There will be zero delegates awarded to the winner of the Missouri Republican Primary hosted today.  So, we taxpayers are spending seven million dollars to put on a puppet-show election when our states faces a budget shortfall of over half a billion dollars in 2012.  In this process of cutting spending, legislators pledged to cut all unnecessary programs.  For example, our representatives cut the state-funded Tour of Missouri, considered by professional bicyclists among the best races in the country.  This race brought international attention to Missouri for the sum of one million dollars each year.

Cutting spending is all fine and dandy if this is the policy and legislators are committed to it.  However, when our representatives decline the opportunity to void the election and save seven million taxpayer dollars, an issue arises: hypocrisy.  We could have hosted seven Tour or Missouri’s instead of this pointless Tuesday election.

Maybe it is a good thing so few students knew about the elections today, or else the police might have been managing a protest outside CHS for the second day in a row.

Patient waits in hospital (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/MCT)

The United States is ranked 37th in the world — just ahead of Slovenia. In terms of health care that is. The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world without a universal health care system. But, by 2014, “Obama Care,” the legislation called the Accountable Care Act (ACA), will cover nearly every American. Unless, of course, this act is repealed by the next president; but we cannot allow that because of what this legislation means.

It means the elderly will be able to buy medicine that keeps them well, families will be fully covered—including children with preexisting conditions and young adults will be insured until the age of 26, when they can obtain a job that provides new coverage.

It means that the care of women will also take a leap forward with “Well Women’s Care,” a part of the ACA, starting in August 2012. This program will provide cancer screenings, annual check ups, mammograms, and other important tests to women at no extra charge. Women’s groups around the country agree that access to necessary care will be the biggest step forward in women’s rights in 40 years.

Sadly, not every American will benefit from the current draft of the ACA: single, childless adults living below the poverty line will not be reached. Even though not all Americans will be covered by this system, we still need to put this system fully in place. Once we have nearly universal health care, the legislation can be amended to insure absolutely everyone.

We need universal health care to fuel our economy and keep our place of power in the world. The next generation cannot work and invent to pull our country out of debt if we are sickly, weak or even dying. We need to be strong, healthy and driven if we want to strengthen our country.

This generation’s high school students are about to be cycled into the working world, where we will find that we can build on our interests and develop as people, without having to worry that our career paths cannot provide us with health care.

With the 2012 presidential election in our midst this vital act could be repealed. It is imperative that we keep “Obama Care” in place if we want to be a genuine first world country by giving all our citizens the basic right to health care.

SS Brian Dawkins of the Denver Broncos signs autographs at the 2010 Pro-Bowl (MCT Campus)

This past weekend was probably fairly busy for everyone, and numerous noteworthy events occurred. The Pro Bowl, however, wasn’t one of these events. That’s not to say that the Pro Bowl didn’t take place this past weekend; I’m merely stating the obvious—that the Pro Bowl is the most unnoticeable, hilariously unexciting sports event of the year.

In case you weren’t aware, the Pro Bowl is an unwanted interruption in the much desired Hawaiian vacations of some of the NFL’s best players who weren’t quite good enough to make it to the main event. After having gone through the regular season, and for a few even a stint in the postseason, the NFL players in the Pro Bowl have had their hopes of getting a Super Bowl ring dashed. As such, many are relatively downtrodden and eager to forget about the past season. A “football game” is the last possible thing they want to participate in after a less than desirable season, especially if the best players from the teams headed to the Super Bowl won’t even be there, in addition to those who claim to be “injured”.

“Football game” is in quotations because the Pro Bowl is anything but a football game. With bans on blitzing, any defense other than the 4-3, and motion by the offense (these are but a few of the regulations imposed during the game), the Pro Bowl has become little more than a glorified game of flag football. Indeed, the primary concern of players and coaches alike is to avoid any injuries that might affect a team’s performance in the next season (which actually matters). All of this considered, we have to ask: does anyone even watch this charade of an all-star matchup anymore? The Pro Bowl might have had its day in the past, but the time to do away this “tradition” is long overdue.

Sophomore Marilyn Gund checks her Powerschool in the library. Some students complain that teachers do not update the site often enough.(Olivia MacDougal)

Powerschool, the online program to keep students and parents up to date on grades, fails to give an accurate portrayal of where a student actually stands in many of his or her courses.

