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LAYA! [eLetter for American Young Adults]
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Volume 2 Issue 8 - August 1997
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http://www.laya.com
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HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS...

A WORD FROM OUR STAFF
GRAPHOLOGY
VISIONS OF THE FUTURE (PART 1)
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION (PART 2 of 3)
LES MISERABLES II
WORST ANALOGIES EVERY WRITTEN
DID YOU KNOW?
WEB SITE REVIEW
SURVEYS

LAYA! looks best when viewed with 10 point Arial font.

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A WORD FROM OUR STAFF
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Hello students from across the nation!

We have a new LAYA! staff member this month who is taking the position of
Lead Writer! Our new member, Serena Chang, is in need of additional
writers to be part of the LAYA! team. E-mail robert@laya.com for more
details if you are interested. The entire staff has new e-mail addresses,
so update your address books. The addresses are listed at the bottom.
Have you realized that LAYA! has a domain name? You can now visit us at
http://www.laya.com, as we have updated our web site and given it a new
look with additional content. You can also subscribe people through the
web page now! Come take a look. Surf on in!

The LAYA! Staff
info@laya.com

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GRAPHOLOGY
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Can a homework assignment or thank-you note reveal someone's personality?

Graphologists, scientists who analyze handwriting, say yes. From just a
few scrawls and doodles, they can also determine a writer's mental,
emotional, and physical state. Variables, such as a person's age, gender,
and preferred writing hand (e.g. whether s/he is left or right handed) can
vary a handwriting sample, but there are many consistent graphology rules.
For example, loud people tend to have huge, loud handwriting, and quiet
people have cramped, tiny writing. When people feel better, their
penmanship is better too.

A criminal's writing often contains letters slanted in all directions,
large letters written next to small letters, no margins-especially on the
left side of the paper, many slashing strokes, and strange letter shapes.
If handwriting leans to the right, the person is emotionally expressive.
On the other hand, writing slanted to the left is a characteristic of an
emotionally cold person. Letters scattered in all directions belong to
someone who's emotionally unstable and hard to get along with. And, if
people print when there is nothing wrong with their cursive, they are
trying to hide their true personality. Neatness, spacing, margins, how
someone dot's i's and crosses t's also tell a great deal about a person's
traits. Additionally, signatures represent a person's public self image,
but the rest of the handwriting represents the genuine self-image.

Lastly, for anyone who's interested, most anyone can learn graphology in
about five years.

By: Serena Chang
serena@laya.com

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VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
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PART 1

The future: tomorrow. Next Month. Next Year. Next Century. This
continuing article will paint images of the future, what is to happen by
the year 2015, in terms of technology and innovation. Every few months your
viewpoint will change, as you, the main character, become someone else.
So read on...the future lays ahead.

You're 29 years old and you live in an ordinary home in New York City, the
year being 2015. You wake up to the sound of water coming to a boil, as
your automated home can detect when you will be waking up. The lights
slowly grows brighter, but never too bright as an internal computer
monitors your brain activity, telling it when to continue brightening the
lights. You walk forward towards your kitchen, following the scent of
toast. As you walk through the hallway, the lights grow brighter in front
of you, and dimmer behind you; an excellent way to save electricity. You
make a quick pass through the kitchen, pick up your toast and your coffee,
and sit down in front of the IVD, which stands for Interactive Viewing
Device, a high tech replacement for a TV. You press a button on the
remote, and the IVD instantly turns on. You use the arrow keys on your
remote to select the 'news' option, and a sub menu appears displaying the
news options. You chose 'weather', and a guy in a suit gives you today's
weather report. You turn your small LCD info panel screen to face you, and
see that your boss needs you immediately (you're a detective agent). You
hop into your car, which vertically takes off, and you quickly drive onto
the flyway.

