Dont be mad, be SADD! Now that it’s spring, SADD is looking forward to hosting its Spring Safe Driving Week the week of May 4.
During the week, the plan is to have a pledge station and theme days, “A Very SADD Day,” and “Ghost Out Day.”
If you want to promise to drive safely (follow rules such as wearing your seatbelt, not driving under the influence, and avoid distracted driving, etc.), you should stop by the pledge station that will be up during lunch all week. Did you know that
eve-ry 53 minutes of eveeve-ry day a life is lost as a result of an impaired driving crash? To get an idea of how many lives are lost daily, one day that week a gong will sound over the PA system every 53 minutes. A ‘grim reaper’ will be chosen and he/she will pull people out of class who will then be consid-ered “dead” for the day. At the end of the day, a memorial service will be held in the auditorium for those victims.
“A Very SADD Day” will execute Operation Buckle Down and Mock Crash; For Operation Buckle Down, SADD members as well as law
enforcement officials will be checking vehicles ar-riving in the morning for people who are wearing their seatbelts. Those who are caught wearing their seatbelts will be entered into a drawing to win a gas card.
During the Mock Crash, SADD members and vari-ous agencies, such as first responders, police and fire departments, ambulance and life flight workers will create a crash scene and enact a rescue. This will be an all school assembly in one of the parking lots. All of the plans are not set in place yet, but stay tuned to find out more!
Online@ www.nw-tigers.org/the-octagon
Volume 66, Issue 29 May 1, 2015
Today:
Golf: Boys’ Varsity Invita-tional @ Hay-ward
Tomorrow: Golf: Boys’
Varsity Invita-tional @ Hay-ward
WSMA State Solo and En-semble Festi-val
Monday: Golf: Boys’
Varsity Match @ Ladysmith Baseball:
JV&V @ Spooner
Tuesday: Baseball:
JV&V @ Iron River vs. Chetek Softball:
JV&V @ Iron River vs. Chetek
Thursday: Track: Varsity
Meet @ Softball:
JV&V @ Spooner Baseball:
JV&V @ Iron River vs. Spooner
Pg. 6 Sci-Fi Novels
By Alissa Ormond The Tigers’ soft-ball team is in full swing! This season the team has stepped up to the plate to take a swing at something that has only been done once before (2004, 2005, 2006), here at Northwestern, for softball: to repeat as conference cham-pions for three con-secutive seasons, or “three-peat.”
Compiling a 27-1 record in conference play for the last two seasons, the team is off to a red-hot start, putting up football-like score numbers on the scoreboard, and are looking great so far. The Tigers believe they can accomplish this goal because of the sen-ior leadership, how
fun-damentally sound the team is, and the girls’ overall love and dedica-tion for the game. This year returning senior starters are Made-line Spangenberg, Kara-line Green, and Abby
Schultz.
Other returning start-ers are big-hitters Laryssa Vik, Cassidy Friend, Lexi Janigo, and By Ricky Schiff
‘Softball’
Continued Pg. 5
The Tiger softball team in their dugout while
Minnesota turkey farm-ers are on edge due to an outbreak of highly-pathogenic avian influen-za (H5N2). According to the United States Depart-ment of Agriculture
(U.S.D.A.), avian influ-enza is a type A influen-za virus that affects poul-try and is spread among “free flying waterfowl such as ducks, geese, and shorebirds.”
Avian influenza origi-nated in Asia and spread throughout Europe be-fore appearing in the United States. Research-ers claim that U.S. ver-sion of the virus is a bit different from the origi-nal, and that “the virus may have changed in a way that makes it easier for wild birds to catch and carry the poultry flu strains.”
In an effort to find some explanation behind the sudden outbreak, the Department of Natural Resources (D.N.R.) is testing stool samples from waterfowl near af-fected farms. It’s be-lieved that the virus is spreading through the feces of migrating water-fowl.
Strong winds are also suspect; some officials believe the virus entered turkey barns by piggy-backing on debris or loose feathers. Another possible cause is a lack of biosecurity.
Minnesota leads the country in turkey produc-tion, so its recent epi-demic of avian influenza is bad news for the entire industry. On average, Minnesota produces 46 million turkeys/year, and over 3.4 million turkeys have already died due to the virus.
According to the Min-nesota Turkey Growers Association, turkeys cre-ate over “$600 million in income for [Minnesota] farmers, processors, and other related indus-tries.”
