I think one of the most important ideas I learned from my research was just how many poor portrayals of mental illness there are in the media.  I think it speaks to a greater misunderstanding of mental illness, and it’s something that we need to work hard to correct.   Recently, portrayals of mental illness have become more accurate and less sensationalized, but there is more work to be done.  

I also learned a lot about how many mental illnesses are underdiagnosed in children, especially in underprivileged communities.  Too often troubling behavior is ignored, dismissed, or labeled as something that a child will “grow out of”.   Early recognition of mental illness can help parents develop a treatment plan before symptoms worsen.  The key to doing this is educating parents on mental illness and pushing parents to take their children’s emotions more seriously.   

My time at North has been great, and I think that I have done a good job of pursuing things that I am interested in and staying on top of school work.  If I could give advice to incoming freshmen, it would be to take advantage of all the opportunities that North offers.  Growing up in Naperville we are all very privileged to have access to such a great public school system, and many of us take it for granted.  Take interesting classes that aren’t offered in other schools, go to school events, and join all of our very well-funded and well-established clubs that interest you.  

That being said, my second piece of advice would be that high school does not matter (or at least not as much as you think it does right now).   You should try in school because it can set you up for success for the rest of your life – but just because your GPA isn’t as high as someone else’s doesn’t mean you’re going to be less successful or less happy than them for the next 70 years of your life.   Just because someone is going to a higher-ranked college than you doesn’t mean you’re going to be less successful or less happy than them for the next 70 years of your life.  It’s easy for us to think that everything is life or death right now – friend groups, sports, grades – but when you look back on your high school years, the only thing you’ll be left with is the memories you made.   It’s important to take a step back and realize that these are just another four years of your life.  What’s most important right now is spending the time to develop yourself into the person you want to be, and to surround yourself with people that you appreciate.  I think too often we separate high school from college, and college from “real life” or the “real world”.   Sure, they’re different, but don’t waste 8 years waiting to start your “real life”.  This is real life right now – find the things that make you happy and pursue them.  

I generally eat pretty healthily, but one particular fast-food chain has captured the heart of the little fat kid that lives inside of me.  It’s not authentic, it’s not fresh, it’s not even particularly cheap – but I love Taco Bell.  Here are my opinions on their most popular menu items, if you care for some reason.   

1. Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes  (6/10)

Not much of this screams “Fiesta” to me, but at only $1.29, it’s hard to say no.  The crispy potatoes covered in plastic, neon-yellow queso and finished off with a dollop of sour cream are a great choice for a side, and offers vegetarians a nice meatless option.   As a bonus, this item is infinitely customizable – it’s a blank canvas for you to make your own meal.   

2. Cheesy Roll-Up (2/10)

This is just a sad, sad meal.  Why not just order a quesadilla?  Sure, they’re only $1 a piece, but I’d need at least 6 or 7 of these to fill myself up, and I don’t feel like doing that to my body.   If you order this consistently, you should re-evaluate some of your life choices.   

3. Doritos Locos Tacos (8/10)

Whoever came up with this deserves a raise.  Taco Bell took a bland, outdated item (their traditional hard shell taco) and upped the ante by making the shell entirely out of Doritos.  It’s like something out of a fever dream, and it is delicious.   I do, however, have to dock points for Taco Bell’s discontinuation of the Cool Ranch and Flamin’ shells.  The original just isn’t the same.  

4. Crunchwrap Supreme (10/10)

This might be Taco Bell’s greatest contribution to the culinary world. It’s a flat burrito that you can eat with one hand, AND it has a crunchy shell inside to separate the double-decker filling.  It combines all of the best aspects of their menu into one – you have the charred burrito wrapping, the crunchy taco inside, and a layer of quesadilla cheese.  When I die, I would like to be buried with one of these.  Maybe thousands of years in the future, archaeologists will dig me up and marvel at the ingenuity of past civilizations (and make fun of the guy buried with his food).  

5. Baja Blast (11/10)

If you go to Taco Bell and don’t order a Baja Blast, you are missing out.  I’m not a huge soda drinker, and definitely not a fan of Mountain Dew, but there is something special about this drink.  I can’t pin down the flavor, which tastes faintly of lemon-lime scented cleaning solution, which is perfect, because after eating Taco Bell, my stomach deserves some deep cleaning.   I will warn you that whatever chemical combination the good people at Mountain Dew infused into the Baja Blast is dangerously addictive.   This thing should be a Schedule 1 drug.   

