Should the United States Abolish Daylight Saving Time?

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March 12, 2019

abecedarian ˌā-bē-(ˌ)sē-ˈder-ē-ən adjective and noun

adjective: alphabetically arranged (as for beginning readers)
noun: a novice learning the rudiments of some subject

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The word abecedarian has appeared in four articles on NYTimes.com in the past two years, including on Dec. 1, 2017 in the book review “In ‘It’s All Relative,’ A.J. Jacobs Shakes the Family Tree” by Daniel Menaker:

In a regularly best-selling way, A.J. Jacobs writes stunt books. Or quest-stunt books, is more like it. Or humorous quest-stunt books is most like it. “The Year of Living Biblically,” for example, described his efforts to abide by the over 700 rules he finds set down — by, well, Whom? — in the Old and New Testaments. In “The Know-It-All,” Jacobs told of his 18-month effort to read the entire “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” using its abecedarian entries as prompts for reflection and anecdotes. Etc.

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Should Kids Be Social Media Influencers?

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March 12, 2019

Should Kids Be Social Media Influencers?

Do you follow any social media influencers? If yes, why?

(Influencers are individuals, famous or not, with large followings. You can check out some of the most popular here.)

Would you want to be an influencer? Would you be willing to promote and market products on your social media feed if it meant earning lots of money?

In “Online and Making Thousands, at Age 4: Meet the Kidfluencers,” Sapna Maheshwari writes:

Samia was an influencer before she could talk.
Her parents, Adam and LaToya Ali, are influencers themselves and began chronicling Samia’s impending arrival on YouTube and Instagram in 2014, once Ms. Ali learned she was pregnant.
“Samia’s birth video is on YouTube, so she’s pretty much been born into social media,” Mr. Ali said.
Samia is now 4 and has 143,000 followers on Instagram and 203,000 subscribers on YouTube. Her feeds are mostly populated with posts of her posing and playing, but they also feature paid promotions for brands like Crayola and HomeStyle Harvest chicken nuggets.
There are instances when “Samia can’t verbatim get the message out,” Mr. Ali, who lives in the Atlanta area, said of the promotional posts. “Sometimes, their talking points are not kid talk, so LaToya would need to appear, or myself, to relay those because those are key deliverables that the brands want.”
Welcome to the world of kidfluencers. Brands have flocked to influencers — individuals, famous or not, with large followings on social media — for years, hoping their online popularity will prompt their fans to buy the products they vouch for. Then child influencers started appearing on their parents’ profiles, a surreal but seemingly harmless offshoot of this phenomenon.
Now, advertisers like Walmart, Staples and Mattel are bankrolling lucrative endorsements deals for toddlers and tweens with large followings and their own verified profiles on YouTube and Instagram. As a result, children too young to make their own accounts on the platforms are being turned into tastemakers.

The article describes how much money can be made as an influencer:

That can mean big money for the families of kidfluencers. Kyler Fisher, the father of 2-year-old identical twins who have more than two million followers on Instagram, said a sponsored post on the girls’ account could fetch between $10,000 and $20,000.
The twins, Taytum and Oakley, have promoted car seats and Carnival Cruise Lines on Instagram. They are also central to the success of their parents’ YouTube channel, Kyler & Mad, which has about three million subscribers. Promotions on the family YouTube channel can draw $25,000 to $50,000.
Fans are so interested in the family that their third child, due the first week of March, already has 112,000 Instagram followers.
“My kids complete the package, man,” Mr. Fisher said. “If we didn’t have the girls, I can’t imagine being as far as we are.”

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

— What is your reaction to the article? Should children be social media influencers? Why or why not? What age is or isn’t appropriate?

— Do you follow any influencers? If yes, do they promote products on their social media feeds?

— Would you want to be a paid influencer? Why or why not? Do you think your parents would let you?

— Should parents allow their children to be child influencers? Would you let a younger sibling or your own children be paid influencers?

— The article describes the problems in regulating the phenomenon of child influencers:

Children’s television, overseen by the Federal Communications Commission, has rules that separate ads from content and limit product placement and promotions by a program’s host or characters. The internet doesn’t.
YouTube has its own guidelines for children’s advertising, but they are often hard to police. For example, the YouTube Kids app, designed for children 12 and under, is not supposed to contain sponsored content, but The New York Times found several paid advertorial videos from influencers there for companies like Walmart, DreamWorks and Claire’s.

Should advertisers and brands be able to use young people as influencers on social media? Should companies like Instagram and YouTube revise their policies on advertising and children? Should there be more regulations for the internet and social media to protect children?

_{Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.}

What is money?

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March 12, 2019

Money itself is changing. Debates about the money form – who issues it and how we use it – have found new shapes in the digital economy. The emergence of a cashless society and the fascination with cryptocurrencies are both altering how we use money and what we know it to be. Yet it’s far from clear what the implications of these changes are.

What we do know is that these changes aren’t neutral. Lobbyists and regulators, for example, have outlined the dangers that they involve. Cryptocurrencies now come with official health warnings. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has repeatedly cautioned against the unregulated and speculative nature of ‘initial coin offerings’ and suggest that most buyers don’t understand the money that they are buying. The risk of a move toward a cashless society has also been given a red flag. The publication this week of Link’s ‘Access to Cash’ report outlined the dangers of too rapid a move to a cashless society, suggesting that it was small businesses and society’s most vulnerable groups who stood to lose the most. Others have gone further, pointing out that the move towards an entirely digital money is a mechanism of social exclusion that functions solely to expand corporate profit.

Money: commodity or public utility?

What these debates suggest most obviously, of course, is that as a society we don’t fully understand what money is or how money is made. This is a point that has been illustrated most powerfully by the group Positive Money whose research has demonstrated that even the majority of MPs don’t understand that the majority of money currently in circulation has been created by the financial sector, through the creation of loans, rather than by the mint or treasury. What we fail to understand by not realising this, they argue, is the way in which the creation of money is implicated in house price bubbles, high levels of debt and rising inequality. Positive Money, like Link’s ‘Access to Cash’ report, conclude that we need to see money not as a commodity, a source of private profit that can be bought and sold, but as a public utility that needs careful stewardship if it is to effectively serve all aspects of the economy.

One of the reasons that people don’t fully understand money may be that the field of economics itself has become an increasingly technocratic one, mired in jargon and hived off from other kinds of political and social discussions. This is one of the major criticisms that has been levelled at both the discipline and the profession since the 2008 financial crisis.

Yet it is important to remember that this has not always been the case: for much of the past three centuries debates about the money form were entirely central to political life – elections were fought and lost on the basis of what money we should use – and reminding ourselves of these contested cultures offers an important way of making the politics of money accessible once more.

Debates about ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ money run throughout history

Beneath the debates about both cryptocurrencies and the death of cash, for example, is the recurring question of what supports money’s value, a question that is as old as the money form itself. These contemporary debates can be compared to histories of money in illuminating ways. The blockchain technologies that have enabled bitcoin may promise radical democratic alternatives to the financial system, through lower cost transactions and redistributed networks, but contemporary buyers of bitcoins, like the buyers of gold before them, are often attracted to a money form whose value is partly rooted in scarcity. Bitcoins are mined, at exorbitant energy costs, and, unlike the paper money of the financial sector, the value of these computer codes are defined by the fact that no more will be made. Buyers of bitcoin are buying a speculative commodity, in other words, that they hope will increase in value because demand will eventually outstrip a finite supply. The logic here is comparable to that of ‘hard’ money, a money whose value is assumed to be inherent in its very form. Buyers of public and private debt, conversely, may be more conservative, attracted to the lower but safer returns that interest rates promise and that the security that the State’s underwriting of public and private debt provides. This is the logic of ‘soft’ money and the possibility of a more elastic and expanding money supply.

