In a towering brick building across from Uwajimaya, a lonely window looks into the Northwest Mystery Museum. The first time I went to see it, the open sign was illuminated in the window, but the door was locked. I stalled for a few minutes by buying and drinking the strangest thing I could find in Uwajimaya (Hello Kitty soda “With Marble!”–), no dice—the door was closed. The website recommends calling ahead.

The next day, though, I got in, and found the packed, esoteric, one-room Mystery Museum. In it is everything a fan of unexplained and obscure phenomena in Seattle could possibly want, especially if that happens to be everything Bruce Lee. Two shelves were devoted to Lee’s Seattle history. Also on display were rows of books, plaster-cast Sasquatch footprints, a humongous model of the New York World Fair, tarot cards, and a machine that, for an unknown reason, dispensed pure oxygen in a choice of scents.

The only staff member there (the Mystery Museum being entirely volunteer-run) was Charlette LeFevre, who I later learned was the museum’s director. Helpful and enthusiastic, one-and-a-half hours later I left the museum with more knowledge about Bruce Lee and other Seattle greats from her then I ever had. At one point, she stopped and asked me if I had heard the story about Jimi Hendrix’ typewriter. The story goes that while at Garfield, he got angry, “maybe it was during a detention or something,” and threw a typewriter out the window. The broken typewriter, she said, was still in storage in the building.

No, I hadn’t heard that, though knowing the SSD I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still waiting for repairs. But I did learn about the three most haunted locations in Seattle: Broadway, Capitol Hill, and Pike Place Market—and about the house Barack Obama had lived in on Capitol Hill as a baby (complete with records and photograph).

Other attractions include the “ghost machine”—a small box containing a computer chip, “programmed with all 71 sounds of the human voice.” Speak into it, she said, and you can talk to a dead person. Random noises emanating from the box, I decided to ask Jimi about his typewriter.

After awkwardly announcing to the static that I wanted to summon his ghost, we waited. Several minutes later, we reviewed the words we’d heard– “Lio,” “Ask her,” “You are,” or maybe “Are you.” Experienced as the museum director was, neither of us could work it out. Anyone with information on the typewriter should come forth.

Still, I left with plenty of interesting information—a grand history of Capitol Hill’s cemeteries, for one (there are three major ones plus untold more potentially buried under church lots or cleared ground). Seattle’s ghost hunters are constantly hunting for buried history, and digging up fascinating stories.

“If [Obama’s mom] had stayed in Seattle, he probably would have gone to Garfield,” LeFevre said. The museum is about secrets, not just ghosts, and for anyone wanting to learn about Bigfoot or play a therimin, I recommend it.

However, to experience the ghosts first-hand, you have to be there. The Pike Place Market Ghost tour is another famous event in Downtown Seattle. To go,  everyone must buy a ticket and meet up directly under the Gum Wall—that stunning urban scene where hundreds or thousands of people have left their own technicolor, bacterial mark on the city. As the tour began, this became a perfect example of residual energy– the presence of many people over time, as the guide explained, which can create a psychic imprint on the area that causes ghosts to appear.

Pike Place officially opened in 1907, and has had nearly continuous business and human presence of all sorts since—if anywhere in Seattle had ghosts, we were here.

As the tour continued, though, it became clear this wasn’t about psychic energy or Ghost Hunters—it’s also about the strange and mostly fascinating history of death in one of the oldest and most important parts of Seattle. The basement under Kells’ Irish Pub at the market’s south end once was quarters for immigrant women  during the Gold Rush—workers who could never buy themselves out of their contracts, and worker until their deaths as hotel maids. Staff at the bar we were below, the guide said, had heard crying and a woman speaking in a Slavic language from the room we were in. When checked, the room was always empty.

Across the street was a theater with back seats reserved for children’s ghosts, and the soft night became a staging ground for the weirder parts of a hundred years of history—an early film star in purple who hides behind columns, a fat lady barber who pick-pocketed customers, floating orbs that appear only in photographs.

