Category: Stirling Tindal

Should Teenagers Drive a Manual or Automatic Transmission

By: Stirling Tindal

          A question that not too many people think about today is “Should teenagers drive a manual or an automatic transmission?”. Most cars nowadays are automatic; however you can get some cars that are left with the manual transmission. I drive a stick shift Nissan frontier and I believe that a manual car will always be better than an automatic.

          When I first learned to drive, my dad taught me in a manual jeep wrangler. It was very challenging to learn at first for me. I may have stalled out at least 300 times before I got the hang of it. After I figured out that you have to let off the clutch slowly and let it start driving for you very slowly was when I finally figured it out. I loved changing veers while driving, it made me feel like I was a professional race car driver. I love it so much that my dad got my truck as manual as well.

          I’ve learned many beneficial habits from using a manual for so long that I will keep with me for a long time while driving. When you have to change gears every so often you have no time to be on your phone. A manual is a big factor in keeping people off of their phones while driving and keeping them focused on the road. Another habit I have picked up is that I continually check my RPMs while driving. I always have to know my RPMs so that I can change gears at the correct time and not waste gas. When driving an automatic you wouldn’t have to worry about your RPMs and may not notice if something is wrong. Something else I love about driving a manual is the control of your vehicle that you have. Being able to change gears to what you want can make traversing rough and muddy roads much more simple than in an automatic.

          A manual really had no negatives for teenagers. They can only make them more aware of what they are doing. I truly believe that if everyone drove a manual transmission, the roads would be much more safe than they are now.

Who Will Win the Super Bowl

By: Stirling Tindal

The 56th Super Bowl is this Sunday and the Kansas City Chiefs will face the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles are sitting at a record of 14-3 and have by far the best running back in the league. The Chiefs have a 15-2 record and really don’t have any outstanding players this year, but Patrick Mahomes and Andy Ried always find a way to win games.

I believe that this will be a close game with a higher score because of both teams’ explosive offenses. By the end of the first quarter I predict that the score will be 10-7 Eagles. Saquon will start off hot because the Chiefs won’t fully know how to stop him; however after the first quarter they will figure things out.

 At half time it will be tied 17-17 with the second quarter ending with a last second Chiefs field goal. Both teams will have a great first half with many yards on offense. The key to winning the second half is who is disciplined enough to stop either of these offenses consistently.

Entering the third quarter, I believe that whichever team receives the ball will have a huge turnover in the red zone on the opening drive. It won’t be a super thrilling third quarter and the score will be 24-17 Chiefs. At this point Andy Reid will have figured out how to stop Saquon, getting rid of the Eagles X-factor. With our Saquon controlling the game, the Eagles won’t be able to get anything going.

In the fourth quarter, the key to winning the game will be turnovers. Both teams will need to hold on to the ball and not make dumb decisions. The game will most certainly come down to the wire. I predict there will be two touchdown scoring drives by both teams in the final two minutes. The Chiefs will have the first touchdown in the two minutes, thinking they can hold on to the lead. Jalen Hurts will then lead the Eagles offense down the field in a final 30 seconds drive to win the game 34-31.

 Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs will not be able to three-peat and Jalen Hurts and the Eagles will start a new dynasty.

The Upcoming NFL Divisional Playoff Round

By: Stirling Tindal

          This weekend the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs starts. There will be two games on Saturday and Sunday. The Texans against the Chiefs will kickoff at 4:30 PM on Saturday followed by the Commanders against the Lions at 8:00 PM. Sunday starts off with the Rams against the Eagles at 3:00 PM and then the Ravens against the Bills at 6:30 PM.

          My pick for the Texans Chiefs game is the underdog. I believe because the chiefs haven’t played in two weeks they will not be fully hot coming into this game. The Texans will also be looking to get their revenge for earlier in the year. This game will show to people that Patrick Mahomes is not the same this season and the Chiefs will expose themselves as frauds. I expect the game to be very close and a final score of 31-28 after overtime. For the Commanders-Lions game I have to take the Lions. The Lions are just too unstoppable right now for the Commanders. The Commanders are a great, young team but the Lions are too big of an obstacle in their way. I believe the score will be 38-21 Lions. In the Rams against the Eagles I have to take the Eagles. The Rams just don’t look like an NFC Championship team to me. I don’t believe the Rams defense will be able to stop Shaquon Barkley from running all over the field. The Eagles probably will go behind first because they think it will be an easy game but come back for a 28-17 win. For maybe the best game this weekend, the Ravens against the Bills, I am going to pick the Bills to win. Josh Allen will show that he is the real MVP and took the ravens defense. Lamar will also show his magic too and keep the game close. My final score is 42-38 Bills move on.