We can see these debates, about hard or soft forms of money and about the relative guarantees of commodity value or state security that support them, running through the history of modern money since its origins in the Financial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century. The mistaken assumption that the stocks in the South Sea Company were guaranteed by the Government, for example, was at least partly responsible for the buyer’s exuberance that only was later realised to be irrational in the moment of the crash. The crisis was part of a much longer shift in cultures of value: as the credit cultures of the new urban economy began to outstrip the landed economies of the aristocracy. The same tension between a soft paper money and a hard gold currency dominated American electoral politics for much of the nineteenth century. Although in this case anxieties about the credit economy were often moulded by debates about race that were quite distinct from the anxieties about the new mercantile middle class that had taken place in Britain century earlier.

It’s critical to explore money through the lenses of literary and visual culture

Literary and visual cultures are important for giving us insight into the social implications of these varied histories. The radical disturbance to the social order that the South Sea Bubble of 1721 brought about, as new economic agents entered the economy and vested interests were brought low, is still most memorably captured in William Hogarth’s Emblematical Print of the South Sea Scheme. Similarly, the violent policing of the forged bank notes that followed the Bank Restriction Act of 1790s was most powerfully captured by George Cruikshank’s satirical note, featuring the bodies of forgers hanging on the gallows and acting as a permanent warning against the despotism that he associated with a state-manufactured money. Yet these cultural histories aren’t only critical. Other texts, like Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, can be read as imagining an alternative to the bimetal debates of the 1890s. The allegorical story that lies behind Baum’s text both reveals the social implications of the money debates of the 1890s, where gold was seen to be the currency of the elite and paper the currency of the workers, and surpasses it, as imagines the future of a more egalitarian form of consumer credit.

It is this history – of money and art and the complex ways in which it is played out through cultures of financial investment and crisis – our course exploring money gives you a new and unique access to. We explore the history of commodity money suggested by the bitcoin as well as the history of credit money suggested by the virtual currencies of the financial system. We also explore the ways in which both forms of money were financialised, as we examine the changes in the locations and technologies of investment and the complex ways in which culture demarcated the distinction between gambling and speculation. Finally, we look at what happens when the money is interrupted, when the commodity devalues or the credit crunches, and a financial crisis emerges.

Administracion de la salud, Curso Abierto Gratuito

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March 11, 2019

Sesión 1. Planteamiento Conceptual de Salud

En la antigua Grecia nada se sabía sobre microorganismos o medidas de prevención en salud sin embargo, se estableció que la personalidad desempeña un papel fundamental como causal de las enfermedades. Galeno de Pérgamo hacia el siglo II a.C. ya había observado la relación estrecha entre los estados de melancolía y la aparición del cáncer de mama. Con esta misma noción Hipócrates de Cos confirmaba esta relación estableciéndose el enfoque holístico sobre la salud (de salus. Lat. -ūtis). Platón, durante el siglo IV, propugnaba que la buena educación mejoraba la mente y el cuerpo reconociendo además que unas buenas condiciones en salud corporal conducían a la higiene mental.

Materiales de Lectura y Estudio

Sesión 2 Enfoque Subjetivista de la Salud

La crítica al objetivismo es contundente en tanto, in sensu stricto, si la objetividad no es posible luego entonces todo conocimiento debe ser subjetivo; el subjectus (Sujeto) en su razón última. Con lo cual, un tratamiento subjetivista sobre cualquier fenómeno o cosa supone que toda afirmación tiene un valor de opinión, y las opiniones no pueden ser ni verdaderas ni falsas; todas las opiniones tienen el mismo valor epistemológico. Una de las formas más arraigadas en el tratamiento subjetivista del conocimiento es el emotivismo o expresión de preferencias, de expresiones de actitud o de sentimiento en la medida en que estos poseen un carácter valorativo. La razón última para sostener que no es posible un modo racional para un juicio en el orden de lo subjetivo estriba en la tesis central del subjetivismo: el alma.

Materiales de Lectura y Estudio

Sesión 3 Análisis de la Aspiración y del Estilo de Vida

Tal y cómo se ha visto en sesiones anteriores la vida orgánica representa un objeto muy complejo cuyos componentes al mismo tiempo, deben relacionarse de una forma coherente con al menos algún otro componente. Estos componentes, compréndase, tangibles como los órganos, o conceptuales como las emociones o comportamientos. Debemos entender el sistema orgánico en tanto sistema (lat. systēma, y éste del griego σύστημα) como una unidad cuya composición, estructura y entorno mantienen una figura o forma

Materiales de Lectura y Estudio 1

Sesión 4 Búsqueda de la Estabilidad Fisiológica

El organismo requiere de una capacidad de interacción innata entre éste y el medio ambiente por el cual pervive; esto debe asegurarle responder a los cambios y ajustes vengan de donde provengan. En tal sentido adquirió consistencia en el campo de la biología y más concretamente, en el estudio de la salud y la motivación, el término homeostasis (gr. ὅμος y στάσις) como propiedad en los organismos vivos consistente en mantener un estado interno estable compensando los cambios en su entorno mediante el intercambio regulado de materia y energía con el exterior. Dicha noción fue difundida por el fisiólogo francés C. Bernard en 1865 en sus descripciones científicas.

Materiales de Lectura y Estudio

Sesión 5 Promoción de la Salud

La promoción de la salud es la fase educativa dentro de las tres acciones de la salud junto con previsión y tratamiento. Permite a las personas incrementar el manejo de información, procesar el conocimiento y así implicarse, conscientemente, en las tareas de control, mantenimiento y tratamientos sobre su salud. Es una etapa en la actividad saludable que busca hacer partícipe al individuo en las acciones para lograr mejoraría

Video Conferencia Materiales de Lectura y Estudio Sesión 6 Conductas de RiesgoLa conducta de riesgo se define en la búsqueda y exposición repetida que el individuo manifiesta ante el peligro. Son comportamientos en situación límite, en el que la persona expone, voluntariamente, su vida en juego. Estos comportamientos no deben confundirse con las acciones peligrosas o arriesgadas y que se realizan cuando las circunstancias así lo imponen (no voluntarias). Las conductas de riesgo se reflejan en una extraña fascinación por el peligro extremo y, en especial, por la recreación de sensaciones fuertes relacionadas con el enfrentamiento permanente ante la muerte
Video Conferencia Materiales de Lectura y Estudio
Sesión 7 Enfermedad como AusenciaAnalicemos el fenómeno y la conceptualización dada a la enfermedad para entender mejor su sentido e importancia como dicotomía junto con salud. En principio debemos decir que la enfermedad ha sido establecida como una negación de la salud, por lo que en queda verificada en negación a la salud: enfermedad igual a no salud. Además de ello, la enfermedad ha sido comprendida desde muy distintos enfoques. Partiendo del hecho de que sólo existe un tipo de enfermedad (no salud), lo que procede a revisar entonces es su caracterización.
Video Conferencia Materiales de Lectura y Estudio
Sesión 8 AdiccionesHemos visto que se puede someter el individuo a un proceso de desahogo para así restablecer el equilibrio que tanto se desea. Sin embargo, hay afecciones del orden de lo adquirido que no son tan propensas a sanarse por estos medios. Lejos de lo que se ha supuesto comúnmente, las adicciones están conformadas por comportamientos compulsivos provocados por deseos no controlados y que consumen pensamientos (síndrome de abstinencia) [Becoña Iglesias & Cortés Tomás, (coord.), 2011; 35].
Video Conferencia Materiales de Lectura y Estudio
Sesión 9 Aplicaciones de AlivioLa acepción dada al término alivio establece en el DRAE (2014) que es una percepción al explicar un (m.) aligeramiento o disminución de la carga o peso. Ante la presencia de un estado de enfermedad, en cambio, implica la percepción en la disminución o mitigación de dicha una enfermedad, una pena o ante la fatiga. La conceptualización al alivio, podemos observar, no se puede limitar al uso médico. Hay varias acepciones dependiendo del campo del conocimiento que a este término, lo mismo que ocurre con otros tantos, tienen aplicación dentro de su área de dominio del conocimiento. .
Video Conferencia Materiales de Lectura y Estudio
Sesión 10 El TratamientoEn el tercer de los momentos señalados por la OMS en relación a los fines y propósitos de la salud (promoción, prevención y tratamiento) aquí debemos describir algunas de las estrategias para lograr un estado saludable en lo mayormente posible. Implica reflexionar la clínica aplicada en lo convencional así como el amplio conjunto de recursos y apoyos que nos brinda el ámbito cultural de la salud. También consideramos los recursos que bien pudiésemos, en la consciencia de nuestro propio organismo detectar que hacen falta.
Video Conferencia Materiales de Lectura y Estudio

