Taylor Dance Off

By Rachel & Taylor

  Taylor Middle School had a big dance off held in the gym after school on Wednesday. Students added their own moves to the swing dance. There were 65 pairs of dancers participating in the big dance off, so 130 people. Thats a pretty big crowd, not including the audience. After four rounds of twirling and spinning, everyone was exhausted. Watching the dance off was like being in the 1920's all over again. Students danced until they were sweating from head to toe. 

The winners were Alexis and Devon. The runner ups were Stephanie and David, Angel and Robert, and Julie and Gabby. "It was really difficult to narrow it down to the top four", Ms.Lotti, a p.e teacher at T.M.S, says. "the quality was amazing, they really worked hard to coreograph their dances. It was so much fun! can't wait to take down B.I.S." Ms Nestor, another p.e teacher at T.M.S, says,"We were excited by the ammount of kids who showed up, it was so much fun".

Everyone got a free mile pass, just for participating! Winners got a $10 itunes gift card. The runner-ups got movie passes. Thank you for all the help from teachers who were judges including, Ms.Miller, Mr. sullivan, and Ms.Villafane. Thank you Dr.Toy and Dr.Martin for the support and encouragment.

Apple's new rival?

                                                                     By: Rachel

     Apple, for the first time in years, has a rival.  The maker of iPhones, iPads and iPods has never faced a challenger that can actually make a truly popular and profitable smartphone or tablet — not Dell, not Hewlett-Packard, not Nokia, not BlackBerry, but Samsung Electronics.

The South Korean manufacturer’s Galaxy S III smartphone is the first device to run in sales. Ofcourse the iphone is still more popular, but Galaxy S III is catching up. Samsung has emerged as a potent challenger to apple since they are armed with other galaxy phones and tablets. Apple is taking 72% of all the earnings while samsung's taking the rest. They are both very different though. Samsung Electronics, a major part of South Korea’s expansive Samsung Group, makes computer chips and flat-panel displays as well as a wide range of consumer products including refrigerators, washers and dryers, cameras, vacuum cleaners, PCs, printers and TVs. While Apple here creates new markets and dominating them, as it did with the iPhone and iPad, Samsung invests heavily in studying existing markets and innovating inside them. Samsung Electronics is slightly bigger than Apple in terms of revenue — $183.5 billion compared with $156.5 billion — but Apple is larger in terms of stock market value.

New bug can possible clean oceans

Everyyear, worldwide, we use about 1 TRILLION plastic bags! 1 million plastic bags are used each minute.  10% of plastic made every year ends up in the ocean. There are probably 46,000 pieces of plastic floating on every square mile of the ocean. Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales, and other marine mammals, and more than 1 million seabirds die each year from ocean pollution and ingestion or entanglement in plastic and other marine debris.  Well, maybe theres a solution. A small bacteria in the ocean was found eating plastic. The bacteria was discovered through electron microscopy on plastic items sampled at the Sargasso Sea. BUT, scientists have not yet finished researching this bug. So we don't know if it's exactly safe yet. It helps get rid of plastic but how about their degestive system?  If their digestive systems are environmental friendsly, then that means nature has found new way to limit the damage humanity causes.

Good Journalism

I learned about how journalism has improved. Journalism was great before, now it's even better. Its continually improving.
I wonder how journalism is going to be like in the next couple of decades.
I still want to know about how journalism even got started.

wam

W.A.M  stands for Wrting Arts Magazine. We have W.A.M as an elective in Taylor.  It was started by Ms.Ensign and Mr.Dezutti with the help of Derek Chow, Lydia Joh, and Bobby Chakalov.They spend their time making working on their magazines.    They do lots of fun things like

poetry, short story, and critical review.  Since they have updated W.A.M, each student writes their own magazine now and other students can submit some of their work in. They publish their works on a website called Issuu.com.   You don't always have to publish written things, you can also submit artwork if you'de like. 

New Orleans Hornets change their name?

       The New Orleans Hornets change their name? Yes. They've changed their nickname to the "Pelicans". The new nickname, colors and logo will be used during the 2013-14 season. The colors will be blue, gold and red. Sports first reported the expected change Dec. 4. The Hornets had been expected to change their identity since being purchased by Tom Benson on April 14. Shinn sold the Hornets to the NBA in December 2010, and the league spent more than a year looking for a buyer who would keep the team in New Orleans long term.Last April, Benson, who also has owned the NFL's New Orleans Saints since 1985, agreed to purchase the club for $338 million. As part of the purchase, he agreed to a lease of the state-owned New Orleans Arena through 2024, ending several years of speculation that the club would be moved again to another city looking for an NBA franchise. The team petitioned for five names: Pelicans, Mosquitos, Swamp Dogs, Bullsharks and Rougarou, but it appears Pelicans is the one Benson prefers. The Pelican is the state bird of Louisiana, which is known as the Pelican State, it symbolizes Louisiana's environmental recovery from oil spills. The name "Pelicans" has received a lot of criticism from Hornets fans and NBA followers, but a video will soon be up telling the history behind the name.