Yesterday, 12 of the richest soccer clubs in Europe announced the creation of an independent “European Superleague”, designed to showcase must-watch matchups of the top teams in the world in direct competition with the current Champion’s League format.   For an American viewer or a casual fan of soccer like myself, it seems like a great deal – matchups that were once reserved for a few special days a year now playout over the course of a season, with powerhouse clubs like Chelsea, Real Madrid, and F.C. Barcelona playing each other week-in and week-out.  The backlash for this league, however, has reverberated far past sports media, with world leaders like PM Boris Johnson and President Emmanual Macron pledging to sign legislation stopping the Superleague within just hours of its announcement.  To understand exactly why the Superleague is so destructive to club soccer’s traditions, and so blatantly offensive to diehard fans, you need to first understand the structure of European club soccer.

Perhaps the most widely followed soccer league in the world, England’s Premier League provides the perfect example of what makes European club soccer so special.  The Premier League sits at the top of England’s club soccer pyramid, made up of 7 “tiers” of play.  Each year, the best performing teams from each league move up, and the bottom teams are relegated to the level directly below them.   This means that no matter how small or how poor your organization is, you are given the chance each year to advance and play some of the top competition in the world.   This creates generation after generation of diehard fans, who support the clubs of their fathers’ fathers, and blends rich tradition with tight community ties to make club soccer so special.   This structure exists in some form in every European country – no matter how small your team is, given enough time, you could compete in your country’s top league – and if you perform well enough there, you move on to the pinnacle of club soccer:  The Champions League.  Every year, The Champions League takes the top club teams from each country to compete in a tournament to crown one final champion.   

While that might be a lot to take in, it means that your team – which could be made up of players making only 50k a year, which fills its 1,000 person capacity stadium with your neighbors and relatives, is always somehow tied to the Billion dollar clubs that compete with the best of the best.  The European Superleague destroys these ties, separating the top 15 teams into their own competition that replaces the Champions League.

To provide an easy analogy, I’ll reference March Madness.  In March Madness, every team plays a schedule of conference games to determine their seeding in an end-of-season tournament to declare the best team in the nation.  Some of the most inspiring and memorable stories in March Madness history come from the underdogs – the Loyola Chicagos and the UMBC’s.   These teams overcome their lack of prestige and funding to showcase their talent against the best-funded programs in the nation, providing their passionate fanbases a chance (no matter how slim) to watch their team compete for a national championship.  The European Superleague would be akin to the perennial powerhouses in each division seceding from March Madness and creating their own season schedule and tournament.  Sure, they will still play their conference games, but they now choose to rest their starters against conference opponents.  Why play your starting five in a meaningless game against Rutgers when you have Kentucky on the schedule later that week?  The dream of the cinderella team is dead – the blueblood teams have their own tournament, and your 12 seed isn’t invited. 

So if the concept of a European Superleague is so detrimental to the traditions of club soccer, why go through with it?  The simple answer is money.  The owners of the top 12 clubs in Europe built this league together knowing that their matchups would be must-watch television and that passionate soccer fans will all but forced to pay a subscription fee to watch the best teams compete.  Games against lesser local opponents may give fans a game fueled by 100 years of tradition, but they don’t incite the same excitement that a powerhouse international club matchup does.   The idea that the top clubs in the world will make more money off of these matchups is not inherently bad – the problem lies with the fact that this league will harm the poorer local teams in domestic leagues.  English teams like Chelsea, now with less motivation to win the Premier League and because they automatically qualify for Superleague, will rest their top players against smaller local teams.  This means reduced TV revenue for those games, suffocating the smaller team’s best sources of profit, in turn widening the monetary gap between the top teams in the world and your local team.  

This attempt by billionaire owners to rake in even more cash is especially offensive to fans because of the current pandemic.  Fans are finally being given the chance to return to their local club’s grounds, traditionally a place of community and celebration.   Even in an economic crisis, games are incredibly affordable, with even the most expensive tickets in the premier league topping out at around 100 pounds and an average ticket costing only 30 pounds.   Soccer offers a chance for communities to heal and forget about the year’s troubles, and now, before the Pandemic has completely ended, a small club of the richest owners in soccer has robbed that experience from the people in an effort to further stuff their pockets.  

The backlash against the Superleague has been intense – FIFA, the International Federation of Football, has threatened that players who compete in the Superleague will not be able to play in the World Cup.  Each domestic league has launched threats at the teams who seceded, and governments are already looking into writing legislation to stop the Superleague in its tracks.  The move is not yet set in stone, but it appears so far that the owners of these top teams are ready to fight both in legal court and in the court of public opinion against overseeing organizations, individual domestic leagues, their respective governments, and even their own fans.