Leadership and Direction Management FREE COURSE

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March 11, 2019

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The following course in Leadership and Direction is provided in its entirety by Atlantic International University’s “Open Access Initiative” which strives to make knowledge and education readily available to those seeking advancement regardless of their socio-economic situation, location or other previously limiting factors. The University’s Open Courses are free and do not require any purchase or registration, they are open to the public.

The course in Leadership and Direction contains the following:

Lessons in video format with explaination of theoratical content.
Complementary activities that will make research more about the topic , as well as put into practice what you studied in the lesson. These activities are not part of their final evaluation.
Texts supporting explained in the video.
Evaluation questionnaire, that will grant access to the next lesson after approval.
Final exam for overall evaluation of the course.

The Administrative Staff may be part of a degree program paying up to three college credits. The lessons of the course can be taken on line Through distance learning. The content and access are open to the public according to the “Open Access” and ” Open Access ” Atlantic International University initiative. Participants who wish to receive credit and / or term certificate , must register as students.

Lesson 1: LEADERSHIP AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

A social identity theory of leadership is described that views leadership as a group process generated by social categorization and prototype-based depersonalization processes associated with social identity

At the end of the course, students will examine the fundamentals of leadership apply it within organizations to achieve integrated management of people.Tendency to personify leaders in terms of unique properties or characteristics. Social Psychology tells us that people tend to attribute others behaviour to underlying traits.It is not the mere possession of some combination of traits, and other social psychologists have suggested that the search for the leadership personality is simplistic The great person theory of leadership , in which effective leaders have special personalities, is generally not well supported.

Lesson 2: DIRECTION

Direction is the information contained in the relative position of one point with respect to another point without the distance information. Directions may be either relative to some indicated reference (the violins in a full orchestra are typically seated to the left of the conductor), or absolute according to some previously agreed upon frame of reference. Direction is often indicated manually by an extended index finger or written as an arrow. On a vertically oriented sign representing a horizontal plane, such as a road sign, “forward” is usually indicated by an upward arrow. Mathematically, direction may be uniquely specified by a unit vector, or equivalently by the angles made by the most direct path with respect to a specified set of axes.

Video Conference

Video Conference:
Lecture Materials

Lesson 3: Theoretical paradigm for integrated management and administration of people

This study examined the relationship between strategic context, viewed in terms of product-market variation, work flow integration, and firm size, and executive use of human resource management control systems, including input, behavior, and output controls. Data from executives in 102 firms showed the following: a positive relationship between product-market variation and the use of behavior control, mediated by the presence of managers’ knowledge of cause-effect relations and the crystallization of standards of desirable performance; a negative relationship between work flow integration and behavior and output control, mediated by crystallization of performance standards; and a positive relationship between firm size and input control that is independent of administrative information. These results are discussed in terms of theory development and future research in strategic human resource management.

Lesson 4: Leadership and delegation of authority

Delegating frees you up to tackle the truly important aspects of your mission/business/project. Too many leaders, believing only they are able to do things just right, insist on being involved in every single detail of their missions. They believe that this ultra-hands-on approach is good for business because they’re making sure everything gets done just so. But a leader should be in charge of the overall direction of a team; he is the one looking ahead, steering the course, and making needed corrections to avoid getting off track. But buried in the small details, a man will lose the big picture and fail to see that the mission is falling apart until it is too late. A good leader isn’t a slave to detail: he uses his valuable time to tackle what’s truly important. And this leads to greater success for him and his organization.

Video Conference
Lecture Materials

Lesson 5: LEADERSHIP STYLES

In business, a leadership style called “transformational leadership” is often the most effective approach to use. Transformational leaders have integrity, they inspire people with a shared vision of the future, they set clear goals, they motivate people towards these goals, they manage delivery, and they communicate well with their teams. (You can find out more about transformational leadership at the end of this article.)
However, leadership is not “one size fits all” thing; often, you must adapt your style to fit a situation or a specific group. This is why it’s useful to gain a thorough understanding of other leadership styles; after all, the more approaches you’re familiar with, the more you can shape your approach to the situation.
Let’s take a look at some of the leadership styles that you can use. (For ease of reference, these are shown in alphabetical order.)

Lesson 6: Goal setting

Goal setting involves establishing specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-targeted (S.M.A.R.T ) goals. Work on the theory of goal-setting suggests that an effective tool for making progress is to ensure that participants in a group with a common goal are clearly aware of what is expected from them. On a personal level, setting goals helps people work towards their own objectives. Goal setting features as a major component of personal development literature.
It is considered an “open” theory, so as new discoveries are made it is modified. Studies have shown that specific and ambitious goals lead to a higher level of performance than easy or general goals. As long as the individual accepts the goal, has the ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals, there is a positive linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance.

Lesson 7: Speaking Points

A talking point in debate or discourse is a succinct statement designed to support persuasively one side taken on an issue. Such statements can either be free standing or created as retorts to the opposition’s talking points and are frequently used in public relations, particularly in areas heavy in debate such as politics and marketing. A political think tank will strategize the most effective informational attack on a target topic and launch talking points from media personalities to saturate discourse in order to frame a debate in their favor, standardizing the responses of sympathizers to their unique cause.

Lesson 8: Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership enhances the motivation, morale, and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms. These include connecting the follower’s sense of identity and self to the project and the collective identity of the organization; being a role model for followers that inspires them and makes them interested; challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, so the leader can align followers with tasks that enhance their performance.

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Lesson 9: Emotional Effects

At the most basic level, a leader is someone who leads other. But what makes someone a leader? What is it about being a leader that some people understand and use to their advantage? What can you do to be a leader? Here’s what you need to know and do.A leader is a person who has a vision, a drive and a commitment to achieve that vision, and the skills to make it happen. Let’s look at each of those in detail.

Lesson 10: Task Oriented Leadership

Task-oriented (or task-focused) leadership is a behavioral approach in which the leader focuses on the tasks that need to be performed in order to meet certain goals, or to achieve a certain performance standard. Relationship-oriented (or relationship-focused) leadership is a behavioral approach in which the leader focuses on the satisfaction, motivation and the general well-being of the team members.
Task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership are two models that are often compared, as they are known to produce varying outcomes under different circumstances.

