Battlefield 3 Review

Hello there. It's been a VERY long time since I've posted anything, but I wanted to give you my thoughts on Battlefield 3 for PS3.
First let's talk about the single player. While it may not be the most compelling storyline out there, with your typical Russians vs Americans in the Middle East, the game takes advantage of good-looking cutscenes where the main character (you) is being questioned for some sort of illegal act that he committed in the military. The very first mission starts you off running away from the police and jumping onto a New York subway train, and once you start actually playing, you find yourself shooting Russian dudes and stealing their Ak74u's. The missions themselves are fairly straight forward, and they don't seem quite as linear as something like Medal of Honor was doing. So there weren't any invisible walls that I encountered, but there were a numerous amount of bugs. For example, I would be playing a mission in the Middle East and going prone to not get shot, but as I was about to grab the LMG on the bridge, all the sudden there's an explosion and I immediately die, even though I was never seen. While this was on hard mode, and while hard mode is supposed to be a good challenge, this was beyond challenging: more like nearly impossible. Eventually I was able to get through it, but I couldn't keep playing the campaign when I would be shot in two seconds as soon as I wasn't prone. So I played the game from the start on EASY and turned off the aim assist. The missions were pretty cool, but it felt like there could have been a tiny bit more variety. I wish there could have been a proper stealth mission where you could choose to sneak past some Russian guards or engage in some firefights.
The game itself looks fairly nice on the PS3, and takes full advantage of the lighting effects, but I thought it started to become too much when many of the missions took place outside in the dark to show off the lighting from the street lights. I'm sorry, but the last time I checked street lights aren't supposed to be so bright that they blind you, even in the Middle East. That being said, the graphics look a tiny bit better than Bad Company 2, although it's very hard to compare the two games since they run on two different engines.
With regards to the multiplayer, it's definitely the highlight of the show. The conquest mode is better than ever, and the maps are large enough to include helicopters and fighter jets, but also small enough to keep the 24 players in a nice contained area. It's a bit frustrating that two people can't be in one jet (as in one person flys the jet the other one controls the weapons, just like in the campaign mission). Also, it takes way to long to unlock equipment for the jets, unless you know how to chase an enemy in the skies down very well. The other modes such as rush and squad deathmatch are back, and now there's a team deathmatch mode too. With regards to the Team Deathmatch mode, there are a couple of points for improvement. First, the spawn points need to be farther away from the enemy, and secondly, the broken buildings need to be solid, so that people aren't literally shooting through the rubble and preventing their gun's flash from being seen. The rubber banding/lag has been fixed which is great, but the issue of spawn points needs to be fixed in order for people to enjoy the game to it's fullest. Also, I would like to see a few more game modes to play besides just the ones that are available, just for more variety.

Stay tuned for the Co-Op review for this game.

Playstation Network Back on

   Playstation Network has been brought back to PSP and PS3 users, and it has been missed. I have to say that Sony deserves some slack because they worked very hard to do what would have taken a few months to complete. However, if there is another threat in the future, I hope that there isn't a 3 week time frame once again, otherwise Sony will be screwed.
   The first game that I decided to try out again was Crysis 2's multiplayer, which I found was a bit "unbalanced." My reasoning for saying that as I have in the past is because this game and MoH's multiplayer require you to shoot constantly to get a "kill" but games like COD take only a couple of shots in the foot to kill someone due to LAG between yourself and the host. I do have to say that this game has much better designed maps, but keeping the powerups that you get to use in the single player makes the game feel less polished than it actually is. It plays and seems a lot like COD, but it lacks the fairness that COD would have.
   As for Killzone 3's multiplayer, it feels like an unbalanced version of Team Fortress 2, in the sense that everyone plays as either the spy or.... the spy. When someone tries to be a medic, they are usually across the map from where your wounded player's body is. The maps aren't quite as polished as Killzone 2, possibly because they were trying to be closer to COD. The thing is COD has such a unique gameplay style that whenever other games try to borrow off of that, it just doesn't work.
   As I may or may not have said previously (few months ago) Medal of Honor is supposed to be difficult. What makes it difficult is that you can't just run out and start killing players. You have to stick with your team (somewhat) and stay out of the open, which gives the game a PC shooter style. I like that, because it adds a different type of strategy to it. Black Ops is fun, but it requires a different strategy that most PC gamers are willing to use, because the sticky aim (AKA aim assist) is what allows players on consoles to kill each other with seemingly good accuacy. As a side note, the aim assist really has to be used, because a mouse and keyboard have a lot more precision than a controller. Actually, if COD developers decide to add new features, they should have a lobby/servers that don't allow aim assist at all, to make it feel like the classic CODs. Perhaps they could call this classic mode.
   Anyway, I'm just glad COD is back up. I know I've already commented on these games before, but I wanted to make the point that CODs style and gameplay mechanics only work with COD, not with any other shooting game.