It is a wintry December day in 1941, and the United States House of Representatives Chamber floor hums with a solemn fervor.  The 77th congress gathers, one day removed from an act which will forever live in infamy, to decide the future of a nation left reeling by an attack on American soil.  Amidst the roll call, it is apparent what will happen next – congress will vote to declare war on Japan, thereby ending whatever hope remained for American isolationism, and thrusting the United States into global conflict.  In apparent haste, Mutual Networks left its microphones on, offering families across the country a live broadcast of the proceedings.  They listen as Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, barely audible over cacophonous boos, casts the sole dissenting vote against the declaration of war  Upon leaving the chamber, she is forced to retreat into a nearby phone booth to await a Capitol Police escort through the angry crowd gathered outside.

This was not the first time Rankin took a public stand against war.   Just four days removed from her first steps into the capitol in 1917, Rankin voted against American entry into the first world war along with forty-nine other congressmen, drawing ire from both her constituents in the Suffrage movement and her fellow legislators. With fading support in both Montana and from leaders in the Suffrage movement, Rankin was not re-elected after her first term.    Much of the criticism leveled at Rankin’s vote was inherently sexist – the Helena Independent claimed that her actions were that of not of a congresswoman, but a “crying schoolgirl”, and the New York Times reported that her vote came in “hysterical condition”.   Detractors may have pointed to her pacifism as being emblematic of some greater weakness in women – but historian Jody Foley argues that Rankin believed in peace as an extension of feminism and female empowerment.  She explained her beliefs best in a 1977 speech to the Montana Historical Conference, saying that “Half of the human race does not fight and has never fought. . . .[W]hy should men not learn something. . . from the non-fighting female.”   

Rankin would return to congress in 1939, running on a campaign promise of peace in the face of rising tension in Europe and the Pacific.  While it is true that she was elected in part due to the rising popularity of isolationism, Rankin herself did not hold strong nationalist views, or simply believe that war would harm America – her pacifism was built upon compassion, and faith that humanity could rise above the barbarity of conflict.  In a 1943 letter to Gerald F.M. O’Grady, she maintained hope that “someday the people will learn that every country loses every war”.   

When Congress gathered after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Rankin knew that giving a dissenting vote would be far worse for her political career than even her 1917 vote against the first world war.   It seemed the country was alight with a patriotic, retaliatory zeal, and the Capitol was no different.  The brief, eighteen-minute debate on the house floor prior to the vote reflected this, as legislator after legislator echoed pro-war arguments.  Rankin, despite her best efforts, was repeatedly ignored and denied recognition by the speaker.   She hoped not only to espouse the value of peace, but to plead caution from her fellow congresspeople, as in her eyes voting for war “based on brief, unconfirmed radio reports” would be directly opposed to democratic ideals, and “not in keeping with our American way of life”.  Rankin’s concerns aligned closely with those Kennedy quoted from Walter Lippman – that a lack of political courage would birth a climate in which “The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular — not whether it will work well and prove itself, but whether the active-talking constituents like it immediately.” 

Rankin’s vote left her at the mercy of intense vitriol from both “active-talking constituents” as well as figureheads in both Washington and at home.   Her own brother told her in a telegram that “Montana is 100 percent against you”, and the Montana National Republican committee asserted that changing her vote would be the only way to “redeem Montana’s honor”.  Rankin, however, had no intention of changing her vote – a vote based on her steadfast commitment to pacifism.  After the vote, Rankin defended her dissent from the criticism of fellow legislators, stating that “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else”.   Regardless of how Rankin’s vote will be remembered by history, there is no doubt that it was one made solely on her “conscience, [his] personal standard of ethics, [his] integrity or morality, call it what you will”.  With the country watching, in the face of 270 votes for war and what would certainly spell the death of her political career, Rankin’s brave dissent proved that her long standing dedication to peace outweighed her “fear of public reprisal”.  

Rankin may not have bowed to what Kennedy identified as the three “pressures” facing legislators, but she certainly faced their consequences.  She would not hold public office again for the remainder of her life, and was politically ostracized from the state she wished to serve.  Despite the personal consequences of her vote, Rankin continued to find new ways to promote pacifism, organizing efforts to protest the Vietnam war, and advocating for aid to humanitarian crises around the world.  Jeannette Rankin is best remembered as the first woman in congress, and for her leadership in the fight for suffrage – but her vote against war, against the world, will forever live on as a shining example of political courage.  

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden

In his poem “Those Winter Sundays”, Robert Hayden examines the ever-changing relationship between parent and child, and the increased understanding of sacrifice that too often only arrives with age.   It is a recount of Hayden’s childhood Sunday mornings, in which his father would rise before the rest of the family to warm the house with a fire. 

Hayden chooses to write the poem entirely in the past tense, indicating that it is a memory of his, but makes a point to include visceral imagery.   Although the events take place when he is a young child, Hayden still remembers his father’s “cracked hands” in the “blueblack cold”, and the way he awoke to their fire “splintering, breaking”.  This imagery, combined with Hayden’s first-person perspective, causes the poem to read quite narratively.  Although it is an early memory for Hayden, it is not clouded by the passing of time or warmed by the glow of nostalgia – rather, it has been sharpened by regret.   The imagery present throughout the poem, even without the other elements Hayden uses to establish tone, demonstrates the frequency with which Hayden has reflected upon his relationship with his father.   This removes the distance that normally exists between storyteller and audience, increasing the poem’s emotional impact.