We understand how busy adults do not have time to go back to school. Now, it’s possible to earn your degree in the comfort of your own home and still have time for yourself and your family. The Admissions office is here to help you, for additional information or to see if you qualify for admissions please contact us. If you are ready to apply please submit your Online Application and paste your resume and any additional comments/questions in the area provided. (Online Application) (Request Info)

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Ask a Data Engineer: Warby Parker Edition 👓

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March 11, 2019

Ask a Data Engineer: Warby Parker Edition 👓

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Codecademy’s very own Nick Duckwiler (left) and Ryan Tuck from Warby Parker (right) in our office. (📷: Mitch Boyer)

Last month, Codecademy and Warby Parker came together to work on a special Learn SQL from Scratch Capstone Project. It was during this time when I met Ryan Tuck, a Data Engineer at Warby, who played a major part in this partnership. So when he decided to drop by our office for the final QA round, I had to break out my notebook and ask some questions. Enjoy.

Hey Ryan, let’s start off with a question I’ve had for a while — what is a Data Engineer? (Is it similar to a Data Analyst or a Software Engineer?)

At Warby Parker, data engineers are responsible for creating and maintaining the plumbing required to support the data and reporting needs of the business. We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.

What languages/frameworks do you use at Warby?

On data engineering, we use Python as our general purpose programming language, as do most of the other teams in our Technology department. When it comes to databases, we use PostgreSQL for the majority of our SQL needs, and are beginning to use Amazon Athena and Google BigQuery for some of our larger datasets. We use Looker as our exclusive business intelligence entry point to all of this data.

What are some of the projects you worked on?

I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of of smart people in every department at our company to help them solve their varied data needs, from reconciling financial data with the Accounting team to automating and modeling standardized performance metrics for our team of over 200 customer experience advisors.

As part of a team of five supporting the data needs of a rapidly growing company, I’ve tried where possible to focus on helping our analysts solve their own problems. This includes helping people learn Python and commit to our codebase, guiding the creation of data models in SQL, and encouraging people to submit pull requests to add features in Looker, our BI tool.

Seeing dozens of otherwise “non-technical” colleagues opening up PRs on a daily basis, and consequently being part of the democratization of tech that we value at Warby Parker, is probably the most rewarding “project” I’ve been a part of.

One project finished recently during our first annual “Hackweek” is called Pipes, which allows anyone at the company to easily move large amounts of data from wherever to wherever (Looker, Google Sheets, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, etc) on a regular cadence, or manually through a simple one-line chatbot interface. The adoption has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re looking to grow this sort of tooling out even more.

“We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.”

What got you into the data field?

I’ve always been drawn to analytical fields like math, and became pretty proficient in Excel during some internships in college. Once I had learned to program and learned more about data science and its applications in artificial intelligence, I knew that anything I could do to immerse myself in the world of data would be a step in the right direction.

Three and a half years ago, I landed a job as a junior software engineer at Warby Parker not fully knowing what I was in for, but am so glad I got the opportunity to help build tools to support an interesting and ever-changing data-driven culture here.

Where did you learn SQL and Python?

I had a background in C++, and was exposed to Python through an Intro to Data Science course. When Warby Parker hired me onto the Data team in 2015, I had never written a SQL query in my life, but picked it up quickly and within a few months started up internal SQL training classes, which I still teach on a monthly basis.

What does your tattoo say?

The ultimate cheatsheet.

This is Bayes’ Theorem, which is an equation that describes how to update probabilities given new evidence. Two summers ago I worked on building a tool to help predict weekly fantasy football performance. Some colleagues suggested a Bayesian approach would be appropriate, since there aren’t really enough data points in an NFL season to be able to use statistical approaches that require larger datasets, and I’d want to regularly update my predictions after each player’s latest performance.

I did a deep dive into understanding the (simple) math underlying Bayes’ Theorem and came out of that experience with a whole new worldview, understanding my entire knowledge of the world as a big and intricate probabilistic model that I was continuously updating with every experience I ever have. It was pretty transformative, and I figured that was worth a tattoo.

What is a concept in SQL/Python that’s essential to your work?

Donald Knuth said, “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.” I’ve generally found this to be true, and try to live by it in my work. For example, I’ll generally prefer to keep a data model simple by rebuilding it for all time on a daily basis using a single SQL query instead of making a more complicated model that requires iteratively adding to a table, keeping track of state, updated timestamps, when something last ran, etc.

A wise man once said, “Duplicating data makes things go fast,” but databases are already impressively fast to begin with, without implementing anything to improve performance. Ultimately, I almost always approach a problem thinking about optimizing for my time over machine time, for readability over performance, and for introducing as little cognitive overhead as is required by the problem at hand. Only once performance issues or readability issues present themselves will some code be worth a rewrite.

Last question! Since you wrote Warby Parker’s internal SQL training courses, I know there gotta be some inner Curriculum Developer in you. Can you teach a SQL concept in 2 minutes?

Sure! Have you ever written a query that yields some result set and you think, “I’d love to query the stuff I just produced like it was a table?” Enter the WITH clause.

Suppose I have a mega query that gives the transaction summaries:

select
    transactions.date as transaction_date,
    sum(items.price) as total_cost,
    count(*) as number_of_items
from
    transactions
inner join
    customers
    on
    customers.id = transactions.customer_id
inner join
    transaction_items
    on
    transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
inner join
    items
    on
    items.id = transaction_items.item_id

Using WITH, I can create a temporary table within my query that I can SELECT from and treat it just like a regular old table.

I will put everything from the previous query in a parentheses and use WITH to give it the name transaction_summaries.

Then I’ll apply the date and customer filtering down below for a more readable query, to separate out all the JOIN logic from the actual WHERE filters that I want to apply on that data.

with transaction_summaries as (
  select
      transactions.date as transaction_date,
      sum(items.price) as total_cost,
      count(*) as number_of_items
  from
      transactions
  inner join
      customers
      on
      customers.id = transactions.customer_id
  inner join
      transaction_items
      on
      transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
  inner join
      items
      on
      items.id = transaction_items.item_id
)

select 
        * 
from 
        transaction_summaries
where 
        first_name = 'beyonce'
        and 
        transaction_date > '2018–01–01'
order by 
        total_cost desc
limit 
        5

If you’re familiar with subqueries, this does a similar thing but makes the SQL far more readable, even if your query isn’t quite as performant as it would have been. This is essentially an implementation of the mantra “Don’t Repeat Yourself” that’s common in the world of programming.

Incredible. And love the SQL styling! 😍

Huge shout out to Ryan and the whole Warby Parker team for making this partnership happen. Special hat tips for behind-the-scenes support from:

Lon Binder, Chief Technology Officer, Warby Parker
Maddie Tierney, Executive Assistant, Warby Parker
Kayla Robbins, Executive Assistant, Warby Parker
Kaki Read, Senior Communications Manager, Warby Parker
Isabel Seely, Senior Brand Manager, Warby Parker

It’s been an absolute pleasure. And of course, the fam at Codecademy. You know who you are. Couldn’t do it without you.

Ask a Software Engineer: Airbnb Edition 🏡

By

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March 11, 2019

Ask a Software Engineer: Airbnb Edition 🏡

A Day in the Life of a Software Engineer (via Life of Luba)

With Airbnb came a revolution of sorts in the world of vacation travel and culture. We sat down with Luba Yudasina, a YouTuber, an opera singer, and a Software Engineer on the Airbnb’s Homes Platform team, to discuss software engineering and her programming journey—from Codecademy to Airbnb!

