Holiday Spending

Gifts are the most common money spenders during the holidays. Christmas is a big holiday where a lot of gifts are purchased and given to people all around the world, whether it’s for a grandchild or a sister out of state. When people hear the word Christmas, they think of gifts. Do you?  You may think differently; you may think of spending your money to people in need.  A lot of Christmas gifts consume a large expense including UGGs or IPads. Instead of buying gifts for others, why don’t you give the money to the people suffering to buy a house or help the starving kids in different counties? I’m not sure people understand that others can’t afford expensive items. I know some people especially kids love toys and love the thought of opening their favorite present that’s underneath the Christmas tree on Christmas morning, but you shouldn’t be thinking of toys, think of getting together as a family and being able to hug your mom or dad on Christmas and say “Merry Christmas” because not many people get to do that. Christmas isn’t just about gifts, it’s about the birth of Christ and some people forget that. According to many articles, it is the one holiday with the most money spent. Christmas may be the largest holiday in terms of expenses, but Thanksgiving is also a very expensive holiday. Turkey and other food pertaining to Thanksgiving dinner can be very expensive. Not all people may eat the traditional Thanksgiving dinner but a lot of people do and the expenses including the food are expensive. Any Holiday including food can be expensive. Including Christmas, you have to buy the food for the Christmas parties. Valentine’s Day is also a food expense holiday because of the dinners relationships go to. Also the gifts the girlfriends get include diamonds and jewelry. I believe people don’t understand the meaning of a dollar bill. Some people see it useless and some people see it as a big effect on their life. People use their money differently and I don’t think some of those people understand that instead of buying something you may not use in a couple of years, they can give the money to someone in need so they can use it for a lifetime.

OneRepublic Native Album

OneRepublic is an American rock band from Colorado Springs, Colorado. They formed as a band in 1996. The lead singer, Ryan Tedder, had become friends with Zach Filkins their senior year. They made their rock band “a beautiful mess” a good start with attending at small gigs and coffee shops until they parted their ways and went to college. They reunited with an addition of a couple more members in the band in 2002 and wrote their first full album.

As the years went on, they had a lot of success with singles being on the US Billboard Hot 100. Also having their second album, waking up, number 18 on the US Billboard 200 and selling over 200,00 copies in the US. Waking Up was later certified Gold in the US for sales of over 500,000.OneRepublic supported many other bands on tour including Maroon 5 and Pink.

OneRepublic’s third album, Native, hit success with many singles including “If I Lose Myself” and “Counting Stars.” Counting stars has become their most successful single from the album thus far, and the band's biggest release in recent years.

Counting stars is very fast pace with the verses showing a joyful view.  I really enjoyed listening to this song and many songs on the album. A lot of songs on the Native album have a message including this one. The life lesson in this song is to be hopeful and optimistic in life. The music video to this single was very clever.  Ryan Tedder represents a broke man in the bottom of a filthy, wrecked building. It shows the toughness of life and the many problems that go with it. You get through life with hope that it will get better. The other people in the music video are having a great time in the upper part of the building dancing and partying. This shows the people with no stress in their life. The alligator in the music video represents the greedy people of the money hungry people.

I was a really big fan of OneRepublic’s first hit “Apologize” on their first album, although I never listened to a lot of the rest of the songs on that album. After the single “Counting Stars” came out I started to listen to more of OneRepublic. I would give this album honestly 4.5 stars out of 5. OneRepublic has a lot of energy in every one of their songs from beginning to end.  I really enjoyed listening to their songs on the native album.

Album Reviews

By Caryn Ganz

October 15, 2013

Scotty McCreery

*Country*

3/5

The 2011 debut from American Idol champ Scotty McCreery was a bumpy pickup-truck ride through generic country tropes, but two years later, the baritone has cranked out brighter tunes about a topic more befitting a 19-year-old star: getting some. The title track — one of five co-written by McCreery — describes a cheery booty call, and on "Blue Jean Baby," he can't peel his eyes off a girl in a pair of Levi's "showin' off a little skin." But amid the tailgates and stolen kisses, McCreery drops "Something More," a midtempo tear-jerker that'll strike a chord on either side of the Mason-Dixon.

