As my years of public school education come to a close, here are three valuable lessons I’ve learned from my three years of high school. 1. Failure happens. What matters is the response. Disappointing test marks have shown me the limits of my preparation methods. But dwelling on shortcomings isn’t what will make a difference.…
A short continuation to the Cool Kazoo. After recently writing an article about the kazoo, I got one for myself. It took me a week to realize that I was playing it from the “wrong” end, or the end not typically played from. How embarrassing. I guess I wasn’t paying very close attention to how…
When thinking of simple instruments, what comes to mind? Maybe you’re thinking of a little toy drum or one of those small, rainbow xylophones. Or maybe a kazoo crosses your mind. A kazoo is a sort of wind instrument that the player hums into instead of blowing air. It is wider at one end and…
What happens to cookies baked from dough that has not been cooled? Background Recently, I came across a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that called for refrigerating the dough before baking it, which I hadn’t done before. I made the recipe, refrigerated the dough overnight, and baked the cookies the next day, and they turned…
Rhapsody in Blue, composed by George Gershwin in 1924, is a piece originally for solo piano and jazz orchestra. It was commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman for his “An Experiment in Modern Music” concert in New York on February 12, 1924. However, it is said that Gershwin completely forgot about being asked to compose the…
Some buildings seen in Germany
Comics are a great way to reflect on life, laugh, and waste some time. XKCD is “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” The creator is Randall Munroe, and he posts life situations, diagrams, and the occasional absurd product advertisement. There are currently over 2100 comics on the website. Here are some of them.…
Water covers over 70 percent of Earth, with 96.5% of it in oceans. However, 80 percent of the ocean is remains undiscovered. While 91% of marine organisms are yet to be described, here are some animals found in the marine and freshwater ecosystems. Anglerfish Anglerfish are carnivorous fish, with most species living in the deep…
Art Tatum (born October 13, 1909 in Toledo, Ohio) is known for his technical virtuosity as a jazz pianist and for his skill in improvisation. Visually impaired from a young age, Tatum began to learn the piano at age 13. He received some training from the Toledo School of Music, but he was mainly self-taught,…
Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, also known as Your Lie in April, is an anime adapted from a manga series of the same name. It follows Kosei Arima, a piano prodigy nicknamed “the human metronome” for playing just as the composer has written. However, he withdraws from the piano after the death of his mother.…
Did you know that there is a project, a sort of Wikipedia, for sheet music in the public domain? The International Music Score Library Project, also called the Petrucci Music Library, currently owned and run by the company Project Petrucci LLC, was created in 2006 to provide free music scores through the internet. Its goal…
The moon looks over the white scene, its light reflecting off the soft snow. The grassy hill glows gently, each leaf and twig blanketed in frost. No wind, not even a whisper. The world is silent, muffled by the powdered cover, stilled by the cold. A lone hare huddles by a bush, ever observant. Its…
A twist on the classic paper snowflakes, these trihexaflexagons will leave you mesmerized by their multiple sides and kaleidoscopic effect. Hexaflexagons are polygons with multiple faces, discovered by Arthur Stone in 1939. They can be made out of paper, then pinched and turned out to reveal the other sides. Being hexagons, they can easily be…
Did you know that 52% of Canadians have needed or know someone who has needed blood? Did you know that 50 blood donors are needed to save one person who has been in a car accident? Did you know that every minute, someone in Canada needs blood? There is an ongoing need for blood. Blood…
When it comes to demonstrating proficiency in the French language as someone who is not French, the DELF is an official qualification that does just that. DELF stands for Diplôme d’Études en Langue Française, or Diploma in French Language Studies. It can be used to enhance your resume, give you an advantage for postsecondary studies,…