The history, of course, ties into the ghosts. Near where we were, “hospitals” were once set up for children with incurable influenza. In 2003, we were told, a caretaker was closing the market’s preschool down at night when she thought she saw a little boy run by. She called the market police, who found the cleaner already sweeping the place out. When asked if she had seen anyone, she replied, “Who, the little boy with no eyes? He’s here every night.”

Chills.

Down the road from a diner where Ted Bundy ate lunch, we met another cheerful facet of Seattle’s past: Linda Hazzard, the city’s first serial killer. As doctor who specialized in fasting, she starved some patients to death as part of her “regimen”, in a hotel just across from the market. She would then take their valuables, and convince them to sign their money over to her. Once caught, the guide told us, she got out of prison early for good behavior, and reopened a medical clinic in Kitsap County. Years later, she finally took sick and starved to death on her own treatment.

I got a nagging feeling that I hadn’t learned this in Washington State History, the stories are too good to make up. Hazzard took her patients to a large, old, brick crematory just blocks away—something I almost didn’t believe until he pointed out large faded letters on the building’s side reading “UNDERTAKER.” Now, there’s a bar in the cremation room.

True, I didn’t see any ghosts, but leaving the tour, I couldn’t stop thinking about the pavement and sidewalks below my feet. The tour and the museum weren’t about magic, or mysticism, they were about stories, and the strange and complex history of the oldest parts of Seattle. You don’t have to be a believer to enjoy either, and they’re a refreshingly dark and odd approach to the area’s history.

Sadly, you may or may not get to talk to Jimi Hendrix.

The Northwest Mystery Museum is open seven days a week with variable hours– Visit seattlechatclub.org/museum or call 206–523-6348. There’s a suggested 2-dollar donation for students.

Pike Place Market Ghost Tours are available Thursdays through Sundays on most weeks, and cost 13 dollars for students. Their website is www.seattleghost.com.

Lucid Dreaming Club, started at Garfield by sophomore Isabel Marshall, seeks to explore the moment in a dream where the dreamer realizes what’s going on. If this has happened to you already, you’ll remember. If not, welcome to a brand new world—being conscious within a dream gives you complete control over yourself and the world around you, basically throwing you into the setting of Inception.

No drugs—don’t worry, they happen naturally, and if you haven’t had one already, just knowing that they exist can make it work. And that, say a number of Garfield students I interviewed on the topic, “is awesome.”

“I think I’ve always been fascinated by dreams,” says Marshall. “It seems like when you’re asleep is the only time when your mind is completely released and just wandering, no obligations, no filters. It’s interesting to see where your thoughts go.”

The science behind lucid dreaming is sound. Most dreams occur in the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) phase of sleep, which goes in cycles on a normal night. In this light sleep, the mind is active, but not conscious—at least, normally. The body also goes into sleep paralysis, which normally just stops you from actually getting up and trying to fly while you’re asleep, but can manifest in a rare state of being paralysed while awake. (Thankfully, if this happens, it wears off quickly.) If you stay conscious while the rest of you falls asleep into REM, however, you get lucid.

Once you’re aware that you’re actually in a dream, the next hardest part is not getting so excited that you wake up. But after that, the possibilities are literally limited only by your imagination, since your mind is what’s making up the world around you. Like a daydream, you can go anywhere, get superpowers, steal secrets with Leonardo DiCaprio, or do whatever you like.

“You could be able to fly, breathe underwater, use it as a form of cheap interactive porn,” says Marshall. On the club’s origin, “last semester, my friend Martina gave me a zine she made. […] I started talking to more people about it, and started to find that there are many more lucid dreamers out there than I thought!”

If this sounds like the nightlife for you, start researching. Many forums and websites exist for the erstwhile dreamer, and with practice, inducing lucid dreaming isn’t hard. Many recommend the reality check—a way of seeing if you’re awake or not. To do one, you can count to see if you have five fingers, try and push your thumb through your hand, or read a clock to see if the time makes sense. (No, you cannot make a totem, because you’re not in someone else’s dream. Silly.)

