Devil’s Advocate Chapter 1

Mariko During this night, the rain fell more heavily than usual and I was looking out the window that was illuminated by passing cars and the dim street lights filled with drunk people who probably got kicked out by the bouncers working there laying around in the streets, I was spacing out of the bar…

#2 Soviet-Afghan War Series: So what happened 42 years ago?

To understand why the Soviets intervened in Afghanistan on 24th December 1979, we first need to go back a few decades.  In the 1950s and 1960s, Afghanistan was still a quite fragmented country. Most of the population lived in rural areas, in their own tribes, with their own laws and social structures to follow. But…

Black History Month – Playlist

Black History Month is celebrated from Februray 1st to this upcoming March 1st. BHM was recognized in 1976 in order to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of people of African descent in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” In order to remember and celebrate black culure, the KIS Today team…

The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa

In the jungles bordering the budding city of Leopoldville, a man fatefully killed and ate a chimpanzee nearly a century ago. Unbeknownst to him, the chimpanzee carried a variant of the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which would ultimately mutate to become HIV-1 and HIV-2 during the years to come.

Are Our Emotions the Problem?

This is a thinking out loud piece, mind to paper. These are just my opinions and are unsubstantiated by any research.  There are a dozen metaphors I could use to describe the climate crisis in a digestible, less frightening way than what reality presents. I’ll begin with one of the more comical ones.  Imagine you…

Two Words To End The Year: Thank You

Gratitude is also known as appreciation, acknowledgement, praise, grace and recognition (Ackerman). For me, it is in the simplest form of feeling happiness while making others feel it too. Gratitude is not the payment for goods, but a response to an unowed, undeserved and unexpected gift (Ackerman). Saying thank you when one helps or supports…

Short Story: Three-Letter Words

After a bizarre police interrogation, a Thai immigrant studying in Dublin realizes that she is being followed by a man she has never seen. With an initially mundane phone call growing ever-stranger, all she can do now is keep walking—and never look back.

One Choice, One Life: A Book Review Of The Divergent Series

You can either be only smart or utterly brave or unconditionally kind or brutally honest or simply selfless or nothing.  At the age of 16, you make a choice. Where do you belong? Do you belong in Dauntless, who home fearlessness, or Erudite, who admire brains, or Candor, who worship honesty, or Amity, who always…