Large turkey farms are losing money quickly because avian influenza can take-out out an entire flock within only two days. According to
MPRnews.org, 1/3 of the flock is usually killed before health authorities take action.
Furthermore, birds in the infected flocks that
Today
Geena Noonan
5/2
Abigail Lindahl Brecken Paulus Nathan Pearson
5/3
Samantha Learn
5/5
Riley Scott
5/6
Jay Gaare Emily Gaare Samantha Clark Steven Kastern Nick Learn
5/7
Zachary Frikart
Happy
Birthday!
Senior Editor/For-matter:
Nik Sauer
Text Editor
Brooklyn Smith
Staff Members: Katie Johnson
Jay Gaare Richard Schiff
Luke Rutten Evan Simmons Mikayla Maijala
Cassie Harvey Alissa Ormond Chaede Vig
Advisor:
Mrs. Thompson
By Mikayla Maijala
‘Avian Influenza’
Continued Pg. 3
Have you ever had any-thing in school or at a sport-ing event that seemed to spontaneously go missing? A lot of lost things surpris-ingly end up in the lost and found. Who knew?!
Almost any item you can think of is in there. Lots of sports clothing, including ones that clearly have own-ers (i.e. bearing last names such as “Moore” and “Nelson”), have been relo-cated there, where they have spent lonely hours waiting to be found.
As of right now, the lost and found tables by the grand staircase are playing home to objects such as a practically new pair of size 12 blue and gray Nikes, a “Play for Pink” t-shirt, By Alissa Ormond
XXL Tiger’s wrestling and foot-ball shirts, tons of totes and water bottles/cups, a Northwest Territo-ry jacket that looks brand new, a #44 Nelson Racing jacket, and more.
While we had Luke Rutten modeling items from the lost col-lection, a freshman walked by, noticed Luke’s attire, and promptly came up and claimed one of his belonging, saying, “Hey, those are my pants!” At the end of the year, what you don’t claim could either be claimed by someone else, or bet-ter, brought to Goodwill where someone else will love what you have neglected. Don’t let your beloved belongings end up in the palms of someone else. They are probably on those tables right now, calling out to you, “I’m here. Come claim me!”
What are your plans for after high school?
I plan to live in a frat house and build a water slide out the top floor that wraps all the way around the house.
What’s your favorite hobby?
Spending money I don’t have.
What’s your favorite high school memory?
Sneaking out windows to have a hoedown.
What was the hardest year in high school for you? Hardest class?
Senior year, because you
have no motivation to wake up every day to go to a place that treats you like a child.
Make up your own question and answer it.
Advice to underclass-men. Don’t ever get in a relationship; be single,
have fun with your friends.
Would you rather have a dragon or a dinosaur as a pet? Feel free to elaborate.
A dragon, so I can fly high in the sky every day.
What’s your favorite hobby?
Watching Frozen with my baby brother, Wyatt. He’s the best darn singer I have ever heard.
If you could travel any-where in the world, where would you go and why?
I would go and study
Oak Island. That stuff is
way too freaky not to be real, man. If you don’t know what I’m talking about...Google.
What’s your favorite high school memory?
Junior year Chorfest. Dear Kyra, I will sing those songs with you for-ever.
What was the hardest year in high school for you? Hardest class?
Senior year, for sure. You begin to hate
every-one. Minutes turn to hours, hours to days, and days to weeks.
What is the number one most played song on your iPod?
Probably “Immaculate Misconception” by Mo-tionless in White. The message is astonishing. Caution: don’t turn your device up too loud when you lock it up.
Make up your own question and answer it. (If it’s a stupid question we’ll just delete it.)
What is your advice to freshmen? You’re not as cool as you think you are. Also, you will regret slacking off your fresh-man year. Light that fire, my friends.
What’s your least fa-vorite school lunch?
How about I answer what my favorite lunch is? If you ask me what my least favorite lunch is, I won’t be be able to de-cide because there there are too many. So, my answer is tacos.
By Ricky Schiff
Kayla
Janowicz
Jordyn
Tribbey
are seemingly unaffected by the virus have to be put-down to prevent fur-ther contamination. After all the birds are de-stroyed, the area is then quarantined and cleaned thoroughly.