          I expect this weekend’s football games to be pretty spectacular. These games will be filled with many electric moments and big plays to remember for years to come.

What is the Best Fruit?

By: Stirling Tindal

          One of the best tasting and most nutritious sources of food is fruit. Today I will be comparing fruit and determining which is the best. 

          Some of the best fruits are strawberries, oranges, pomegranates, grapes, apples, and bananas. Each of these fruits have an extremely juicy and satisfying taste. I will be judging these off of their ease of eating, taste, and how filling they are. 

          Bananas are a great fruit in sports because of their potassium. They are very easy to eat with only having to take off the peel. It has more of a bland taste but still a good flavor. Bananas will fill you up pretty well and are great for more situations than just being hungry.

          I never had a pomegranate until recently but was very surprised as to how it tasted. It is one of the sweetest fruits I’ve had. The only problem with it is that you have to eat around little seeds. Plus there is not much fruit around the seed so it doesn’t really fill you up at all. Pomegranates are still a great fruit but the seeds are the main thing holding it back.

          Grapes are a great snack and can be frozen for a different taste. I prefer grapes thawed and I also only like purple grapes. I’m not a fan of the sour taste or the green and the crunchy feeling of the frozen ones. They are very easy to eat and have a great taste however they are not something you’ll want to eat to fill you up.

          Apples are a classic fruit. When you think of the word fruit you think of apples. There are many different kinds of apples. A good apple is one of the best things ever but it’s very rare to find it. They are super easy to eat and can fill you up pretty well, but their taste can be very bland or perfect. Most of the time it is bland and that’s what holds down apples from being the best.

           Oranges are one of the best tasting fruits. All oranges taste good unlike apples. Oranges also will fill you up if it’s the right size. It would be the perfect fruit if it weren’t for its breakable shield that it has for a skin. It shouldn’t take me more than five minutes to open a fruit and stab the inside of my fingernail with its skin. Oranges are so close to being the best if it had no peel.

          Strawberries are magnificent. There is no other way to describe them. Strawberries’ taste is so sweet and the texture is perfect. They are one of the easiest to eat and have a little stem to hold them. On top of that, it is probably the most filling of fruit I know. Strawberries are nearly perfect and are by far my favorite fruit. If I see a platter full of every fruit, I will be eating all of the strawberries first.

What is the Best Breakfast Food

By: Stirling Tindal

     Breakfast is very important because it is at the start of your day and what you will be basing your day off of. If you have a bad breakfast that usually leads to a bad day so you need to know what you should be eating.

      I’m only going to be comparing breakfasts that are quick and easy to make and what you would usually eat before school. The main options in the morning are cereal, eggs, grits, oatmeal, breakfast bowls, and muffins. All of these are great but there is one that takes the cake for best breakfast food.

       The cereal is really good the first time you have it but if you have it for more than five days in a row it usually becomes pretty bland. The type of cereal is a big factor. My very hot take is that Cinnamon Toast Crunch is not very good. I may think that because I’ve had it so many times but I believe there are so many better options. Cereals like Captain Crunch or Fruity Pebbles I personally think is the best, however; they always end up with the same blended and sugary tastes. 

        Grits and oatmeal are in a similar category. I’m only going to talk about the easy to make ones that take about two minutes to microwave. Depending on the flavor they can be an amazing breakfast and with their super simple instructions they could be a perfect breakfast. The one factor holding them back is their small serving sizes. To fill you up most of the time it takes two packets. 

