This World and Me

Two young children are playing. "Hey Jack! I found a stick! Check it out." "Cool! Let's play Harry Potter with it! Jacob, pretend the stick is a wand." "Okay! Avada Kedavra! " At this point, Jacob, who has the stick, sharply spins and thrusts it as if he were casting a spell. However, he ends up forcefully jabbing Jack in the face with the stick. "Ow! Hey! That hurt! I'm gonna tell the teacher you hit me!" "No, don't! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to hit you!" Jacob's right. He didn't mean to hit Jack. It happened accidentally. However, this doesn't change the fact that he hurt Jack. The question is: does it matter if Jacob meant for it to happen? Should the teacher punish Jacob, or should Jack forgive Jacob and forget the incident ever happened? Does  intention  matter? We see similar questions in far less humorous circumstances. Murder, in the simplest terms, is the intentional killing of a human b...

The overwhelming majority of my life thus far has been consumed by the primary and secondary education systems of the United States. Being so close to the end of high school, I often find it sobering to pause and look back on the whole journey. Nostalgic at times, longwinded at others, there isn't a singular direction I'm aiming for with these posts. When you get to the end, you might wonder what the point of the post was. When writing to this blog, I usually start with a main idea then let the post write itself. The idea for these posts is pure reflection. At the forefront, they're a collection of memories—kind of like a memoir. They're about me, and what makes me who I am. They're mostly for  me too. Perhaps years down the line, I'll look back at these posts and chuckle nostalgically at them. I'll call them School .

Today, outside Secretary of State Jon Husted's office, we protested . We demonstrated that seventeen-year-olds do not live up to their stereotype of being apathetic and uninformed. We demonstrated that the most fundamental right of democracy—the right to vote—could not be denied to us on a technicality.  Ohio law is clear : if a person is or will be eighteen years of age on the day of the next general election, then they are entitled  to cast a ballot at the primary election, provided they are affiliated with the political party whose primary election they desire to vote in. All citizens must have an equal say in the nomination of candidates just as much as the election of candidates, and the ultimate goal of the presidential primary is  to decide the nomination of candidates. And today, the Court agreed. At about 4:30 pm on Friday, March 11, 2016, Judge Richard Frye of the Court of Common Pleas for Franklin County, Ohio, made a decision in the case of  Rachel...

RSVP to our Facebook event. Hello friends. You are invited to participate in this opportunity to take direct action in support of a cause. This is a unique experience – please carefully consider the issues and help us protect our right to have a say in presidential nominations. In Ohio, it is legal for seventeen-year-olds to cast ballots in primary elections, provided they will be eighteen on the day of the next general election. This entitlement is stated in the Ohio Revised Code as section 3503.011, titled “Qualifications of electors for primary elections” : At a primary election every qualified elector who is or will be on the day of the next general election eighteen or more years of age, and who is a member of or is affiliated with the political party whose primary election ballot he desires to vote, shall be entitled to vote such ballot at the primary election. (ORC 3503.011) This law, enacted in 1981, has led young Ohioans to believe that they were entitled to a full ballot...

It started when I was 11. I was a fifth grader, or—as I had put it—a “senior” in elementary school. High school and college felt eons away, and middle school seemed merely an opportunity for renewed excitement. All of us were acutely aware that in middle school, there would be no recess, so we savored each day on the playground—each minute, each second. In the midst of this bustling playfulness, however, fear was lurking—a pervasive, subtle horror that guided the decision-making of nearly all children: the fear of being left out. It was amid this atmosphere when I started fencing. I suppose my path to fencing really started, then, before I was born. My parents are Chinese; they immigrated to the United States around four years before they had me. I often attempt to imagine what it might have been like for them. Everything that they knew—their people, their culture, their society, their language—all of it was gone. Truly, they must have felt alone, or perhaps left out. Yet somehow—an...

The brilliant To Kill a Mockingbird had a profound impact on American literature. Its powerful themes of empathy and prejudice remain painfully relevant today and will remind and inspire us for generations to come. Rest in peace, Harper Lee.

I admired this man's devotion to the Constitution of the United States and the passion with which he defended it. The candor and wit he brought to every proceeding have undoubtedly shaped the ways we interpret the law today. Rest in peace, Justice Antonin Scalia. The image at the top was originally taken in 2010 by Stephen Masker, who has made it freely available under the CC BY 2.0 Generic license . It was adapted by me, and the adapted version is available under the same license.

The world faces a crisis. At the end of 2014, there were 19.5 million refugees on Earth, most of whom were displaced by the devastating civil war currently raging in Syria. As the world struggles to resolve the crisis, it is becoming increasingly imperative that we understand what  is at stake, even before we think about the implications. One such imperative understanding is the difference between the two often fallaciously interchanged terms "refugee" and "migrant." The difference is stated perhaps most eloquently by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees  (UNHCR): Refugees  are persons fleeing armed conflict or persecution. The situation in their own nation is so incredibly dangerous that they must leave their country in search of safety that may be provided by other countries or organizations.  These are people for whom denial of asylum has potentially deadly consequences . Migrants  are people who choose  to move, not because of armed co...

On Thursday, February 11, 2016, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington, announced the first direct observation of gravitational waves. Part of the scientific method  and any scientific theory is being able to make testable predictions. This is an ecstatic moment for science because such waves were predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which he had published in 1915. The direct observation of gravitational waves further solidifies the theory, and provides a strong basis for further experimentation, observation, and prediction. The scientists at LIGO are almost certainly going to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions. Comment from discussion ELI5: Why is today's announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves important, and what are the ramifications? . I have  posted about science  before. Science is—and always will be—a...

