Monthly Archives: February 2010

Editor’s Note: Parents! You might want to pay special attention to this article!

It started with the infamous Grand Theft Auto, and now, it has spawned numerous sequels. The series has been deemed controversial because it involved such instances as violence, nudity, drugs, and other adult situations. With one game even having a mod that allowed the player to do explicit things with the main character’s girlfriend. Rockstar did re-release the game, after removing that portion of the coding. There are numerous murder cases where the attorneys have brought the Grand Theft Auto series into play, but all have failed to use the game as substantial evidence. The series is possibly the most controversial video game series ever created; ironically, it is also one of the most popular. Rockstar Games is currently working on another Grand Theft Auto title due to release this fall.

Manhunt, one of Rockstar’s other gems (released on November 18, 2003), is considered one of the most sadistically violent games of all time. In the first Manhunt game, the player controlled a serial killer that lurks through each mission dispatching enemy gang members. Occaisionally, the player kills the victims with a firearm, but primarily with gruesome, over the top action sequences. The more gruesome the kill, the more points earned. There was also a sequel to the game. Manhunt 2 released on October 31, 2007 for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii and PC. In Manhunt 2, the player is a different character named Daniel. The game begins with the player escaping the asylum that they are locked away in, killing everyone who gets in their way. As the story continues, the player moves through multiple different areas, killing off gang members. Sound familiar? Well, they changed the mission structure, so even though there was a story, it wasn’t quite as engaging as the first. However, it was enough to draw the player in and keep them wanting to play the game. The Manhunt series has sold 1.7 Million copies to date. It is unknown is Rockstar will create another Manhunt game in the future.

State of Emergency, Rockstar’s action-adventure that released in February of 2002, was also controversial. However, there was not as much negativity thrown towards State of Emergency, as there was titles like Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt. However, it was still not liked. It was considered controversial because of it’s military-style level of violence, and it’s coup d’etat content. Such as political assassinations of corrupt government officials. The game was degraded by Washington politicians for it’s similarity to the 1999 World Trade Organization Riots in Seattle, which caused about three million dollars in damage. The game featured the fictitious, “American Trade Organization”, as the antagonistic establishment. The game was given average-low review scores, and was never more than just a mediocre attempt at a well thought out idea.

Then, they brought us the school-time madness of Bully. This third person action-adventure sandbox game took place at Bullworth Academy, a fictional private school. The main protagonist of the story is James “Jimmy” Hopkins. A 15-year old, well, bully. He has been expelled from every school he has ever attended, and that’s how he ended up here. As far as being controversial, this is possibly the most non-controversial game Rockstar has released. The only controversy was the fact that there was sexual themes, and violence amongst teens. The sexual material involved things such as pinching the buttocks of female classmates, kissing female classmates (and in a few instances male classmates), and a gym teacher that hit on the female students. The violence was that of fights, shooting students with slingshots and other weapons, and playing dodgeball in gym class.

Rockstar Games is one of the most daring, and successful game development companies in the world, gaining and losing much respect from people all over the world, throughout their entire existence.

If you have ever been on Google, which I’m sure every American has, you have probably seen the different ways to write Google on the homepage. There’s been one for just about anything you can think of. There’s Elvis’s birthday, The Olympics, Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Christmas. Then of course there are random ones just for fun. Well I guess Google must be running out of things because now they are asking new people for drawing designs…you! You can submit your drawings of the Google logo and Google could review them and keep them for further use, or if you’re lucky, publish them right on their homepage! They can be a random drawing of something as crazy as unicorns, or something to do with a holiday, celebrity’s birthday, or even an anniversary of a death! To submit a design or a design idea send them to proposals@google.com.

From May 14, 1971

Meeker A Dead End?
Are things as bad as they seem? Is Meeker, Colorado really Dead Endsville, U.S.A? Are we really surrounded by gossipy closed minded people, as many people seem to believe exist in small towns?
In order to find this out I decided the best method would be comparison. So I interviewed students who had moved here just recently.

Make your own conclusions.

Dennis Piper-Hawaii

“The kids are better here, a little conceited. There was more to do there but here it’s more fun. In Hawaii you can’t get drunk until you’re 21, or they will put you in jail for a whole year. The parents here are a lot more open minded than in Hawaii. I like school better here, less people and better looking ones. In Hawaii the principals didn’t swat you, here they do plus expelling you.”

Dannette Devereaux-Green River, Utah

“The people in Utah are more open minded. The kids aren’t any wilder. This isn’t a very interesting place, so I can’t say anything interesting about it.”

Carla Overton-Denver

“This town is boring. The people are friendly when you first get here, but then they get back in their groups and act snobbish.”

Mike Gregory-Dallas, Texas

“Meeker’s smaller and friendlier. I like this school better, each day is different.”