Garfield club members recommend writing a letter “A” on one hand to remind yourself. If you do the checks enough in the real world, the theory goes, you might start doing them while you’re asleep. This simple idea has helped many begin their lucid dreaming adventures.

Garfield has a small but active population of practicing lucid dreamers. On LDC’s first meeting, the small choir rehearsal room in which they met was packed. People introduced themselves, and traded tips and dream stories.

Sophomore Lane Aasen described his first lucid experience: “I tried to make a plane, which came out as a gigantic snowman-yeti-thing. Then a fortress, which worked quite well.”

“One time I dreamt that I was a piece of broccoli being chased across a cutting board by a flaming knife,” adds Marshall. “That was weird.”

“I  fell asleep and had a lucid right after the HSPE,” claims sophomore Michael Rosenberger. Any time you’re asleep is a good time to make it happen.

Lucid Dreaming Club hopes to sell t-shirts to fund its continued endeavours, but for now it’s just a community of curious dreamers trying to do something cool. It meets in the choir practice room on Tuesdays at lunch.

Successes
Prior to what’s been called the worldwide “Jasmine Revolution” of 2011, Tunisia’s president had been in power for 14 years. Tunisia has the seventh highest GDP of 52 African countries, and the annual number of HIV deaths is lower then the slightly smaller Switzerland. Tunisia was not expected to make news.

When it did, a legacy of brutality, corruption, and oppression surfaced to the international media. Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit vendor in the city of Sidi Bouzid, who was slapped, spit on and insulted by a police officer. Municipal officers at the local provincial headquarters ignored him. Within an hour, he made history by returning to the headquarters, and lighting himself on fire in front of everyone.

While Bouazizi was taken to a hospital, people took to the streets, in Sidi Bouzid, and then around the country. Police responded with tear gas. Trying to calm the rioters, the Tunisian president, Ben Ali, visited him in the hospital. Bouazizi died from his inuries on January 4th– ten days before the rioters became successful revolutionaries, and Ali left the country.

Egypt’s revolt came next. Egypt is still comparatively rich but much larger then Tunisia, and the revolution made international news. In February, crowds cheered in Cairo as Mubarak handed the government over to the friendly military. Meanwhile, protests were breaking out in Iraq, Algeria, Yemen, and other countries. The revolution was rolling east.

Libya
None of the other protests have yet led to a full overturning of a country’s government. While nearly 400 died in Egypt and 200 in the Tunisian revolution, Libya has had at least 3,000, and possibly many more. Meanwhile, the future of the country is unsure.

The current president is Muammar Gaddafi, who has been the leader of Libya for 42 years, or, since slightly before the moon landing. Libyan citizens have been jailed for speaking to foreigners about politics, foreign languages have been cut from schools, and Gaddafi has paid for murders around the world including a million-dollar bounty still on the head of a journalist.

The protests broke slowly and kept coming. Around February 19th, Gaddafi’s own police and military started to fail against the huge numbers of protesters, and he began hiring paid mercenaries from a nearby country, Chad. The military, like Egypt’s, was split between fighting for the pro– and anti-Gaddafi protesters. And approximately 200,000 Libyans have fled the country, relocating to Libya or Egypt with few or no resources to survive. The country today is not holding a revolution, it is fighting a civil war.

Most political powers and reporters agree that Gaddafi, unlike Mubarak or Ali, will not leave the country voluntarily. The question is whether Gaddafi will be ousted, and how stable the country will be afterwards.
Once the resistance hits Tripoli, a defeat there ‚ight allow one of the groups named in temporary government of the other parts of Libya to take control of the whole country, or if Gaddafi will be able to move elsewhere.

“Let me just be very unambiguous about this. Colonel Gaddafi needs to step down from power and leave. That is good for his country. It is good for his people. It’s the right thing to do,” said Obama on the matter. He and the UN have considered attempting to implement a no-fly zone above Libya– which would prevent Gaddafi from flying in mercenaries, or trying to air-bomb civilians. But no one knows if it would be possible to implement or even enforce.

The battle for the country continues, and whether the country descends into chaos or falls to either side, Libya is in for the long fight.

