Features page 4: The Egyptian Uprising
A&
page 11: Black Swan
page 13: Pujol’s Contract Claim
From The Archives: IHS in the 70s page 8
ALL THE NEWS THAT’S fit
to tattle. PHOTO/PROVIDED
March 22, 2011 • Estd. 1892 • Vol. 119 • No.5• Published Monthly • www.ihstattler.com • Ithaca High School, 1401 N. Cayuga St., Ithaca, NY, 14850 • FREE
Governor Cuomo’s Plan for New York With more than two thousand people packed into the Empire State Plaza’s Convention Center in Albany on January 5th 2011, Governor Cuomo gave his state of the state address. As noted by his speech, the main topic of interest that has concerned New Yorkers is how the governor plans to “transform” the government. Cuomo addressed these concerns by initially stating that, “In government, as in life, you can never solve a problem if you refuse to acknowledge it.” Such problems include the 800,000 New Yorkers currently unemployed, the state taxes that are 66% higher than the national average, and just the fact that the state of New York spends an incredibly large amount of money each year. The latter is a problem that has persisted since the early 1990s and has continued to affect the rates of unemployment and the increase in taxes in NYS. The governor also pointed out that while the state is funding more money on education and Medicaid (both have exceeded inflation by more than 3%), the state is still ranked number 34 in terms of better education, and 21 in terms of Medicaid. These poor results show the need for radical reform, which is exactly what Cuomo plans to do. In his speech, the Governor declared that in order to radically reform New York’s economy, economic regional councils continued on p. 3
Ithaca Math Circle Shines at HMMT By FOREST TONG
A group of 8 Ithaca High students from Ithaca Math Circle (IMC) participated in the 2011 Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (Division B) held at MIT on Feb. 12. The IMC team won 2nd place in the team round and was ranked fifth overall in Division B. The team round is a 90-minute test composed of 15 challenging short-answer and proof-style questions, which focus on several topics in algebra, combinatorics, number theory, and geometry. Team members Forest Tong, Anying Li, and Ofer Grossman won 3rd, 5th, and 7th place in the Algebra/Geometry individuals, respectively. The annual Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (HMMT) was established in 1998 and has grown considerably into an international event with over 900 participating students in 2010. This year, it attracted 100 teams from across the U.S. and a number of international teams. Ithaca Math Circle’s participation in the 2011 HMMT was made possible by the sponsorship of Cornell Math Outreach. The Ithaca Math Circle was formed in April 2010 by a group of local middle and high school students interested in mathematics at the competition level and beyond. They meet every weekend to learn, mostly from each other and occasional continued on p. 3
PHOTO/PROVIDED
By MANSI VOHRA
Destruction in Japan caused by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake has left people without homes and infrastructure in ruins.
Disaster Strikes Japan By LARRY GE
On Friday, March 11 at 2:46 p.m. Tokyo time a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck northern Japan, setting off a destructive tsunami that sent waves as high as 30 feet crashing into the Japanese mainland. The resulting loss of lives and damage to property has been catastrophic; the estimated death toll is over 10,000 and rising, and Prime Minister Naoto Kan declared the tsunami Japan’s worst crisis since World War II. The quake was the strongest recorded earthquake in Japan’s history. Japan is located in an area prone to violent seismic activity, and Friday’s quake left thousands homeless in a matter of minutes and stranded millions without water, power, heat or transportation. Japan has mobilized more than 100,000 troops, which amounts to over half of the country’s active military force. In addition, thousands of volunteers aided in the recovery of survivors and the general relief effort. Currently, the most pressing issue is the nuclear crisis at Japan’s nuclear reactors. The Japanese government declared a Nuclear Power Emergency on March 11. At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which contains six nuclear reactors, the quake and tsunami knocked out the cooling systems of the reactors. Many fear the damage may result in full meltdowns. Hydrogen explosions have also hit three of the six reactors, destroying much of the roofs and outer walls of the reactors as well as damaging reactor two’s suppression chamber, which allowed a crippling surge of radiation to escape. This surge of radiation, which is 800 times more intense than Japan’s recommended hourly exposure limit, is what caused the evacuation of over 750 workers Tuesday morning. Only 50 workers stayed behind in an attempt to cool the reactors and quell the fires resulting from the explosions.
Traditionally, when a nuclear reactor is shut down, electric pumps pull cool water in from rivers and oceans to draw off the massive amounts of heat emanating from the fuel rods. However, the quake knocked out both the electric powered pumps and the diesel backups. In a last effort to prevent full meltdowns, Japanese officials have resorted to flooding the reactors with seawater to cool the fuel. As the seawater boils, pressure builds up and steam must periodically be released into the atmosphere. However, the steam released in this process has potentially radioactive particulates in it if the fuel rods of the reactors have begun to melt, which could result in lasting environmental harm as well as potential risk to human lives. The winds have mainly taken the radioactive material out towards the Pacific, but Japanese officials have urged people who live within an 18-mile radius of the plant, an estimated 100,000 people, to take precautions such as staying indoors and sealing their houses. On Tuesday, Tokyo officials stated that they had detected radiation levels over the city twenty times above the normal limit, though they quickly stated that such levels had no immediate health risk. For now, officials at the Fukushima Daiichi have two risky options, assuming that a full nuclear meltdown has been averted: they could continue to flood and vent the reactors, hoping that winds do not carry the resulting steam towards populated areas, or they could hope that the worst of the overheating has passed, and that within a few days the cores would cool enough to essentially entomb the radioactivity within the plants. As a result of the disasters at the plant, Tokyo Electric has had to implement rolling blackouts across the region, the first of their kind in over 60 years. Unnerved by the events at the nuclear plant, Japanese investors have also responded with a 10.6 percent drop in the Nikkei 225 index, which closed at 8,605.15 points, the lowest in nearly two years.