Culture ∙ Page 4
The Knight Times ∙ February 2022
JAYLYNN WOOLLEY Staff Writer
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The Dragon Dance is a traditional dance often performed to celebrate Chinese New Year, Photo by Ms. Lauren West.
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Chinese Club brought Chinese cultural traditions to EHS with the celebration of Lunar New Year and educated the EHS community about its importance to Chinese culture. The Lunar New Year is a time for new beginnings and rebirth and also marks the introduction of a new zodiac sign, this year the tiger. Each year there is one of 12 animals assigned to the new year, and each animal determines what the year will be like and assigns certain characteristics to the people born in that year. Similar to the Western celebration of the new year, the Lunar New Year marks the start of a new chapter in the lives of many Asian cultures. Although, the U.S.’s new year is based off the solar calendar, which is used by many countries around the world. China and other Asian countries base the start of the year off the lunar calendar, which explains why the date falls a little later than the Western celebration. The Chinese Club helped to expose the EHS community to Chinese cultural traditions such as Lunar New Year during the Mandarin World Languages Chapel. Dur-
ing the service, club members explained the importance of the Lunar New Year and its similarities and differences to the traditional American celebration. While the actual holiday was celebrated on February 1 this year, Chinese Club celebrated Lunar New Year by selling Asian snacks and drinks during lunch on February 2. Boba tea and Asian sodas were a few of the favorites, as well as an Asian-inspired lunch provided by the lunch staff that was greatly appreciated by the community.
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Chinese Club celebrates new year
ESTEFANIA LOPEZ-SALAS Social Media Coordinator
Students learn Chinese calligraphy in the library in celebration of the Lunar new Year. Photo by Ms. Lauren West.
Hay una clase en nuestra escuela que no mucha gente conoce: la clase de Español 5 “Spanish conversation through film” es una clase avanzada de español muy especial porque los estudiantes estudian y analizan películas que son producidas en España o América Latina. El objetivo es entender lo que ocurre “bajo la superficie” de lo que ven en la película. Los temas que abarca la clase son inmigración, La Guerra Civil Española, justicia e injusticia en América Latina, eventos populares actuales y el arte de ser director/a de cine. Por medio de discusiones y presentaciones que los estudiantes preparan, los estudiantes desarrollan una perspectiva sobre los temas de las películas y pueden servir como críticos. La clase está compuesta de Seniors y un Junior. Yael Gonzales, un estudiante en esta clase, dice “siempre disfruto esta clase. Me encanta analizar las películas populares de mi patria y de otros países cercas.” ¡Si esto suena interesante,
únase a esta clase el próximo año! There is a class at our school that not many people know about: the Spanish 5 class “Spanish conversation through film” is very advanced because students study and analyze films that are produced in Spain or Latin America. The goal is to understand what is going on under the surface of what they see in the film. Topics covered in the class are immigration, the Spanish Civil War, the justice and injustice in Latin America, popular current events, and the art of being a film director. Through student-prepared discussions and presentations, students develop a perspective on the film’s themes and can serve as film critics. The class is made up of seniors and a junior. Yael Gonzales, a student in this class, says “I always enjoy this class. I love analyzing popular movies from the country my family is from and other countries nearby.” If this class sounds interesting, join it next year!
Hi, everyone, I am Catherine MacConnell, Co-Chair of the Competition Organizing Committee, and I am here to share the latest math news. February was a productive, fun-filled month for EHS math lovers, marked with contests and receiving competition results. We continue to hold monthly Mu Alpha Theta and Math Club meetings, now in Anderson Lecture Hall, where members participate in the Texas Math League Contest. Regarding the other local, national, and international competitions, congratulations to all the mathletes who competed. We had five teams successfully participate in HiMCM. We also had fifteen members compete in the UH math competition.
Out of the thirty who competed in the national AMC, we would like to recognize the top five scorers in each level. For the AMC 10, the top five are Matthew Kan (top scorer), Daphne Melton, Evan Ringwald, Rishabh Sharma, and Sarah Yates. The top five scorers from the AMC 12 are Craig Choi, Ava Gami (top scorer), Chris Lahoti, Grayson Maki, and Carter Peeler. Also, this month, two teams comprised of juniors and seniors completed the consecutive 14-hour MathWorks Math Modeling (M3) Competition. Save the date for our schoolwide celebration of Pi Day and the International Day of Math on March 10th during both lunches. (More on this next month).
If you haven’t already, follow @ehsmathclub on Instagram and Twitter to stay up to date with math events and exciting math memes.
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The Lily Pad with Lily O’Gorman Beijing held the 2022 Winter Olympics without snow. Yes, you read that right. And besides being impractical and confusing, this snowless snow sport competition is also horrific for the environment. Unsustainability in the Olympic Games is not a new phenomenon; researchers from Switzerland have found that it has been trending steadily since the 80s. But the Beijing Games took this unsustainability to new heights. Thus, environmentalists (and logical thinkers) across the globe have posed questions that have no simple answers: Why would the International Olympic Committee (IOC) select a snowless city to host an event that almost entirely relies on snow? Why is the IOC marketing the Beijing Olympics as the “greenest Olympics yet” despite data proving that it is not? And how can we hold the IOC and the Chinese government accountable for their promises of sustainability? These are good questions, and sadly, I don’t have the answers. But what I do
have is some information about just how questionable the Beijing 2022 environmental policy was. Like I said, this Winter Olympics relied on 100% artificial snow. Artificial snow has been used in the past - in Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018, but never to the extent that we saw in Beijing. Creating enough artificial snow to cover terrain for 109 winter sporting events is an insane proposition, and one that required almost 400 state-of-the-art snow guns. Additionally, producing the amount of snow needed required huge amounts of water - a conservative estimate of two million cubic meters or 49 million gallons of water, according to Carmen de Jong, a geographer at the University of Strasbourg. That alone sets off sustainability alarms, but coupled with the fact that Beijing has suffered from water scarcity for decades, it is downright absurd. Data from the Ministry of Water Resources tells us that Beijing’s water per capita is 20 times lower than the national
average. By the definition of the United Nations, the region is in water scarcity. So why on earth is the IOC allowing 49 million gallons to be used to create ski slopes? Should that be Beijing’s priority? We are already seeing local water resources being impacted by water demands, and local populations could potentially face severe consequences for years. Additionally, the slopes themselves run through a nature reserve - a reality that poses disastrous risks to the surrounding ecosystem. Presenting artificial weather phenomena such as snow to a region that does not contain those elements puts the nature reserve in danger. De Jong commented further on the issue, saying, “These could be the most unsustainable Winter Olympics ever held. These mountains have virtually no natural snow […] To create events without the primary resource it depends on is not only unsustainable, it’s irresponsible.” Sven Daniel Wolfe, one of the coauthors of the previously-mentioned study
on the sustainability of the Olympics, likewise commented on the amendment of nature reserve borders, saying, “There are a lot of indications that power usage for these Games is not ecologically sustainable, and we have also seen reports, in Beijing and in other host cities such as Sochi, of protected natural parks being damaged in order to accommodate new construction. This is not sustainable from an ecological point of view.” Looking ahead from Beijing 2022, we have to ask ourselves questions about what the future of the Winter Olympics and winter sports in general looks like. With global warming continuing at a rapid pace, the number of locations that are physically able to hold the games is decreasing dramatically. Chad de Guzman of Time Magazine summarized up this grim future, remarking, “If this trend continues worldwide, not even artificial snow can save the future of the Winter Olympics in a warming world.”