Minnesota's top two turkey-producing coun-ties, Kandiyohi and Stearns, have both been hit hard by avian
influen-za. Kandiyohi County (the fifth largest turkey-producing county in the U.S.) has lost 731,100 turkeys so far, while Stearns County ( the ninth largest) has already lost 475,100 turkeys to the virus.
The virus is highly contagious and is rapidly spreading to other coun-ties, including Meeker (424,600 turkeys lost), Swift (314,000), Poll, and Lyon. Seven cases
have even been discov-ered in the Wisconsin counties of Jefferson, Juneau, Chippewa, and Barron.
The outbreak of avian influenza is so serious that Minnesota’s Gover-nor, Mark Dayton, has issued an emergency ex-ecutive order, and Gover-nor Scott Walker has de-clared a state of emer-gency. Moreover, both Dayton and Walker have called in the National
Guard. As said by Scott Walker, “We must act quickly and efficiently to contain the outbreak and protect domestic poul-try.”
What are your plans for after high school?
Make enough dough to roll in every night. Also, adopting many pugs.
What’s your favorite hobby?
Making Benji’s :)
If you could travel any-where in the world, where would you go and why?
I would travel to a time machine, go to 1969, and attend Woodstock, where everyone was carefree.
What’s your favorite high school memory?
Doing things with my girls that everyone else was too good to do.
What was the hardest year in high school for you? Hardest class?
Senior year. It’s the year I had the least motivation to show up.
‘Avian Influenza’
From Pg. 2
Karlie
Reed
Rescue operations are under way following a Nepalese earthquake that has killed over 5000.
By Nik Sauer
Need another reason to add to list of why you shouldn’t ride in planes?
Look no
fur-ther. Traditionally, there have been the classic rea-sons why: everyone has a higher chance to die if and when they crash, they have a nasty tenden-cy to plummet to the earth when the jet en-gines inhale pigeons, and have also been hijacked by terrorists, and then crashed into various lo-cations other than the destinations that the pas-sengers were attempting to reach. However, the FBI has recently warned of yet a new problem: hackers potentially hack-ing planes through the on -board wireless internet. Wireless internet on planes is a new offering to be provided by air-lines. The idea has been proposed for quite some time, but just came out now, due to the airline figuring out how to make
money via peddling sub-scriptions for its use. This is all fine and dandy, and flyers seem to enjoy it, but there is a darker side to the WiFi. WiFi, because of its na-ture of being widespread and open, is very vulner-able to hacking. This has
been known for quite some time, especially on unregulated WiFi net-works (ones that don’t have any administrators or password encryption). And while regulated ones are supposed to be more secure, there have still been reports of hacking through them.
The reason that this problem, specifically re-garding planes, has even been noticed by the FBI, is because of what a pri-vate security consultant tweeted while waiting for
his United Airlines flight.
Chris Roberts, a co-founder of the organiza-tion One World Labs (a prominent cybersecurity research think tank), was impatiently waiting for his late flight when he decided to tweet a
joke. His “joke” was "Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? "PASS OXYGEN ON" Anyone ? :)"
For those of you who have no idea what you just read, he is saying that should his plane be a 737/800 (a plane model), he could theoretically use the EICAS (Engine Indi-cating and Crew Alerting System) to deploy the oxygen masks
prema-turely on the flight. This, as you can prob-ably guess, made a lot of federal people freak out. After Roberts’ flight landed, police officers from the Syracuse Police Department boarded the plane, and, along with federal agents, seized Roberts’ personal elec-tronics and other lug-gage. He was then es-corted into an interroga-tion room at the airport and was questioned for several hours.
While this entire thing was more of a joke or a prank as opposed to a real threat to national security and all those onboard the plane, it is a chilling reminder that the world around us is not as safe as we would like to think.
All we can do now is attempt to secure these vulnerabilities more, and focus on removing rea-sons for people to com-mit such atrocious and terrorizing acts.
By Evan Simmons
The Russian spacecraft Progress
M-27M is currently spinning out
of control in orbit after a mal-function caused a loss of contact. An iPad app used by
American Airlines pilots encountered a glitch,
caus-ing multiple flight delays.
A team of scientists at NASA may have unintentionally
dis-covered faster-than light travel.
“...it is a chilling reminder that
our world around us is not as
safe as we would like to think.”