Said one protester, “if it’s necessary I will fight with my hands and teeth. I don’t need anything else.”

You should know that the true key to getting into your dream school is having the right life-changing experience to write about in your essay.

Colleges are, after all, getting more and more competitive, and if you want to go to anywhere that’s anywhere (other then somewhere that’s nowhere, and by “nowhere” I mean Wasco State University of Shellfish Management), you need to prove that you’re capable, talented, and unique: by sending in your SAT results, grades, and a personal essay about pivotal parts of your life.

Let’s be frank—if your essay is about the time you saw a bear when you were camping, and Little Johnny writes about teaching uneducated children who live in cardboard boxes about reading and the concept of open space, guess who’s getting a $9,000 contract-based renewal scholarship?

Here’s a hint, he’s probably not reading this paper right now.

To keep up with today’s able student body, you must have the right story. I hear that Yale won’t even consider students who’ve saved any less then at least one (1) orphanage full of children from certain destruction. That’s the kind of competition you’re up against.

In fact, studies have shown that the more heroic and mind-blowing your essay is, the more likely that no one will even bother to look at your SAT scores. Why would they bother to? They already know you’re a fantastic person.

Sadly, not all of us have gone out and experienced deep, soul-changing revelations, probably because we were all inside studying. In that case, we’ll just have to get creative. For instance, is there a river by your house? What about a dock?

Try waiting for someone to fall in, so that you can jump in and rescue them. If you have to push them into the river to do this, just make sure no one’s watching.

Reading to orphans on Christmas, or curing previously untreatable diseases, is also a great idea. (If the last one is taking you a while, you can also try making your own disease, but note that this is considered bad practice if you hope to become a doctor.)

After all, everyone knows kids who are going anywhere they want just because they’re too awesome not to. They’ve overcome great adversity, or done incredible amounts of good in the world, or maybe just have a master goal for their life—and colleges want the most impressive applicants they can have. Plenty of students across the country have 4.0’s, but only a few have fist-fought with a bear. Your goal is to be one of these people.

Once you’ve been enlightened to some universal truth, you’re now ready to write your essay. For maximum impact, be careful in the writing, and remember: the focus isn’t how awesome you are, but how much you benefited from the experience, while being awesome.

For example: “when I had to use household supplies to save the lives of three people struck simultaneously by lightning, I gained a deep understanding of the value of life.”
Great! For extra “oomph”, try going into specifics. “Also the fragility of the human consciousness.”

Finish off by restating your point: “and that is why it’s important that I get an economics degree at Minnesota State.”

Remember: the right essay can make or break your application. If you want to be successful, you have to be ready to prove it.

Is that a burning building I smell? juniors, step up—you have work to do.

Edwards’ new invention, Le Whaf, is a machine which takes in “food essence,” and produces a dense caloric gas, which smells and feels nothing like your desired snack, and is “eaten” by inhaling it from a giant light-bulb shaped container via a glass pipe.

“At first, my mouth feels warm and dry; then, as the droplets in the smoke settle, I can make out the particular flavours,” writes London Daily Mail journalist Laura Powell, while inhaling a gaseous lemon tart.

The machine also works for alcohol and a potentially wide variety of foods that have been reduced to liquids.

Why would you want to inhale food? “I’d had a few too many glasses of wine [when I had the idea],” Edwards admits. Edwards is also the inventor of “Le Whif,” Le Whaf’s older and stunted sister.

Le Whif is an inhaler-shaped device that lets its user sate a caffeine fix in the form of chocolate or coffee. Edwards also expects the device will be of use to dieters at 200 calories for ten minutes of huffing.

Granted, I can eat a 200-calorie meal in less then five minutes, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

In mechanism, Le Whaf is purely science: the only slightly suspicious “food essence” flows onto piezoelectric crystals which vibrate at high speeds when the device is activated.

The ultrasound waves produced by the vibrations turn the liquid into gas. No, I don’t understand this either, but I’m sure AP Chem students will be building one for us soon.