The problem stems from the fact that teachers update the grades with infrequency. Teachers are only required to update the Powerschool portfolios by the end of the quarter, but are encouraged to update it during the course of the school year.

However, in some cases it could take weeks for teachers to update Powerschool, and small discrepancies could make or break a student’s grade when it comes down to the quarter.

Many students also check their Powerschool daily, trying to find out if they did badly on an assignment, and to check in with the teacher if they did.  The lack of updating is leaving students feeling unfulfilled, and worried for when the teacher finally does post their grades online.

Many parents also check Powerschool and look for individual assignment grades. They become concerned if their child’s grades are low, but the child has turned in all the homework and projects for the class.

If this happens long enough, the parents will believe that Powerschool discrepancies are valid due to enough mistakes, even if the student hasn’t turned in multiple assignments.

The school should develop regulations for teachers to update their Powershool accounts, and force them to update at regular intervals, like the first of the month, for example. This would allow parents to see accurately what their students are turning in, and, as a result, be able to get more involved when there actually is a problem.

Students need a way to see their grades. That is where Powerschool comes in, but because of human input, grades are placed in later. And, unfortunately, for too many classes, this happens the last day that the teacher can post grades.

On October 26, 2011, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) to the US House of Representatives. Ostensibly, the bill’s purpose is to fight Internet copyright violation and correspondingly increase film and music industry revenue. Unsurprisingly, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are ardent backers of the bill.

The intentions are admirable and decisive: SOPA would empower copyright holders to request court orders to deny user access to offending sites (presumably containing copyrighted content) and even remove the sites from the Internet entirely. Protecting American businesses – isn’t that what Congress is supposed to be all about?

The enforcement, however, is brutal, poorly conceived, and open to abuse. To deny user access to offending sites, the bill would permit Internet service providers to screen the data to and from user computers in order to identify those sites – in essence, surveillance of users.

Shannon Brady color illustration of Napster pirate getting water and wet music spat in his face from his computer as his chair sinks into water and digital information. Saint Paul Pioneer Press 2001. MCT Campus.

One would be hard-pressed to find legitimate rationale for censorship of a user-generated network like the Internet. It is, at its heart, a form of communication. We have our privacy.

We are assured that in America, the land of the free, nobody will be watching us every waking moment, recording and judging our actions. Yet with SOPA, service providers could go through your Internet history, your site visits, and regulate what sites you could visit.

YouTube, Facebook, Google, Yahoo; the list goes on. These sites could all face orders to heavily censor user content and remove millions of instances of copyrighted material. However, SOPA also holds sites liable if their structure enables copyright infringement – any site that permits the upload of user-generated content falls foul of this line.

Wikipedia is planning a 24-hour blackout on Jan. 18 to protest SOPA, which “would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia,” according to a statement from the web site.

In an NRO article defending his bill, Smith reiterates his belief that SOPA only targets “websites dedicated to illegal and infringing material”. One is left to wonder if the Representative understands his own legislation. Handing the power of review and persecution requests to copyright-holders is ridiculous. It simplifies normal copyright law from lawsuits to a simple request for a court order, and puts this power squarely in the hands of sometimes trigger-happy folk (just look at the barrage of copyright lawsuits that seem to constantly surround Google).

It’s bad enough that the government is considering surveillance of our Internet usage, but it is absolutely unacceptable to allow private individuals to use this surveillance to request censorship of others. It boils down to a sense of entitlement: people who create content want to make as much money as they can. By itself, that is a perfectly legitimate concern. SOPA, however, goes far beyond the scope of that interest.

Copyright infringement can persist because infringers provide services and access to content faster, simpler, and more efficiently – the natural solution is for copyright holders to provide their services with comparable speed, simplicity and efficiency. Perhaps SOPA should make profiting from copyright infringement illegal.

Now that would satisfy the righteous fury of copyright holders while still forcing them to abandon their erstwhile laziness and provide better services.

He started teaching at CHS in 1957 and taught a variety of physical education classes such as climbing and orienteering.  During this time he was also the water-polo coach, boys’ swimming coach, and the girls’ swimming coach.  He taught and coached there until 1991 and then worked for several years at Lafayette High School as a swimming and water-polo coach.  He then came back to CHS and resumed being the CHS boys’ swimming and water-polo coach.   He also began working at the Shaw Park Aquatic Center in 1952 and worked there for several decades.