Hayden’s intentionally cold and distant diction demonstrates the strained relationship that he has with his father – a relationship his Father attempts to warm with his labor of love.  The repeated use of the word “cold”, along with “blueblack”, “cracked”, and “splintering” captures the energy of the house beautifully.  It is as cold and lifeless as the relationship between Hayden and his father, seemingly devoid of passion and love.   When examining their father-son relationship through this lens, his father’s fires take on significant symbolic meaning.   While Hayden’s father may seem gruff and cold, his efforts each morning are a labor of love.  Although he does not express his feelings through words (Hayden chooses to omit any dialogue from the poem), Hayden’s father lights a fire each morning in an attempt to warm the house as well as melt the icy relationship that he has with his son.  Unfortunately for him, at the time these efforts were in vain, as Hayden recalls the “indifferent” manner in which he would speak to his father each morning.   

Hayden subtly demonstrates his own emotional growth through his syntactical choices.  The first of these choices come in only the second word of the poem, as Hayden writes that “Sundays too my father got up early”.  The inclusion of the word “too” is easily ignored at first glance, but it reveals to the reader that Hayden’s father awoke every morning, even Sundays (a day of rest) to warm the house for his family.  It would be understandable for the reader to skip over this detail, just as Hayden as a child was ignorant of his Father’s continued sacrifice for the family.  Hayden also makes interesting use of sentence structure at the end of the first stanza.  He switches from narration to reflection, ending the stanza with the phrase “No one ever thanked him”.  This shift in writing indicates Hayden drawing back from his storytelling, and functions almost as a realization that the reader experiences alongside the author.   Hayden chooses to conclude the final stanza with repetition and a question.  This both highlights the poem’s introspective nature, as well as imploring the reader to ask themselves about parental love.  The repetition of “What did I know” strikes the reader as being reflective, not an outward question but rather one that Hayden is asking of himself.  He understands that at the time he did not appreciate his father’s sacrifice, and is forcing himself to reckon with the fact that he did not demonstrate thankfulness when it was due.  By separating the final line from this introspective questioning, removing the first-person “I”, and scaling to a much larger question of love, Hayden asks the audience to reflect on whether or not they returned the sacrifice and love they received from their parents.  

Through his use of past tense, cold diction, the metaphor of the fire, and clever syntactical choices, Hayden urges the audience to appreciate the love they are gifted with, no matter what form it may come in.  

            If you haven’t already heard about the rise of Gamestop ($GME), I’ll try to keep it brief, because let’s face it: if you’re interested in this kind of stuff, you already know what happened and why, and if you aren’t, you’ve definitely had someone try (and fail) to explain it to you already.   Large financial institutions bet billions that Gamestop’s stock would go down and everyday retail investors convinced bought the stock in an attempt to raise the stock price and force hedge funds to cover massive losses.  What started out as a localized effort on Reddit community “r/wallstreetbets” snowballed into a social movement that acted as a sort of socio-economic Rorshach test for the country.  Many retail investors and economic progressives saw the event as an opportunity to exact revenge on Hedge Funds for the 2007 housings crisis, buying shares of the stock simply as a middle finger to big banks.   On the contrary, economic conservatives, the wealthy, and the financial institutions themselves saw the stock’s rise as an artificial rise, one directly in violation of SEC regulations.  Now that the dust has settled, and the stock’s rise is over, I wanted to take a look at the phenomenon that led to the rise of $GME – the meme stock pump-and-dump.  

               The recent rise of retail investing (short term investments by everyday people with expendable income) can be attributed to three factors.  The first is the increased prevalence of investment apps like Robinhood and WeBull, which make investing more accessible and gamify it to get people hooked on short-term gains.  The other factors are directly related to the pandemic – since the early stages of the pandemic, when stocks experienced a sharp crash, the markets have been incredibly bullish, pushing all-time-highs in almost every sector.  It’s easy to dream about what could have been if you had taken some of your excess cash – say, the $2,000 check that the government handed to you – and bought into your favorite company back in April.  Americans have downloaded apps like Robinhood at an astounding rate, stimulus check in hand, ready to get their piece of the pie in one of the best markets in recent history.  