Unfortunately, at $115 per bowl (not counting the liquid) Le Whaf costs more then several other inhalable substances I can think of—not to mention that only two machines have been built so far. Still, Edwards speculates that the concept will catch on once these models go up for sale.

Blogger Neha of Gizmodiva agrees: “Here’s a sneak peek into the future, and a future that I don’t like one bit.”

If you’re curious about other ways to eat food, you might be interested in the new gourmet trend, “molecular gastronomy”: an art that consists of taking a perfectly innocent food and using science to make it as unrecognizable as possible. For instance, recipe blog Khymos offers the enterprising baker instructions for preparing fluorescent candy, rose-flavoured foam, and salmon in gelled dark chocolate.

And if you’re worried about destroying your kitchen, or, worse, eating what you just made, you can go elsewhere.

The menu at Alinea (a high-end Chicago restaurant that specializes in molecular gastronomy) serves such chemically-altered concoctions as liquid popcorn, cubical blocks of chicken liver, and something only described as “rabbit parfait.”

Of course, if you’re not willing to foot Alinea’s $750 bill or Le Whaf’s rarity, I am personally willing to prepare a grilled cheese sandwich and light it on fire in your very own kitchen for free. There’s no food like homemade food.

This is how the bill would work if you’re in a gang, if your friend or brother or cousin is, or if police think you might be: the police can file a “protection” or “civil order” against you, and if they find reason to believe you’re in a gang, you can be arrested.

The bill doesn’t say you have to break a law, it just says you have to be in a gang. Not all people in gangs commit crimes. Street gangs weren’t originally criminal organizations: most large gangs were actually founded in the 1960’s to protect those living in dangerous neighborhoods, when police presence wasn’t effective. Even today, not all gangs are criminal, and it would be a mistake to treat them as such.

Additionally, most people’s problem with gangs—gang violence—is said by most experts to do mostly with extremely small regional gang “cliques,” and isn’t connected to the larger gang. It’s the wrong designation, and will lead to the presumption that a lot of innocent people are “criminals in waiting.”

According to the bill, suspected gang members must prove they aren’t in gangs by following a set of rules. Granted, most of them are already apply to civilians: no trespassing, no intimidation, no graffiting buildings, etc. They’re also not allowed to “wear gang clothing in public” or “communicate directly or indirectly with any other person found by the court to be a criminal street gang associate.”

In short: suspected members, whether adult or minor, can’t wear certain colors or express freedom of speech (since they can’t talk with certain people). And, of course, there’s the Right to Assembly. In essence, the proposed bill not only tears apart the First Amendment but lights the pieces on fire and eats them.

Honestly, clothing? A t-shirt is possibly the least reliable way to decide that a person intends to commit violent crimes– as petty as arresting people based on brand of hair gel. And barring people from talking to each other is an attack on rights. More troublingly, the provisions for what constitutes “potential” gang members lacks specificity.

At best, ex-gang affiliates and family members who have no idea what their sons or brothers are doing are at risk. At worst, people who know someone who know someone, or who look like gang members, can have the same ridiculous statutes applied to them.

To a biased observer actively searching for them, nearly anyone will “look like a gang member.” There’s no question that this kind of witch hunt mentality will turn up false positives. And, of course, there are the actual gang members who haven’t done anything and don’t plan to.

Ultimately, the proposed bill is dangerous because it will lead to the conviction of innocents. Among other examples, a very similar approach to violence in California has already shown the same results, and the 23 racial awareness groups who agreed that the bill would promote racial profiling should say clearly that I’m not alone.

Rob, your intentions are grand, but I’m shocked that anyone can stand for any law that allows the arrest of a minor because they’re wearing the wrong color t-shirt. If that’s the best you can do, someone else can surely do better.

Elan is not a high security prison, it’s a boarding school for teenagers. In Poland Springs, Maine, the school specializes in kids with behavioral problems. Student testimony has been describing alarming behavior in the school for decades, including physical and sexual abuse, improper living conditions, punishments that equate to torture, and brainwashing. The school, astonishingly, remains open to children from age 14 into adulthood. The website describes an idyllic educational environment, but emerging accounts from alumni are far more disturbing.

