Political Satire

The untrustworthiness of a politican's promises

The University of Chicago

This is an university I would love to go to, but the difficulty of getting accepted and the high tuition makes it very unlikely. The University of Chicago is a private research university founded in 1890. The school has a great academic reputation and ranks among the top universities in the US. It also has a good reputation for scientific research, which is a field I might want to go into in the future.

Dr. Heidegger's Experiment by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dr. Heidegger's experiment is Nathaniel Hawthorne's take on the ancient archetype of the search for eternal youth. In the story, Dr. Heidegger invites four old friends to partake in the experiment. All four of them were old, miserable and dissatisfied with life, having squandered their youth. Dr. Heidegger offers them the chance to drink the water from the Fountain of Youth and return to their youth. However, when they drank the water, they did not value their regained youth; they kept doing the same things that the did when young.
We may laugh at how they keep on making the same mistakes, but many of us behave similarly. When we're young, we feel as if we have infinite time, so we act as if we would always be yound. However, once we're older and look back, many of us realize that we've just been wasting our youth.

The Middle Passage

Listen to us! The voices of the deep

Forgotten, but

Chained no longer by your lust

Poisoned no longer by your avarice

You imprison us with your hopes

For riches, for wealth

A life of leisure

No toil, nor sweat

Tossed overboard

Are the lucky ones

Whose souls sail free

From the wails and sickness that surround us

Are you the scale

Weighing heavy coins

Feather light souls?

Forgetting where

Your soul silently rests.

On Baking Bread

Working with yeast to make bread has often been an intimidating endeavor for people. Unlike baking powder, baking soda and other chemical leavening agents, yeast is living and more difficult to control. Before the advent of commercial yeast in the 19th century, people used naturally occurring yeast to make bread. A medium of flour and water was used to culture the yeast and the symbiotic bacteria, this was called a sourdough starter or levain. The acidity of the sourdough starter kept harmful bacteria from growing it and enabled the yeast and bacteria to live without much competition. Bread made with levain is more flavorful than bread made with commercial yeast, however it takes more time and is more challenging. You need to allow the dough to ferment sufficiently in order to have enough flavor, but you can easily end up fermenting too long and end up with bread that's as sour as vinegar.
I was inspired by the beautiful blog Tartine Bread Experiment to try and make my own sourdough bread this summer. One summer of experimentation has convinced me that we are constantly learning new things in life. When you think you finally think you've got the handle on something, you fail or the results come out differently than what you thought they would be.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a highly influential English poet who lived a highly interesting life. He was good friends with William Wordsworth, and highly interested in philosophy. He is most famous for the poems "Kubla Khan" and "The Rine of the Ancient Mariner".
Here you can see his life in more detail.

How to Make Your Senior Year at GCA Very Good

It's nearing the end of the school year, and its kind of hard to believe that next year will be my last year at GCA. And since its my last year at home in Taiwan before I head off to college in the US, I plan on making the most of it.
One of the first things I'm going to do is trying to get rid of my habit of procrastination. As students who have it know, the spirit of procrastination is one of your greatest enemies in getting any homework or studying done. You either do what you enjoy instead of you're supposed to be doing or stare blankly at the work in front of you, reluctant to lift a finger, and end up with such a big pile of work you wonder how you're ever going to finish it.
The second thing I'm going to do is to spend more time with my friends and family. I've realized that I spend way too much time staring at a computer screen or buried in books and not enough time with other people. In fact the only person I really spend a substantial time talking to is my younger sister. That's just sad. I just need to figure out a way of spending time with my parents without getting nagged at for my schoolwork. Any suggestions?