 

By Mike Powell

November 1, 2013

Matt White

*Soul Pop*

  2/5                  

Matt White's blandly reassuring soul pop has been featured throughout Hollywood movies and network TV, most recently on The Bachelorette. No surprise: His pose is wholesome (with a dash of danger), his storylines familiar and his problems solvable in four minutes or less. Standouts on his third album – "Around the World in 80 Days," especially – have more life than his strained falsetto might sometimes lead you to believe, but that's not saying much: Mayer Hawthorne still looks heavy metal by comparison. White's struggle is trying to sound sincere in a genre that rewards cliché. "I don't want those silly love songs," he sings. "I don't know what they will prove." Then he writes one.

 

By Will Hermes

October 18, 2013

The Head and the Heart

*Sub Pop*
3/5

"The world's just spinning a little too fast," declare these Seattle folk rockers on album number two, earnestly pumping the brakes. Their strummy singalongs make them kin to the Mumfords, their choral singing to neighbors Fleet Foxes. But they're most compelling when the harmonies fray ("Fire/Fear") and whenever marble-mouth singer-violinist Charity Rose Thielen grabs the mic ("Summertime").

By Will Hermes

October 18, 2013

Van Morrison

*Rock*

4.5/5

"Here we go to the main course!" ad-libs Van Morrison on an extended "Caravan," one of the shaggy outtakes on this fi ve-disc unpacking of the Belfast bard's 1970 jazzy-pop masterpiece. That LP is nearly all main course, and if the numerous alternate takes here often feel incomplete without their sublime, brassy final arrangements, they compensate with intimacy – see "Into the Mystic," take 11, mainly just Morrison and acoustic guitar. The set's grail is the long-lost outtake "I Shall Sing," a Caribbean-style confection that became a signature for many (Miriam Makeba, Judy Mowatt, Art Garfunkel). Its author delivers a meaty, scatted-up reading here, alongside a ferocious early version of the soul burner "I've Been Working" (His Band and the Street Choir) and a roadhouse-piano reading of Bessie Smith's "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" – the sound of an Irish bluesman cruising at high altitude.

By Caryn Ganz

October 7, 2013

Nelly

*Hip-Hop/Rap*
2/5

Nelly's seventh album opens strong with a brilliantly chill Nicki Minaj cameo on a gloriously narcotic Pharrell track ("Get Like Me") and a characteristically romantic turn from Future ("Give U Dat"), but wraps weakly with a jangly jam featuring country duo Florida Georgia Line and a cheesy ballad with Nelly Furtado. Nelly the rapper can still pull big guests but isn't sure whether to shout, whisper or sing to get our attention. He tries airy pop-hop on "Heaven" and calls in T.I. to rap around a 10-year-old Dave Chappelle joke on "Rick James." He'd have been better off making "I'm rich, bitch!" jokes around the time of "Hot in Herre."