Alternative Fuel Sources Post 5

  I found another very interesting article on my topic, alternative fuel sources. This actually kind of goes against many proposed ideas about alternative fuel. The article almost "shuts down" at least the idea of ethanol from corn. One excerpt made the point that ethanol is less efficient than gasoline and would cost more for motorists. This is a good point, but because oil in the Middle East is already causing gas prices to rise, I personally could see ethanol as just a part of a combo of alternative fuel. While it's important to try to use cleaner fuel, it ends up being more expensive for the consumers (which are the people who ultimately have to get the gas at the gas station).
   Here's a little excerpt from this article:

"For the first time since the push to use more ethanol in American vehicles began five or six years ago, ethanol costs more than gasoline. E-85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, has recently been priced higher than regular gasoline at some stations.

"It's not going to last," said Wallace Tyner, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University.
The reason is that E-85 is a bad deal for motorists when it costs as much as gasoline. Ethanol contains less energy per gallon than gasoline. A gallon of ethanol normally will propel a vehicle fewer miles than a gallon of gasoline."

   While I may have recently implied that we should use more alternative fuel, this opened my mind a little bit, and made me realize potential problems with alternative fuel such as ethanol. I kind of see why America hasn't made a whole lot of effort over the past few years to try to use more alternative fuel. That being said, however, the U.S. is dealing with rising gas prices because of imported oil, and because China is in the ballpark to compete with America, it's time to take extra measures to make sure that dependence on imported oil doesn't lead to another attack similar to the 9/11 attacks.
  It's time that America toughens up a bit more and starts initiating in more research to find the right combination of alternative fuels (not just one type alone) to create cleaner fuel and more energy efficient fuel for vehicles.

Alternative Fuel Sources Post 4

  Here's a link to an excerpt of the "Clean Air Act," which was first issued in 1963. Amendments were made to this act in 1966 and 1990. The reason why I bring this article up is because this indirectly relates the reasoning for why the U.S. should ideally switch to cleaner and more abundant sources of energy. Basically this act discusses includes uniform standards for controlling air pollution. This act, however, wasn't limited to regulating the pollution from cars, but I imagine it contains regulations for factories, and what regulations were ideal for keeping the air clean. I'm actually a little surprised that this act was released in the '60s, because I wouldn't totally associate efforts for cleaner air with the 1960s, but I guess that can be considered an ignorance on my part.
   Anyway, this post could imply that I believe in the theories about global warming, which is a separate issue that I'm not working on for this project. Let me just put out there that the link I posted here does not imply any of my opinions on global warming. While many people, including the more Democratic-sided politicans, believe that America needs to stop depending on oil for fuel because the Carbon Dioxide is contributing to global warming, I believe that there are different reasons that more people can agree on for gaining an independence for fuel and energy. Our dependence on the Middle East has proven to be dangerous, and many of the places where we get our oil from are in countries that we are essential fighting against. If America stops depending on these countries, then the U.S. can move forth with new ways to fuel cars, buses, trucks, airplanes, and other vehicles. While many people disagree with offshore drilling, perhaps it's the only way we can transition from oil to cleaner fuels.
   I'm just trying to get people to think about this.

