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These two prize winning essays by “Jeremy Lavine” have been floating around the internet for sometime…. take them as you will.

Jeremy Lavine
Period 3
Coming in like El Niño!
El Niño is spanish. It is the spanish word for child. Like all things spanish, it is dangerous. It kills people and burns down trees. This child is more than a child. It really isn’t a child at all. It is a storm. A deadly storm that kills people and burns down trees.
Warm water usually builds up around australia. But not anymore with el Niño. El Niño moves the warm water from australia to somewhere else, namely to other places. Where are these other places? These are places that also have water, but water that is usually not as warm as the warm water El Niño moves to these said other places. These other places are to the east. Of the water.
In Peru, they have many names for many things. One of the things they have names for is for people who go fishing, go fishing to make a living. If we had a word for this kind of people that word would be “fisherman”. But we don’t. In Peru, they have different names for things than we do in America. They call that kind of people “pescadores”. That’s Spanish. That’s what they speak in Peru. When El Niño comes, these “pescadores” can’t catch any fish. El Niño is caused when the Peruvian gods get angry. They have been angry for millions of years and have made El Niño for millions of years. Many many moods ago, the Peruvians committed human sacrifice to satiate their gods and end the flood that was caused by El Niño. In today’s modern dog-eat-dog work-a-day world of scientists, diplomats, McSalad Shakers, and George Bush Jr., we no longer have access to such solutions. We are too proud. We will not commit human sacrifices. We refuse to satiate the Peruvian gods. Thus, they remain angry and keep killing us and burning down our trees with El Niño.
Instead of satiating the gods, many of these “scientists” have tried to control El Niño with “science”. They put up expensive fish-attracting-bueys that run on flashlight batteries. Imagine, fighting the power of the gods with flashlight batteries! Needless to say, this didn’t work and everyone died.
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Jeremy Lavine
Period 3
Lightning!!!
What is lightning? Where does it come from? What does it mean? Does it have a meaning? Where does it come from? What is it made of? Is it made of light? Some might say it was made of light. Others contend that lightning is made of fire. People used to think that lightning was made of fire. Fire in the sky. Fire that killed people and knocked down trees. Before Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin was a founding father. He father founded that lightning is made of electricity. Electricity in the sky.
But what of the Greek myths, of the Greek god Zeus and of the popular image of Zeus – a Greek God – throwing down lightning bolts to kill people and knock down trees. Where did he find the time? And what of lightning being made of fire? In this workaday world in the era of the founding father Benjamin Franklin we have no time nor patience for such concerns. These are for third world and schizophrenics.
Some people do not understand that lightning is destructive. They ignore the wisdom of their elders and of the founding father Benjamin Franklin. They think lightning is a lie perpetrated by people with a vested interest. At their own peril!!! Lightning kills people and knocks down trees!!! It a power of destruction exercised by the Greek god Zeus, the mightiest of Greek gods!! But they do it: they ignore such wisdom and taunt the powerful exercise of destruction and they worship their idle gods and stand near trees. At their own peril!! Lightning has the killing power to kill people and the destructive power to knock down trees! When you stand near trees, they will be knocked down by lightning and you will be killed by lightning! There is no escape. Lightning will knock down the tree and knock down your soul. Trees are tall.
Many things are tall. Many things attract lightning. But do the two correlate? A recent study says yes. It says that being tall and attracting lightning do correlate. That means that being tall corellates with being struck by lightning. You die when you are struck by lightning, and your tree is knocked down.
Some people try to measure lightning, they take measurements of it. They use balloons and rockets and their imagination and determination and research money and they put it all in the mixing bowl and they mix in storms – storms with lighting – and so they mix in the lightning and then they get the product of they’re lucky of measurements about lightning from the storm? What kind of measurements? We may never know …