               The problem with these investors is that they are, for lack of a better term, financially uneducated.  Rather than taking the time to complete their own due diligence, and build a portfolio based on careful analysis, they want to make money as fast as possible.  And who can blame them?  Just as prospectors rushed to California in 1849 to pan for gold, Americans rush to the internet and social media, hungry for a voice to direct them in the direction of the next untapped vein of profit.   This ravenous hunger is exactly what enterprising, albeit morally ambiguous, social media con-men need to make a quick buck off of unexpecting Americans.   

It is a beautiful example of cutthroat capitalism.  It is the “Pump-And-Dump”.

             The process is incredibly simple, and although I won’t advocate you should because it’s morally wrong and in violation of SEC regulations, the truth is: you could do this with no prior knowledge and start making money tomorrow.   The first step is to build a social media presence – it doesn’t even need to be particularly large, especially if you’re able to make even one of your videos go viral.  As a bonus, get yourself a sleek setup, to ensure that you really look the part.  It’s all about building trust with your audience – you need to look and act like you know more than them.  Because the sector is completely unregulated, you can easily lie about a degree or professional record without anyone batting an eye.  These schemes choose their audiences carefully – posting on Facebook won’t get you anywhere, because its userbase is older and more fiscally responsible.  You are searching for the lowest hanging fruit possible, so post on apps like TikTok and Instagram.   If you’ve established even a relatively small userbase of >1k followers, you have everything you need to start turning their mistakes into your money.  

             Find a random stock, with emphasis on random – you want a company that is small and trades at very low volume each day.  If on average the company is bought and sold 7,000 times a day, then your small userbase can easily account for 25% or more of those trades in a day.   Buy a large number of shares and start pumping the stock.  Post about how it could “be the next GameStop”, or how you “won’t want to miss out”.  Add technical jargon that will fly over your userbase’s head, spouting off about its “Bullish MACD crossover”,  “low RSI”, and “5 day SMA crossover with a resistance level of $2/share”.  If you know what you’re talking about, great, but it really doesn’t matter if you don’t.  You just have to pass the smell test of the uneducates retail investor, who might as well not have a nose at all.  Now that you own a large number of shares of a company with trading at exceptionally low volume, your large follower count will account for most of the investors looking at that company, which means your words will have significant influence over the stock price.  The second that it rises, you want to sell – the company has no underlying value that warrants this rise, and it’s almost guaranteed that it will take a dive in the near future when your post has lost momentum.   By selling early, you will leave some potential profit on the table, but you minimize the risk on your end and ensure that your followers will be the ones suffering losses as they chase the unrealistic price target you engrained in their minds.  Rinse and repeat, boasting about your success and making your followers think that it is their fault they bought too late or sold too soon, getting them hooked on the adrenaline rush of investing and ensuring that they’ll be back for your next post.  

            Pump and dump schemes like this are as old as the markets themselves, but with the speed of social media and the emergence of meme culture, it’s easier than ever to take advantage of the uneducated masses. While GameStop itself was not a cut-and-dry pump and dump scheme, and the circumstances of its rise are too complex to attribute to some large-scale con, much of the discourse surrounding it is unsettling.  I frequent websites like “r/wallstreetbets”, and every day I am exposed to posts goading me into buying these garbage stocks.  As GameStop rose, 10 other companies were heralded as the next big thing.   AMC, Nokia, and Blockbuster saw a steep rise and an even steeper decline, leaving many first-time investors who just wanted to be a part of something “bagholding”, or refusing to sell based on some unfounded belief that their shares were just a day away from being worth millions.  GameStop will remain in the collective psyche of retail investors in the same way that the market’s bounce back from coronavirus-induced lows have – as a unicorn they can chase like an addict looking for a high.   “This could be like GameStop.  If only I had listened back then!”, they’ll say, unwittingly falling into the trap laid by social media con-men.  

                We can see it happening now with DogeCoin.  Although not a company (DogeCoin is a cryptocurrency, akin to BitCoin), thousands of TikTok and Reddit accounts urged their readers to buy in and ride it to the top.  It was lumped in with a legitimately executed short squeeze like GameStop for no legitimate reason, and real people lost vast amounts of money buying a digital currency that is literally named after a meme.  Meme culture pump-and-dumps are difficult for the SEC to regulate because they often operate on only a thousand or so viewers, and accounts will deliberately try to avoid raising suspicion by keeping their influence on the markets from becoming too large.  

                 So who is to blame here?  Yes, the people who orchestrate these schemes are squarely in the wrong, but some fault must be assigned to those who bought into these stocks without doing proper research.  If there’s one thing you take away from this, any money that you made or could have made during the GameStop boom was a fluke, and you really shouldn’t be investing in anything other than Blue Chip companies and ETFs without doing a lot of your own research.  The market is always one step ahead of you, and Hedge Funds and con men alike make their money off of idiots like us.  If you want to try to beat the system without being properly informed, go ahead – the odds are not in your favor.  