Alternative Fuel Sources Post 3

   I recently found a fascinating article from nytimes.com that discussed a specific proposal over my topic, which is Alternate Fuel Sources. The author of the article, Joe Nocera, discusses about a friend of his, Boone Pickens, who drills for natural gas, rather than crude oil. The author of the article suggested that the U.S. should use natural gas to power vehicles, not just the 140,000 trucks and buses that already use clean energy. One of the facts that was made in this article was, "There are already 12 million vehicles around the world that use either liquefied or compressed natural gas."
   The author referred a bill that proposed the increased use of natural gas as the Boone Pickens bill, which suggests that America goes towards the path of gaining an independence on foreign oil, and start using natural gas, which the U.S. has more of an abundance of, to power vehicles, especially one's that use diesel fuel.
   Here's a little chunk from the article that Boone specifically agrees on, "Although Boone believes that our continued reliance on OPEC oil is dangerous, he also knows that even if you drill, baby, drill, as many Republicans want, it won’t make much difference. Quite simply, America is running out of oil. The Pickens plan calls for increased use of wind, solar, nuclear, even coal. ”I’m for anything that’s American."
  I agree with this, but the concern that I personally have is how America would be able to switch from Middle East oil to natural gas. Again, if I didn't post this is one of my previous posts, the people like Boone who drill for natural gas have to actively start drilling as if America was already using it, that way it will be accessible for newer cars to use. The transition is probably the most critical part of this process of swtiching over to cleaner fuel, because the U.S. can't just suddenly stop importing oil over on night. At the same time Americans who support cleaner gas can't just get rid of the cars that require regular gasoline. Hopefully there will be a solution to this conflict that I forsee happening.

Alternative Fuel Sources Post 2

   I recently found an interesting article that discusses how Obama set a goal for America to reduce oil imports by one-third by the year 2025. While it's nice that President Obama has set a fairly realistic goal for America, it will still be hard to follow through, because he's definately not going to stay in office for that amount of time to make sure that goal is completed. While it's important for America to become more independent on energy sources that we can find, this is not an easy task to complete, because transitioning from oil imports to American resources might not be too predictable, when it comes to prices. One thing that I found interesting about this article was the critism that President Obama recieved by a Republican Senator, and how he reacted to it.


"Republicans have blamed Obama's policies for the rising gas prices, pointing to the slow pace of issuing permits for new offshore oil wells in the wake of last summer's massive Gulf of Mexico spill and an Obama-imposed moratorium on new deep-water exploration.
The president struck back at that criticism Wednesday, saying his administration has approved 39 shallow water drilling permits since new standards were put in place last year, and seven new deep-water drilling permits in recent weeks."

   While making the effort to initiate offshore drilling is important, and possibly crucial, if the Americans are to complete the president's goal, there has to be even more possible energy sources besides oil that can be used. While Obama's plan to cut oil imports may seem like a good idea, the problems with this outweight the benefits. You can't just cut something that we are constantly using. The US has to already be initiating offshore drilling and effectively using that oil before any oil imports are to be cut. If the president does not realize this, then his plan will backfire. It's one thing to have a plan and to set goals, but reducing imports without already using the oil from offshore drilling is not the best idea.
   Besides, even if the US successfully reduces oil imports from the Middle East, there are still cars that use oil for fuel, and not any "hybrid" power. There's no telling that oil prices will continue to increase, but for the people who drive regular cars, it will not be easy to pay for gasoline when the prices continue to rise.


In case you were interested in the actual article, the link is here.

Issue's Project: Alternative Fuel Souces/Alt. Sources of Energy Post 1

   As prices for gasoline continue to spike upwards in the U.S. due to rising conflicts in the Middle East, many have been trying to find other means of obtaining enough oil for cars and other vehicles in the U.S. However, this is easier said than done, because it can be (not always though) very difficult to find other means of energy, whether it is price of those alternate sources, or lack of enough of it to power the whole country.
   But not to worry, because President Obama has the hope and confidence that very few other Americans truly have with finding and transitioning to a "clean energy economy." There was an article on CBS News, called,

"Obama: Growth tied to energy independence"

 that discussed Obama's seemingly encourging words for using cleaner energy. Although I agree with what he wants to do and why, it seems like his execution at actually getting it done may not be effective enough to push his plans forward. One of the more striking things that I found from this article was the statistic that the author threw in.