-Roberta Nieslanik

Krystal N. Otwell
Pat Robinson
College Composition II
February 10, 2010

John’s early history resembled a normal child’s development, by age two he could speak in sentences, and his development appeared to continue to appropriately progress. At age two and a half years, he abruptly revealed a period of marked behavioral regression shortly after the birth of a sibling. He seemed to have lost previously acquired skills in communication and no longer became bathroom trained. He seemed uninterested in social activities, and various unusual self-stimulatory behaviors became obvious. Comprehensive medical examination failed to reveal any conditions that might account for his developmental deterioration. Behaviorally he exhibited features of autism. At a follow up appointment at age 12 he no longer talked apart from an occasional single word, and attends a school for the severely disabled.
Autism is a complicated developmental disability that typically develops in the first three years of an individual’s life and affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others. A certain set of behaviors called a “spectrum disorder” defines autism. The “spectrum disorder” affects individuals differently and to varying degrees. Autism spectrum disorders range from a severe form called autistic disorder to a milder form, Asperger syndrome. Other rare but very severe disorders included in the autism spectrum disorder consists of Rett syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder and pervasive developmental disorder.
First described in 1040s by Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger, Asperger’s Disorder affected boys who seemed to have normal intelligence and language development but had difficulties with social and communication skills. A much milder form of autism and commonly known as the “high-functioning autism” regularly describes Asperger’s disorder. Asperger’s Disorder may only mildly affect children causing them to frequently have good language and cognitive skills. Children affected by the Asperger’s Disorder may seem like a normal child behaving differently. Children with autism generally do not take interest in others; however, with Asperger’s Disorder individuals usually try to fit in and have social interaction with their peers except they do not know how to achieve this desire. They may act socially awkward, not understanding the conventional social rules and show a lack of empathy. They may have limited eye contact, seem to have broken conversations and cannot understand the use of gestures. Asperger’s Disorder affects individual’s interests in a particular subject to cause obsession. Children with Asperger’s Disorder love to collect categories of items such as rocks, bottle caps and stamps; they may become experts in specialized information such as baseball statistics, biology or even Latin names of flowers. They may have good rote memory skills but they have difficulty with abstract concepts. Also, children with Asperger’s Disorder normally have good language skills; they simply use language in different ways. Their speech patterns may be unusual with lack of inflection and rhythmic nature. In addition to all this, children with Asperger’s Disorder possess average to above average intelligence.
Rett syndrome is a disorder of brain development that occurs almost exclusively in females. Girls with the classic form of Rett syndrome usually start developing severe problems with language, communication, learning, coordination and other brain functions after six to 18 months of normal development. Early in childhood, girls affected with Rett syndrome lose purposeful use of their hands and begin making repeated hand wringing, washing or clapping motions. They generally grow slower than other children and have noticeably smaller head sizes. Other signs of Rett syndrome includes breathing abnormalities, seizures, an abnormal curvature of the spins called scoliosis, and sleep disturbances. Rett Syndrome slowly progresses until the patient enters their teen years. Around the teen years, the symptoms may improve; for example, seizures or breathing problems tend to lessen in adolescent years. Children with Rett syndrome develop differently. Usually, a child with Rett syndrome sits up properly but may not crawl. For those who do crawl, they might scoot along on their tummies without using their hands. Similarly, some children affected with Rett syndrome can walk independently within the “normal” age range, while others do not learn to walk at all or only start learning to walk until late childhood or early adolescence years. On the other hand, children with Rett syndrome may lose their ability to walk properly, even though they used to walk for a few years normally. The average life expectancy of a girl with Rett syndrome on average lives until around their mid-40s. Death often relates to seizure, aspiration pneumonia, malnutrition, and accidents.
Very few children who have an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis actually meet the criteria for childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD). This rather rare condition was first described in 1908 many years before autism became a recognized disability. Children with CDD develop conditions similar to autism but only after a relatively prolonged period, usually two to four years of clearly normal development. The long period of normal development before regression helps differentiate CDD from Rett Syndrome. In CDD the loss of skills such as vocabulary becomes more noticeable than in classical autism. The diagnosis requires extensive and pronounced losses involving motor, language, and social skills. Accompanying CDD includes the loss of bowel and bladder control and oftentimes accompanied with seizures and a very low IQ. CDD clearly differs from autism by the patterns of onset, course and outcome. Due to the rareness of this condition, many believe that it has frequently been incorrectly diagnosed. Perhaps ten times less common than the strictly defined autism, CDD affects more boys than girls.

