging from star 0.14 lightyears away." It's definitely been years.
"Take us closer. Any planets orbiting the sun?" Probably not.
"Negative." Right. I was right.
"Computer, reset time. Wake me up when we make contact with another planet or when we make contact with another life form." I stare into space for a little while longer, absently reaching below my seat and taking out a photo of 5 of my friends and I from flight school. Back then, everything was better. We were confident that no one could beat us. On the back, my friend's signatures are all there, wishing me luck. A reminder of happier times. My thoughts drift back to my current situation. Lost in space with a damaged fighter. Maybe the United Colonies would dispatch a search team for me. My gaze sweeps over the small souvenirs that decorate the edges of the command table. Five from the T-84 offensive. Another three from the Miner's rebellion. I put the picture back under my flight seat and push myself out of the chair, orienting myself and pushing to get through the entry way into the back of the fighter. My cryostasis pod awaits in the back. I tap a button and the door to the chamber slides open silently. I get in, settling into the form fitting gel and lay my head back against the headrest. The hatch closes and I am shut in the dark. "Lost. I am lost forever." is my last thought as the computer shuts down my body's functions, and eventually, my brain to preserve them for the long wait ahead.

Christopher Nolan, A Genius of his Art

Christopher Nolan, one of the greatest directors of all time. He is known for his insane plots; dark, twisted loopholes; and enough psychoanalytic trauma to fill Sigmund Freud's offices for years.

We'll start with his early work. Memento, his first big movie, tells the tale of a man who is looking for his wife's killer. There's a catch, however, he has short-term memory loss, much like Dory, but with him it's devastating because he knows about his condition and is constantly leaving mementos for himself, taking pictures and writing things on them to remind him of something important, tattooing himself with words that he needs never forget and which will now never get lost. The film jumps from place to place, time to time, telling this man's tale as he sees it. It moves almost backwards, which makes for a very confusing plot but once you watch it more than once it all falls into place and becomes one of the best movies I have ever seen. Nolan has a tendency to make his stories dark, which Memento certainly is. I place it 3rd on my list of all-time best movies and give it a 9.7/10 simply because in order to fully understand it you must watch it at least twice.

Next, we move to The Prestige. A story about magicians and the science behind magic. It tells the story of two magicians, competing in a stage war to garner more popularity. It delves into the psyche of these two, or maybe three, artists. They do everything from steampunk devices which remove birds from cages to escaping from a glass box full of water to vanishing acts, that puts one person in two places at the same time. Nolan is almost obsessive with the three stages of magic. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course...it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige". Recommended for a light evening. 8.4/10

Nolan investigated Batman. He spent nearly a decade on The Dark Knight trilogy and it is one of the greatest vigilante stories in history. At a staggering 7.5 hours, you couldn’t watch the entire thing in a school day. In classic Nolan theme, he turns everything dark and throws some of the most terrifying villains of all time, one of which gave Heath Ledger an Academy Award. The only thing I can say is you need to watch this trilogy. 9.8/10. The second installment, The Dark Knight, falls second on the list of all time best.

Inception and Interstellar are two action packed thrills where Nolan challenges science in more ways than one. With Inception he challenges the idea that we are able to control our dreams and that we can even extract information from the subconscious mind. Leonardo DiCaprio does a fantastic job portraying a disgruntled man trying to get back to his family. Falling fifth best of all time, it gets a 9.6/10. In Interstellar, Nolan looks at wormholes and space travel. With highly accurate science he puts a dystopian Earth in need of a new planet in a decision between making enough food to survive and funding a space program to search for a new home. It goes beyond three dimensions and shows manipulation of the fourth and maybe even fifth dimension. Excellent science, recommended highly. Twelfth on the all-time list. 9.4/10.

Casey Starr

Blog

Skiing is something everyone should learn how to do at a very young age. In my opinion it should be a requirement for all United states citizens to learn how to ski and try it out because it would being so much money into the economy if everyone was paying for skiing, and it would bring joy to everyone and realize stress. I am mainly joking because it cost money that people don't have but my point is that if you have the opportunity to be out in the woods, skiing with friends and just enjoying the outdoors you should take advantage of that.

Once I get out onto the slopes it’s hard to get me off. I always buy 50 cent ramon because the prices of the food in the ski areas are stupid expensive and take up to much shredding time. I normally just eat the roman hard on the gondola up to the glades where the powder is fresh. If I’m lucky I can find a nice line of fresh tracks and have the day of my life. On snow days, me and my friends wake up at the crack of dawn, drink our coffee on the way up to the mountain so we can check the first tracks on a fresh powder day. They best days are snow days during the week when all the New yorkers are too scared to make the drive so we got the whole mountain to us Vermonters. Skiing is what makes the winter fun for me and I can’t wait for it to start up again.

Big Ole Whale

One of the hardest questions in life isn't one that we come across as adults. It is a staple of any childhood, and the answer changes as frequently as the tides. For me, I always knew what animal I would want to be if I could be any animal. Some people try to complicate the question, create some sort of conditions that you need to meet in order to have a valid animal. The only answer I need is the killer whale.
The killer whale is the most amazing member of the underwater squad. Killer whales are technically dolphins, but when sailors first encountered one, they called it "whale killer". The name was soon reversed, and they came to be known as killer whales or orcas. They are the most fearsome animal in the ocean, and have only ever been hunted by humans. Orcas hunt a huge variety of animals, from sharks and dolphins, to moose and pelicans.
Killer whales can live to be over 100 years old, similar to how long humans can live, although the lack of predators means that orcas will more frequently live to be very old. They use echolocation to find their prey, as they cannot smell and their eyesight isn't the most useful tool in their toolbox. Possibly their best trait is their temperament. They only ever attack humans while they are in captivity, meaning that no wild killer whale has ever killed a human. If I could be any animal, I would be a killer whale.