"Oil prices have been rising because of growing demand in China and continued instability in some oil-producing countries in the Middle East. That, in turn, has pushed gasoline prices to new highs. The national average for a gallon of gas hit $3.619 on Friday, the highest price ever for this time of year, according to AAA and other sources. Prices have climbed 23.2 cents in the past month and more than 81 cents in the past year."
While this price hike is bad, no matter what political side you are on, the solutions for lowing prices may not become effective right away, depending on what sources the U.S. decides to use in place off fossil fuels, and how much of that source reall is available within a given amount of time.

In case you were interested in reading the actual article, you can find the link here

Random video game review: Crysis 2 Multiplayer first impressions

   There's no denying that game publisher companies EA and Activision are in serious competition with each other. Whether it is visible to the gamer's eyes or not, these two companies do whatever they can in their power to buy our small or medium to large game developers and try to control them to make a popular, but not always great game. Many of the campiagns that I have heard about  and have played at least part of (i.e. COD: Black Ops and MOH) have the same issue: short campaigns, heavy emphisis on multiplayer. While multiplayer gameplay is a great feature to have in a game (especially when it well-balanced and an overall fun experience), perhaps these two publishers take "too much" from each other to the point where any game that is advertised on ign.com or gamespot is just a combo of hundreds of other games out there. Crysis 2, developed by Crytec, published by EA (running on the Crytec 3 engine) is no different. In fact, the multplayer is just a more diluted and unbalanced bland version of COD, Halo, and Killzone's  mutiplayer, with maybe on or two twists.
   While it's really cool to have powerups such as extra armor, heat vision, and invisibility, this only works well in theory. The armor powerup, for me at least, has proven to be ineffective against enemies, and the invisibility always starts to wear off whenever I am close to an enemy. Perhaps this is because I am just not good at the game, but these are issue's that take away from my experience as a player.
   I guess I should mention that overall the hit detection is not very good, even with the sticky-aim, otherwise known as "Aim Assist" is on, and proving to be functional. Sometime's an enemy would take 50 shots from my gun to the head, but yet only 20 shots from their gun to my chest kill me write away, leaving him unharmed. Even COD isn't this bad, when it comes to hit detection. There is usually some form of lag in COD, but at least everything else is fairly balanced. I will say that the level design though is pretty good and interesting, and the game itself looks quite incredible on the Playstation 3.
   Even if you disagree with this semi-review, keep in  mind that I am not fantastic at the FPS genre, but I have at least some experience between COD, BC2, MOH, and a few others. This is just my opinion on the very little amount of gameplay time that I have spent on the multiplayer.

