This World and Me

The other day in school, I overheard a conversation that intrigued me. A girl was bragging about how she stuck up her middle finger while walking through the hallway, and the teachers couldn't do anything about it. I didn't barge in to the conversation, but it got me thinking about why the girl thought she could make such a foul sign without consequence. In 1965, three kids wore black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War. The school imposed a policy banning the practice and calling for anyone violated the policy to be suspended until they complied. The kids argued that the school violated their First Amendment rights to free speech. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which, by a vote of 7-2, ruled in favor of the students. A popular excuse is the claim that she has "the right to free speech" in sticking up the middle finger. Firstly, what kind of "speech" is it trying to convey? To many, the sign is just like cursing. I mentione...

Surfing on the Web one day, you encounter a post on Facebook that is very offensive to you. You report the post to the Facebook team, who take the post down. The person who made the post cries out that Facebook has violated their right to free speech and threatens legal action if the post is not restored. This scenario isn't exclusive to the Internet; you can see it in places like malls, coffee shops, grocery stores, and business workplaces too. The claim that "Facebook violated my free speech" may sound like a threat, but it's actually very cute when I hear it made as it has no legal merit whatsoever. The term "free speech" comes from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution , which also establishes freedom of the press and freedom of religion. The amendment has been very important in the history of this rather young nation. Specifically, the amendment reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiti...

We are a speck, a sliver, a grain in this massive universe. No, "massive" would be a huge understatement. The universe is indescribably large. First of all, there are two kinds of perspectives you can take for sizing the universe. There is the universe, and then there is the "observable universe". The universe is the "totality of existence". It's the sum of all matter, energy, and events that exist. The observable universe  only includes the part of the universe which Earth can detect and observe  through the use of tools such as telescopes. Wait. We can only see a part of the universe? That's right. Everyone knows that light travels at a constant speed in space: the speed of light. Everyone also knows that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Light itself cannot travel faster than the cosmic speed limit. From the point of the Big Bang to now, the universe has expanded quite a lot. It's even created us and the Earth. But lig...