This game is when Mario and Sonic first coming together in a video game. This time takes Mario and Sonic’s team in the Beijing Olympics to compete in 20 different sports, plus 4 dream events only existing in the video game world. This game is for the Wii and DS. There are 16 different characters to choose from, including Mario and Sonic. Using the Wii Remote (and Nunchuk), complete events variously.

Play Single-Match mode to play each event individually, and go for the gold. You can also play for fun. Circuit mode makes you compete in muliple events in one. Get points depending on what your rank is. Mission Mode lets you plays missions on certain events with a character. There are a total of 6 missions per character. The last mission for each character can only be unlock after beating the first 5. Be warned, the last mission is the hardest of the 6, period. But that doesn’t mean that the first 5 can’t be too easy.

There are 24 different events to play in the game. 11 in Athletics (5 for Track and 6 for Field), 1 for Shooting, Rowing, Archery, Fencing, and Table Tennis each, 4 Dream events, 2 Gymnastics, and 2 Aquatics. For Athletics (Track): 100m (this is for Dash), 400m, 4X100m (4x means 4 by, which is using 4 players in 1 race), 110 Hurdles, and 400m Hurdles. For Athletics (Field): Long Jump, Triple Jump, Hammer Throw, Javelin Throw, High Jump, and Pole Vault. For Gymnastics: Trampoline and Vault. For Aquatics: 100m Freestyle and 4X100m Freestyle. The other events: Skeet Shooting, Rowing (Single Sculls), Archery, Fencing (Individual epée), and Table Tennis (Singles). Finally, the 4 dream events: Dream Race, Dream Platform, Dream Fencing, and Dream Table Tennis.

To Review, 24 different events, 16 Characters (8 from Mario World, and 8 from Sonic World), 2 different systems, and 1 totally awesome game. Playing these games can work up a sweat, so try it out!

By Warren Carlin

This Tuesday, 28-year-old actor Heath Ledger was found dead in Mary-Kate Olson’s SoHo apartment. He was found at 3:26 pm, according to police, and pills were strewn on the bed around his naked body, though it hasn’t been confirmed whether they are prescription or over-the-counter. It’s not clear why Ledger was at Olsen’s apartment, since she is reportedly in California.

It’s unclear whether the cause of Ledger’s death was deliberate, or a drug overdose. Considering Ledger has been a fairly successful actor in popular movies such as “10 Things I Hate About You,” “The Patriot,” “A Knight’s Tale,” and “Brokeback Mountain,” and was cast as the joker in the upcoming sequel to “Batman Begins,” suicide seems unlikely.

Many celebrities have fallen prey to Hollywood’s partying and drug scene. Some, like Amy Winehouse, Pete Winz, and Lindsay Lohan, have made multiple trips to rehabilitation to try to correct this. Others, such as Ledger and Elvis Presley, haven’t been so lucky.

Drug abuse a serious issue that affects people of all ages across America, not just celebrities. According to a survey taken by the U.S. Bureau of Justice, drug use in teens was much more prevalent in the ‘80s than now. However, despite the efforts of D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) and other organizations devoted to stamping out drugs, many Americans still struggle with drug addiction.

By Susie LeJeune

Plagiarism is defined by www.dictionary.reference.com as “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.” Especially in recent years, since the Internet has made others’ work so easily accessible, plagiarism is very common among middle school, high school, and college campuses.

In fact, plagiarism is so serious, it is even punishable by U.S. federal law. Violating copyright laws, which outlaw the copying of another’s work without their expressed permission, can result in appearing in court.

According to www.plagiarism.com, the following are considered plagiarism: “turning in someone else’s work as your own; copying words or ideas from someone else without giving them credit; failing to put a quotation in quotation marks; giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation; changing words but copying sentence structure of a source without giving it credit; copying so many ideas or words from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not.”

Not all students plagiarize because they are lazy; many students are shocked to discover they are being punished for plagiarism. Not understanding how to correctly cite works can result in unintentional plagiarism. Becoming informed on how to properly paraphrase can help avoid this issue.

At St. John, plagiarism is punishable by a suspension and a 0 on the plagiarized assignment. The most frequently plagiarized assignments are summer reading assignments and class essays.

By Susie LeJeune

Each year on the third Monday of January schools, federal offices, post office and banks across America close to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr Day. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the newest national holiday and was approved by Ronald Raegan. The first national celebration of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday took place January 20, 1986. The holiday takes place to remember the late Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 at his family home in Atlanta, Georgia. King was originally given the name Michael Luther King, but later changed his name to Martin Luther King, Jr. He was the second child of Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. In his mid-20s, He married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953. Together they had four children, Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice Albertine. Martin Luther King Jr. became a Baptist minister in his late 20s. In his early 30s, He began to lead the civil-rights movement in America. King fought to make it clear to all Americans that all people are equal. King was one of the most important people to have made a significant change in the rights of blacks. He had great courage and passion to defeat segregation and racism that existed in the United States. His dream was for people of all different races to come together in one country. He was a strong believer in equal rights. King spent most of his life devoting himself to these actions.King went by all means to maintain peace during this movement. For his non-violence to achieve civil-rights reforms, He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Martin Luther King Jr. changed the American society. He set the bar for many African Americans to follow. He is a hero to all of us. Without him, African Americans would probably not have as many rights as they do today.