       The best breakfast food is a tie between muffins and breakfast bowls. Both of these options are delicious, can fill you up, and are simple to prepare. A good muffin is the perfect start to your day and preferably a blueberry muffin. If you’d rather have something meaty then you can have the breakfast bowl. The best bowls are the Jimmy John’s breakfast bowls. They only take about three minutes to make and have a good amount of protein, around 20 in each bowl. In my opinion, muffins and breakfast bowls will always be on top in the breakfast world

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Is the “New Call of Duty” Good

By: Stirling Tindal

The new Call of Duty game just released and many people are saying that Call of Duty is good again but is that true? The game released on October 25 for $70 and is free on Xbox Game Pass. The game includes a campaign, zombies mode, and a multiplayer mode.

I have only played the start of the campaign, but I can say that it definitely is a fun and interesting story. It is set in 1991 and the main group of characters are rogue operators that work on their own to take down a group called the Pantheon. The entire campaign is around 11 missions long and should take about 5-6 hours to complete. There are many different types of missions that include stealth, action filled fighting, or figuring out puzzles. 

Since this Call of Duty is a Black Ops that means that zombies are back in Call of Duty. This year’s zombies include two maps so far, Liberty Falls and Terminus. Liberty falls is a map in the middle of a town with a bowling alley, bank, and a cathedral. The pack-a-punch machine is inside the cathedral and you have to go through a portal-like door to get to it. Terminus is a map on a big island with a cave system and an underground lair with smaller islands around it. You can buy boats and go to different islands but why you are in the water bugs will spawn and spit acid at you. If you are in the water for too long then a kraken tentacle will come out of the water and spray a gas on top of the water that chases you at the same speed as the boat. The pack-a-punch for this map is on a lift that goes up and down from the top of the island to the basement. The zombies are overall pretty fun and the easter eggs are pretty cool.

The multiplayer side of this game is a bit different this year. They changed the way you get vamps and added a new form of movement called Omni movement. The camo progression this year is extremely easy. You don’t have to level up your gun at all and there are only three challenges. The first challenge is one hundred headshots for every gun and then each gun will have two separate challenges specific to that gun. The movem by is very similar to Modern Warfare 2019’s movement. It is mainly sliding around and tactical sprinting but there also is the annoying dolphin dive to deal with. The gameplay feels good and the guns feel fun to use but the TTK is very high this year making the headshots somewhat challenging to get. Overall the multiplayer is very fun and I will play this multiplayer a lot more than past Call of Duty’s.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is a very fun game and very well made. I give this Call of Duty a 8/10 because of its challenging yet fun play style.

What is the best division in the NFL?

By: Stirling Tindal

 In the NFL, there are 8 divisions, 4 in both conferences. The obvious better conference is easily the NFC with the most teams at or above .500 so far. 

The competition for the best division would have to be between the NFC East and the NFC North. The East consists of the Commanders, Cowboys, Eagles, and Giants. The Commanders lead the division with a 4-1 record. The giants are the only team that are under .500 however their team has been looking up. In the North the Vikings with a perfect record of 5-0. The Packers are at the bottom of the North with a 3-2 record but just because they are at the bottom does not mean that they are a bad team.

Points wise, it’s a pretty tight race. The North takes the crown for most points with 484 points. The East lost this one with only 447 points. The North also sweeps the points allowed race with only 351 total points allowed compared to the East’s 436 total points allowed. 

The overall talent that these divisions have is pretty extraordinary. The East is filled with some extremely talented veteran players like AJ Brown for the eagles and Dak Prescott for the cowboys.

The East will certainly be very strong with the players it has. There are even some young stars shining bright early in this season like Malik Nabers for the Giants and Jayden Daniel’s for the Commanders. The talent in the North is led by young players in their third or fourth seasons. Players like Justin Jefferson for the Vikings and Jordan Love for the Packers, it’s only his second season starting even though it’s his sixth year. There are still quite a few veteran players leading their teams in the North. Jarod Goff for the Lions and DJ Moore for the Bears showcase extreme talent in their later years in the NFL. 

 Through this it is easy to see who the best division in the NFL is. It is clear on paper and on the field that the NFC North is the best division in the NFL right now and they will most likely hold that title for a while going into the season.

Which Pullout was the best in Elementary School?