The UK’s National Crime Agency seized £500 mil-lion in cocaine from a ship
in the North Sea. A German media report has
alleged that the German BND has been spying on top French officials on the U.S.’s behalf.
The death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, in ad-dition to causing riots, spurred many largely peaceful protests in cities such as Boston, New
Because 4 out of 5 car-diac arrests happen at home, and a person can only go 4-6 minutes without breathing before they die or suffer severe brain damage, it’s essen-tial to learn C.P.R. Cardiopulmonary re-suscitation (C.P.R.) is an emergency technique that retains blood flow to brain and heart by manu-ally “compressing the chest” and “forcing air into the lungs.” This technique is often used when someone suffers cardiac arrest or a heart attack; CPR artificially circulates oxygen when someone’s breathing or heartbeat stops.
Unfortunately, only 32% of people with a cardiac arrest receive as-sistance from a
bystand-er, mostly because 70% of Americans “feel help-less to act” because they don’t know C.P.R. or their training has “significantly lapsed.” Consequently, “less than eight percent of people who suffer cardi-ac arrest out of the hospi-tal survive.” Conversely, if C.P.R. is performed early enough, the Ameri-can Heart Association believes that around 100,000-200,000 lives/ year can be saved. To quote heart.org, “Effective bystander C.P.R. provided immedi-ately after sudden cardiac arrest can double or tri-ple a victim’s chance of survival.”
C.P.R. is also used for kids who have “non-traumatic cardiac arrests due to drowning, electro-cution, or choking.”
Children under five years old are particularly sus-ceptible to choking be-cause they tend to put everything in their mouths. In fact, livestrong.com reports that “choking is a leading cause of death in this age group.” As such, parents of young children are highly advised to learn C.P.R.
Anyone can take a C.P.R. class, either on-site or online, and re-ceive certification. There are a variety of C.P.R. classes to choose from,
including basic life sup-port, adult C.P.R., and child C.P.R. The average class takes about three hours and costs under $100; however, hours and prices may vary de-pending on the class type and location.
To find a C.P.R. class near you, go to
www.redcross.org/take-a -class. To have expert health advice (including C.P.R. instructions) at the tip of your fingers, download the Red Cross First Aid app.
Mrs. Lahti’s 4th block class, Parenting/ Early Childhood, went on a field trip to Essentia Health and WITC this past week.
The first stop was Essentia Health, where Mrs. Kim Pearson (our school board vice presi-dent) is the head nurse of the unit she works in. Her nursing squadron provided the opportunity to explore a little bit of the fifth floor, which is the newborn center. Students toured eve-rything from the family center, NICU, to the birthing rooms. All of the rooms are decorated to look very homelike, yet all have the equip-ment needed in case an emergency situation were to occur.
In addition to going on the tour, students also learned a little bit about what degrees it takes to get into a nursing career, and how all of the de-grees work. At WITC, it
is possible to go for two years to get an Associ-ates degree to start and get a low ranking job as a nurse, but eventually adding years to get a higher degree.
Last, but not least, on the field trip agenda was a visit to WITC. While at the WITC campus in Superior, they spent some time on the area of early childhood educa-tion, where they talked to students, made fun props, and learned some songs/chants with some little kids, as well as on tour of all the different programs offered.
Some of the pro-grams offered that stu-dents had a chance to investigate are Nursing, Law Enforcement, Cos-metology, Automotive Maintenance Techni-cian, and CNC Machine Tool Operation. There are more programs avail-able and class shadow-ing opportunities; if you are interested, contact WITC.
By Alissa Ormond By Mikayla Maijala
Sami Clark, and the power-pitcher Cheyenne Johnson. Returning as coach is Mr. Janigo, who is sure to give them a memorable season. Players commented to the Octagon on the team’s chances of a three -peat repeat as confer-ence champs.
“Yes, we we have the capability, we didn't lose many seniors from last season; we have the same team, just a few girls in different posi-tions. We have the skill level; we just need to have the mindset.” says Abby Schultz.
Karaline Green and Laryssa Vik both agree that the team can three-peat as champions. “We are working hard, and
are looking really good in games,” say Karaline. Laryssa says that they can “if the team keeps working hard like is has been, but we also need to continue to work hard-er.”
The JV Tigers are also in for a mighty season with a large number of returning starters from last season, after having gone undefeated last sea-son in conference play (and they were also the 2014 Duluth Arrowhead JV Champions!).