As you turn on your info-panel, which is located where a car radio would
normally be, you press the 'Call' button, and then 'Boss' on the touch
screen. His face appears on the screen and tells you, "There's been a
murder. It's your job to investigate. Sending information...done. Good
luck." You arrive at your partner's office and she hops in. As soon as
you lift off, your info-panel lights up with an on-screen map, displaying
directions to the crime location, you quickly take a right (and the map
rotates to keep you always moving vertically on the map).

You soon reach the crime site, and find nothing out of the ordinary (other
than police men walking around). You are given a list of people you should
interview, and you read every name on the list before you realize that you
have just been given an anonymous tip-off. You run to your partner, and
tell her everything that has happened. She tells you that we should get on
the interviews immediately. As you leave, your advanced police car tells
you that someone has inserted a metallic device into your hood. Your
partner tells you that it was a time bomb, set for 5 minutes. Your partner
quickly disarms it, and you put it into your trunk; you never know when
you'll need it.

To be continued...

By: Robert Chin
robert@laya.com

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AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
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PART 2: What's Bad About Affirmative Action.

This is part two of the "Affirmative Action: Fairness or Discrimination"
series. In this issue, I'll be discussing ways that affirmative action can
be bad and unfair.

Affirmative Action affects not only minorities and "underrepresented"
ethnic groups, but also touches the lives of majority races and the like.
As affirmative action is enforced in various states and counties in the
US, the white population of institutions are dropping. Most of these
whites and other races would have been accepted into colleges without
affirmative action. But because of affirmative action, minority students
who may be less qualified for the job have gotten in. This is simply
unfair to everyone. It is unfair to the qualified students, and it is
unfair to the students who are accepted solely on their background. Ward
Connerly of the UC Regents, an African American, has views that strongly
oppose affirmative action. He believes that minority students who are
being accepted into UC schools partly because of their ethnic background
are receiving unfair treatment and thus will have low moral. Affirmative
action does harm as well as good to everyone, but is there a realistic
solution to the low minority rates in our universities and businesses? In
part three of "Affirmative Action: Fairness or Discrimination," I'll
discuss possibilities to this nationwide dilemma.

By: Chris Lin
chris@laya.com

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LES MISERABLES II
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At the End of the Day
(to the tune of the same song from the musical "Les Miserables")

STUDENTS
At the end of the day you've got nothing but homework--
Just a tower of paper on top of your floor.
It's a struggle, it's a war,
And there're answers that no one is giving.
With a midterm on the way...
What is it for?
One day less till Thanksgiving!

At the end of the day you're more tired than ever.
You've got fifty more pages left to get through.
With the students going nuts
They can't read the notes they've been keeping--
And it's two AM and you still
Haven't a clue.
One night less to be sleeping!

At the end of the day still the paper's not written,
And your study break stretches hours and hours.
Make a phone call, write some e-mail,
Procrastinate all that you're able.
Still the screen is sitting there blank, and
Your mind is becoming unstable--
And there's gonna be more till June...
At the end of the day!

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WINNERS OF THE "WORST ANALOGIES EVER WRITTEN IN A HIGH SCHOOL ESSAY"
CONTEST.
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They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that
resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.)

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who
went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes
with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high
schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of
those boxes with a pinhole in it.
(Joseph Romm, Washington)

She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to
dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open
again.
(Rich Murphy, Fairfax Station)

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling
ball wouldn't.
(Russell Beland, Springfield)

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with
vegetable soup.
(Paul Sabourin, Silver Spring)

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie,
surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and
"Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.
(Roy Ashley, Washington)

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
(Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the
center.
(Russell Beland, Springfield)

Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access
T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by
mistake
(Ken Krattenmaker, Landover Hills)

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
(Unknown)

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a
Dr Pepper can.
(Wayne Goode, Madison, Ala.)