This post comes as a sort of follow-up to this old post . In that post, I pointed out that different people have different artistic tastes, and the fact that other people don't enjoy something does not necessarily indicate that you shouldn't enjoy the same thing too. Also, it is questionable whether enjoying something solely because other people enjoy it is really true enjoyment. I suppose a corollary to that is challenging whether disliking something solely because other people dislike it truly means that one dislikes it. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic , an animated TV show with a target audience of girls aged 4-7, comes to me as a good example of all this. Despite its young demographic, the show has unexpectedly garnered a massive fan following consisting of older viewers, many of which are male adults. Indeed, the My Little Pony fandom —the members of which identify themselves as "bronies"—has grown to be notorious. I suppose the question I really want to a...

I am in a state of bliss right now. Pure ecstasy. For on this first day of February, two thousand sixteen, American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and Minnesotan music producer Adam Young released his first album as "Adam Young." I've posted before about Mr. Young. He is more widely known for Owl City, one of many musical projects he has created over the years. One of Owl City's songs, "Fireflies," propelled him into the international spotlight and peaked at position one on the national charts of seven countries. Today's album epitomizes exactly what draws me to Owl City and the ingenious man behind it. Every single instrument, every single lyric, every single sound—the overwhelming majority of Owl City was conceived, written, produced, engineered, recorded, and mastered by only one person. Owl City is often mistaken for a band, because (until today) Young doesn't use his own name for his musical endeavors. "Owl City" is mor...

In July 2015, I attended a three-week-long program in Chicago called the Civic Leadership Institute (CLI), hosted by Northwestern University. Toward's the end of the course, I had to write a letter to myself detailing what I had learned. The letter was crude and not proofread; I had actually asked my instructor if I could rewrite the entire letter, but time ran out, so I had to submit the "draft" letter. As a junior in high school, stressful times have come and gone, and my mind tends to reprioritize things, shove things out of the way, forget things. Right after I finished CLI, I wanted to write a blog post expressing everything that I had learned, but I could never find the time or the motivation to properly articulate it. The post was never written. The Civic Education Project, the organization that runs CLI, kept the letter – the one I had written for myself – and said they would actually mail it out to me sometime in the next year. That time has come. Yesterday – m...

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." The source of this quote is not definitively known, but it is often attributed to Joseph Stalin. Regardless of who said it, I find it as powerful as it is provocative. We are all too frequently bombarded with endless, awful, mind-boggling statistics. But most of them don't really make us feel  – at least to a deep, personal level. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 1.24 million deaths resulted from automobile accidents and incidents in 2010 ( source ). According to the Ascend Aviation Consultancy Team, 828 deaths resulted from aviation accidents and incidents that same year. Ascend's director wrote that "2010 was a disappointing year from the point of view of both safety and insurance with the number of fatal accidents and passenger fatalities both up on recent years" ( source ). However, place those 828 deaths right next to the staggering 1,240,000 deaths f...

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. —Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail" , 1963

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?" Often misattributed to Albert Einstein, this quote first appeared in Laurence J. Peter's  Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time  (1977). I used to sign all my emails with this.

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." —Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes , 1989

It started when I was 12. I was one third of the way through middle school, having just completed sixth grade. It was perhaps the last time I felt totally stress-free. College and high school felt eons away, and the childish play of elementary school had yet to wear off. The year was 2011, the same year my family bought its first "smart" mobile device: a 32 GB black Wi-Fi-only Apple iPad 2. Naturally, the decision to buy the device was lobbied mostly by me, and when the shiny new product made its way to my hands, I couldn't wait to try out the features that I had waited for in anticipation. The first app I opened was Photo Booth—the iPad 2 was the first of its kind to feature a camera. I was oblivious to most social issues of the world, and as a tween, I probably wouldn't have cared all that much anyway. School was out, vacation was here, life was good. The June of that same year, my family and I traveled to China to visit my extended family. The trip to China, let ...

Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? — Edgar Allan Poe, " A Dream Within A Dream ", 1849

I am the type of person who takes things personally. If you have a grievance to air about me, I want to hear it right away, and I want to apologize for it as soon as possible, for if I don't, I would spend the rest of the day kicking myself over it. After finishing my calculus class for the day, I was energized to get on with the day (it was a Friday). In calculus, we had learned of definite integrals for the first time—my teacher has the rare ability to impart upon students the beauty of mathematics, at least to those who desire to appreciate it. Oftentimes, I leave class with a sense of genuine wonder. Calculus is my first period class, meaning it is the first class I attend—the first room I enter when beginning the school day. My school's bell schedule system is set up so that immediately following first period is homeroom. The purpose of homeroom is to provide for a brief, 5-minute span of the day where announcements and general information may be broadcast. Teachers co...

One winter, when I was in elementary school, my family and I were home, feeling warm and toasty despite the bitterness outside. In the mood for a flick, one of us had rented the 1993 comedy  Groundhog Day , starring Bill Murray. The main character is Phil Connors, a meteorologist assigned to cover the annual Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Connors hates the assignment (how can a lowly groundhog who also happens to be named Phil predict the weather any better than him?!), and to add salt to the wound, he gets the weather report wrong. Despite Connors' prediction of good weather, a massive blizzard hits, shutting down all travel to or from Punxsutawney. As Connors soon finds out, however, the weather is the least  of his worries. Connors wakes up the next morning... to Groundhog Day. Indeed, Mr. Connors has found himself in a time loop, a horrifying state of existence wherein the same day repeats itself over and over again, with no end in sight....