Newcomers to the school are not allowed to talk to one another. An older student of the school is assigned to tail them, constantly, and it is them—not an adult—who  decides to administer punishments. If a certain number of punishments a day isn’t recorded, the older student will be demoted and face the same treatment.

An example: in the “General Meeting” tactic, the “problem” student sits in the middle of the room. Then, the entire dormitory group, in clumps of fives and sixes, approaches, and literally screams obscenities and insults at them for five minutes before switching off. The process is called “getting your feelings off” and can take up to fifty minutes. It’s done as a therapeutic activity.

“So staff always had their hands clean,” wrote an anonymous alumni. “Literally, the blood was on ours.” If any of this sounds ridiculous, it is. But students have been giving accounts of similar horrific abuses for years

Elan and other boarding schools are usually the last in a long line of options, the teen having been rejected or kicked out of other programs. Many exhausted parents never visit the schools, and have only a recommendation from a social worker or a website to determine to send their children there.

Students have died at Elan. It’s not surprising considering what was once a common practice in the school: “the Ring”, a boxing ring formed by students where the target student would be forced to fight several others at the same time.

“Elan had a real sick way of making you do violent things,” said a former student. The school maintained that any participants were heavily padded and monitored by adults. But the fact remains that the school was founded in 1970, and got its first lawsuit for the Ring in 1975. As of 2000—25 years later—the practice has apparently been discontinued.

Elan’s most famous alumni is Michael Skakel, who was charged with murdering his neighbor, Martha Moxley, at 15. During the 2002 trial, his classmates stated that Skakel confessed while at Elan—after eight or nine rounds in the Ring. “Another classmate… testified that he was forced to wear a sign that read ‘Confront me about the murder of Martha Moxley,’’ for six weeks,’” wrote the New York Times.

Outside contact is strictly monitored: employees are told not to reveal anything, and phone calls to parents last about 15 minutes every week and are monitored by an adult. “The person who monitored the call would have their hand hovering over the hang-up button,” wrote an former student.

The elaborate Orwellian secrecy has a motive: Elan, like other boarding schools, is an extremely profitable venture. Parents pay up to 50,000 dollars for their child to go to the school (part of the cost is deferred by the state). Between the total cost and the population of 150, the school makes 7.5 million dollars in profit a year. It has a clear interest in keeping itself running.

And for a few alumni, maybe Elan was worth it. Some students describe the program as making a positive difference in their lives.  “I don’t think I’d be alive today if I hadn’t been sent there, but I have nightmares to this day about it,” said a woman, who joined the program at 14.

“They didn’t kill me, so I guess they made me stronger,” said another alumni, but added, “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. I’ll never forgive them for what they did.” Most alumni would rather see the school shut down for good.

One bill, HR-911, or the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act, would have shut down Elan and any similar schools around the country. It passed in the Senate but not in Congress last year, and its current fate is unknown. Meanwhile, Elan remains open.

The school’s opponents may be encouraged by the public outcry which has won other victories in the past: Casa by the Sea, a boarding school in Mexico to which many parents from the US sent children, was closed after it kept students in solitary confinement for days as punishment. Darrington Academy in Georgia was shut down after the principal attacked two students. One band of alumni is already trying to file a class action lawsuit against Elan.

If the public at large becomes aware of the issue, eventually it will become too large to ignore.

Many, including most students, felt that Garfield APP should not be split now or in the futurethat it would be impossible to replicate the full variety of AP classes and award-winning music, art, drama, and other student-run programs at GHS. Many others thought that a split would be impending, and that alternative, possibly optional pathways for APP students at Ingraham would be fair matches for Garfield.

Ingraham is located in North Seattle and offers the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, which would theoretically be expanded if the change were to happen. APP students would be allowed to take IB classes as sophomores, one year ahead of normal students. And the numbers add up: Garfield had 110 ninth-grade students on a waitlist this year, while Ingraham had 100 ninth-grade seats to spare.

