The Week of 4/11/16 in a Glance

Hello Everyone,
First, if you read our last post and you were confused, we hope you realize that it was actually an "april fools" post. This week, our four pieces are all real, even Rose's (Some of us didn't even believe that one at first) Next, we want you to remember that we love suggestions on what to write about! Email us at thegreylockglance@gmail.com with any topics you want to learn about. We hope you enjoy this week's glance.
-The 'Glance editors

Equal Pay Day

By Maddy Art

         I wish that, with a title like this, I could be writing an uplifting post about how women miraculously will now be getting paid equally to men. Nope. Tuesday, April 12 was equal pay day, the day that marked the amount of time that it took into 2016 for women to make the same amount of money that men made in 2015. To clarify, that means that it took women fifteen and a half months to earn what men made in twelve. Hooray. Although the gender pay gap has been reduced in the past decades, the average woman still earns just 79 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Moreover, the gap increases when you take data focusing on women of color, particularly black and Latina women. So, how can this be legal? Well, it technically violates the Equal Pay Act of 1963 for women to be paid less than men for similar work, but due to abundant loopholes, it still happens customarily. In 2014, legislation to attempt to reduce the gap came a few votes short of passing. While paychecks are certainly not the only means of measuring gender equality, Equal Pay Day is a good reminder that there is still a ways to go for women to be treated equally to men.

The Breakthrough Starshot Project

By Rose Gotlieb

Let’s just say that the russian billionaire Yuri Milner really wants to find E.T. Last year, he invested 100 mil - a lot more than Kim Kardashian’s engagement ring - in the effort to look into the skies for extra-terrestrial activity. This year, he’s decided to take a 25.6 trillion mile step further by sending a bunch of tiny spacecrafts to the closest star system, Alpha Centauri.

Won’t that take about a trillion years? With the help of genius Stephen Hawking, Milner proposes an entire fleet of postage-stamp-sized spacecrafts with meter-wide sails to fly out. Because of their small size, they would travel faster - with the help of a laser beam sent from Earth. Ever seen Doctor Who? It’s pretty much that. They would move about one-fifth the speed of light and reach their destination in 20 years.

What’s the catch? $5-10...billion. But if anyone can do it, Stephen Hawking can.

Religious Freedom or Discrimination?

By Owen Tucker-Smith

This past Thursday, Mississippi’s governor signed a religious freedom bill that quickly became controversial. The “freedom” bill gave businesses the option to not serve members of the LGBT community because of their religious beliefs. A lot of this kind of action has been happening recently, though. This isn’t a first.

What? Recently North Carolina passed a bill that stated that local governments didn’t have the power to pass any sort of anti-discrimination laws. It also made transgender citizens use the bathroom of their biological sex, not of their preference. After this law was passed there was also huge controversy, even from large businesses. For instance, PayPal, an online payment company, was planning on opening a center in North Carolina. Plan scratched. PayPal didn’t want to be located in a place of such discrimination.

What’s this new bill? The governor claimed that the bill was passed to expand religious freedom after it had been minimized last year (when the supreme court allowed gay and lesbian couples to be married). Key word: marriage. Because the law was passed, gay and lesbian citizens can be denied services such as marriage licenses, wedding venues, or even flowers for their wedding because of the person’s religious beliefs. They can also be denied of other services such as housing, and business.

How do people feel? As you would expect. There’s been protesting. Lots of protesting. Some think that this bill does really protect people's’ religious rights, some think it doesn’t. Many, like us, believe that laws like this are just ways to slowly pick away at the progress that we made last year when the supreme court passed their law. Every bill that is made like this one and North Carolina’s is just another form of discrimination. A large step backwards.

Another Update on the Zika Virus

By Owen Tucker-Smith

We’ve talked about the Zika virus before. It is that mosquito born disease that gave joint pain, rashes fever, and was dangerous for pregnant women as it was connected to birth defects. The CDC has acted on it as much as they could, but recently the virus has been spreading extremely fast, through the Caribbean, Latin America, and finally the US. The first sign of the disease  in the US was in Texas, and it was passed not from a bug, but by sex (we’ve attached an article about it, 2nd one down) The virus has spread through many states. Recently the not-so-magic number was 12. Now the CDC has announced that it is present in 30 states, a more than double increase. And there’s more bad news. We thought that the virus was a large threat mainly to pregnant women, but scientists in Brazil say no. They have found that the virus may be linked in some way to a brain disorder, which opens up the field to all adults

The Week of 13/32/17 in a Glance

Hey Guys,
We hope you've been enjoying the weather. And excited for that snow day. We've got some boring stuff for you guys to read. Because honestly, who cares about the news? In our opinion, if it doesn't directly effect us, we don't care. So you're probably better off if you spend your time instagraming.
-The 'Glance Editors

Snapchat: Disappearing?