Deandre Hopkins (along with a 2020 fourth-round pick), in exchange for RB David Johnson, a 2020 second-round pick and a 2021 fourth-round pick.

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When this blockbuster trade was first announced back in March, amidst new restrictions and lockdowns, some of it’s headline potential was lost to bigger news.  It was a shocking trade, but many around the league trusted Bill O’Brien’s vision.  After all, he had to be seeing something that we were all missing to trade a generational talent at receiver for an injury-prone back and a move up in the draft.  Perhaps Hopkins was on the decline, and he believed Will Fuller was ready to step into the WR1 role?  Or perhaps Johnson was finally ready to reclaim his place at the top of the league?  Nope, O’Brien was just plain wrong. 

 In Arizona, Hopkins continued his dominance, passing 1,400 receiving yards and providing a true WR1 target for a budding Kyler Murray.   Johnson, on the other hand, posted yet another disappointing season, continuing his decline in the wake of past injuries.  This move was the final nail in the coffin for Bill O’Brien, who was fired after the Texans limped to a 4-12 record. Unfortunately, this trade goes deeper than just damaging the Texan’s record this season.  It will have a longstanding impact on their future as a franchise – with Hopkins gone, and Will Fuller likely to enter free agency, the Texans have all but abandoned supporting DeShaun Watson.  This, coupled with an aging defense and one of the worst cap situations in the league, means that times will likely get far, far worse in Houston before they get better.  And yes, Bill O’Brien is entirely to blame for that.  

Stefon Diggs (along with a 2020 seventh-round pick), in exchange for a 2020 first-round pick, a 2020 fifth-round pick, a 2020 sixth-round pick and a 2021 fourth-round pick.

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I have to admit that when news of this trade first broke, I was a little split.  Yes, it was clear that the bills were filling a positional need, and giving Josh Allen the weapon he desperately needed to go to the next level.  But Stefon Diggs?  Through his time at Minnesota, despite flashes of greatness, he struggled with his role in the locker room and repeatedly clashed with coaching staff over his role in the offense.  Was he really worth that much in draft picks?  Diggs responded to the criticism he received from fans and the media with a 127 reception, 1500 yard season that elevated the Bills from wild-card contender to legitimate Super Bowl threat.  This move by the Bills proved the need for teams to provide their budding young QBs with a superstar WR1 (Looking at you, Texans), as Josh Allen tore through opponents to the tune of 37 TDs and 4500 yards in the air.  

The vikings received a lot of value in draft capital, and seem to have made all the right decisions for the future.  Cornerbacks Cameron Danzler and Jeff Gladney should offer help to their lackluster secondary, and picks like Ezra Cleveland, D.J. Wonnum, and James Lynch should help them in the trenches.  Their breakout rookie, Justin Jefferson, has proven that he could be the best receiver in the league in just a few years if they can keep him injury free and find him a reliable passer.   It’s been a disappointing season for them, and it is unlikely that they will be contenders in the near future unless the front office can pull off some much needed salary cap magic, but these young players offer a bright future for Vikings fans.  Both Minnesota and Buffalo have benefitted from this trade, and it’s hard to pick a clear “winner” other than fans of both teams.  

Buccaneers sign Tom Brady to a 2 year, $50 Million contract, and trade 4th round pick to Patriots for Rob Gronkowski

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The Buccaneers were in a strange place after finishing the 2019 season 7-9.  With a strong receiving corps and the league’s best run defense, it felt like they were not good enough to be a contender but far too strong to begin any kind of rebuild.   They needed to make a move that would make them contenders, and they found that in the acquisition of former Patriot and future hall of famer Tom Brady.  In addition, they traded a 4th round pick for Brady’s longtime favorite target, Rob Gronkowski.  While these additions immediately placed them in the superbowl conversation, many questioned whether or not an aging Brady and Gronkowski still had it in them to compete at the highest level.  

This season Brady has shown flashes of his former greatness, while at the same time struggling to overcome his aging body and adapt to a brand new offensive system in a rushed COVID season.   At their best, they look like the strongest team in the NFL and the favorites to win the NFC championship – but at their worst, they look at best to be a wild card team.   One undisputed victory for the Buccaneers was their acquisition of Rob Gronkowski.   Despite his slow start to the season, he has proven himself to be a valuable pickup and worthy of a 4th round pick.   Whether or not dishing out $50 million to Tom Brady was the right decision will be decided in the next two years.  The Buccaneers are in win now mode, and if they can figure out their inconsistencies and win a title, the money will have been well worth it.  If not, they will enter 2022 and beyond once again a team without direction, clinging desperately to an aging QB and having wasted the primes of their star-studded receivers’ careers.