References
Alexander Westphal, M.D. Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. 2010. 04 February 2010 .
Autism Society. Autism Society – Improving the Lives of All Affected by Autism. 30 January 2008. 02 February 2010 .
Autism Society of America/Oakland County Chapter. Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (CDD). 2008. 04 February 2010 .
Autism Society. What’s Unique about Asperger’s Disorder? 03 February 2010 .
Genetics Home Reference. Rett Syndrome. 31 January 2010. 04 February 2010 .
Heidi Liss Radunovich: Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville. Autistic Disorder . 2009. 02 February 2010 .
Morris, Barry K. Help with Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome & Related Disorders. 2008. 04 February 2010 .
National Institute of Neurological Disorders adn Stroke. NINDS Asperger Syndrome Informaition Page. 19 October 2009. 03 February 2010 .
Office of Communications and Public Liaison. Autism Fact Sheet. 19 October 2009. 02 February 2010 .
—. NINDS Rett Syndrome Infromation Page. 18 December 2008. 04 February 2010 .
—. Rett Syndrome Fact Sheet. 18 December 2008. 04 February 2010 .
Songswift. History. 2008. 04 February 2010 .
—. What is Rett Syndrome. 2008. 04 February 2010 .
The Nemours Foundation. Asperger Syndrome. 1995 – 2010. 03 February 2010 .
Voorhees, Benjamin W. Van. Childhood disintegrative Disorder. 13 June 2006. 04 February 2010 .
WebMD, LLC. Asperger’s Syndrome – Symptoms. 2005-2010. 02 February 2010 .
—. Autism Spectrum Disorders Health Center. 2005-2010. 02 February 2010 .
Zieve, Neil K. Kaneshiro and David. Rett Syndrome. 01 December 2008. 04 February 2010 .

Micron Technology is a company most famous for producing DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory), a type of flash memory for computers. They are the largest memory chip producer in the United States, and are based in Boise, Idaho. They have announced that they will be purchasing Numonyx Memory Solutions, another huge flash memory company. They will make the purchase for $1.27 billion. No date has been set yet, but the agreement has been made. So, that being said, Micron is going to be impossible to catch, and will have a monopoly in the flash memory business sooner or later!

In 2004 the punk rock band Green Day released their 7th studio album, American Idiot, and much to their surprise, the album went triple platinum and to date has sold over 14 million copies just in the United States. The album was what they called a concept album, and it told a story about a troubled teenage boy and his his group of law breaking friends. Each song told another step in the story and the concept of it was loved by teens everywhere because there is at least one chapter that almost everyone can relate to. This album won four different Grammy’s and totally threw Green Day back into the main stream.

Now you may think, “Well if this happened in 2004, then what’s the big deal now?” Well American Idiot isn’t over. The phenomenon is just beginning. Now you can not only hear the story, but watch it play out. Jimmy, Tunny, and Whatsername show the audience what it’s like to be in their shoes and not be accepted as they are. The premiere in the Berkley Theater was on September 15th, 2009. It was originally going to run until October 11th, but the response was so huge, they decided to extend it until November 1st. After becoming the top grossing show in Berkeley Rep history, the producers extended the run another two weeks to November 15.

The show was so huge that it was announced to start on Broadway. The tickets went on sale last week for the opening show on March 24th, which the members of the band, Billie Joe Armstrong, Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt, will be attending. You don’t want to miss this extraordinary event featuring all the characters from the concept album’s plot! so get your tickets before it’s too late! That is, if you can find a way to get to New York!

Yesterday, Meeker’s FBLA chapter traveled to Grand Junction for the District 9 Leadership Conference. Erica Roybal, our District 9 vice president and organizer of the event, did a great job in preparation for the conference this year.

Our chapter did very well, with several teams and individuals qualifying for state. Here are the results:

(Note: State qualification requirements are different for every event. In most cases, the top three in individual pre-tested events will qualify; and the top two in team or live events will qualify.)

• Individual Events
  • Business Law
    • Courtnie Blazon – 8^th
• Business Procedures
  • Nate Bradfield – 1^st
  • Ryan Wix – 1^st
  • Gabrielle Goettel – 3^rd
• Personal Finance
  • Gianna Casias -5^th
• Word Processing II
  • Jessica Mullins – 7^th
• Public Speaking I
  • Cody Pfau – 10^th
• Help Desk
  • Timbre Shriver – 3^rd

• Team Events
  • Business Presentation
    • Sydney Boes
    • Lindzey Patterson
    • Aubrey Walsh
      • 4^th
  • Global Business
    • Cameron Glasscock
    • Jake Nieslanik
      • 1^st
  • Network Design
    • Garret Griffin
    • Logan Sanderson
      • 1^st
  • Emerging Business
    • Amanda Kendall
    • Tracey Roybal
    • Adrienne Wix
      • 8^th
  • Management Decision Making
    • Garret Griffin
    • Spencer Madison
    • Jessica Mullins
      • 2^nd