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Written by Michael Holcomb
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Tuesday, 02 February 2010 08:58 |
Superstitions are either good or bad. What people forget is that they are also fun to mock. Superstitions are usually born when mankind either cannot explain a certain action or wants to blame a mistake on an unseen force. However, superstitions feed off of those feelings of anger and paranoia until they have bloated into a potentially vile, visible force that a large group of people will eventually accept as a possible explanation. Of course, there are both good and bad superstitions, and while good superstitions can seem lovely to imitate, it is the bad superstitions that are looked upon by the majority of people due to the sometimes radical, yet hilarious, nature of them. Bees. Bees are a busy-buzzy sort. They are seen as either honey collectors or ravenous swarms that exist in Africa to chase humans for miles. In old folklore from across the globe, bees held a certain luck to them. It was believed at one point that if a bee were to enter a house spontaneously, it would be considered good luck. If one were to kill that same bee, they would proceed to bring about bad omens. The radical belief is that if a swarm of bees were to be above a person’s home then that house will proceed to burn down. No one is quite sure how such an event would occur, but it could be suspected that the only reason the house would burn down is because someone thought it was a good idea to use a torch to rid the swarm away. Yawning. Yawning is a lazy student’s favorite past time. They yawn in class, yawn at home, and yawn when they are in detention instead of working. However, yawning was once believed to be a warning of danger to come. The oddest belief was that people covered their mouths when they yawned in order to keep their soul from escaping their body. Marriage. Marriage, while being a magical and beautiful ordeal, is given its own strange superstitions. One nice superstition is that single women can start seeing their future husbands in their dreams if they slip birthday cake underneath their pillow. The classic of these superstitions lies in that a woman must enter her home after her wedding through the main door and not trip. That is why the grooms carry them over the threshold. The darkest superstition related to marriage is the person who goes to sleep first on the wedding night shall die first. 13. This single number--a highly feared number for people--including the seventeen to twenty million Americans who absolutely dread this number. There is no thirteenth room in eighty percent of hospitals or hotels, Italy omits the number from their lottery, airports usually lack a thirteenth gate, and people would randomly show up to parties in order to have fourteen guests and keep the bad luck away. This fear has even stopped consumers from spending one billion dollars on a single day (because there are 13 digits). Folklore has its fun messing with the people, but in a day of this age where technology increases and logic is the driving force, superstitions serve only as a source of humor. Being the thirteenth person to a party will not cause the party to erupt into absolute chaos, bees will not bring flames to someone’s home, and yawning will not cause someone to lose their soul. If any of these were true, bees would be public enemy number one, and everyone in detention would be literally the walking dead.
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Written by Hi.Life Staff
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Friday, 09 January 2009 22:23 |
This year the school board cut a lot of money from the Lee’s Summit school district, which leaves students and staff dipping into their own pockets and time for the school. Everyday students come to school equals cash the school gets paid. This year, as the result of not having the money, we have no built in snow days. Luckily, after years of having school buses wobble on hazardous roads, they have finally proven to make safer choices.
We on the Hi.Life staff pondered over the factors to be considered when deciding a snow day. A well known precept is that safety always comes first, and when students are in a rush to get to school it can get messy. It does not help when the bells ring and students have to run across an icy campus to get to class. Another condition we came up with was temperature; an average of 15 degrees or lower should be thought of as a snow day. Also walking from building to building in freezing weather is not the way to dodge catching a cold or flu. Of course there cannot be a snow day without snow, so it was decided that an average of three inches should be enough for a snow day to be declared.
Student administration clarified how the new snow day policy works. In the past one year rules about snow days and how they affect our summer break were different than this year. Last year the policy was that we had two days built into our school year schedule to use for snow days. If we had over two snow days we would have to add days onto our summer vacation. Those two days do not apply to this year. Every snow day we have will mean an extra day added to the end of our year. The days that use to be for snow days are now for teachers. Teacher were requesting for extra time to finish things, now the two days are professional development days.
The thought of a snow day always leaves one drooling at the mouth and day dreaming about endless possibilities; maybe missing a test or two, or getting to spend a day with friends. A winter day wish cold and icy conditions is worth a day from our vacation as long as we stay safe. |
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Written by Nathan Baker
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Wednesday, 02 December 2009 08:16 |
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It was all for attention. That is the easiest way to explain the event now commonly known as the “Balloon Boy Hoax”. Why else would Richard Heene, a father who has been on two Wife Swap episodes, throw his children into the warzone that is our national press to be questioned about things that they could not explain? The young boys did not have a clue why their father wanted to lie to the police, to the Federal Aviation Administration, and to the media that their father so desperately craved. They could not understand their father’s insatiable hunger for national attention; the sad thing is that Heene was willing to ruin his children’s futures for a couple of weeks of publicity.