In this blog series I take an unbiased, scientific approach to the age-old question:  what is the best burrito in Naperville? Everybody knows the rules – each week, I pick one local restaurant and evaluate it’s classic steak burrito.  No national chains, no add-ons or substitutions.  

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After my last blog on Los Burritos Tapatios, which welcomed some heated and (mostly) civil debate in the comments, there was really only one choice for this week’s review.  It is a restaurant that has long lived in the shadow of it’s crosstown rival, sandwiched between Ogden locations like an afterthought.  But is it really the fault of its food?  Or is Los Burritos Tapatios simply more popular because of its status as a local chain?  Does the little guy stand a chance? I have to admit, I am hopeful for this review – after all, it’s fun to root for the underdog.

COVID has once again closed indoor dining, and so I was forced to navigate my way through El Hogar’s “drive thru” to order my burrito.  I’m not sure if it’s due to property restrictions, or if the owner’s really like making drivers work to get their food, but this has to be one of the strangest drive thru layouts I’ve ever seen – it is essentially an extension of the parking lot, and appears to only be able to accommodate 3 cars at a time.   That being said, this isn’t an architecture blog and I’m a professional, so I’ll base my review solely on the quality of the burrito.  

First impressions are… underwhelming.  Weighing in at almost exactly a pound, with a price of 8.79$, this is not the budget burrito I was perhaps wrongly anticipating.  On our Burrito Budget Index (BBI),  that comes out to just 1.82oz/$.  With a BBI that places this burrito squarely in a premium price bracket, El Hogar will have to deliver on quality.  

I was excited to find the outside of the burrito grilled, which added nice texture and some additional flavor.  It also helped seal in the fillings, which was important for reasons I’ll get to later.   First, the cross-section.  Although this burrito is considerably smaller in size than El Burrito Tapatio, it ended up weighing only a few ounces less.   I was concerned that much of this weight would come from bean, sour cream, and other fillers, but the cross section revealed an impressive amount of steak.  

Unfortunately for El Hogar, that steak was practically floating in grease.  I’m glad that the burrito was sealed on the grill, or I’m afraid I wouldn’t have gotten home without grease bursting out of the tin foil wrapping and into my passenger seat.  There’s certainly flavor there, but it’s not as a result of fresh steak, a quality marinade, or technique on the grill.  It’s just grease.  I have to admit, it tastes good, but in a hedonistic sort of way – each bite of the burrito only adds to the looming punishment my stomach is set to receive.  

The rest of the burrito was pretty good.  Refried beans in a burrito isn’t my first choice, but they were added sparingly.  What most impressed me most was the quality of the lettuce and tomato, which added much-needed freshness to a burrito as greasy and heavy as this.  I also loved the salsas provided, which were house-made.  They turned up the heat without sacrificing flavor.

Ultimately, I think El Hogar is deserving of its reputation as Naperville’s second favorite burrito.  While it was by no means a bad burrito, the sheer amount of grease that they managed to fit in this thing, coupled with it’s poor score on the BBI, overshadowed any positive qualities.  I will return to El Hogar’s confusing drive-thru, but only after Los Burritos Tapatios has closed its doors.   

In this blog series I take an unbiased, scientific approach to the age-old question:
What is the best burrito in Naperville?

Before I begin, it’s important I lay down some ground rules to ensure that every restaurant gets a fair chance. The first rule is no national chain restaurants. That means no chipotle, no qdoba, and no taco bell. I’m looking to find the best burrito native to Naperville – local chains like Burrito Parilla Mexicana, or this week’s entry, Los Burritos Tapatios, are safe. The second important rule: my order will stay consistent from restaurant to restaurant. I will be evaluating the quality of each establishment’s Asada Burrito, exactly as it comes, adding only sour cream if it is not included.  And before I get any comments about authenticity – if I wanted to review authentic Mexican food I wouldn’t be ordering a burrito, and I certainly wouldn’t be doing it in Naperville.

With the ground rules set, there was only one logical choice for my first review. It is a perennial favorite, one that transcends the boundaries of age and status. It is a late-night haven for the tired, the hardworking, and most often, the heavily inebriated. But questions remain – Does it taste as good at 6pm as it does at 2am? Is it more than just a budget meal for broke high-school and college students alike? And most importantly, does it deserve to be Naperville’s favorite burrito?

While I couldn’t get the full “Taps” dine-in experience due to new covid-19 regulations, I was able to call in and pick up the standard order – an asada burrito, add sour cream. The order came out to $7.52 with tax, and weighed in at a whopping 1.2 pounds. On our Burrito Budget Index (BBI), that comes out to 2.57oz/$. In terms of sheer value, “Taps” sets a benchmark that will be difficult to beat in coming weeks.