By Maddy Art

      Are you one of the approximate 100 million people who send photos daily though the app Snapchat? If so, you unfortunately may soon lose all of your streaks. As you may know, Snapchat released an update earlier this week introducing somewhat major changes. For example, the stories of your friends play automatically, one after another. That is all fine, but the issue comes into play with the new stickers that you can now send in the chat feature. A small company based in Philadelphia is supposedly suing the popular social media platform, because many of the doodles on these digital images were apparently taken from their website without proper permission. If they win the lawsuit, which is looking likely, Snapchat will not only have to pay a hefty fee, but will either be required to completely reboot the app and its users, or get rid of the app altogether. This could be the end of Snapchat’s story.

Sprucing up the Spruces

By Rose Gotlieb

For a while now, Williamstown has been debating on what to do with the area that was formerly the Spruces Mobile Home Park. As you may know, a few years ago a river flooded and caused big problems at the Spruces. However, the Williamstown Selectmen have finally made a decision on what to do with the area after an interesting proposal was made to them last week.

What proposal? Six Flags, the amusement park, has noticed that many people from Bennington, North Adams, Lanesborough, Williamstown, and other nearby towns and cities have been going to Six Flags, and they think it would be profitable for them if they had a location nearer to our towns. They saw that the Spruces was “up for grabs” and they offered an undisclosed amount of money for it. In addition to the money that they are paying for it, they would also be able to make the river less of an issue, making it safer for the people of Williamstown.

Was this put to vote? No, actually. Because of the 28th amendment, which says that as large company businesses (which includes amusement parks) can build what they want on land they buy as long as they pay their high taxes, the town didn’t get a say.

What are they going to do? Well, if you’ve been to Six Flags, you’ll have a basic idea. It is going to be a full-blown amusement park, with rides, cotton candy, and “much more”. Among the plans that they’ve released, they showed a roller coaster that offers a panoramic view of the purple mountains called the “Greylock Lightning”. They are also planning on painting the stately lions at the front of the park gold. April Fools, in case you didn’t notice. The first two sentences were true - the rest definitely weren’t.

The New Mount Greylock: Top 10 Things to Know

By Owen Tucker-Smith

On March 15th, the Mt. Greylock building project was approved in Lanesborough. It had been approved in Williamstown on March 1st. Now that we are getting a new building, some people are wondering about the details. Some decisions have been made, and we have established a list of the top ten most important things about the new building.

10: No vending machines, maybe a Starbucks to replace them.

Apparently now the vending machines aren’t giving the school enough money for what they are worth. So the school is considering replacing them with a more profitable option, a Starbucks right outside the lunchroom

9: No paper

YES (Youth Environmental Squad) has won. Greylock is going green. All paper will be replaced with dry erase boards that ARE THE DESKS. Yes, the desk tops are whiteboards.

8: No bells

This past September, 3 students and 1 teacher died from either shock or ear infection after “being surprised by the bells.” For this reason, the school has decided to take away the bell schedule for the new school. Teachers will release students when the lesson is over.

7: Strict internet blocking system

Many websites and apps will be blocked in the new building, including snapchat (if it exists) instagram, twitter, facebook, wikipedia, sparknotes, candy crush, and all pizza ordering websites, which have become recently very popular in class among juniors and seniors.

6: Uniform

There will be a school uniform. This uniform for boys will be a red tux, and for girls will be a red dress. This is due to many teachers complaining that they could not concentrate on teaching when students were so informally dressed.

5: The band room will be on a separate premise

Miles and miles away. Recently, administrators in the main office have passed out and developed ear infections due to listening to the blasting sound of the middle and high school blands. It is just too loud to be anywhere near other humans.

4: We’re going solar!

And YES strikes again. This is sort of self explanatory. When it is dark out, or cloudy, classes will be forced to watch a movie as they cannot see the teacher’s lesson.

3: No books

That’s right, everything will be done on ipads. This is due to students’ shoulders actually falling off because of the heavy weight of textbooks in their backpacks. The library will be replaced most likely with an apple store.

2: Art will be replaced by karate

The school has decided that karate is much more useful for students considering possible zombie apocalypses in the future (Last year some students after playing to much Black Ops decided to try to start a zombie apocalypse by walking around with their hands sticking out.) When will art help in a zombie attack on the school?

1: No teachers

Teachers take money to have. They are too expensive, apparently. In the new building, there will be robots standing at the front of the room with ipads standing as their heads, playing Khan Academy videos. It is much more cost efficient.