Mrs. Ho's AP Lang - 2021/2022

                      I bet everyone that started reading this blog thought I would be writing about how much I love the show, the drama, the characters, the plot, and so on. Of course I love the show and everything about it, but that is not the main topic of this blog. The music in Euphoria is top notch, fantastic, spectacular. These adjectives can’t even begin to describe how good the music really is.            Everything about the music in Euphoria suits it so well. It really grasps your attention and takes part in the scene. Without the music the show wouldn’t be as enticing and the scenes that include the melodies wouldn't have as strong of a hold on our attention.           The talented man behind all this fantastic music, Labrinth, has made them specifically for the show. Of course there are others who have had songs pop up in the show here and there,...

  A conspiracy theory is a theory that is not 100% true with evidence to support it, but is not proven wrong or right. There are conspiracy theories about anything from mermaids are real, to theories about Tupac not actually being dead. Some of the wildest conspiracy theories are very very out there, that people actually believe. The US has a long list of conspiracy theories, as well as many other countries all over the world.  One of the most well known conspiracy theory in the US is the theory that birds are part of the government. This theory is about how the CIA uses chemtrails to kill the live birds, which then are replaced with drones from Area 51 to spy on people. Another well known conspiracy theory is Bigfoot in general. There are a claimed 2,032 sightings of Bigfoot in Washingotn, a huge ape creature that is not proved to be real. There have been sightings all over the US, but Washington has had the most sightings so far. The Lochness monster is another made up cre...

  Ben Heller 2/28/2022 I’ve always had a soft spot for animals. Ever since I was little I’ve liked to learn about and meet different animals. Naturally, when I got the opportunity to adopt a furry friend, I was ecstatic. My first dog’s name is Nikki. We picked her up from the tri-county rescue a few weeks after we moved to Florida, when I was in Kindergarten. Even though I was only the age of 6, I could remember all the times we’d asked my parents in New York and they said no.  I remember our lackluster apartment, the same size as my living room today, with a white-painted closet-looking kitchen that could only house three people at a time. The cramped longtable that we somehow managed to fit into when we had guests over. At that time, when we were living in New York, our parents would help us babysit a friend’s dog during some weekends and we fell in love. His name was Peanut. He was a rowdy little runt who used to sleep on the foot of my parents’ bed and go for walks on th...

     This week I chose to write about a topic that may sound strange, but I have been thinking a lot about it recently. Do you feel as if what you wear affects the mood you are in? To me, I think that it does.       When I wake up in the morning I say to myself what do I feel like wearing today? So there it goes… I have a certain mood. Everyone has a certain mood which makes them not want to wear a certain pair of clothing over the other. For instance, when I think of Sunday, I think of a cozy day filled with chilling at home and doing homework. When I wake up, my first instinct is to get dressed. Now, I don't go and put on a dress because that definitely would not be fitting for any occasion. I don’t wear a dress unless I am going to a party or a very fancy event. Additionally, I don’t put on jean shorts. Instead, I immediately go to the section in my closet where I have sweatpants, sweatshirts, leggings, and all my comfy clothes.     ...

  Ariella Green Week 17: Lady Windermere's Fan In 1893, playwright Oscar Wilde published his comedic play titled Lady Windermere's Fan . Lady Margaret Windemere suspects that her husband is being unfaithful to her with the beautiful Mrs. Erlynne. In reality, Mrs. Erlynne is Lady Windemere's mother who abandoned her as an infant, but in the end sacrifices her own reputation to save her daughter’s marriage. The FAU Department of Theatre and Dance is performing this hilarious show at the Marleen Forkas Studio One Theatre between the 18th and 27th of February. The cast members conveyed a clear understanding of their characters which heightened the experience.  Throughout the show, you felt the actors’ pains, motives, and desires. They all had a strong stage presence and clear objectives. Many of the actors spoke with Old English dialects minus Mr. Hopper (Blaine DeBerry) who spoke with an Australian dialect. Lady Windermere was portrayed by Ashley Brooke Miller and she truly...