But those couple weeks of publicity are worth it to some people. Because of the excessive coverage from news channels and reality TV shows, small incidents are blown up into breaking news stories or special edition shows. Not only do these stories not matter to the average person, they also make personal situations that should be resolved privately become play-by-play expositions that make matters worse. Look at Jon and Kate from the hit reality TV show Jon and Kate Plus 8. Before they were put onto the show, Jon and Kate had a stable family life that was just a bit more unusual than most because of the high number of children. But after a couple of seasons of having their family life become national news, the two are now finalizing a divorce because Jon was cheating on Kate with a woman who only knew him because she had seen him on the show. If the show had never been broadcasted, they would probably still be a happy family.
Media attention has a profound effect on ordinary people. The jump from off-the-street guy or girl to TV stardom can be highly toxic to a person’s personality. It may even cause people to develop personality disorders that had never surfaced before in a celebrity’s life, such as histrionic personality disorder. HPD where a person craves attention so much that they use provocative displays or flirtation to get said attention. Too much attention can also make a person develop narcissistic personality disorder, or “the God complex”. Narcissistic people are the ones who we always find to be the most annoying people in the world; they are the men or women who think the world was born to serve them, and all they have to do is exist in order to earn that servitude. Obviously, this kind of thinking is quickly stomped out of people in regular society, but when a person becomes famous, it is not hard to think highly of one’s self.
However, the point of this editorial is not to discuss the trivial lives of celebrities gone bad. Instead, it is meant to point out the cause behind all of this: The national news channels and reality TV shows. Our television news has devolved from its previous purpose of supplying the population with relative, useful information to force-feeding its viewers a daily diet of tragic stories, advertisements, and reality TV updates, along with a small dose of real news. The news is meant to inform the public, not entertain it. That should be left to the reality TV shows, although they rarely ever depict the “reality” of average viewers because they decide to publicize the craziest or saddest stories just to gain our attention. However, not all of the blame can be put on the television media. After all, they are just giving the people what they want.
When people decide that they would rather be entertained than informed, their media follows suit in order to meet the demand of the people. It is sad when people would rather learn about the insane, yet atypical life that a morbidly obese man lives than learn about the lives of average people who are struggling with everyday life because of certain situations, such as lack of medical care or poverty. People would rather witness the quintessential lives of a family of eight than witness the injustices that occur around the world. The bare truth of the matter is that people watch these unrealistic shows because they want to escape from the real world, and until people can muster the courage to face reality, news coverage over pointless publicity stunts like Heene’s will continue to happen.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 02 December 2009 08:20 )
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Written by Michael Holcomb
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Friday, 09 January 2009 22:22 |
A week before break when most shopping is done, people are having a blast. People are having fun. Around this time of year the joy of holiday cheer is spread. Few still battle over deciding the name to use ‘holiday’ over Christmas at places, if it can mean the same. As people bicker back and forth in non-decisive bashing, it leads to a war of different cultures clashing.
There exists a supposed ‘War on Christmas’ in the United States. While not new, this debate has raged on most recently in our decades over whether the term Christmas should be avoided in the media. The people who argue against using holiday want to make the claim that the reason most media avoid using Christmas claim to being against relating to Christian ties; since it is usually celebrated as the birth of Jesus. The other side who wants to use ‘holiday’ thinks it is a much more logical term, and provides more equality for those who do not celebrate Christmas but holidays such as Kwanzaa by many African-Americans or Hanukkah by the Jewish community (which lasts longer than Christmas by seven days) for example.
Both sides have bitterly argued this topic to such a dead-end that no one is really sure what is right and wrong. In fact, one could argue Christmas has evolved into a more secular event. This argument lies in that the most common Christmas items such as wreaths, yule logs, and mistletoe have pre-dated the birth of Jesus and have non-Christian origins. Christmas has also changed in meaning. Christmas was a day in which Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. Over time, though, it grew into a different ordeal in which others are now purchasing gifts for one another that wanted items, and for people they love and cherish, gaining a humanistic value to it. By gaining humanistic quality, Christmas grew into something else in which friends and family focused more on each other, realizing unity is the important aspect. Unity is something that exists in all holidays, and can be celebrated by different kinds of people, and does not have to pertain itself as a religious idea. Jews, Christians, African-Americans all have unity during the winter season. While Christmas is considered the major holiday of the season, acknowledgement is needed for the other holidays in which they too have grown to realize the important family aspect in everything.
As the holiday group speaks their side and what to do, the others will stay and always argue. Both arguments not ending anytime soon, even by the new moon. In the end though we have to see, that can be simpler as one, two, and three. With over three hundred million people in this country of different origins to share, all holidays equally show how much they all care. In the end it doesn’t matter what you celebrate after fall. What matters most is the unity in families, and equality for all.
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