By Allie Hebert

Wii Sports is more than likely the first game that many people, including myself, have ever played. Wii Sports consists of 5 different sports to play, with different tastes for each person. There is also Wii Fitness and Wii Training. This game is amazingly popular to a lot of people right now.

Wii Sports has 5 different sports. They are: Tennis, Baseball, Golf, Bowling, and Boxing. With Wii Training, you can use various exercises to help you master the sports. Wii Fitness lets you use you Mii to lower your Wii Fitness Age. The lower the Age, the more powerful your Mii is.

Every Sport uses movements of the Wii Remote, and buttons too if necessary, in order to play the sports. Wii Tennis is 2 on 2 matches, swinging the ball like you’re actually in the game. Wii Baseball lets you pitch the ball different ways, depending on the A/B button combination you use, while you bat to try to score and get Homeruns and possibly Out of the Park Homeruns. Wii Golf let you hit the ball, until you make it into the hole. This sport is the hardest sport, because of the power limit you have to swing the ball. Wii Bowling is fun, and you can try for a Perfect 300 game. Try to find the perfect angle and power for your strikes and turkeys (3 strikes in a row). Finally, Wii Boxing uses the Nunchuk as well for a double combination of punching and blocking. This sport is exciting, but stressing at times.

I think that a lot of people these days really enjoy playing Wii Sports. By creating your own Mii and playing along, it really spruce things up. It’s Fun, and its normally the first game everyone plays, including myself, so have fun and live a little!

By Warren Carlin

This past weekend the Louisiana High School Athletic Association held the Football State Championship games for all classes in the Louisiana Superdome. Class 2A and 3A championship games were held on Friday, while the Class 1A, 4A, and 5A games were played on Saturday.

Playing for the State Championship game in the Louisiana Superdome is possibly one of the best things you can experience as a high school student athlete. Every high school football player’s dream is to play in the Dome. I was part of the 2006 St. John High School state runner-up football team. All year long, our goal was to make it to the State Championship game in the Dome. When we won our semi-final game against Southern Lab High School, we couldn’t believe that we were actually going to achieve our goal, and play for the class 1A State Championship game in the Louisiana Superdome.

Our game was to be played on Saturday. We arrived at the Dome on Friday to watch the 2A and 3A games, while waiting for our turn to step on the Dome turf. On Saturday morning we arrived at the Dome and were walking around in amazement. We took our pictures and started doing pre-game warm-ups. After pre-game warm-ups, it was time to suit up and get ready to play for a state title. Running out onto the turf, with thousands of screaming fans under the Dome lights, was possibly the best experience I have ever had in my life. Nothing was like playing in the Louisiana Superdome for the class 1A State Championship game.
I was able to attend the Friday night games this past weekend, in the Dome. While watching the games all I could think about were our experiences playing in the Dome. Though we lost, there was not a feeling like it in the world.

By Clint Ourso

As you all well know, sleeping in class is a pastime at this school. Over the years the faculty and administration has made more strict rules regarding this. Still, students sleep in class. There are students that know they will get in trouble for sleeping in class, and go to sleep any way. The problem with this is when students go to sleep they miss out on class. Common sense will tell you that if you sleep through a lesson, you will not learn it. Some students (mostly gifted students) can on the other hand pull this off. Even though they can teach themselves, it is still more effort that you would have to pull through. The aggravation of that faculty and staff comes from the student’s grade. Generally a student will sleep during class. They will not learn the lesson. They score poorly on the test. Their grade will go down. The parents call the school.

Most students won’t admit that the decline in their grade is their “drowsiness” during class. They will blame it on the teacher. I guess that it is our human nature to point the finger of blame rather than blame yourself for your own misconduct. That still doesn’t make it right though. Some students blame that the teachers give them homework or the test are too hard therefore they have to stay up late and study. A simple solution to this problem would be to not sleep in class, learn the lesson being taught, and the student would not have to stay up all night trying to figure out the home work or the material at that. “The classes are boring”, some will say. I will even admit that yes, they are boring. The thing is at this age, this so called “maturity” level a student should be able to at least stay awake and persevere through the boredom.

To all students that actually read this, think about it. Is it really that difficult to maintain awareness of what is going on in the class? You could at least draw or play on your calculator rather than blame the teacher for your mistakes. All it takes is one student to stay awake and blow you whole case against the teacher. So give up the charade. Either take responsibility for you own faults and stop making faults accusations against your teacher or just plain stay awake. It is only seven hours a day.