Hey Luba, let’s start with the basics! What does a Software Engineer on the Platform team do at Airbnb?

Homes Platform’s mission is to create the building blocks to power all Homes categories. Any project undertaken by our team should be reusable and extensible in some way. This means that as a backend engineer, I have a lot of opportunities to work on impactful technical projects that create systems and services to support Homes, as well as collaborate across teams to come up with the best architectural decisions and designs.

Recently, our team wrote a blog post on classifying Room Types into categories using Machine Learning and computer vision. The room-type classification problem largely resembles the ImageNet classification problem, except our team’s model outcomes are customized room-types.

After a few experiments with various models, the team chose ResNet50 due to its good balance between model performance and computation time. To make it compatible with our use case, we added two extra fully connected layers and a Softmax activation in the end.

Categorizing listing photos into room types (via the Airbnb Engineering & Data Science blog)

What languages/frameworks do you use at Airbnb?

At Airbnb we use Ruby, Java, Kotlin, JavaScript, Swift, Ruby on Rails, React for frontend, iOS and Android for native development.

Let’s rewind a little bit. Coming from a chemical engineering background in college, how did you make the switch into programming?

I went to the University of Waterloo in Canada—a university with the biggest co-op program in the world. Co-op means that to obtain a bachelor’s degree you must complete a certain number of internships. If you are in Engineering at Waterloo, you must complete 5 internships to graduate.

In my first and second years, I interned at chemical engineering companies and afterwards I couldn’t see myself working in the field full-time. That’s why I’m particularly grateful that I studied at Waterloo: if not for co-op, I probably would not have realized I didn’t want to work in chemical engineering until getting a full-time job after graduation.

I happened to have a lot of friends in Computer Science and Software Engineering right when I realized Chem Eng wasn’t for me. They really encouraged me to try coding, and when I decided to follow their lead I never looked back! My first online programming course was Web Development on Codecademy 🙂

“It’s a really cool time to be a software engineer and even cooler to be a female software engineer, because this is the time when women start to embrace their own unique identities and be ok with not being ‘one of the dudes.'”
-Luba Yudasina

How did you land an internship at Yelp?

When I decided I wanted to learn computer science on my own, my goal was to get an internship in the field because working as a software engineer at a tech company would be the best test to really know if it was for me.

I happened to be in Munich, Germany on academic exchange for a whole year when I was learning how to code, so I hustled as much as I could while being there to get experience to learn quicker and have something to put down on my tech resume.

Almost immediately after arriving in Germany, I got a part time job as a developer at a game publishing company. I had a good friend in Computer Science at my German university: her and I ended up working on an Android app as a side project, etc. When I was ready, I started preparing for technical interviews. I then leveraged my network to refer me to companies and do mock technical interviews with me.

Yelp was really random though—a Yelp recruiter looked at my LinkedIn profile and didn’t even message me, but I messaged them anyway asking about internship opportunities, and that’s how I got my interview there!

1_EHELVEIPNp19gv_RsIU-Ng

Airbnb HQ in San Franciso

What is an essential app/item in your day-to-day?

Code searching! A lot of software engineering is problem solving and a lot of it is understanding other people’s code and the reasoning behind writing it a certain way. Searching through the codebases is almost essential to my day to day. Whenever I build something new or build on top of already existing tech, I need to understand how it works and is written, and code search is vital to this.

At Airbnb we use Google’s Codesearch for these purposes, but developers (myself included) also frequently use their IDEs to search for relevant code. I mostly use RubyMine or IntelliJ (depending on the codebase I’m working with).

In your videos, you’ve mentioned the intersection of gender and technology. Can you speak a bit more about that?

It’s a really cool time to be a software engineer and even cooler to be a female software engineer, because this is the time when women start to embrace their own unique identities and be ok with not being “one of the dudes.”

I think it’s particularly important to redefine the stereotypes, and I hope that with my own example I can show young girls and women interested in the field that you don’t have to give up your feminine side to be a software engineer and still be into fashion, or makeup, or art (I personally sing opera) and have other interests outside of coding and be successful in the field.

Before we wrap up, do you have anything else you would like to say to our learners?

Don’t be discouraged, learn and absorb as much as you can! If you don’t understand a concept or can’t build a project right away, know that with practice, perseverance and concentration you will get there!

Take advantage of such amazing tools as Codecademy that are there for you to take and learn. Learning anything new can be frustrating, but knowing that you can do it, staying curious, asking questions and not losing your motivation is the key to success.

Huge shoutout to Luba for this insightful interview. It’s always incredibly moving to see a Codecademy learner go on to do bigger things. Go subscribe to her YouTube channel, Life of Luba.

And thank you to the whole Homes Platform/Engineering team at Airbnb for the support. Check out their wonderful open source projects on airbnb.io.

Making Connections: 53 Teenagers Suggest Creative Ways to Link School Curriculum to the World of 2019

By

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March 11, 2019

Making Connections: 53 Teenagers Suggest Creative Ways to Link School Curriculum to the World of 2019

Anieya Archuleta-Valdez, a student from Utah, connects the Op-Doc above with Elie Wiesel’s “Night.”

For the runners-up, we are publishing short excerpts from their essays — enough, we hope, to give readers an understanding of why and how the writer connected the two texts.

Anieya Archuleta-Valdez, Nuames High School, Layton, Utah: “Night” by Elie Wiesel and “Wuilly Arteaga: Fighting Venezuela’s Repression With My Violin”

“Night” had me dumbstruck and in turmoil while reading. It transported me to another place, and I could almost feel the pain and need for survival one might have felt. However, there was one important part of the book that stood out to me: Juliek’s farewell. He played Beethoven’s Concerto, something the SS forbid him from doing. He broke the silence that filled the darkness and played the last piece he ever would.
Much like Juliek, Wuilly Arteaga played in defiance against the Cuban government. He too lived in restraint and was denied his “basic” human rights. He was beaten, tortured, and witnessed his comrades die before him.
Despite this, Juliek’s and Wuilly’s music wasn’t filled with hatred or anger. Their songs reflected pain and hope, but, most of all, both of their performances conveyed forgiveness.

Mahesh Agarwal, Berwick Academy, Exeter, N.H.: “Oryx and Crake” by Margaret Atwood and “Chinese Scientist Claims to Use Crispr to Make First Genetically Edited Babies”

A mass-distributed drug has eradicated Homo Sapiens—an inefficient, violent and sex-crazed people. Now, “Crakers” inhabit the earth. This gentle new species has a digestive tract that can process grass and skin that is UV protected and blemish free. Devoid of lust, Crakers breed during a specified season and live until they’re programmed to die at age thirty, avoiding the ailments that come with midlife. Such is the vision of Crake, a bio-engineer in Margaret Atwood’s novel “Oryx and Crake.” By spreading a virus and “improving” humanity, the geneticist’s desire for perfection propels him across both scientific boundaries and moral ones.
Atwood’s story, although obviously fictional, deals with a relevant topic: the ethics surrounding genetic modification. Two months ago, Chinese scientist He Jiankui reportedly created the world’s the first genetically edited babies: twin girls named Lulu and Nana. In order to give the embryos HIV-resistance, Dr. He used CRISPR Cas9, a chemical pair of “scissors” that can cut and paste sections of DNA. Dr. He caused global uproar. Gene-editing is still in its infancy and many pointed out that any mistake would affect not only Lulu and Nana but all of their future descendants. Instead of being championed as a step towards a healthier future, this experiment was seen as a rogue move that used humans as lab rats.

