Sleepy Brain Equal Bad

I do know that I’ve personally experienced all of the other side effects. I’ve hallucinated horrifying faces staring at me during fits of insomnia, lost my temper over tiny and otherwise unimportant events, remembered events that never took place, said things that I knew I shouldn’t have, and experienced my thought processes slowing down the more tired I become.

Viruses in the Body

I spent all of last week lying in my dorm room with the lights off. While that kind of break may sound like fun, it wasn’t. Like so many over the last few months, I was sick with the flu. In fact, 100 years after the worst flu pandemic in history, the United States is...

Robots: The (Not-So) Distant Future

We’ve all seen movies with highly-advanced and terrifyingly deadly artificial life. Terminator, Blade Runner, the Matrix – we all know that robots are going to take over and engage biological life forms in a war where our very existence is on the line. At the very least, they’ll take an approach more similar to the...

So, What Happens in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory?

If you were born in the 1970s or later, chances are you grew up watching either Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder or, in the case of much of my generation, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp. Regardless of which film you grew up with you were sure to be...

Break Down or Study Break

While people all over the U.S. just had Thanksgiving, students may have been looking forward to it the most. The Monday before break I was in the communal bathroom in my dorm, getting ready for my 8 a.m. class when the girl I always make small talk with in the morning looked me dead in...

A Feat of Engineering

This August, the week before we left for school, a few friends and I took a day trip to Warren Dunes State Park. The weather was perfect- we spent the whole day lounging on the beach, climbing the dunes, and wading in Lake Michigan. At one point during the day we decided to make a...

How to Handle the Cold

Humans generally do not handle the cold that well. There are, of course, a few noteable exceptions.  The Mongols, who are -to date- the only people to have conquered Russia in the winter, complained that spring made for worse conquering weather because the muddy ground was more difficult for their horses than the winter which...

Cockroaches: They Will Outlive Us

There are many animals that have acquired what seem to be superpowers through their use in popular culture, despite the facts to the contrary. We see sharks as cold-blooded murderers lurking just out of sight at every beach, waiting for their moment to slash and bite – yet according to statistics from the CDC, cows...

Find Your Patronus

I am among the many Harry Potter fans who have taken the patronus quiz since the Pottermore website published it on September 22nd, 2016. Going into it I knew that, depending on my answer, my patronus could be anything from a hare to a black bear. So imagine my excitement- and surprise- when I got...