By Scotty Baldwin

Exams are right around the corner! When taking an exam can be very stressful most students have hard times comprehending all the information that is needed to pass. Students sometimes stay up all night or try in start early or both to try and do the best that they can do.
It is already bad enough for some students to pass a test that they have reviewed for at least a week much less remember everything that they have learned from the beginning of the school year. Being able to remember everything is a really hard thing to accomplish for most students because most students have a hard time paying attention, comprehending, or sitting still and remembering all the information when taking their test. Some students can just know everything that is need to pass and study and know everything back and forth and when they go to take the test they get nervous and everything just looks different then what they studied and forget everything that they had ever knew and studied for. School already puts a lot of stress on the students because they don’t want to fell. It is a very hard thing for most students to remember a little information but for an exam you have to remember a lot. Trying to remember so much information can be a really hard thing for most students to do so. Most students can easily forget more than half or even get different lessons mixed up. Most teachers do not have time to go back and re teach everything way from the beginning. When studying for an exam you need to look over notes and the study guide that the teacher has gave you. By doing this and you really study and know all of you information for the big exam you should do really good.

By Brooklyn Landry

Through doing this packet on Catholic Environmentalism, I have come to realize how dangerous chemical plants such as Dow, Shaw, Shintech, and many others are to our environment. Every day thousands of chemicals are burned and then released into the air through the multiple smoke stacks found at the plants.
All of these chemicals create a huge variety of greenhouse gases which are constantly heating up our world. The climate changes that have occurred in Louisiana over the past years are very extreme when compared to earlier years. This summer temperatures soared to nearly 110 degrees and even now in December, the coldest month of the year, temperatures have been shifting to around 80 degrees in the afternoon. The cause behind this is both the constant improvement plans that we feel are necessary to Louisiana and the recovery of New Orleans after Katrina, but how can we be blamed, our society finds it normal to and transform Louisiana into an urban area. However the problem is that we are constantly forgetting the question “where will it come from?” The answer is places like Dow, who are constantly supplying us with the resources necessary to achieve this goal.

In the beginning, God’s plan for us was to become the stewards of nature, not it’s destruction. We are failing to secede in this area each and every day. Every time we fill up with gas, especially diesel, we are bound to destroy the environment more and more. Sure, we may not be intending to do this, but we do, every single day we do it. It isn’t too late to change it, if we cat quickly enough as both a community and nation we can prevent global warming from reaching a dangerously high point. To do this, we must take the following steps to make our chemical plants safe enough. First it must become state law to have all smoke stacks, require some sort of filtration device, which purifies and creates a safe, and harmless release product, which will be emitted into the air. We could also begin to work as a whole, and achieve the goal with no money hassles. This may cause certain suppliers to lag behind for a while, but eventually they should overcome it. By freely supplying and constructing these filtration systems, we could put a quick and instant halt towards over half of the global warming, if we do this worldwide. However, today’s society would not only call this idea time wasting, but also freak at the idea of freely supplying what their business gets all it’s money from. All it would take is simple negation, but that seems almost impossible in today’s society.

By Robbie Gomez

One of the most popular summer movies of 2007 was Knocked Up, a romantic comedy starring Seth Rogen (who also starred in comedy Superbad) and Katherine Heigl about a 23-year-old slacker who finds out that his own-night-stand is pregnant. Knocked Up grossed nearly $30 million during its first three weekend in theaters. However, despite the popular movie’s success, it shows men and women in very different—and somewhat sexist—lights.

Actress Katherine Heigl even commented on the movie’s sexist themes. She told Vanity Fair in their January issue, “It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as goofy, fun-loving guys … I had a hard time with it, on some days.” Though she later took care to mention to People magazine that it was “the best filming experience of my career,” she has also stated, “It was hard for me to love the movie.”

Some may argue that calling Knocked Up and other modern comedies with similar plots sexist is silly, even ridiculous, but sexism in movies seems to be a growing trend; David Denby of The New Yorker commented that Knocked Up is part of “the dominant romantic-comedy trend of the past several years—the slovenly hipster and the female straight arrow.”

Such plots depict women as being entirely concerned with the functional aspects of their world, responsibilities such as their home and family, while men are entirely carefree. In the real world, thanks to the feminist efforts of the past 70 or so years, women are more carefree than traditionally thought of, and men have started shouldering part of the burden that has previously been called “women’s work.”

Feminists are often stereotyped as having boyish haircuts and clothes and not shaving their legs or underarms. While this may have been true for some in times when women were virtually forced to choose between intelligence and beauty, http://dictionary.reference.com defines feminism as “the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.” Another definition describes it simply as “belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.”

By Susie LeJeune