By Jon Dolan

October 7, 2013

Lorde

*Pop*

4/5

New artists in 2013 don't come any "2013"-ier than Lorde. Ella Yelich-O'Connor is 16, but she could be 25. She sings tough and raps soft. She's from New Zealand, but she could just as easily be from Tampa or Glasgow or Dubrovnik. On her debut, she's a tiny-life teenager and a throne-watching pop comer with a sound that recalls the Internet hip-hop of Kitty Pryde, the cold-storage torch pop of Lana Del Rey and the primal self-dredging of Florence Welch, while still sounding strangely sui generis. "Maybe the Internet raised us/Or maybe people are jerks," she muses on "A World Alone." She's a child of the cloud.
Yet Pure Heroine feels surprisingly real and fully formed, punching through sparse, cushily booming post-hip-hop tracks with vividly searching lyrics about growing up too fast that can seem at once arrogant and pensive. "We're so happy even when we're smiling out of fear," she sings on "Tennis Court." Songs like the hit "Royals" are foreboding but catchy, hushed but hype. She's great at dissecting her so-called life ("We're hollow like the bottles that we drain") and at evoking the feeling of loving hip-hop even as its impossible fantasies turn you inside out. "Team" is an ode to her friend crew, with a beat that booms like Run-DMC playing from inside a stu ed animal. But the song feels proudly isolated: "I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air/So there/I'm kind of older than I was when I reveled without a care." Ball up your fists anxiously at your sides to this shit.

Sinkhole Situation

A family living in Dunedin, Florida notices a screened in room fell into a hole. A sinkhole has formed on an early morning. About 70 feet wide and 50 feet deep and growing. If it rains the hole may get worse.  Seven homes in all were evacuated.  Hole will be filled in soon but not all families may return to their home.

Question?

When you hear the word "dance" in a conversation, what pops into your head?

Ethos, Pathos, Logos

Why exercise is good for you.

Ethos: The health benefits of regular exercise and physical activity are hard to ignore. And the benefits of exercise are yours for the taking, regardless of your age, sex or physical ability.

Pathos: Exercising causes the body to produce endorphins, chemicals that can help a person to feel more peaceful and happy.

Logos: Doctors and researchers are finding evidence that regular exercise, along with other things that make up a healthy lifestyle, can prevent some diseases that occur later in life and lead to a longer, happier life in general.

"Why Exercise Is Wise." Persuasive Article. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
"TeensHealth." Why Exercise Is Wise. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
Staff, Mayo Clinic. "Exercise: 7 Benefits of Regular Physical Activity." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 23 July 2011. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.

Answer to weekly question. Ken Ross

I disagree with parents banning cellphones, texting, tweeting, and laptops from their bedrooms and limiting their fun time to two hours a day. I believe banning the kids screen time will make surreptitious kids; when the parents are out, the kids will sneak around the house and try to find their laptop or cellphones and use it. Also a lot of kids use their screen time to interact with friends and others. Kids use Facebook or email to connect with team members to figure out schedules for sports, but if you used up your limit time of screen time of two hours for the day, you won’t be able to find the schedules nor you won’t be able to talk to them about it. Also having a social life could be tricky to get with only two hours of the day to make plans or if we had an emergency we wouldn't be able to call 911 or our parents because out limit of two hours a day is gone. Although parents may think it could be a good idea to have their child two hours a day for their screen time, if parents want you to be safe and have friends and a social life, they shouldn't think about limiting because a phone can help a lot.

Magazine Analysis

The Fry Graph shows the magazine "Better Homes and Gardens" is designed for a 13 yeas old reader. The ratio of contents to advertisements is 57:141. This shows that this magazine uses more advertisements than contents. Based on the information I got from the classmates in my group, my magazine has more advertisement pages for product sales than content pages such as interviewing interior designers. This comparison shows that my magazine is made more for adults. If I were to create a profile for a reader of this magazine, I would go towards more adults and 20 year olds. Maybe a 13 year old would want to read it to get ideas for their room decorating, but not many do. I know a lot of teenagers go towards the magazine "PBTeen" to get decorating tips and ideas. The more readers of this particular magazine label has more of the characteristics of designing and decorating. This magazines shows women and men with the qualities and interests in interior and exterior designing.

Are you a sweet snacker or a salty snacker?