By: Stirling Tindal

In elementary school, pre-school, and kindergarten at Wilson Hall we would have a pullout everyday. A pullout is essentially exactly what it says, you get pulled out of class to do an activity. You would either have library, music, computers, PE, or art

 In library, we would go check out a book for the week and take it home. We sometimes would also get books read to us. Once a year, the Scholastic Book Fair would come to the school. Every kid would get excited for this because they would have really cool toys like the invisible spy pen and awesome books like the I Survived books.

The next pullout is music. Your class would go to the music room throughout the year and you would sing all kinds of different music. Sometimes it would be with bells with different notes and other times it would be with tubes that we’d hit on our arm to make a sound. Every year we would prepare for at least three recitals, which were the Christmas recital, Grandfriends day, and May Day. Music class was really fun most of the time but sometimes it could get boring when all we would do is sing and not use the cool instruments.

The computers pullout was probably the most useful one because it was very helpful in getting everyone adapted to how to use technology. We would go to the computer lab, which is right across from the library, and we would do many kinds of activities. Sometimes we’d play typing games and sometimes we would just play normal games so that we could learn how to use the computer. Computers was always fun and something everyone always looked forward to.

Another fun pullout was PE. This was everybody’s favorite because everytime we would get to play games like dodgeball, kickball, or ultimate frisbee. We would usually run one lap or do some stretches for warm up and then we would get to our game. This pull out was always awesome because it was like a second recess. 

The final pullout is art. Each year there would be different projects to do like the hand fish in pre-school and the sun and moon in fifth grade. In art you could really see who were the true artists of your grade early on but even if you weren’t that good at it, it was still always fun. Sometimes we would draw and sometimes we would mold clay and make sculptures. Art really helped develop our creativity and our artistic side.

These five pullouts left us with very important childhood memories. Out of all the pullouts my personal favorite was P.E. because of how fun it was playing dodgeball and other sports with everyone in my grade. All the pullouts have, in some way, shaped who we are today.

Does Green Bay Need to Worry WIthout Jordan Love

By: Stirling Tindal

On the second to last play of Green Bay’s week one loss, Jordan Love went down with what looked like a pretty gruesome injury. Many fans were scared that he would be out for the rest of the season, however Love is now reported to make a recovery in 3-6 weeks. Matt Lafuer assures fans that Love will be back on the sooner side of that expectation. 

Taking Love’s place will be Malik Willis who is now preparing for his first NFL start for the Packers. Willis should be a solid quarterback since he started some for the Titans his rookie season. If he has to start the entire 6 weeks or more, I believe Green Bay can win most of those games with a couple of losses. In their first game with the Colts at home, they should be able to come out with a win. The Colts run defense was very weak in week one with the Texans, allowing 213 rushing yards. If the Packers rely on Josh Jacobs it will be a good first game for Willis to get ready for the rest of his time as starter.

The next week on the road at the Titans, I see a close game. It’s Willis’s old team and this is his time to make a statement for the league but I don’t see the Packers pulling it away. Because it’s a road game and I don’t think Green Bay’s defense will be able to contain Tony Pollard, I have them losing this one and falling to 1-2.

In week 4 the Packers will stay home for their first divisional game and host the Vikings. This is Willis’s first divisional game as a Packer and I have Green Bay walking away with a win. I believe Green Bay’s secondary will be able to stop Justin Jefferson. I think the Packers offense will also have a decent game with some sloppy turnovers but the team will end up with the win.

Week 5 the Packers will go to the rams. Because of Green Vays great secondary and good offense, even with Malik Willis, I have them coming back home with a win and being 3-2

Green Bay hosts the Cardinals in week 6. The Packers are now getting into their stride and I am taking Green Bay again in this one. Matt Lafuer will have figured out how to work with WIllis at this point and the offense will look good enough to get another win

However in week 7 the Packers stay home once again and host the Texans. Because of the Texans hot offense I have Green Bay losing this one and falling to 4-3. I don’t see the Green Bay defense being able to control CJ Stroud. 

Green Bay still needs to be careful in all of these games because without Love, all of these games could go to anyone. I believe Malik Willis can keep the Packers satisfied and give Love a good record to work with once he returns.