What’s even more impressive is the composition of this burrito. Weighing 1.2 pounds, one would expect upon opening up the cross-section to find a heaping portion of rice and beans – but to my surprise, the burrito was majority steak. Most exciting to me was the lack of rice. To me, rice in a burrito is a cop-out, a flavorless add-on used to compensate for a lack of more valuable ingredients. It compromises the structure of a burrito, overwhelming it’s composition and spilling out after just a few bites. This is of course, a matter of personal preference, and as such I will not allow it to impact my review.

The real star of this burrito is the steak. It tastes like it came fresh off the grill, and that’s because it did – the counter at “Taps” offers customers with a direct view of the cooking process. The steak is perfectly cooked, just slightly smoky, and perfectly charred to give it a complex, slightly bitter bite. Whatever marinade they used was just enough to make the steak perfectly tender, without adding an overwhelming amount of flavor. I mean this by no means a knock on the flavor, rather a compliment, as it allows the flavor of the meat to shine through. This paired especially well with the beans, which were applied sparingly, and are noticeable only as a compliment to the steak.

While the steak is exceptional, the burrito does falter in other areas. The tomatoes were chopped large, leading to textural inconsistency throughout, and were a little too watery. It was pretty clear that these and the lettuce were not at their freshest, but it didn’t ruin the burrito. The only other negative I found was the wrap of the burrito. It appears that the tortilla used was too large for the burrito, and in order to compensate, it was bunched up in the rolling process. This left large pockets of plain tortilla with nothing else, which was jarring at times.

Overall, this burrito stood up to my high expectations, and will be tough to beat moving forward. It is exceptionally budget-friendly, but does not skimp on quality, and certainly deserves to be a Naperville favorite. Of course, you’ll have to come back next week to find out if it truly is the Best Burrito in Naperville.

Nancy Lee believes in America as a land of opportunity, in which anyone can achieve what they set their minds to, with liberty and justice for all. And why shouldn’t she? After all, Nancy Lee is well-respected and liked by all of her classmates, an excellent athlete and artist. She has always identified with her African heritage, but has never been defined by it in the eyes of others. That is, until she submits her precious watercolor into an art scholarship and is denied by the virtue of her skin color. In his 1952 work “One Friday Morning”, Langston Hughes paints a brutally realistic, yet equally hopeful, picture of growing up black in the United States.

Hughes himself understands the difficulties of reconciling other’s hatred with his own belief in the american dream. Growing up in Joplin, Missouri, he faced racism from his own community in day to day life. He eventually moved to New York, where he became a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, redefining what it meant to be black in America through his works of poetry, writing, and social activism.

While this work is, of course, about racism, it’s central theme is optimism. Nancy Lee’s artwork is representative of her positive outlook on the future of her country. It depicts an elderly black woman sitting on a park bench, watching children play, while looking up at an american flag outlined by blue skies. The woman has undoubtedly faced years of discrimination based on the color of her skin. She has seen some of the darkest moments of American History, and the worst of human nature – and yet, she is not filled with hate herself. Her eyes remain trained upwards, looking in deep reverence at the American flag, and she is surrounded by the next generation of American citizens. They are too young to understand her pain, and yet, they share her optimism for the future of the country. The grandma understands that they are not born hating her heritage, and that the key to the future is in teaching them acceptance and love.

The painting in many ways mirrors Nancy Lee’s own character progression. She begins the story as one of the children in the painting – while she is aware of her skin color, she has not yet experienced racism or hatred as a result of it. Her naivety is not the result of ignorance on her part, but rather the goodness of the children around her. All of her classmates hold immense respect for her, both as an artist and as a friend. Nancy is optimistic for her future and for her country, for which she is very prideful. Upon first winning the scholarship, she plans to use her acceptance speech to preach about the equality and fairness on which the United States is built. She is unfortunately sucked away from the reality when the committee finds out that she is a student of color. For a moment, she questions everything that she knew about the country she holds dear to her heart – but her principal intervenes, reminding her that “we still have this world of ours democracy to make”. With this wisdom and understanding, Nancy Lee is able to move past her pain and enter the role of the grandmother in the painting. She is no longer blind to the inhumane actions of her country, or the hatred that so deeply pervades the deep south, yet she is optimistic. She understands that her actions, and her art, can help mold her country into a more equitable future. With this revelation, Hughes lays out his central argument that still rings true today: Yes, injustice exists, but you must let it define you. It is your job to take action, to be the change that you wish to see, and to make the country that you love even greater.

I would strongly recommend reading Hughes’ short story. Even though it was written almost 70 years ago, it’s message still rings true. Racism and injustice still remain across the United States, but they are not as widespread as when this story was written. While this is cause for celebration, it is not cause for complacency. The optimism that young people like Nancy Lee provided for the future in the face of hate is admirable, and is a tradition which our generation must continue, so that we may create the America which we are proud to call home.