It also became a forum for dicussion on the merits of the APP program itself and how it is taught at Garfield and other schools. A group of students, the Garfield APP Student Union, talked about their experiences with the program and how it affected them, agreeing that splitting the school and the students would damage the strength of the program.

For others, the meeting was used as a platform to campaign for reform.

“The level of exceptionalism displayed by some of the parents is appalling to say the least, even though there’s no way to ensure that previously gifted second graders  are still special needs once they get to high school,” said one GHS student. “The problem is that the program in its current form [encourages] parents to work for the good of their children and not for that of the Garfield community.”

“If we reward excellence in sports,” said one parent at the meeting, who compared APP to a varsity sports team, “Why shouldn’t we reward excellence in education?”

Then, Jane Fellner, who has run for the school board and who was the chairwomen of the APP Task Force for eight years, stood up and said something that seemed surprising to many.

There are only 23 more APP students at Garfield then there were last year.

While the comment was lost quickly, it showed something very important: that information about this decision is not widely known.

“Program placement has been the least transparent, the most political, and the most corrupt process in the District,” says Charlie Mas, writing for the blog Saving Seattle Schools. Given that, for instance, the meeting at Garfield was only publicized among 8th and 9th grade families, even though some of the proposals affected all high school APP students, Charlie may not be exaggerating.

“[My son] was promised in three years that he and his cohorts would be back together,” one middle school parent announced at the meeting, referring to the group of students who his son went to elementary school with.

After the APP program was split at the elementary and middle school levels last year, many thought they were in the clear and that they would automatically get a seat at Garfield. Many feel that the APP program is being intentionally targeted.

Mas puts it simply: “They want to break up APP because the District improves school test scores by re-arranging the distribution of high-performing studentsnot by actually improving outcomes for students.”

While the district administration is not widely known for popularitythe 98 percent teacher vote of no confidence in Maria Goodloe-Johnson earlier this year and the school board’s renewing of her contract being telling examplesit still seemed a little extreme to accuse the district and school board of  purposefully overcrowding Garfield in order to split up APP and raise test scores.

The district has yet to produce an official statement on the matter, but among teachers and parents, it’s a given belief. A parent at the meeting suggested a possible future in which all students were automatically sent to a designated neighborhood school, regardless of program or anything else. Could that really happen? At my table, GHS parent Stephanie Bower shrugged. “I think it’s what the district would like to happen.”

At the end of the meeting, the audience was split up into table-sized discussion groups to talk about the issues at hand.

Ginny McFarland, a GHS parent was unimpressed, saying, “It’s basically divide and conquer.”

The one concrete result from the meeting was that it was decided that students currently at Garfield will not be moved. This satisfied a major concern among many students and parents, but did little to solve potential long-term problems.

While the district administration stopped accepting proposals for new assignment plans on November 28th, they will continue to accept input into December.

Without drastic action from parents and students, APP at the high school level may well be split. Garfield is crowded, and Ingraham would be a more convenient location for some students. Other high schoolsChief Sealth, Franklin, and especially Rainier Beachhave space for more students.

The most underpopulated schools frequently have less funding or fewer dedicated teachers, which doesn’t help their popularity.

Redrawing automatic boundary lines for placement would fix the enrollment problem at these schools in the future, and a greater parent presence might help fix and make the schools more attractive.

But that will take time. Meanwhile, families with means are already be literally moving into the attendance zones for choice schools. Excellence for Allthe motto that is driving the district’s controversial changeswill take time to achieve.

Schools don’t want to wait, and the district wants to act.

Marie Goodloe-Johnson writes, “We’re listening, and we want to hear what you have to say.” Now is the time to speak up.

The real cause was the popular alcoholic energy drink Four Loko.

“Everything was going fine, the music was playing, people were having fun, and then all of a suddenthe girls were puking everywhere,” said a CWU student to ABC News.

After this and other incidents, Four Loko has been banned by the Washington Liquor Control Board for 120 days until it can be decided if the drink is safe.

