Now You're Thinking With Portals

Cave Johnson here!

After quite a few years of waiting, the highly-anticipated sequel to one of the best games of the early 2000s finally arrived on Tuesday, April 19th. It was met with very high reviews from several professional review sites. Many fans have also voiced their approving opinions on the game, especially after the intense ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that led up to the release of Portal 2.

The great thing about Portal is that it's a puzzle game from a first person perspective. The humorous dialogue and intensely creepy robot villain GLaDOS keep the game moving along at a nice pace. The voice acting in the game is superb. Cave Johnson, the ever-enigmatic, somewhat`disheveled former CEO of Aperture Science may be the best part of Portal 2.

Portal 2 is not just a well-written game but a well-designed one too. The environments are similar to the last game but feature more dynamic lighting. Since it's been a few years after the end of the first Portal, the test chambers have become somewhat overgrown. The design of each test chamber is incredibly well-thought out and unique -- it's not something you'd see in most futuristic first-person-shooters. The archaic lower-depths of the testing facility are also beautifully eerie.

My advice?

Buy it.

Science v Technology Definitions

So this issue has been bothering me for a long time: the difference between Science and Technology. Many people think they understand the difference, but I have been seeing more and more cases of confusion between the two words. So here's the two definitions:

Science - The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment

Technology- The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.

So pretty simple, science is the study of learning about our world (and space) through observation and experimentation. Technology is using science. So technology can be gizmos and gadgets like we usually think, but it can also be just using science in our everyday life. Identifying plants from scientific research is technology. Though it is not an incredibly advanced item, it is still part of what technology is. Now that, that's cleared up, I think it's important to understand how both are practical in our everyday life. Many could say that we never actually use science, itself , but we use the information from it in all of our technology. Without science we could not advance in society, but the actual information we acquire from scientific study is essential.

Leads

Startling Statement


Across from me sits a man twice escaped from jail. His tanned skin shows years of sun. You'd never know it, but this man has graduated medical school and served in the army. Because of that, he was sent to jail. He would have been safe if he'd served in the North Vietnamese army.

Startling Statement


After escaping to Laos, Steven Hoang is sent back to jail. As a doctor, you wouldn’t think that he’d be in jail. But this isn’t America. In Communist Vietnam, anything goes.

Narrative


It's scorching outside, but there is an abundance of water. Unfortunately, it's all salt. The tepid breeze ruffles the sea as the boat drifts along, the last of the fuel dribbling out of the rent in its side. Quietly the thousands of men and women crouch, driven to exhaustion by the lack of supplies.

-[Asian X]

Mister Pip's Leads

Twist:

Being one with the animals and understanding their life. She ventured into a difficult field, that few take on. She's not an adventurer nor an explorer, in fact she's not even exploring extreme dangers. No, Brittaney Hopkins, is a teacher.

Startling;

Earlier this year, Britanny Hopkins found out that her services will no longer be needed at LASA High School. After only one year of being a teacher she is losing her job, and will be forced to find work elsewhere.

Descriptive:

Her room says everything about her. A calmness in the air layers the small shrieks coming from the parrot next door. Her room is greeted with the friendly words of _______(need to fact check)_______. Nothing though expresses herself as much as the biology and teaching material dispersed across the room.

Dem Leads

Dialogue:

When most people are asked what their favorite teaching moment was, they usually reply with some big teaching triumph. Amanda Walker, however, thinks differently.

"The moment I remember most of all in the classroom was I had a kid who suddenly just vomited on another kid in class."

Startling Statement:

"The first time I ever stepped in to a public school was my first day as a teachers."

Descriptive:

The parrot squawks in it's cage as students hurriedly copy notes down from Ms. Walker's chalkboard. She lectures sternly, but with a calm and understanding undertone. All the students pay their utmost attention. By the end of a class, all of the kids have learned an entire new concept from their favorite teacher.

Srta. Hopkins Interview

The interview was really interesting. Unforunately I could not interview Mr. Ridley, who I had originally intended to interview, but I ende up interviewing my Science teacher, Ms. Hopkins. the interview was slightly different than interviews I have done in the past, just because most of the interviews I have done in the past have been for Journalism. In Journalism, interviews are usually rather short, as you are getting information from numerous sources. In E-zine, as I am writing a feature story, I had to ask a lot more questions for just one person. I had the interview in the morning at about 7:45 am and finished by about 8:10 and had just enough time to get to class. It was very kind of Ms. Hopkins to be willing to be interviewed on such short notice. So I started off the interview by asking her how she got into Biology and teaching. At first, on a few questions, I'm afraid I cut her off. Then there was one question where she was giving a really good answer, and I knew I would have plenty of great quotes, but than a student interrupted for about 2 minuets, and after that we just went on to the next question. I was slightly disappointed. i did ask her about the budget cuts and the staff cuts, after asking her permission, and she gave me some good answers. I ended my interview by asking her what her favorite chromosome was. After looking in her copy of Genome that was lying nearby, she said Ch. 2, as it is responsible for our evolution from chimps. Very neat.

Interviews

I interviewed my grandfather. He was a doctor in the South Vietnamese army. Originally, I had wanted to interview my mom about coming to America (They jumped onto a boat and then drifted, starving, for days), but she convinced me to interview my grandfather instead. Since he lives several hundred miles away and his first language is, you guessed it, Vietnamese, I decided to email him instead of actually going to talk to him in person.

The issues:

Most of the questions had a one-sentence response, mainly because they were redundant in relation to the answer to the previous question. In addition, there were a lot of questions that my grandfather hadn't thought to elaborate upon. If I had been there in person, I could've asked related questions and been done a bit faster.

The benefits:

I didn't have to transcribe, always a plus, and, unlike some people, my grandfather is very prompt in his replies. He also elaborated very well, with many quotes I'll be able to use.

I learned a lot of things during my interview. Firstly, my grandfather had been jailed and then escaped. Secondly, my grandfather had been jailed and then escaped.

Yes. It happened not just once, but twice. The second time he was under high-security watch, too. My mom provided some explanations and she had a lot of stories to tell about leaving Vietnam too, which helped a ton. For example, I'm sure the jail conditions were horrendous, but the jailers weren't too smart. They were kids, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and they were neither the best nor the brightest; the best, the brightest and the experienced were need on the battlefield. If you were determined and resourceful (like my grandfather), you could escape from jail twice.

More info on Vietnam

Info on Ho Chi Minh (the person, not the city)

Oh, and I DO NOT in any way, shape or form, endorse this man or anything he embodies.

-[Asian X]