      Laws are considered by many to be the backbone of a society. Without laws, what governs how people are supposed to act and how they will be punished for their acts. America has a very intricate legal system with different extrapolations, inferences, and complicated arguments for every law. But, some laws that are in either state or government constitutions are just  outright weird and often humorous as well. Florida is well known for having many of these weird laws.     A lot of weird Florida laws are centralized around gender. For instance, one law says that unwed women aren't allowed to skydive on Sundays. It is also illegal for a woman to fall asleep under a hair dryer at a hair salon for whatever reason. For men, you aren't allowed to wear strapless gown in public, but that might be beneficial towards the public. Florida also has weird laws that are specific to places or times, like you can't roll a barrel down the street in Pensacola (b...

You know that period in time when everything just seems to happen at once? Well that has been my last two weeks.  For starters, there was mold detected in one half of my house, the half that has mine and my sibling’s bedrooms and bathrooms. Obviously living with mold is incredibly unhealthy and dangerous, so my mother organized a team of mold removers to come into our house and get rid of the mold. Two weeks ago, my siblings and I packed up our entire rooms, including decorations on the walls, and moved into the lounge and my parents’ bedroom. Sleeping on the couch hasn’t actually been too bad, but having no personal space and my parents around all the time has been intense. Also, my house is a mess, everything is covered in plastic, and the machine used to get rid of the mold makes an awful noise, it sounds like an airplane.  Another crazy thing that has happened recently is that my mother has been in New York taking the American Law Bar Exam. She worked as a lawyer in South ...

  Florida's "Don't Say Gay" Bill House Republicans in Florida approved a bill banning discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools on Tuesday, defying Democratic objections that the legislation demonizes LGBTQ people. After GOP lawmakers rejected a series of Democratic amendments on Tuesday, the bill, called the "Don't Say Gay" bill by opponents, is now poised for a final vote in the House on Thursday. The proposal has sparked widespread debate and has become one of the most recent battlegrounds between the White House and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for reelection and is generally seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2024. Yesterday, the original Florida House sponsor of the "Don't Say Gay" bill, Rep. Joe Harding, abruptly dropped an amendment requiring school principals to inform parents of a child's sexual orientation within six weeks if they discover a student has come out as anything...

     On Tuesday, February 22, President Biden officially announced that he would be imposing sanctions on Russia as they didn’t listen to his request to not invade Ukraine. As a response to Putin invading Ukraine with “peacekeeping” forces, Biden said, “This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine ... so I'm going to begin to impose sanctions in response.”      According to Biden, these sanctions will include “cut[ting] off Russia's government from western financing,” and according to a White House official, they would be "swift and severe."      Biden has also ordered the United States to move already-deployed forces in Europe to NATO countries that are on Russia’s western border. This is a direct response to Putin refusing to withdraw troops from Belarus, and are meant to show countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that they will be safe pending a Russian invasion.      Biden described these moves as “totally ...

                                                              Traveling by car or by plane How is it possible for airplanes, helicopters, and jets to fly in heavy snowstorms?  On February 22, two Blackhawk helicopters crashed during training exercises. It is difficult to get to the populated ski resorts in Utah and Colorado, and only certain planes are able to get through to these ski locations. The crash occurred near a popular ski bird resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon, near Salt Lake City. The helicopters crashed while attempting to land during routine survivability and mobility mountain training. The snowstorms, in places like Utah, block the view of the pilots and therefore they lose track of where to land.  Out of luck, these helicopters happened to be practice flights, so they were pre...

  “Socialites, it is with our deepest regret to inform you that Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has died”, read an ‘exclusive’ breaking article from Hollywood Unlocked on the afternoon of February 22. The article claimed exclusive information was given from Buckingham Palace to the website to report that the royal was “found dead” after being “scheduled to attend the wedding of British Vogue editor Edward Enninful”. Hollywood Unlocked backed up their claim with the context of the Queen’s recent positive COVID-19 test result and subsequent mild symptoms. However, just hours later, the news story was debunked as false and misleading information. A chief of staff from the House of Lords, Dayo Okewale, affirmed that Queen Elizabeth is alive and well, and that the previously vaccinated monarch was recovering steadily. Despite this, Hollywood Unlocked founder Jason Lee still defends his claim that he received word that the Queen has passed away. While this news would not have been entirely s...