Vaidehi B, Deccan International School, Bangalore, India: “1984” by George Orwell and “Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret”

On the surface, it seems as though the world of Winston Smith is a hyperbole, a worst-case scenario, an exaggerated version of your reality. However, upon closer examination and analysis, you notice the uncanny and surprising similarities between the reality that Orwell paints in the book and the reality you live in. The book alludes to several themes that are relevant in the 21st century, the two major ones being privacy and freedom.
“Big Brother is watching,” is a statement that is pervasive throughout the novel, and it makes you think about the Big Brother in your reality, a significant segment of which may be comprised of social media- Facebook friends, Instagram likes, WhatsApp instant messages. These big tech companies send out assured proclamations of security and data privacy, but in reality, every millisecond of our activity on these apps is being fed into the machinery of profit-generation.

Christine Baek, Northview High School, Johns Creek, Ga.: “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding and “A Dictatorship Is Rising in My Country, Again”

I watched as the boys [in “Lord of the Flies”] shed their wide-eyed purity as easily as snake skin, staining their newly naked forms with bloodshed and decay. The sovereign dictatorship molded from the ashes preceded a society rooted in nationalism based on fear and manipulation and impassioned acts of violence. In the end, the children had become their greatest fear and their greatest enemy; the island was no longer a refuge, but a battleground as the inhabitants descended into chaos.
Just months later, I read an op-ed essay: “A Dictatorship Is Rising in My Country, Again” addressing the reality of Daniel Ortega’s regime as a “return to dictatorship.” President Ortega, once a symbol of revolution and freedom from the violent Somoza dynasty’s reign, is now the head of the sprawling Sandinista government. The brutalization of innocent people, the burning of books, and the organized attacks on religion are all done to strip away the human rights of Nicaragua’s citizens. They are all acts I have seen in the nightmarish dystopian novels flooding my school supply list.

Luke Briody, Byram Hills High School, Bedford, N.Y.: “Maus” by Art Spiegelman and “Migrants in Tijuana Run to U.S. Border, but Fall Back in Face of Tear Gas”

Liberty’s lantern flickers in the eastern skies as the sun blazes down upon Tijuana, Mexico. While American citizens sit down on their couches to enjoy the Saturday morning cartoons, a caravan of migrant families are immersed in chants and cheers of freedom; they have traveled hundreds—thousands—of miles in search of sanctuary. Yet here at their new home and haven, they find instead a new hell, as tear gas rains down upon them. Suffocating. Silencing. But why? Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen suggests violence by migrants, but Maya Averbuch & Elisabeth Malkin imply in “Migrants in Tijuana Run to U.S. Border, but Fall Back in Face of Tear Gas” that the true impetus was nothing more than the color of the migrants’ skin: the beginnings of an American hecatomb.
Currently, my English class is exploring Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” and its classification into a genre, considering the controversy of its content and graphic medium. Hailed as an allegory, a comic strip, and a pure biography, Maus encompasses all literary realms… But what if the ambiguous nature of this piece’s identity was intentional? Spiegelman created “Maus” to illustrate the strength of an interconnected narrative of past and present, rather than the bare bones of one strained through the polluted dichotomies of genre. This concept applies to all levels of identity created by and for humans: every border, belief, and birthright. When Hitler perceived the Jews as threats, he did not identify them as humans, or lovers, or families, but as animals. With the isolation of an entire people from their true identity, we irrevocably lost six million of our own kin.

Sarah Fulton, Flint Hill School, Oakton, Va.: The psychological term “choice blindness” and “Why Trump Supporters Don’t Mind His Lies”

In psychology, we learned about a term: choice blindness. Essentially, a person becomes so consumed with their own choice that they fail to see any development or change in the situation that would change their opinion. It’s part of a bigger circumstance called the introspection illusion. People tend to be more confident and stubborn than they should be in their choices; we will even go to the extent of defending an argument that’s wrong, just because we made it.
Unfortunately, this is reminiscent of the political climate today. In the article “Why Trump Supporters Don’t Mind His Lies” by Daniel A. Efron, it states that Donald Trump made over 2,400 false statements in under 400 days in office, however, his Republican approval ratings are at 82 percent. The excuses people actually believe these falsehoods or they just don’t mind them because they’re a result of his confidence; nonetheless, I believe it stems from this introspective illusion. Specific to our president, in 2016, voters made a choice and now that that choice may not be as ideal, people still want to believe they were right. This isn’t specific to Trump either. In all major issues, there tends to be two sides that get so caught up in their own viewpoint that they refuse to even acknowledge the other side.

Gabriela Garity, Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart, Miami, Fla.: Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and “Climate Denial Was the Crucible for Trumpism”

The deadliest wildfire in history, the costliest hurricane ever to hit the United States, and multiple exhortatory reports from the world’s leading experts seemed to have no effect on the most powerful man in the world’s belief that climate change is a “gigantic hoax.” It does not require a scientific degree to notice that as carbon emissions, deforestation, and pollution have increased, so have global temperatures and natural disasters. Why, in our abundance of knowledge, do those in power turn their backs to the truth? Paul Krugman, author of “Climate Denial Was the Crucible for Trumpism,” says the reason is a combination of “corruption, willful ignorance, conspiracy theorizing and intimidation.” Examining the relationship between knowledge and politics, Plato in his “Allegory of the Cave” presents a similar list of reasons: lack of sense of duty, private interests, and corrupt political ambition.
In Plato’s allegory, a group of prisoners chained inside a cave, unable to turn their heads to look around, have spent their entire lives believing that the shadows in front of them are “real” objects. One prisoner escapes and enters the world of light, recognizing that his life in the cave lacked objective truth. When he informs the other prisoners of his findings and attempts to liberate them, they threaten to put him to death. Plato applies his allegory to politics, demonstrating how the truth is sacrificed in favor of political gain. Sound familiar?

You Young Kim, Seoul International School, Seoul, Korea: Virginia Woolf’s “Professions for Women” and “How I Came to Hate the Word ‘Wife’”

As bizarre as it may sound to an American reader, [aegyo (a Korean word for acting cute)] is encouraged in Korean women. Female celebrities are often asked to show aegyo on television; a young female singer named Kang Jiyoung once incurred much hatred online for refusing to show aegyo on a talk show. Aegyo has long become a characteristic many Korean men expect in women, and even many women concede that it is a quality that women should possess.
Growing up in such a society, I did not ponder the implications of aegyo deeply until I came across Virginia Woolf’s “Professions for Women” in my AP English Language class. Delivered in 1931 before a branch of the National Society for Women’s Service, the speech celebrates Woolf’s successful killing of the Angel in the House (the idea that a woman should be devoted and submissive to her husband). I rejoiced in her success only briefly, however; my eyes lingered over her lament that she still has “many ghosts to fight, many prejudices to overcome.” Indeed, the conventionality of men restricts a woman’s freedom. A woman can no longer be herself once she is concerned about the male opinion of herself.
Almost a century after Woolf’s speech, women still struggle to fight against the expectations thrust upon themselves—their Angels in the House—as well as men’s conventions of gender roles. In “How I Came to Hate the Word ‘Wife,’” Marcia Walker finds herself feeling strangely possessive about housework that she previously resented after finally acceding to the label “wife.” Despite feeling distressed by the traditional duties associated with this new “role,” she is unable to redefine its responsibilities in a way that would not compromise her freedom and identity.
Just like Walker’s revelations that she does more housework as a wife than her unmarried self, women in Korea, myself included, often find ourselves raising our voices and omitting syllables—whether consciously or not—to appear more feminine, as society expects.