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

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DID YOU KNOW?
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Q. Why (on a clear day) is the sky blue?
JASPER GRAHAM-JONES
Southampton

A. The sky is blue because of a process called Rayleigh scattering. Light
arriving from the sun hits the molecules in the air and is scattered in all
directions. The amount of scattering depends dramatically on the frequency,
that is, the color of the light. Blue light, which has a high frequency, is
scattered ten times more than red light, which has a lower frequency. So,
the "background" scattered light we see in the sky is blue.This same
process also explains the beautiful red colors at sunset. When the sun is
low on the horizon, its light has to pass through a large amount of
atmosphere on its way to us. During the trip, blue light is scattered away,
but red light, which is less susceptible to scattering, can continue on its
direct path to our eyes.

By: S BRENTFORD
Lymington Town

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WEB SITE REVIEWS
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The Unofficial Tupac Homepage

Do you listen to hip-hop? Or are you interested in Tupac Shakur (R.I.P.)
and his life and music? Then the Unofficial Tupac Homepage, by JD Bastin
is the web page you should take a look at. This site literally has
everything you ever wanted to know about Tupac. Want some lyrics,
biography, theories, and facts about Tupac? JD Bastin is constantly
updating his page with magnificent amounts of content. His newest section,
added a week or two ago, is about Tupac's rivals. Here, he shows a picture
of each rival, what the beef between them is all about, and some personal
comments. He also has a page with Tupac Updates, in which he tells us
anything in the world that somehow relates to Tupac. This is updated at
least once a week, usually once every 3 days, so you're sure to be seeing
the latest news. I thoroughly applaud JD Bastin's page for Tupac. This is
unquestionably the BEST Tupac page (content-wise) of any sort that I've
come across. The design of the Tupac page is a little too mediocre, but
better than most home pages. His computer-made graphics are not exactly
spectacular, but his photos are high quality and enhance the page. I
strongly suggest you visit this page if you are a music fan of any kind or
simply want to learn how to create a high content and marvelous page.

Ratings-The Unofficial Tupac Homepage:

Content-LLLLLLLLL (9 out of 10)
Design-LLLLLL (6 out of 10)

Overall-LLLLLLLL (8 out of 10)

http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/bastin/tupac/temp.html
Main Page
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/bastin/tupac/pacup.html
Tupac Updates (updated frequently!)
By: Chris Lin
chris@laya.com

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SURVEY QUESTIONS
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1. What kind of music do you listen to? In other words, if you turned
on the radio, what type of station would you first go to?

2. So, (you knew this was coming) what's your opinion about Andrew
Cunanan? Any comments about anything related to Cunanan would be welcome.

E-mail "surveys@laya.com" with your answers.
It will remain anonymous--just include your answers.
The results will be posted in the next issue.

You can submit a survey you want conducted by e-mailing "surveys@laya.com"

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SURVEY RESULTS
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Here are the results:
Should Timothy McVeigh have gotten the death penalty?
Yes: 75%
No: 16%
Don't know: 8%

Comments:

-"McVeigh deserves the death penalty for killing so many people, it's just
the same as a serial killer type thing."
-"Yes...obviously...he murdered ... many hundred people who were in that
building."
-"Well, I agree that with McVeigh getting the death penalty. His life was
so screwed up, they deserve to end it."
-"No, I think they should put him in jail and feed him bread and water for
the rest of his life. Death is an escape; Timothy should not be allowed to
just escape from the crime he committed--he should be punished for a long,
long time."

Was Lt. Flinn a victim of double standards?
Yes:60%
No: 10%
Don't know:30%

Comments:

-"It is kinda a double standard, but it's been going on like that forever."
-"...just plain unfair"
-"Flinn was obviously a victim of a double standard by the military. She
should have at least gotten a honorable discharge."

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LAYA's STAFF...
Compiled, edited, designed, and approved by:

Robert Chin
President
robert@laya.com

Daniel Cheng
Layout & Design
daniel@laya.com

Chris Lin
Director of New Happenings and Weekly Content
chris@laya.com

Serena Chang
Editor/Lead Writer
serena@laya.com

Charles Hua
Internet Assistant
charles@laya.com

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The article should be appropriate for 7-12th graders.
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LAYA!
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