Race Stuff

I just finished reading an article from  the CBS News website that was written last year about how the "minorites" were to soon become the majorities. Although I had already known about this, it's interesting how America, a country filled with a white majority once holding blacks as slaves up until the mid-1800s is becoming a country where whites are no longer the majority. Although I don't think that this is such a big deal, it seems to me that people who write these articles are trying to make a bigger deal out of this than it really is. So what if whites are not the majority. Americans shouldn't be concerned about what ethinicity is the "majority" as much as they should ideally be concerned about illegal immigration. To me, if Hispanics become the "majority" race in America, so be it, as long as they are officially documented United States citizens, and not Hispanics who are fresh from the other side of the border.
Another article that I read, this time from CNN.com, entitled "Black and white, and a target of both" was about a black man, Don Lemon, who had discussed his hometown when he grew up. Although his grandmother made sure he did well in school, his town was split up between blacks on one side, and whites on the other, sharing the same grocery store, post office, etc.
"The whites, on the east side. We all shared the grocery store, bank, post office and such. That's where I first heard a white person call me a N***er."
He continued his story by explaining how the new town that his family moved to was pretty much all white, and some parents wouldn't allow their children to play with him. He then mentioned how the time when his intergrated "white" school was dealing with Ku Klux Klan protests, he was elected as Senior Class President, the 2nd one in history of the school.
I thought that this story was very insightful, on the idea that the South, while having a lot of racial tensions in the past, has made progress with being more racially accepting. With the video we watched in class last week,  regarding the murder of the black man in Jasper, Texas in 1998, the form of racism that was expressed through the murder was dampered immediately by arresting the three convicted white men who were involved with the muder of a black man. It was really the first time in the South where this type of arrest to any white person was made, and this was a huge strive for black people.
Then recently, we were told to go onto a website and see how racist we were. It started off with a simple survey of whether you prefer white Europeans or African Americans. Then the test portion consisted of hitting two keys on the keyboard "e" and "i" and associating certain words to the "bad" category on one side of the screen or the "good" category on the screen. Then instead of the good and bad categories, it was replaced with "African American" on one side and "White European" on the other side, and you would have to associate which pictures go where. What made things even more challenging was the combination of the "good" and "bad" words, and the "African American" and "White Eurpean" pictures. It was even harder when the two sides switched.
My end result, however was that I prefered White Europeans over African Americans, which I really found interesting. I honestly don't see one person as "black" or "white", but I see people of different races and ethnicities more as just a people. I don't have a preference or a point where I am comfortable or not around certain races. The reason why this is is because the grade school that I went to had a lot of diversity. Going to a majority white high school, it will be a bit harder to get used to being around a more diverse community of students, but I won't have a preference between any 2 or even 10 races.

Mock Trial Response part 2

It's very difficult for me to say that I have seen sexual harassment nor date rape in or around DHS. If there was a recent case, emails would be sent out to all of the students including myself, the teachers, and the parents. The DHS culture avoids having any relationship with these issue's because parents are very diligent if their daughter or son had any problems regarding their sexuality. Or at least my parent would be diligent if I had any problems with either of these things. I don't feel like DHS is the type of school that would have problems with either of these issues, there are other problems such as kids in my grade smoking and drinking various stuff, and much of which is illegal. Sexual harassment could be occuring at much bigger high schools, especially public high schools in Chicago. The reason for this is that parents of students who go to CPS high schools don't pay property tax for their kids to go to their high school. It is funded in a much different way than suburban schools. Somehwhat of the control here at DHS is lacking at these schools naturally. But if there was a case of sexual harassment, there would be a big deal out of it.

Mock Trial Blog Response Part 1

The first trial that occured in Issue's class was about a guy named David, who was accused of "raping" his girlfriend. This seemed like it was more of scheme for revenge, because the only direct evidence of anything relevant to the trial case was the note David had on has dresser from his class partner at school, who happened to be a girl.Other than that, there was no direct evidence that any "rape" occured, especially if it was stated that his girlfriend made gesters that would imply the want for sex, not the escape from it. I was very pleased to participate as a juror for this mock trial case, because I could tell from the start, the group arguing that there was rape had very little of anything to prove their point, which wasn't their fault.
    As for the case that I particpated as a memeber of the defense for, regarding lawyer Elyse Roberts, I couldn't help but feel that the case could have gone either way. In class, my group "won" the case because we did a better job arguing for our side, but the truth of the matter is that Elyse Roberts was doing worse on her works at the Bureau that she worked at, whether it was because of Kevin Murphy or not. However, the sexual overtones that Kevin made in his jokes were not just directed towards Elyse, but to many other members of the bureau. It could be said that Kevin Murphy went too far with his jokes, because although he had the good intention of making Elyse feel more comfortable, there was nothing done to stop him from annoying Elyse to a point where she struggled to do even close to well. I still feel that the bureau avoided making a big deal out of Elyse Roberts for two reasons: 1: She was new; and 2: The bureau didn't want to get into legal issues. This was a reasonable case of sexual harassment, and of course it was not intended to be that way by Kevin Murphy, but not locking the door to the office they shared while he was changing clothes, and making jokes that she was clearly uncomfortable with was not really appropriate at the workplace, and again: nothing was done about it soon enough.
At the same time, it's very hard to prove that a friendly invite to a party was part of the sexual harassment, because I still do not consider that Kevin was asking Elyse out at all. If the other male workers asked the female workers to this party that was referenced in the witness statements, then it would have been a more obvious example of sexual harassment.