Lizzie Hanson

October 16, 2013

Period F

Data Driven

                Do you prefer salty snacks or sweet snacks? Asking so many people of all different ages I came to the conclusion that as you age, you grow out of the sweet snack phase. I know a lot of kids go for cookies or cake but when you grow up you start to like salty snacks more. As said by an adult, Karen, “I prefer salty snacks such as lays potato chips because I ate too much sugar as a kid.” Karen also enjoys noshing on pretzels. Sharing the taste buds of an older adult, I decided to ask a younger kid preferable around the age of 10 to see if age had anything to do with the decision of choosing a snack. I asked a girl named Brooke. “I love sweet snacks,” Brooke replies without even thinking. You could tell she liked sweet snacks over salty snacks because she didn’t even second guess herself. The next person I asked was a little older but not by much. Tori is a 15 year old, “I would rather eat a carton full of Ben & Jerry’s chocolate fudge brownie ice cream than a box of cheez it’s .” Tori and Brooke being around the same age and liking sweet snacks while Karen, an adult, likes salty snacks make me think it was age and how young or old you are made you choose between the two different types of snacks. What I did was ask an adult older than Tori but younger than Karen which type of snack they preferred. Melissa, a 33 year old, preferred to have salty snacks over sweet snacks. “Well I love salt and vinegar chips but I also like cookies,” she says with an indecisive look on her face. A few minutes after thinking about the question, she came to a realization that she likes salty snacks more than sweet snacks. After asking people with a variety of ages, the question of sweet snacks or salty snacks resulted in sweet snacks but as you start to age and grow older you start to like salty snacks more.

Data-Driven Journalism

Qualitative: Do people prefer salty snacks or sweet snacks and what makes you choose?

Gabby Bergeron

Gabby Bergeron is a senior at the Norton High School. She has lived in Norton her whole life with her mom, dad, and her two dogs. “My dogs are so cute,” says Gabby, “I cuddle with them every night.” Her favorite sport is diving. She is a part of the Diving team at the Norton High School. Dunkin Donuts is where she works and she has been working for about a year and a half. “I love my co-workers” Gabby, a worker at Dunkin Donuts says. She also has worked at cold stone and a dare care center in the past. Her dream job is to be a high school history teacher. Something interesting about Gabby that I learned was that she likes to knit, “sometimes I’d knit a little then pull of the string and start over.” Gabby never always finishes her work, but when she does it turns into a beautiful scarf. During the summer of 2013 Gabby went to the cape with her family. When she is in Dennis Port, Cape Cod, she eats fish while listening to country music sitting in her front lawn. She loves country music especially Tim McGraw. Gabby, a big fan of country music, “It was louder than most concerts I would say” she says talking about the Tim McGraw concert she went to this past summer. Gabby Bergeron is a fun and friendly person.

 

Do you think dance is a sport?

            To me dance is a sport. The definition of a sport is an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature. A lot people think if there’s no ball in the activity you do, it’s not a sport. Well, last time I checked boxing doesn’t involve a ball but it’s considered a sport. Being a dancer requires physical strength, flexibility, a good memory and of course your passion for dance. There are so many dancers in the world that can do about 12 pirouettes in a row. A pirouette is when you are turning in place on one foot. The only way to get to that level is by having skill. Skill isn’t something you’re born with; skill is the ability to do something well with all the special training and practice you go through. Go ahead and see how many pirouettes you can do. I know a lot of non-dancers myself and whenever I ask them to do a pirouette, they always tumble to one side on their first try. If you ever fall or do something wrong on your first try in soccer or cheerleading, do you get up and try it again and again until you get it perfectly? Yes! Dancers do the same thing; they fall and get hurt but it doesn’t stop them from getting back up and trying it again. All athletes have endurance. Dancers have legs like soccer players and strength like football players, what makes them so different? Desire is one reason I believe dance is considered a sport. When other athletes don’t get something the first time, they don’t give up. Neither do dancers. So many dancers have desire to do 12 pirouettes in a row or to hold your leg straight towards your head for a minute without touching it. Dedication is what leads you towards all those challenges you want to accomplish. You also need determination and the ability to push your body past its comfort zone. A lot of dancers compete in competitions against other dancers including myself. Dancers compete in the same way soccer players compete against other teams. You need to be focused and have coordination in order to win. All athletes strive to win and they won’t give up until they have succeeded. Dancers practice year round like some other sports. We practice daily for hours and hours and come back the next day and do it all over. We sweat, we cry, we get hurt, but we live for what we do. We work with a team and we always cheer them on. We put as much time, effort, and commitment as any other sport. Dancers are just like other athletes.