"If it works for them, it works for me," Stern said. "I don't have any objections to anything that the Hornets want to do name-wise because I'm sure it'll be sensible. … I'm sure whatever it is, it'll be good. If (Pelicans) is what it is, that's fine. … I think everything sounds good. I think Lakers, have you seen any lakes in Los Angeles? There's the same amount of lakes in L.A. as there is jazz in Utah, or grizzlies in Memphis. I'm out of that business. Whatever works for a team works for me."  There was a similiar problem when the Seatte SuperSonics changed their nickname to Thunder when the franchise moved to Oklahoma City in 2008, but now the nickname is widely accepted.  Some fans are hoping the Charlotte Bobcats change their name back to the Hornets, considering the change in New Orleans.  They're going to announce everything on Thursday, 3pm.

Fried Brain Sandwhiches?!

                                    Interesting Foods

      One person's nightmare may just be another person's delicacy. Every culture has a strange food, no doubt about that. From chicken feet to birds nest soup to snails. Those aren't the strangest foods compared to these.

FRIED BRAIN SANDWHICHES. It is  a sandwich made from fried calves' brain  The sandwich is still available in the Ohio River Valley, where the brains are now heavily battered and served on hamburger buns. In El Salvador and Mexico beef brains, called sesos in Spanish, are used in tacos and burritos. The brains have a mushy texture and very little flavor on their own so loads of hot sauce really helps.    RAW BLOOD SOUP. The name tells it all. Yeah. Its basically a soup made with... raw duck blood.

Take duck blood, add duck meat plus spices, then enjoy!  Its a traditional Vietnamese dish called Tiet Canh.

Speaking of blood... BLOOD JELL-O! No. Its not sweet. Instead it's opaque and salty. It's pork blood, in jell-o form.  Next up... MONKEY BRAINS. I guess blood and brains are quite popular and delicious. brains. Monkey brains can be eaten in different way. (1) Eat it cooked. (2) Eat it raw. (3) the brain is eaten fresh, spooned out of the skull while the monkey is still alive. So at some point in history, someone took a monkey and ate its brain and then BAM it becomes a dish.  Enough with the brains and blood now. How bout BALUT. Balut is fertilized duck embyr that is boiled and eaten in the shell. It is commonly sold as strfoods are very wierd to us, but to other people it may be the most normal food ever. Apparently, people think spam,crawfish, and gumbo is a very strange food.  But yes, we do have some strange foods too. Alligator meat. It's low in fat and calories, yet high in protein. It can be cooked a number of ways, including fried, sauteed, and grilled. Found in resturaunts in  Florida, Louisiana and other southern states. Every culture has a strange food. But that just makes it unique. Fertilized duck eggs are a food in the philipines. Fertilized duck eggs are kept warm in the sun and stored in baskets to retain warmth. After nine days, the eggs are held to a light to reveal the embryo inside.  

Wassabi Productions

  Wassabi Productions is a youtube channel run by Roi and Alex. They are known for their music parodies. They also have some random videos about random things .. They have two very interesting characters, Richard (Alex) and Rolanda (Roi) Its just Roi & Alex dressed up. So Rolanda is just this not very pretty 'girl' who likes Alex, but Richard likes Rolanda, and Alex does not like her. Its kind of confusing. Some of videos are:

As Long As You Love me.

Makeup With Rolanda:

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together:

Beauty and the Rolanda.

Call me maybe

Moving like Richard

Never gonna leave you

   They have 157,237,923 veiws in total! And 484,653 subscribers.  They put in lots of effort in their videos. They dress up and even put on make up! In fact, they even have a video of how "Rolanda" does her "make up" using sharpie.

They make the craziest videos and they're not afraid to get embaressed. They are two very creative people. They have 77 videos so far, they make a new video every wednesday.

c

Q u i c k l y ' s

                                                   Q u i c k l y ' s

      Quicklys is a popular cafe in  Millbrae. Their prices are affordable and they have a huge variety of food . Quickly's is a  great place to hang out with your friends and have a snack.  They have cold food, hot food, cool drinks, and warm drinks. Their most popular drink is boba milk tea also known as pearl milk tea or bubble milk tea . It's basically just tea and condensed milk. I asked some Taylor students if they had ever been to quickly's, and if so, what their favorite thing on the menu was.  "Yes I have, I love the Egg Puffs. Its wonderful at Quickly's, the drinks are cold and taste amazing," says Serena, an 8th grade student. They have lots of interesting food and drinks, such as fruit flavored vinegar, avocado flavored gelato and even tofu gelato. They have a mix of American food and Asian food from Thai curry chicken and rice bento to burgers and fries. 

      Quicklys was founded by Nancy Yang. According to Nancy's mother, when her mother was pregnant she loved to eat cold ice desserts. That's probably why Nancy loved eating ice desserts as a little girl. Quicklys is everywhere! They have Quickly's in Hawaii, Europe, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Cambodia. That's a lot of quickly's. Quicklys has a tv for you to listen to kpop while you're waiting in line or eating. The decorations are so fun looking and cute. So if you're hungry, thirsty, or just need a place to hang out. Then you know where to go!