Simon Levien, Sparta High School, Sparta, N.J.: “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka and “Some Good News, and a Hard Truth, About Science”

There’s a famous line in German. Translated, it goes: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into a monstrous, verminous bug.” It comes from Franz Kafka’s most-celebrated novel, “The Metamorphosis,” in which salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up, suddenly transformed into an insect-like creature, or bug, or cockroach, or dung beetle, or…we don’t really know. Metamorphosing “The Metamorphosis” into English has been a translator’s quandary for over a century. The German word Kafka uses in place of “bug” is “Ungeziefer” (and yes, it’s a capitalized proper noun) with no direct English translation. Translators search their entomological glossaries for suitable “Ungeziefer” alternatives but to no consensus.
…But the problem of translation doesn’t just stick to the literary world, it very much extends into our own lives through science communication. Science and technical journalists are tasked with the same challenge as literary translators. They need to take dense, jargon-filled research articles and clarify them into succinct feature pieces that both catch the eye and stay true to scientific findings. Effectively, they—just like Kafka’s translators—must interpret and innovate to get a text from language A (the scientific world) to language B (the general public). And sometimes, compromises must be made for simplicity’s sake.
But between staying true to hard data and embellishing it for readability (or for clicks) is a balancing act. Fake news writers and conspiracy curators are not-so impartial translators, distorting information, misrepresenting statistics for their agendas. And there’s major ramifications in purposeful mistranslation—swung votes, misinformed minds, unvaccinated children. It inspired the recent March for Science this Science Times article deals with. As literary translators defend the sanctity of translated works, hoping to be as close to the original as they can, science journalism and science’s portrayal in the media must follow suit. In the words of the article’s author Alan Burdick: “That’s the task of science journalism, to tell that story, as well as keeping the enterprise accountable.”

Peyton Narr, Vanden High School, Vacaville, Calif.: “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson and “How I Used Art to Get Through Trauma”

“Speak” is about a freshman named Melinda Sordino whose sense of self-worth is obliterated after being raped at a high school party. Not only does she face the ordinary trials of transitioning to high school, but also faces depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, bullying, severe loneliness, insecurity, fear, anxiety, and many symptoms of PTSD. At the beginning of the story she feels utterly isolated, unable to voice her seemingly endless suffering. Throughout her journey of reclaiming her life back, she rediscovers her love of art and uses it to empower herself and heal.
The tragic event inspiring the New York Times article “How I Used Art to Get Through Trauma” by Terry Sullivan occurred only six years prior to the initial publishing of “Speak.” Sullivan witnessed a mass shooting on her evening train commute in which six people died and nineteen others were injured. Although she fled physically unharmed, she was left with mental scars and suffering. She faced difficulty when attempting to accurately translate her emotions into words, so she turned to her love of art to express herself.

Jenna Park, Blair Academy, Blairstown, N.J.: “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury and “Technology Has Destroyed Reality”

Bradbury paints a world where technology is so advanced that it creates confusion between reality and fantasy. Although the short story was published way back in 1950, almost 70 years from today, it astonished me how Bradbury foresaw the implications of technology on people’s lives. The New York Times article, “Technology Has Destroyed Reality” by Hito Steyerl, correlates closely with Bradbury’s work. Steyerl shares with her audience that technology “divides and fragments” people, just as Bradbury’s nursery ultimately separates and destroys the family’s relationship.
Although there is no roaring lion in Steyerl’s piece, she describes how contemporary technology provides a “custom-made” reality for “your preferences” if you “don’t like the reality you’re facing.” As Bradbury highlights the dangers and fears of relying on technology too much, Steyerl underscores how our very real technology promotes fake news, false reports, and rumors, as well as technology’s effects on the workforce.

Paige Patton, New Tech High@Coppell, Irving, Tex.: “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and “Military Veterans Respond to Our Cover Story About Moral Injury”

Pearl Harbor, D-Day, and the Evacuation of Saigon are the war stories we always think about. Our society focuses on the epic battles and forgets about the quiet moments or the loud moments that seem quiet: the death of a friend, the killing of an enemy, the moment when the feeling of war finally settles in. Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried,” describes these instances that affect soldiers’ lives forever. The New York Times also provides anecdotes in “Military Veterans Respond to Our Cover Story About Moral Injury” that describe the psychological injury to veterans.
“The Things They Carried” is a succinct compilation of stories and experiences about the Vietnam War. They range in both length and drama, but each reveals something about the realities of Vietnam. He recounts how a friend was playing with a grenade and it exploded, forcing O’Brien to shake his human remains down from a tree. O’Brien also tells of the first time he killed a man. It wasn’t intentional. It was an “automatic” response, he claims. The victim was a young Vietnamese man walking along a path adjacent to the American ambush team. However, the most important aspect of this story is how O’Brien presents several different versions: one for his daughter, one for the reader, one for himself. The truth is subject to change, and it is constantly evolving to match the circumstance. Civilians never hear the real stories, just the versions they find appealing. We encourage the lying because we are dissatisfied with the mundane.
Veterans often suppress these stories when they return home. In The New York Times, veterans from across wars tell about the internal struggles they faced upon returning home. Huck Flynn from Colorado, “pretend[ed] that he was O.K.” to the guests at his daughter’s birthday party. Sean Case remarks, “my young cousin thanked me for keeping him safe, but I couldn’t bring myself to respond for fear of lying.” These veterans are forced to present a certain truth to those around them while wrestling with the realities of how war has damaged them. These struggles often manifest themselves in the forms of outbursts, addictions, suicide, and murder.

Amy-Grace Ratanapratum, Fountain Valley High School, Huntington Beach, Calif.: “Why I Write” by Terry Tempest Williams and “The Feminist Power of Embroidery”

In such a socially and politically tumultuous time, how can we take a step away from the utter chaos of it all? With the clamor of so many voices, each scrambling to be heard over the other, how can we hope to hear our own?
Stronger importance has been placed on the “self” as of late, and with that importance comes the need for self-expression. There needs to be a way to make ourselves heard—not just to an audience, but to ourselves. Terry Tempest Williams, in “Why I Write,” explains how her writing does just that. Our class had first read it in order to pinpoint exactly why we, as individuals, chose to write. At first glance, the poetry of it struck a chord with me. In it, I saw a piece of myself. We went around, articulating our own purposes for writing, and I was surprised to find that many of us had similar reasoning: “to explain…to express…to understand the world around [ourselves].” Williams, too, “[writes] to make peace with the things [she] cannot control.” These similarities couldn’t be a coincidence.
The act of creating for yourself, and yourself alone, transports you from the turmoil of the world and creates a space where you can be alone with your thoughts. It can be “an act of slowness,” allowing you to process the constant flood of information from behind screens. Or, as Tammy Kim writes in “The Feminist Power of Embroidery,” it can be “transgressive in its silence and domesticity.”
Kim expresses a similar sentiment to Willams’ in “The Feminist Power of Embroidery,” admitting that while “resistance is necessarily public…there is a corresponding need for time indoors, where [she] can be still and let the mind wander.”

Sarahi, Verona Area High School, Verona, Wis.: “Enrique’s Journey” by Sonia Nazario and “Trump and the Baby Snatchers”

Sonia Nazario had written “Enrique’s Journey” to depict the realities of immigrants, especially in recent decades, depicting the journey of struggles immigrants go through, such as gangs, bandits, lack of food and water, and trying to avoid border patrol. As “Enrique’s Journey” humanizes and brings awareness to the situations of immigrants, President Donald Trump’s language tells another standpoint. New York Times author, Charles Blow had written “Trump and the Baby Snatcher”, after President Trump enforced families to be separated and incarcerated because Trump viewed them as “unlawful immigrants” and “criminals”; therefore, the foul language and actions used by Trump dehumanizes all immigrants who cross the border.