A loved coach and friend Wally Lundt passed away this week. He will be remembered by many.

He was inducted into to the U.S. Water-Polo Hall of Fame in 2004.

I had the privilege of knowing him for the last four years as he was both my water-polo coach and swimming coach.  He was the man who first told me how to do a flip turn and the true way to do freestyle.

As evidence of his caring and personal way, he always had us call him by his first name, “Wally,” not “Coach Lundt.”

He really cared about all of us and even when he was sick this last fall, he still tried to make every practice he could.  He loved the pool and coaching.

I am thankful for his patience and his understanding way.  Even when I did a stroke incorrectly, or I was a little late to practice, he would talk to me calmly, and tell me what I needed to do differently.

It seemed at times that he got more excited than us when the team won a relay event, or when we scored a goal in water-polo.  When I was a freshman, He even promised me that he would dye his hair orange if I went to state during my high school career.  He never had to live up to this promise, but he always wanted us to do our best.  He was a man who really cared.

He always looked out for us.  Last year during a water-polo game someone swam over me and I came up coughing water, struggling to breathe.  He automatically substituted me out and had me sit out the game until my breathing had returned back to normal—much to my chagrin.

After my own grandfather passed away last spring, Wally was there for me.  He gave me his condolences and told me how everything was going to be okay.  Wally was understanding when I told him that I would be missing some water-polo games to go to my grandfather’s funeral.  Although Wally loved the pool, he knew what was most important.

I am grateful for his joyful attitude and his example of living a full and busy life.  His wide influence has taught me how one person can make a difference.  Even in these last couple years, former swimmers and water-polo players constantly came and talked with Wally during practices.  He was proud of all these people and would tell us stories about them. He loved all of us and we loved him.

I’m going to miss Wally.  He was a great man.  The image of him in his flip-flops writing the swimming workout on the whiteboard will always be a memory I will cherish.  Thanks Wally for always being there for us and not only teaching us how to swim, but how to become men.

For the Globe’s full coverage of Wally Lundt’s life, click here.

The average working American makes about $31,111 in a calender year. As a Los Angeles Angel, Albert Pujols will make five times that amount in a game.

A few months ago, if you went down to Busch Stadium around 7:00 p.m. there would be a sea of red Cardinals jerseys. Many would read “PUJOLS” on the back, showing our city’s support for their baseball legend. Now, $254 million later, those jerseys will be put in a basement cellar, where they will stay, collecting dust, until Pujols somehow makes amends to hurt and disapointed Cardinal fans.

Pujols played 11 seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals. He ripped 445 home runs, won three MVP awards, and brought his team two World Championships. This, Pujols said, was his ultimate goal. Well, if it truly was his goal, then wouldn’t he want good players around him? Wouldn’t he want the Cardinals to sign free agents like Matt Holliday and Lance Berkman, to make the dream of winning a championship possible? Apparently not.

Buster Olney, a well noted ESPN baseball analyst, has said that he thinks Pujols’s pride was hurt because the Cardinals didn’t make more of an effort to sign him and instead pursued free agent Matt Holliday two winters ago.

Pujols obviously wasn’t making his choice to win championships, he was doing it to make the most money as possible. Or maybe not. Maybe Albert’s ego just wanted the world to know, “I am the best. Look at my contract.”

Once someone gets $200 million, how much extra money really matters? It’s enough money to last him, his children, and his grandchildren for a lifetime. That is not even taking into account all the money he made as a Cardinal or through ad contracts.

As a lifelong Cardinal fan I am hurt by the situation. Baseball is one of the biggest parts of my life and always has been. Some of my first memories are of Pujols rounding the bases after a homer.

Now, those memories are tainted. All I can think about is Pujols leaving the city of St. Louis, leaving the Cardinals, and leaving me, over pride and a higher contract.

That said, I do not know how I would have reacted in the situation. It is a lot of money and its hard to blame a guy for taking it.

The truth is, we will never really know what was going through our once beloved first baseman’s head on that fateful Thursday morning he decided to leave. What we do know is that it hurts, it’s sad, and we lost one of our city’s legends.