If you have not yet seen the softball team play this season, come out to their beautiful field in Brule on game days, and watch NHS history being made as the softball team at-tempts to three-peat as champions, and play great softball!
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline- In all honesty, it’s been about three years since I’ve read this book, so I don’t re-member all that
much about it. I feel like I recommend books of which I have no memory to you guys a lot, for which I am sorry, but take heart in the fact that I’m not usually wrong. I’m going to review this book based on fif-teen-year-old-me’s im-pression of it, and you’re going to have to take eighteen-year-old-me’s
word for it, is what I’m saying. As I recall, the book is about a dystopian society wherein the world is at the level of suck that it appar-ently takes to in-cite everyone to choose to live in a virtual reality.
Characters in the novel don helmets and sensors that immerse them in a virtual world, called OA-SIS, where they can go to school via their avatar, buy virtual items, and, most importantly, search for clues left behind by pop culture junkie and OASIS creator James
Halliday.
The plot itself is de-cent, but what I loved the most were the obscure ‘80s references (such as the scoring for the film Ladyhawke), and the fact that Rush’s “2112” was a crucial plot point.
The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crich-ton- Andromeda Strain is about a
mi-croorganism from space that sickens, and subse-quently kills, all but two of the inhabitants of a small town in
Ari-zona. A group of scien-tists are dispatched to deal with that situation, which gave way to over three hundred pages of dense scientific and med-ical text chronicling their efforts to learn about (and cure) the extrater-restrial plague.
This should not have been a particularly grip-ping book, but Michael Crichton is a story-telling wizard who could make an account about sitting in the DMV compelling, so it should come as no shock that it was not pro-saic (I’m making word puns, now, I apologize) in the least.
The Hitchhik-er’s Guide to the Gal-axy, Doug-las Adams
- Obvious-ly. If you haven’t, go
read this right now. Don’t panic; it’s mostly harmless.
The Rowan, Anne McCaffrey- McCaffrey is one of the best science
fiction authors in gen-eral: she was the first woman to win the Hugo and Nebula awards, one of the first people to make strong-willed women the protagonists of science fiction stories, and one of her novels, from her Dragonriders of Pern series, was the first hardcover sci-fi novel ever to make the NY Timesbestseller list. The first book in her Tower and Hive series, The Rowan, details an alternate universe wherein distant planets have been colonized, a sizeable chunk of the human population has developed psionic powers, and the threat of invasion from insect-like aliens
looms. Logic dictates that the books be about teleki-netic/
telepath-ic warfare. The premise of people using their psionic abilities to read the minds of enemies, or attacking from behind enemy lines seems like the best bet for an action-packed thriller, right? Well, McCaffrey would disagree. In her books, those gifted with super powers use them to teleport cargo between planets. That’s right -- the most powerful people in the universe are mail carriers.
But somehow, this doesn’t make the books boring. Like Michael Crichton, McCaffrey was an expert at making a paradigm that should be dull incredibly exciting. School’s out, the days
are longer, and it’s final-ly above freezing! Sum-mer is nearly here, and we’re all so excited, but should we be?
Summer is full of as-saulting bugs, bad odors, and sunburns, yet for some unknown reason, many people still look forward to it.
Perhaps the worst thing to come out of summer are the bugs,
mosquitoes in particular. These annoying parasites seem to get everywhere, and are extremely hard to vanquish. Their bites itch like crazy, and they can spread diseases like no other creature on Earth. Humidity, a contrib-uting factor in huge mos-quito populations, is just as annoying as the bugs themselves. It makes any temperature feel many times worse than it actu-ally is, and is the cause of
a disgusting human con-dition known as “sweating.”
One of everybody’s favorite things about summer is the sun! And one of everybody’s fa-vorite things about the sun are sunburns! Right? Wrong. Sunburns are the worst. At first they’re painful, and then they start to flake off, leaving weird patches of dead skin all over the place.
Truth be told, summer really stinks...literally. To keep all of these bugs and harmful sun rays off us, we resort to lotions. The odors of sunscreen, sweat, bug spray, and moisturizer assault our noses on a daily basis. Summer is a time for which most people can’t wait, but with all of the annoying things that hap-pen, it’s surprising that anybody ever leaves the safety of their houses. By Brooklyn Smith
