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.

Noobsquad Update

It was an intense week in fantasy football, with many good teams squaring off, and many bad teams participating as well. All I do is Winston continued his win streak, beating the Cashmere Bull by 14 points in what started out as an even matchup but quickly turned the victory away from Marcus. By 4:30, it was pretty clear after two rounds of games that I had a sizeable lead on Marcus’s underperforming team. He also made the mistake of starting Adrian Peterson, who, with age slowing him down and an offensive line that can’t seem to make any room for him, got a measly 3 points before being injured. Isaiah Crowell meanwhile sat on Marcus’s bench, gaining 21 points and could have gotten Marcus the victory if he knew which players on his randomly selected team were actually good.

Winners were rewarded again in Week 2, with half the league 2-0 and the other half 0-2. The winners are being separated from the losers early this year, with a few upsets as previous league champion Adam sits in second to last place, scoring less than 200 points in two weeks with a team that has only one good player on it. In other league news, four households have successfully hosted get togethers so far, providing pizza and burgers for the boys. We can only hope this trend continues next Sunday, and maybe this time we’ll be able to watch the real NFL Redzone as opposed to a stream from a sketchy looking website.

Mountain Removal

I love the mountains, and I believe that I can say the same about everyone else in this room. As a lover of the mountains of the Appalachian I believe that it is my duty to notify all of you of the situation in the southern Appalachians. In the southern, West Virginian section of the Appalachians, mountains are being destroyed through the act of mountaintop removals, where the top of the mountains are being taken off for the coal hidden underneath the first hundred or so feet of rock and soil. I would know what this destruction looks like because of all the experience I have had driving across this landscape, and because of all the hours of flying over and capturing pictures of the covertly decimated mountains. I believe that together we can break the deafening silence that surrounds this unspoken tragedy.

It is unimaginable to believe that up to 500 mountains have been destroyed from mountaintop removal spanning from northeast Tennessee and eastern Kentucky, through western Virginia and southwest West Virginia, all the way to Charleston, West Virginia.  In some counties it is calculated that up to 40% of the landscape has been destroyed from the mountains being flattened. These areas are among the richest, most diverse temperate forests in North America, and until mountaintop removal began 20 years ago, they were the source of clean water and beautiful tourist areas for much of the eastern U.S.  

Imagine a beautiful New Hampshire landscape, mountains like precious gems spread across the whole horizon. Now imagine that you look across the same horizon in the same location three to five years later and find yourself looking at a totally different landscape. Half of the mountains are cut in half and the others stand alone as foothills compared to what used to be. You have just witnessed what it is like to find yourself in the midst of a mountain-top removal area in West Virginia. Not only is this common, unsatisfying, and demeaning to see but it creates major environmental problems. The mountaintop removals in West Virginia are long overdue for opposition, and need to be rebelled against. Let us stand up together, and maybe we can make a difference before it is too late.

Injuries

Every year in sports some of the best athletes are incapacitated by serious injury. In football, this problem is especially prevalent. This year, notable players such as Keenan Allen, Danny Woodhead, Jimmy Garoppolo, Adrian Peterson, and Rob Gronkowski have some sort of injury that has or will prevent them from playing multiple games this season, and it's only week two. The problem with football is it is a pure contact sport. On every play, players are at high risk of injury simply due to the rough way the game is played. In addition, there are so many different ways football players get injured. The most common season ending injuries are focused on the knee; such as ACL and MCL tears. These injuries are especially common in running backs who take a beating each time they carry the ball. But more often players experience repetitive minor concussions on every play that build up over time. There has been so much publicity around concussions and CTE of late that it puts the protective gear and medical protocol of the NFL under question. CTE is by far one of the scariest injuries on the list, minor concussions can cause long term brain damage causing players to die and lose cognitive function at younger ages. I just wonder how the NFL can continue when so many top players cannot play. Is there anything they can do about the problem without drastically changing the way football is played? Also now I need a wide receiver because I drafted Keenan Allen in the second round.

The Dynamic Trio

Going into this NFL football season, many people had very different views on how good the New York Giants receivers group would be this year.  Everyone knew that Odell Beckham Jr. would most likely continue to play as well as he had in the past, but some people did think that the defenses would eventually figure out how to guard him.  So far this year, they have not found a way to shut him down, and besides a few unfortunate drops, he has played very well.  Though Odell Beckham Jr. is not the receiver that most people were worried about.  The past Giants star wide receiver had been injured nearly two years ago, and had not been able to play since then.  Many were concerned that he would get injured again, or that he would not be the same player that he was before.  Neither of these things have occurred yet though.  Victor Cruz has been looking healthy, and possibly even better than before his injury.  In his return back to the NFL, he only had 34 receiving yards, but caught a very impressive touchdown that eventually helped the Giants claim their first win of the season.  In his second game, he played even better.  Even though he did not score in this week, Victor Cruz caught 6 passes for 91 yards.  One of these catches, lead to the Giants being in great field goal position, and lead to the team with a last second field goal.  Sterling Shepard was a college football player out of Oklahoma, taken by the Giants in the second round.  Many didn't know how good he would be, coming right out of college, into being apart of such a talented receiving core, but he has handled the pressure quite well.  Many people also worried that even if all the Giants wide receivers were to play well, how the team receivers would interact with each other on and off the field.  So far, all the players seem to get along, and take sacrifices for the benefit of the team, in order to increase the chances of the New York Giants winning a game.  If the Giant's wide receivers continue to play this well, or even get better, it will be a very good year for the Giants, and will make the opponents defenses suffer throughout the season.

Team Fortress 2: Is It Dead?

Yes, I know this is a common topic among certain Youtubers and players, but I wanted to talk about my own opinions on the game and rant quite a bit. First of all, while I didn't actually play the game at the beginning of the Meet Your Match update that started most of the controversy, I do want to express my thoughts on what I think my experience would have been. I personally only play TF2 casually, I never really intended to play it competitively. For me it's more of a game that I can pick up and play a few rounds when I have the free time and interest, just like over 90% of the TF2 community. I only ever used the valve servers to play games. So when I first heard that valve had completely removed that quick play option in favor of competitive, I was worried. Would this mean that I couldn't play casual games and had to play on a ranked scale similar to that of CSGO or Dota? I felt like some of the best and most entertaining games included people from all skill levels. And let's not mention how much the system was broken from the start. Wait time of over an hour to play a match that might last 15? Seriously? And no penalty for abandoning matches? You can't join a match in the middle? Really? When I heard all about this, I was wondering what had happened to the game that I had enjoyed. Who at Valve was working on this and trying to fix it? Whoever they were, they really failed the community. Who decided that competitive was the next step in TF2? What about casual play for the 90% of the players who just wanna play for fun? Is it the fact that TF2 doesn't get Valve much money? Is it just not of interest to the company anymore? It almost seems like the people in charge of the game currently don't even play it anymore. I feel like the only way the game is going to stay alive is if the community shows interest in the game and helping it proceed to become the game we want. I'm personally excited to see if Valve will incorporate something community made, like the Frontline or Mayan community-created projects. But knowing Valve, we can only wait and see.