Normally sold at convenience stores, the attraction of Four Loko  is it’s combination of potent alcohol and caffeine—one can contains the equivalent of four beers and a cup of coffee, respectively. The caffeine counteracts the body’s natural tendency to get sleepy when drunk, resulting in a state described by a Garfield junior as “drunk, but you’re completely awake.” You’re impaired, just not obviously—inexperienced drinkers who often don’t realize they’re drunk until the caffeine wears off, or until they pass out.

Many of the incidents involving the drink have occurred at colleges, and the drink has been accused of being marketed to younger people, who comprise its largest customer base. Served at a party, the brightly colored container looks like a normal energy drink. A second product, Four Loko Max, is sold only in Mexico and contains the equivalent of six beers and double the caffeine of normal Loko.

“Until I felt a slight flush in my cheeks and subtle tingling on my scalp, I could have convinced myself that I was drinking candy,” writes a reporter for the New York Times. “If the cans didn’t expressly advertise their contents as 12 percent alcohol, you’d never believe it, because the bite of the malt liquor is so well masked.” UrbanDictionary.com calls the drink “legalized liquid cocaine.”

The statistics associated with Four Loko and other drinks that combine alcohol with energy drinks don’t help it. National Public Radio reported that drinkers at bars were four times more likely to want to drive home alone. It’s  been banned from multiple college campuses after incidents similar to the CWU one. At less than three dollars, one Garfield student described it as “drunk in a can.”

Other companies have combined caffeine and alcohol before, including Bud, Miller, and Rockstar. All, however, have either toned down or removed said products. On the other hand, Four Loko is made by an independent company, for whom the drink is the most popular of the three products they sell. They can’t simply pull it off the market.

“Our cans feature seven different warnings about the product’s alcohol content and the necessity of an ID for purchase,” says Phusion Projects, the manufacturers of Four Loko, defending their product. “We strongly believe retailers that sell our products to minors, and individuals who purchase them illegally, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Phusion believes that Four Loko is being singled out unfairly for damage caused by ordinary alcohol abuse, and argues that people have been safely consuming alcohol and caffeine for years– in the form of coffee and wine, coke and rum, and vodka and Red Bull. Still, the FDA believes that has given producers of products that contain them  an ultimatum: prove that they’re safe to drink, or stop making them. Four Loko has submitted a study for review, though it’s still unknown whether or not it’s been accepted.

Starting on November 17th, it will become illegal to sell Four Loko in Washington.

These are the participants of National Novel Writing Month (abbreviated as NaNoWriMo), a mass literary endeavour  for each participant to write 50,000 words (about the length of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) of sequential plot. To quote the event’s website, “They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.”

Among all the international areas participating, Seattle is king. The Emerald City has had the greatest word count per person for multiple years running, beating out other cities and even some small countries (what’s good, Denmark?). Last year, Seattle was bested by Atlanta, but local participants are eager to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“[We] are lucky to wrangle some brilliant and motivated individuals,” writes Amanda Cherry, a Municipal Liaison for the program in Seattle. “I can assure you that, no matter Chris Baty’s allegations, there are no novel-writing cyborgs in our region.”

Chris Baty is the founder of National Novel Writing month, which began eight years ago in San Francisco. NaNoWriMo has a growing population of some 165,000 participants, over 30,000 of whom passed the set goal by midnight on November 30^th in last year’s event. To be sure, writing a good novel in such a short amount of time is not, by anyone’s definition, easy. But among participants, it’s clear: the point of NaNoWriMo isn’t to write the best novel. It’s about getting ideas onto paper.

Says the website, “You will write a lot of crap.”

Writing a novel in a month is no simple task: people who have beat the 50,000 word deadline often resort to main characters with eight middle names, staying up till four on a nightly basis, writing during work or school, and writing while drunk (I don’t understand how this helps, but it seems to be popular). Still, “our [writers] range in age from elementary schoolers to retired people,” writes Cherry. Ultimately, winning this crazy race comes down to dedication, and the willingness to abandon all else for the sake of writing a really long story.

Writes Renda Dodge, another Seattle liaison, “The goal is to get those words down on paper. November is for writing, and you have all of [next year] to edit.”