As you got from the title, a blind wrestler, with the name Cole Snider, won the state championship for the school,  Branford High School. This is truly amazing to win a wrestling championship, let alone one game while being blind, while the opponent is trying to wrestle you and all you can do is listen and feel, and he used the senses to get him all the way to the championship, and to end up a champion! Cole Snider was blind since he was born, and is now a Sophmore, where the doctors told him he could never play or if he played, he would never be good at a sport because of his blindness. Snider took these words and beat the odds, and ended up as the number one seed for the 170 pound weight class. His story of what really made him fall in love and pursue the sport of wrestling was through his uncle's jujitsu class, where Cole learned jujitsu at the age of 4, from here it steered him towards his love for the sport of wrestling. Cole was made a special headgear with goggles to keep hi...

Kamila Valieva has placed fourth in the women’s figure skating finals. Kamilia Valieva, a fifteen-year-old girl from Russia, has been the center of controversy the past few weeks. She has been part of a doping scandal since it was found out that she was taking trimetazidine. Trimetazidine is a banned drug that is used to treat heart complications. This drug has an alternate use of helping improve stamina in athletes. The young skater tested positive for the medication just last week, but she was tested for it on December 25. However, the Olympic court still allowed her to participate in her competitions.  A week before the women’s figure skating finals, Kamila Valieva became the first woman to land a quadruple jump in the Olympics. She also helped the Russian team win the gold medal in the competition. All of the hype around her name caused many people to believe she would take the gold in her competition. In fact, Russia was hoping to score a clean sweep meaning the country would ...

I think the hardest sport to play is baseball, hand down. I think this because in this sport there is a small ball getting throw at you at the speed of a car, and you have to swing and hit that ball coming at you. To learn and become good at the sport of baseball you need to practice an insane amount of hours to even catch and throw the ball.   Many people, researchers, and reporters have said that hitting the baseball with a bat is the hardest thing to do it a sport, which is also what I think because your reflexes, timing, and eye hand coordination  have to be spot on every time you go up and attempt to hit the ball, which is hard to do just with someone tossing it to you. Now imagine someone throwing the ball, in baseball it is called pitching, at you with average speed of over 90 miles per hour for a fast ball which is usually thrown from 60 feet away, do the math, it is very hard to hit the ball in these circumstances. As an athlete who have played and can play many diffe...

    For weeks now, the United States has been pushing for a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine. There was a sign of hope when the U.S. The Secretary of State announced that there would be a meeting held between the U.S. and Russia. This meeting was contingent on one key condition, that Putin would hold back his troops and not invade Ukraine. Although as some expected, Putin did not live up to his side of the “deal”.      Over the last week, while this meeting was still planned, Putin had been executing deceiving actions. He said that certain groups of Russian troops were relocating away from the border, yet he then recognized two seperatist regions in Ukraine. The U.S. denied that troops were being relocated, so both these actions were viewed as hostile. This caused the U.S. The Secretary of State called off the meeting stating that “ it would not be productive and that Russia’s actions indicated Moscow was not serious about a peaceful path to re...

At the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Yekaterinburg, Russia, a security guard, Alexander Vasilyev, drew eyes onto a 1930s painting with a ballpoint pen during his first shift. The painting is known as “Three Figures” by Anna Leporskaya which was created throughout 1932-1934. This piece was on loan to the center by a museum in Moscow and is a part of a larger temporary exhibit. The incident has been described as a “stupid mistake” by the museum. The security guard, Vasilyev, says that he thought it was a “children’s drawing” and that teenagers were asking him to do it. He is currently under police investigation for vandalism.  An official at the center, Alexander Drozdov, was able to watch the security cameras and described the incident as a “smashing performance.” Vasilyev is seen using a souvenir pen to draw the eyes. He then proceeds to leave because he “didn't feel well and left.” The museum has taken on new changes in response to this event. The center has recently ad...