My youtube account, ebpianodude, is back in action once more.

Now as much as I dislike sharing links that don't have any revelvance with what I have recently talked about on my blog, I'd like to share with you the link to my new (music) composition, "Modern Warfare 10." I wrote thhis over the past weekend, and I am very proud with what I have done. Of course, being a composer, I don't feel like this piece is completely finished, because it repeats the same overall idea two times. Although I was creative with the little guitar riff used in the COD: Black Ops theme, I feel like my work has only just started. Anyway feel free to view this link here, because even if it's not the greatest piece of music in the world, I could always use more views. If you have a youtube account, PLEASE comment on my video. Voice your opinion on what you think of my piece. Remember, there is no such thing as a good or a bad piece of music, but I want to know whether you liked it or not.

Protests in Cairo: What will happen to other Middle Eastern Countries as a result?

As many may know, the protests against the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, came to the point last week where he had no choice but to step down from his seat in power. Although he was leader for 30 years, the citizens of Egypt had suffered through economic poverty, while Mubarak was living in the luxury that many can only dream of. Mubarak handed over his power to the military which sparked all the protesters to immediately start celebrate, but one overlooked story was the female reporter who was covering the celebration, being sexually assaulted by the few people who were against the revolution.
Anyway, while it's great that democracy was spread to Egypt, or at least the want for it was spread, the one issue that I'm seeing with this situation is the possible election of a terrorist orginization threatening the US, as well as Israel. Of course, one could argue that this may not occur right away. An article that I found entitled Reflections on the Revolution in Egypt said,
"Change in Iraq was imposed from the outside by force, whereas change in Egypt has come from within and has largely been accomplished by consent rather than coercion. But it is too soon to know whether change in Egypt will be far-reaching and lasting, much less positive, and thus too soon to assess its historic impact."
This helps prove that no one really knows what group or who will take power as fair leadership in Egypt, but people were thinking (and hopefully still are) during the actual protests.
   I've also heard on the news recently the denial that oil and gas prices will go up. News media such as WBBM have argued that the economy is growing so oil prices should stay stable but this statement may not stay true for long once the continuation of demand for oil increases. This is where I stand up and say that it is time for the US to focus on alternate sources of energy. Unfortunately, people agree with this, but they don't understand how difficult this goal will be to achieve since we are fighting an intense war in Afghanistan. While President Obama wants to see the war end within a year, the US could end up moving to another part of the Middle East to fight the real threat to America: Al Queda. It may be very questionable, however, to continue fighting a war in the Middle East, once we find alternate energy sources. At the same time, it will be difficult to find alternate energy sources when we are still fighting a war. Yes, it will be a problem when prices for fuel WILL go up, but just because the rest of the economy grows doesn't necessarily mean that the country will be able to afford oil.
   So let's look into why the protests in Egypt happened. Well, to start off with, the same article that I mentioned earlier, Reflections on the Revolution in Egypt said in the first paragraph,
"Revolutions happen for a reason. In the case of Egypt, there are several reasons: more than 30 years of one-man rule; Hosni Mubarak's plans to pass the presidency on to his son; widespread corruption, patronage, and nepotism; and economic reform that did not benefit most Egyptians, but that nonetheless contrasted sharply with the almost complete absence of political change."
This pretty sums up why protests started in Egypt. I'm curious to know why the protests began just a couple of weeks ago and not sooner, such as maybe ten or five years ago? Were they inspired by President Obama? Did they find out prior to the protests that Mubarak's son was going to become a successor? Of course these questions can't all be answered at once, but I do know that other Middle Eastern countries were inspired by the measures that were taken by the Egyptians. Even protests began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last week, because of a new bill that teachers felt would screw them over during retirment.
  These series of protests are not over, but for now, some settling has begun. There will probably be even more protests that turn into revolutions not too long from now in other Middle Eastern countries, but next time could be the fearfully anticipated revoltutions that would make the US look bad.