(Photo by:  Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/MCT)

Unfortunately, nobody else took them up on their suggestion. Some took pictures, though, and the girls got a bit of press as well.

PETA, or the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, has long made a name for itself in the practice of taking extraordinarily extreme measures to get a simple point across. But unlike other like-minded groups, there are other factors involved, such dashing red paint on fur-coat-sporting passersby. Or, rather being naked than wearing fur, and then pretty much doing just that.

For some reason, PETA has always left an off taste in my mouth. I couldn’t put my finger on it, though, till the end of November. It’s this: why in the world does it seem like publicity comes in close second only after animal rights?

Don’t get me wrong. I resonate, as do most of us, with PETA’s general philosophy. It is, after all, based on the ethical treatment of animals, and that’s a sort of logically humane thing to stand for, no? No one likes to hear about vivisected monkeys, tortured rabbits, and cruelly slain cows, all in the name of science and self-preservation. It goes against our better nature.

But to what purpose is going nearly stark naked in the middle of winter? I imagine that seeing two people with painted bodies with a giant sign as their main form of covering as more of a surprise than anything else. I hardly think that it would inspire me to throw out those leather loafers in the closet.

I admit cannot say for certain. I only found out about the Forest Park incident from the news. Maybe it would have been different had I actually been there. But from behind the screen, at least, the whole combined scene somehow conjured more of a “Silence of the Lambs”-esque idea. Do I have any human-skin coats? No. Any such products? No. But do I have a pair of leather shoes? Why, yes, they are, and I suppose that they’re made of “skin,” too: animal skin. But I’ll admit that that’s not what I thought of first.

I digress. Is it a bit of a morbid train of thought? Sure. But that’s exactly what was wrong with it, and the whole reason that PETA probably has as large of an opposition as it does a following. It plays up the shock value too much, and plays down the morals. It’s not a lesson, or a demonstration. It’s a display, and a ridiculous one at that.

We want ethical treatment of animals? Then, my PETA friends, I think it’s time to start with the basics: to focus on the ethical treatment of animals, which is a noble cause in itself. Maybe the protest shouldn’t make me think about human skins before I realize that the body paint is supposed to resemble leopard-print and that therefore the protest is, in fact, about animals. Maybe those sorts of protests should follow the example of the more normal protest—and by normal I mean that all of the people were clothed—I saw on Brentwood a few days before, also by PETA. Maybe it should be less about the spectacle and the media, and more about what’s right. Maybe.

It’s just a suggestion.

“Viral video” is one of those buzz words that gets thrown around a lot but nobody is really sure what it means.  The most commonly used definition for “viral video” is a video that becomes popular in a short period of time. How can someone easily achieve this though? Why is it that videos such as Charlie Bit Me and Numa Numa Dance can garner millions of views, while other videos usually hover around a thousand views? In short, how do videos become viral?

Something that I have noticed with viral videos is that they are enjoyable to all types of audiences, from toddlers to grandparents. Take Charlie Bit Me for example: it is video about a toddler getting bit by his baby brother. Though the video does not have a wow factor, it is very cute and it is something that all age-groups can get a good laugh from. Being popular with a wide span of age groups is key for a video to become viral.

“The biggest reason videos become viral in today’s day and age is because a lot more people are able to view videos thanks to websites such as Facebook and Twitter. If they see a video they like, they can instantly share it to another person, and so on,” said Clayton High School psychology teacher David Aiello.

More buzz equals more viral. Comedy sketch groups such as Lonely Island (which is affiliated with Saturday Night Live) always get several million views on their videos due to the buzz they create on social media sites, Twitter especially.

Smosh, another Youtube comedy group that gets hundreds-of-thousands of views in all their videos, utilizes social media to get viewership; they have had a facebook page for little over a year and already have more than one million likes.

Even scientifically speaking, there is a reason why some videos garner more views then others, explains Aiello.

“When you see something you enjoy, you brain produces a chemical called dopamine. Once dopamine is produced, your brain remembers the action that led to its production,” said Aiello. “That’s why videos you like never get old, and you end up watching them a lot, which in a macro-scale, leads to videos becoming viral because people are watching them over and over again.”

(Photo: Lane Christiansen/for the Chicago Tribune/MCT)