Numbers

More than 16 billion animals are killed each year in the U.S., according to PETA. They’re used to feed and clothe America, but at the detriment of the animals and of the environment. The average meat-eating American’s diet contributes greenhouse gas emissions that are 85 percent produced by the raising and killing of animals.

Finally, an equal split.

Eight out of the 16 directors in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category of the Sundance Festival this year were women. This is a rare occurrence in any industry in our country (or world) today, especially when it is in film: women only fill 29.8 percent of all jobs in the film industry, according to a recently released report by the Sundance Institute and Women in Film.

Human civilization has always been dependent on numerical systems to promote order, uniformity and stability. From Sumerians and Egyptians to Greeks and Arabs, the most advanced early cultures were the ones founded on consistent mathematical principles that represented the rule of logic over chaos and the scientific idea that there is a pattern to the events we witness.

A poem by Sam Kamenetz

“Barack Obama, yes we can! Stop this dirty pipeline plan!” The voices of over 40,000 others as passionate and purposeful as myself fed into the positive energy that flowed down Constitution Avenue to the President’s front door. On Sunday, Feb. 17, I joined tens of thousands in Washington, D.C. at the Forward on Climate Rally — the largest of its kind in U.S. history — to tell President Obama to stop the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

In an increasingly competitive academic environment, students no longer merely compete against one another for higher test scores. Today, in addition to the dreaded standardized state testing, middle and high school students are periodically tested by the federal Department of Education, which measures and compares their academic performance to that of students in other countries.

A short story by Alec Kaden

Whether you’re a devil worshipper or a religious skeptic, you’ve probably encountered the number “666” and some of the superstitions that follow. The connotations of this number in popular culture are so strong, there is even a specific word for the fear of the number 666: Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.

Sunday afternoon, in the Marriott hotel. The National Dentist Association was having its annual convention. In addition to the orthodontists and other dental hygienists brushing up on their technique, the ten fabled dentists were reviewing a new form of Crest. As per usual the product was granted a recommendation by 9 out of 10 dentists. But what about the tenth?

With the passing of the NY SAFE Act on Jan. 15, several new restrictions and policies have been pressed on gun ownership and sales that have been controversial among both sides of the second amendment debate.