Before I buy TDU 2

Now I have already played the first Test Drive Unlimited game on the PS2, which is actually not bad, but at the same time it doesn't live by the "unlimited" part of it's title. In fact it's the exact opposite. Of course the graphics would be dated for a PS2 game, but it most certainly can handle the full-sized map, just not all of the cool cars, secret island, and the glitch to drive on the runways at Honolulu's International airport. This had seemed to be more like TEST DRIVE LIMITED.
Anyway, I mentioned this because I, like many others, plan to get Test Drive Unlimited 2 for the PS3. Now even though the developers and publishers have done all that they could to avoid advertising for every version EXCEPT the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game, both of those versions, ironically enough are what is dragging the game's graphics down. Mostly the 360. Now, as much as I don't like to normally point fingers, the 360 has lived up to it's potential, but in terms of graphics, it has nowhere to explore, other than cleaner and smooth graphics rather than realism. The PC though will always be the one exploring the most with realism.
All things considered the size of the map is supposed to be over 2x the size of TDU1's map, and overall the car models will look pretty decent. It still looks a bit fake for everything else. The thing I'm concerned about is the balance between retarded AI, extremely and overly aggressive AI, and a nice challenge. As great of a game GT5 is, one of the things I never really mentioned much in my review was how the game uses "railroad" AI, meaning that they stick to generally one path. It's easy to pass them if you have a fast enough car, but the challenge for all of the Gran Turismo games was more the track than anything else. If you didn't master the track, then even the easy AI would be seemingly challenging. It's really you v. the track than anything else. I don't anticipate TDU2 being anything like this.
Now at the same time, I hope that TDU2 isn't like Midnight Club LA, where the AI was extremely tough, sometimes forgiving, and sometimes just plain stupid all at the same time. I cannot tell you how many time's I have played Midnight Club, and one of the AI drivers bumps into me, and then says something like, "Why the hell did you bump into me?" on the phone, or, "Are you blind mane?!" Yes, they do actually sometimes call the main character "mane" instead of "man." There was actually one time where I was racing against my fellow female AI driver, and the first race in the GP I spun her out, but then in the next race she spun me out and said "What the HELL are you doing?"
Overall, TDU2 could potentially be the best racing game of the year, or at least the best MOOR game of the year. Good looking or not-so-good looking I think that TDU2 will be the winner out of all of the racing games that I have played because of the challenge that was presented in the first game, as well as the feature of GOOD online racing.