Annie Sheridan, Marblehead High School, Marblehead, Mass.: “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley and “Now Mental Health Patients Can Specify Their Care Before Hallucinations and Voices Overwhelm Them”

Both pieces regard bioethical issues of their times and unfair treatment given to people because of their differences. The creation of Frankenstein’s monster is a great bioethical dilemma because it is be a major scientific discovery but its morality is debatable. The bioethical issue in the article is whether mentally unstable patients should get full control of their treatment.
The amount of respect that Mr. Singer, profiled in the New York Times article, and the creature from Frankenstein received from others are similar. Mr. Singer, who suffers from bipolar and borderline personality disorder, was locked in a room with a guard at the door for 20 hours after visiting the hospital. Both of them were treated like they were animals that were to be put in cages. Even Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein,” wanted to see the creature in anguish.
When reading “Frankenstein,” it can be hard to empathize with the monster because he is just that, a monster. I never felt strong sympathy for him because he acted so inhumane. Surprisingly, the treatment that Mr. Singer received in the NY Times article allowed me to understand how the monster felt.

Tommy Sherman, Bloomfield Hills High School, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.: “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett and “Going Nowhere Fast on Climate, Year After Year”

In this article, author Paul Bledsoe displays society’s lack of action over the past 30 years, from the meager response to the staggering climate reports of the 1980s to the current withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Accords, ending his article with another warning about the rapid warming of the planet and the costs to humanity in the near and far future. Like we care.
Although tempting, to think this increasing disregard of our global problems is merely a modern phenomenon would truly be naive. Societal ignorance is a never-ceasing historical habit, which has spread into our literature through the escapist genre, often infused with political allegory.
In my English class, we recently read the play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett, a play originally written in France in 1949. The play follows two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, as they wait for a man named Godot for reasons unknown to the reader. As Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot, they converse about things they wish to do: hang themselves from a nearby tree; never see each other again; and move from where they are, ultimately ceasing to wait for Godot. However, Vladimir and Estragon severely lack the motivation to take almost any action throughout the play, expressed ironically at the end of Act I when Beckett writes,
ESTRAGON: Well, shall we go?
VLADIMIR: Yes, let’s go.
They do not move. Curtain.
…Beckett’s incessant displays of inaction are not only purposeful, but also a satirical stab at the ignorance of the political elite in post WWII France. Although his play was written for another time, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot still has relevance today, as the problem of lethargy has surfaced again with respect to global warming.

Janani Srinivas, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, Plainsboro, N.J.: World War II and the Holocaust and “China Is Detaining Muslims in Vast Numbers. The Goal: ‘Transformation.’”

“Never Again,” that is what we said after World War II, never again would such prejudice corrupt the thoughts of our world. “Never Again,” was the anthem of the people after the 9/11 attacks, never again would we let ourselves be caught off guard like that ever again. “Never Again,” is what we say after every single school shooting that has happened over the past decade, never again would we let our schools become war zones. It is funny though, how history keeps on repeating itself, isn’t it. Now the situation in China with the Uighur Muslims is no different, yet again are we imprisoning people for being who they were born to be, or who they chose to be. Throughout my education I have learned about the Holocaust in different subjects to varying degrees. In science, we learned about how the Germans used chlorine against the american troops. In language arts, we read the “Diary of Anne Frank” and other books detailing the life of a Jew during this time. And in history, we learned about everything leading up to the War and all the catalysts and warning signs. At the time my peers and I just went through the motions, did the homework and took the tests. Only after reading about the Uighur Muslims did I understand why we were being taught the same unit year after year.

Valerie Wang and Kisha Yan, Richard Montgomery High School, Bethesda, Md.: Newton’s Third Law and “Women Will Pay for the Mess of the Kavanaugh Confirmation”

Newton published his laws of motion in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Not only have these laws been the cornerstones of the field of physics, but they’re also applicable to the metaphysical world. Perhaps the most often quoted is Newton’s third law, which states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Simply put, it explains why your knuckles hurt while boxing, or why a tennis ball bounces. Outside of its implications in a classroom setting and its fundamental interpretations, the general principle stands: everything you do will have repercussions, making it crucial to remain tenacious in our words and actions.
For decades, people have been urged to speak up about sexual assault, yet society still tiptoes around the subject like it is broken glass. The past year has brought momentous change, with pivotal figures such as Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and Julie Swetnick shedding much needed light on the issue of sexual harassment. Women around the world, realizing that they were not alone, were empowered by the courage of others to share their own stories, sometimes earning justice for the crimes committed against them. Although the rise in such testimonials should have solely been constructive in the treatment of women in society, it has caused unanticipated backlash and damage.
The article headline, “Women Will Pay for the Mess of the Kavanaugh Confirmation,” likely shocked readers initially, especially those for whom Ford has become a beacon of inspiration. Yet, reading into the article reveals the author’s disheartening, albeit true, conclusion that the women involved, the very people who ought to have benefitted from Ford’s testimony, are unfortunately losing just as much as they should have gained. Hence, being equal, but opposite.

Maxwell T. Wilson, Cresskill High School, Cresskill, N.J.: “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams and “China Is a Dangerous Rival, and America Should Treat It Like One”

Two partners, polar opposites in attitude and personality, find themselves in a relationship built not on love but on carnal needs, violence, dominance, and submission. One is delicate, valuing kindness and virtue. The other is aggressive, even animalistic. It works because the former submits to the latter, rationalizing and forgiving abusive behavior.
American literature buffs might recognize this relationship as that of Tennessee Williams’ Stanley and Stella Kowalski, two main characters in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” But the pattern of dysfunction also describes another star-crossed couple: The United States and China.
A recent article in The New York Times entitled “China Is a Dangerous Rival, and America Should Treat It Like One” noted that the Chinese are simultaneously one of our greatest trading partners, and one of our greatest strategic enemies. Their ideology is antithetical to ours; they steal our intellectual property and rattle at us a military saber built with our dollars. It seems that just as Stella is dangerously attracted to Stanley’s dark masculinity, the U.S. is addicted to The Red Dragon’s cheap goods.

Audrey Yin, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, N.H.: “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and “China Breaks Silence on Muslim Detention Camps, Calling Them ‘Humane’”

I first heard about China’s hidden internment camps through a snapchat news story. Located in Xinjiang, these camps hold tens of thousands of Muslims. The Chinese government refers to them as students, bragging on public media about their “generous” living conditions. However, the truth of the situation has been brought to light by various news sources. These Muslims are being brainwashed and stripped of their identities. Chinese officials ignore Islam values like the strict adherence to permitted “halal” foods and dress code, instead detaining Muslims and force-feeding them communist propaganda.
It is shocking to see how individualism was not allowed fifty years ago and are still not allowed today. Reflecting on what happened to my grandparents during the Cultural Revolution, and seeing picture after picture of Muslims reciting laws and being forced to do hard, manual labor, I wondered how it was possible for oppressors to oppress. I realise now that this isn’t a simple matter of empathy. Maybe the incentive is more of an absolute power for the communist regime.
In English class we watched the Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She spoke of how one version of what you hear has the power to totally infest your perspective on someone or something. Are these Chinese officials, the ones who are running the Muslim “schools”, hearing single stories from the government? Are the Muslims trapped in these camps hearing single stories from these officials? When these shallow, one dimensional stories become somebody’s truth, do we start forgetting about putting each other in each other’s shoes, regardless of religions or customs?

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March 10, 2019