Iogan writes about a special member of his family.

I'm writing about someone really special to me in my life. He's someone I wake up to every morning, someone I tuck in at night. He's a dog. His name is Cheeko. Cheeko is not just any ordinary dog, well, everybody feels that way about their dogs. Cheeko is the kind of dog who's really playful with other dogs, but I often keep him away because he jumps on the smaller ones. You could probably tell by his name he's really small so we don't often come across smaller dogs! Cheeko is also the kind of dog who can play fetch. But when he gets the ball he lies down, chewing it. Sometimes the only way I can get him to come over is to crumple up some plastic (he really likes food, and his food is packaged in plastic).

One time my mom laid out a training pad (that's where dogs go to the washroom in the house). She told him "this is your washroom". He sleeps there now! Have you ever heard of such a thing? He still uses our carpet as a toilet . . . but I love him either way. I'm just happy he's small, so his waste is small. He likes racing me when I take him for a walk. Whenever I pass him he tries to keep up, and when I run, he runs after me. Sometimes it's the only way I can get him to follow me when he's distracted (running). He's a really friendly dog, especially to humans. Cheeko gets really excited when somebody comes through our front door. Have you ever had a dog jump on you a lot? Well, Cheeko can't actually jump on anybody except a baby, but he does try.

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Morganna explores myths and how they relate to education.

In Roland Barthes' "Mythologies", a collection of essays, Barthes analyzes Einstein's brain as a mythical object in his essay, "The Brain of Einstein." Barthes believes that Einstein's brain -- "the greatest intelligence of all" -- is "commonly signified by his brain" and therefore "reified" into "an image of the most up-to-date machine." In other words, people dehumanized Einstein from having any physiological or spiritual relevance and instead think of him simply as "matter."

Barthes makes a peculiar simile of Einstein's brain to that of different machines; he writes, "The mythology of Einstein shows him as a genius so lacking in magic that one speaks about his thought as of a functional labour analogous to the mechanical making of sausages, the grinding of corn or the crushing of ore: he used to produce thought, continuously, as a mill makes flour." However, Einstein eventually faced death, like every human, because he is exactly that -- mortal, and this is his greatest and only downfall. Yet since people were so amazed by Einstein's absolutely brilliant mind, we all seemed to forget that he too was human. Thus, "some failure on the part of Einstein is necessary: Einstein died . . . without having been able to verify 'the equation in which the secret of the world was enclosed'." "In this way Einstein fulfills all the conditions of myth," according to Barthes, because that's exactly what our ideal image of his brain as a ongoing machine turned out to be -- a myth.

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