State of the Union Address 2011

So assuming that you have already seen the State of the Union Address, here are some of my thoughts.
Let's start with the most obvious one: Bipartisan seating...
This is the first time we have ever seen Congress sit with each other, rather than split by friends and party. One who may have been very skeptical of this idea may assume that this was done to cover up Obama's seemingly one-sided appeal. What I mean by this is that last year it was more than obvious that only the Democrats were cheering and standing up at virtually all of the point that President Obama made, while most of the time the judges and Republicans remained seated for the majority of the hour, and couldn't wait to get out of the room. Last year's address came to the point where Obama made the comment, "I really thought you guys would stand up for that one."
This year's State of the Union Address was quite the contrary, and most of Congress agreed with Obama's points. This probably made Obama feel more confident with what he was saying, and much of what he said wasn't extremely liberal. He made the point that it was good that there is some disagreement, and I totally agree with that. If everybody liked Obama and no one disagreed with anything he said, the country would turn into a Communist nation, and it would become a disaster. If everyone disagreed with him, though, the country would be rioting like the Middle Eastern protesters.
Anyway, one of Obama's points was about education. He did a nice job connecting education with jobs, but he was so general, it would be hard for anyone to disagree with him. He mentioned getting rid of the bad teachers and said to everyone. "Those of you who want to become teachers, our country needs you."... Or something among those lines.
Another point that he mentioned was using 90% of independent energy by 2035. This is good that this is the goal, but he made it sound like everybody in that room believed global warming exists. Sadly, this is not true, because Republicans who believe that global warming is a political tactic for Democrats refute any idea that has to do with global warming existing. The President used the term "independent energy source" to kind of satisfy what both sides wanted to hear, but I still feel that without him being in office, his goal, not the nation as a whole, will not be achieved.
Sadly I never got to hear what Republicans had to say about his speech, but from the looks on their faces, the reactions with what Obama said varied. Some Republicans in the room had a shocked and disgusted look on their faces, while others did not as much. Obama and everybody in that room knew that not everyone likes him, but at the same time, Republicans such as John McCain don't totally hate him. Obama has wanted to work with Republicans since he first got into office, but I think that maybe the bipartisan seating may have given the President the hope that he had about working together with everyone. He seemed a lot more comfortable with what he said, and didn't care as much about who agreed with him or not in the room that everybody was in. That being said, there are still sadly people in America who will always hate Obama, and if not hate, just think he's a Communist, which he made clear he was really trying not to be.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: Post 3

At this point in the book, Michael Pollan describes his experience at what could be considered an organic slaughterhouse. The reasoning for him going to this place, is to desribe how the animal's (specifically the chickens) are slaughtered. He mentioned this in the book because it is important for people to understand what the life of a chicken being prepared to slaughter should be.
Pollan concluded at the end of this section, "I finally had to conclude that Rosie the organic free-range chicken doesn't really grok the wholed free-range conceit." He continues on about how the field for these chickens has turned more into a joke: something that is there but really more for people and vistors to get some fresh air, rather than for the chickens. It would have been interesting, however, to read about how Pollan feels about Factory Farming. I don't support PETA, but they make a good point about animal abuse even so.
I guess there's really no way to treat pre-slaughter animals well, and that's kind of what I can pull from Pollan's chapter about the chickens.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: Post 2

One thing that was really interesting in the later part of the first chapter was how one in three children east fast food every day. That's a lot of fast food being consumed! Michael Pollan's son doesn't get to eat at McDonald's very often, so when Pollan was talking about a trip with his family to McDonald's I knew that he was doing this to see what kinds of things people could get on the menu (his son mentioned a salad because Pollan's wife doesn't like to go to McDonald's because of the lack of a "real meal."). Of course, Pollan didn't really mention anything about fast food places such as Subway, which would have been interesting to read about, because they are also considered fast food. What makes them different? Their tuna contains almost as much fat and calories (if not as much) as a McDonald's burger.
Perhaps what Pollan was getting at was how much corn is in most of the McDonald's food. Corn is the basis of our food products in America, as I stated in my previous blog post, but how are we American's supposed to get our other neutrients, from vitamins?

The Omnivore's Dilema: First Impressions

When I picked up this book to open it up, I know going in that this would discuss the agricultural problems of America. What I didn't know it would do was explain how certain parts of agricultural history apply and have contributed to the problems we have today in America, as well as how methods may have been better in earlier times. The first chapter of the book discusses one crop; corn. Michael Pollan (the author) discusses howmany of the things we use in our daily lives (sometimes nonfood products) came from corn at some point. Soda, beer, twinkies, and many other food products use high fructose corn syrup, which of course because the same has "corn" in it, came from corn. I'm not too sure where Mr. Pollan was getting at, but I'm starting to think that corn.  is not what we should continue to base our whole agriculture off of. I'm also not sure if cows are supposed to eat corn, knowing that they prefer to eat grass. This may not seem like such a significant issue, but I do know that processed foods are not healthy at all, and this is a problem because a lot of America's diet consists of processed foods (even if there are preservatives). But perhaps this is a more important issue of politicians to take a crack at, rather than allow them to debate whether evolution exists or not.