Lizzie Hanson

September 17, 2013

Rolling Stone

 

Jahar Tsarnaev, a 19-year old suspect in the Boston bombing, has changed form an attractive young teen with a success in wrestling into something terrible. Rolling Stone has turned him back. Taking an inappropriate young man, Jahar, and glamorizing his portrait on the shocking cover of the Rolling Stone magazine was absolutely absurd.

            Rolling Stone magazine has taken a picture of Jahar in his early years and put it on the cover to show who he was. Nobody knew who exactly who Jahar was before he snapped and disturbed the world besides his friends. “…as a beautiful, tousle-haired boy with a gentle demeanor, soulful brown eyes and kind of shy, laid-back manner that “made him that dude you could always just vibe with,” one friend says.”  Jahar seemed as though you could sit there and no nothing but still have a fun time. Not only did his friends see him as a cool and collective kid, but so did his friends parents. “He was just, like, this nice, calm, compliant, pillow-soft kid.” Anna, a parent of a friend of Jahar, would say this about Jahar. Anna likes Jahar and even wanted her son to be more like him. Jahar came to America having experiences living in a town and seeing war every turn he looks. “He just embraced the city, the school and the whole culture – he gratefully took advantage of it. And that’s what endeared me to him: This was the quintessential kid from the war zone, who made total use of everything we offer so that he could remake his life.” Larry Aaronson, a retired history teacher, had said. Having Jahar in Larry’s history class showed him who Jahar was as a student. Also, seeing Jahar in the halls showed his demeanor and how his life was just by the looks on his face. The Rolling Stone magazine tried to show people that Jahar wasn’t such a bad kid by putting a young picture of him on the cover, but some people just didn’t give in and pays attention on who Jahar is now not who he used to be.

            Jahar may have been known as the cool kid in school, but now he’s a monster. Jahar killed three people including an eight-year old boy. People should know Jahar for who he is not who he was. After doing something this big and injuring hundreds of people, there’s no going back. “There are things we need to know, including the fact that Mr. Tsarvaev, almost banal in his teenage aspects, is suspected of having become a cold blooded killer.” David Carr had said in response to the outrages cover on the Rolling Stone magazine. I know some people say that what happens in the past should reflect what happens in the present or what’s going to happen in the future, so why pay attention on who he was? Forget the past. “That photo is the way he wanted the world to see him.” He wanted people to see the good side of him that was gone. He wanted people to kind of forget what he did. Nobody will forget what he had done because it touched so many lives.  “…Jahar appeared to take responsibility for the bombing, though he admitted he did not like killing innocent people.” He wanted people to know that he didn’t like killing people to maybe see if they could find a soft spot in him. Why did he do it if he didn’t want people see him as “the bad guy?’ The portrait on the cover of the magazine showed him as the guy everybody is talking about, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. “Celebrities see it has a huge milestone in their careers. It usually means they’ve achieved something great.” This is said in the Rolling Stone magazine. If Jahar is on the cover that would mean he accomplished something outstanding, but he didn’t. it was wrong to have Jahar on the cover not only as a totally different person, but to see him as proud of what he did.

                Jahar being on the cover of the Rolling Stone magazine has many different responses to it. It shows a soft side to him where it shows his past. It shows how he got to this situation that made him kill so many innocent people. On the other hand, the cover should show who he is, not who he was. That was the past so why should people care who he was. What he has done is what is important. Having Jahar Tsarnaev, the Boston bomber, on the cover of the Rolling Stone magazine was a terrible idea.