St. Patrick’s Day Quiz

1. What year did St. Patrick’s Day become a public holiday (at least in Ireland)?
a) 1879
b) 1903
c) 1911
d) 1926

2. Where is Canada’s longest-running St. Patrick’s Day parade?
a) Ottawa
b) Toronto
c) Montreal
d) Fredericton

3. Which US city dyes one of its rivers green as a St. Patrick’s Day tradition?
a) New York City
b) St. Louis
c) San Francisco
d) Chicago

4. What is the traditional Irish St. Patrick’s Day meal?
a) Corned beef and cabbage
b) Skirts and kidneys
c) Irish stew
d) Bangers and mash

5. What colour badges do children traditionally wear on St. Patrick’s Day?
a) Red, orange, and yellow
b) Black, brown, and purple
c) Orange, white, and green
d) Red, white, and blue

6. In which province was St. Patrick’s Day a provincial holiday until 1992?
a) New Brunswick
b) Nova Scotia
c) Prince Edward Island
d) Newfoundland and Labrador

7. When was the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston?
a) 1702
b) 1737
c) 1786
d) 1823

8. Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day festival runs for how many days every year?
a) Three days
b) Four days
c) Five days
d) Six days

9. Shamrocks were worn to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as early as which century?
a) 1400s
b) 1500s
c) 1600s
d) 1700s

10. In which country did the first St. Patrick’s Day parade take place?
a) USA
b) Ireland
c) UK
d) Canada

Score 1 point for every question you get right and 0 points for every one you get wrong.

Answers:
1: B, 2: C, 3: D, 4: A, 5: C, 6: D, 7: B, 8: D, 9: C, 10: A

If you scored…

0-2 points: Don’t feel bad; this quiz was actually a bit tough. Keep your leprechaun spirits up!

3-6 points: You’re not bad at this stuff! Keep on learning and you’ll do even better next time.

7-10 points: You sure know a lot about St. Patrick’s Day! Good job!

Top 10 Oscar Best Picture Winners of All Time

Every year the crème de la crème battle it out at the Oscars for the prestigious Best Picture award. We all have our predictions for this year’s winner, but let’s not forget about the amazing films from the past. Here are Youthink’s picks for the Best Picture winners of all time.

10. Gone With the Wind – 1939
This epic film set during the American Civil War tells the complicated love story of Scarlet O’Hara and what was probably the first love triangle ever made into a movie.

9. Casablanca – 1943
In WWII, Rick learns the real reason why his one true love, Ilsa, left him alone in Paris. While fleeing the Germans, they both realize how quickly plans can change and go wrong.

8. Oliver! – 1968
Based on the classic story by Charles Dickens, Oliver! takes us into the life of a poor orphan boy who learns how to “pick a pocket or two” from the best singing street-urchins there ever were.

7. The Departed – 2006
Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon get so absorbed in their double lives that they must figure out who each other really is in order to save themselves from the Irish Mafia in Boston.

6. The Sound of Music – 1965
Set in Austria in the 1930s, this movie made us fall in love with Julie Andrews all over again and taught us how to remember our musical scales with the classic Do Rae Mi song.

5. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – 2003
Third in the trilogy and a worldwide best seller, LOTR: Return of the King ended the journey that Frodo and Sam took to destroy the One Ring and all they encountered on their way.

4. Chicago – 2002
Set in 1920, Chicago follows the life of two showgirls on death row and left us singing sultry show tunes for days on end.

3. Forrest Gump – 1994
Forrest Gump, a man with a unique perspective on life, takes us on an historic journey and proves that what his mama said is true: “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.”

2. Titanic – 1997
James Cameron’s multi-million dollar reenactment of the fateful journey of the Titanic, made us all start to lean over the bow of every boat screaming, “I’m the king of the world!”

1. Slumdog Millionaire – 2008
Coming from the slums of India, Jamal (Dev Patel) conquers all the hardships he has faced in his impoverished life to win an Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and the girl he has loved since he was a child.

Game Review: Mass Effect 2

In 2007, fans of Bioware and science fiction were treated to a little game called Mass Effect. With in-depth RPG mechanics and a densely populated alien world, Mass Effect soon became a well-known franchise. A little more than two years later, Bioware has released the sequel to this smash hit, Mass Effect 2 (very original, I know).

Let's talk about the good things first.

The game is much cleaner now. The first one, while visually solid, had a boatload of technical issues. From constant texture pop in, long load times and a poor frame rate (not to mention the incredibly long elevator rides), the sequel solves most, if not all, of these problems. The frame rate is much better and texture pop in has been abolished.

The game opens shortly after the ending of the first. Commander Shepard and his crew have defeated Saren and his Geth minions and are now roaming the galaxy, wiping out small pockets of resistance.

During a surprise alien attack, Commander Shepard (your character) is killed saving the handicapped pilot of your ship, the Normandy. After floating around in space for a while, Shepard is picked up by a Cerberus ship, a pro-human organization that requires Shepard in order to save human colonies from a terrible alien threat known as the Collectors. Cerberus spends two years using state-of-the-art medical equipment to bring you back.

The game takes you to planets all over the galaxy, each with its own vibrant and well-thought-out theme and atmosphere. You work your way from planet to planet, gathering a team of professionals to help you in your mission.

Along the way, you encounter many of your previous teammates, who have since moved on to other things, during the two years that you were gone. Most of the characters on your team are well fleshed out individuals with a unique back-story and plenty of interesting dialogue options.

Not only are the members of your team unique and interesting, but nearly every minor character is as well. Everyone, from a grizzled space cop to a video game salesman, all comes with incredible dialogue, subtle humour and plenty of entertainment. By doing this, the whole world of Mass Effect 2 seems almost alive and completely plausible.

Now I do have a few gripes with the game.

For starters, it's much more of a shooter than its processor. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but seeing as how only two of the six character classes are heavily based on shooting (the others focused on biotic and tech powers), it makes the game feel a little unbalanced when playing as on of the other classes. It's almost you need to play as one of those two classes to get the most out of the game.

Another issue I have with the game is that because it is so much more of a shooter, it loses a lot of the RPG mechanics that were a big appeal for me in the first place.

The game also streamlines the equipment system. Instead of weapons and armour scattered throughout the world, you have one suit of armour, which you customize with colours and a few different parts you find at vendors and on missions. This takes away some of the charm that the first game had where you could spend hours trying to find the best equipment possible.

Overall, Mass Effect 2 is a very solid game, it streamlines some of the aspects of the first game and the world is well developed and very fleshed out. The characters are numerous, and all of them have their own personality.

If you like space, great stories or even just shooting people with laser guns, Mass Effect 2 is your one-stop shop for all of the above.

Book Review: Hunted (A House of Night Novel) by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast

2 stars

Hunted, the fifth book in the House of Night novel series is weak in comparison to the first four books in the series. This book is filled with unnecessary and uninteresting details, and the events that take place in the book only span over two days.

Zoey Redbird – the main character – is initially portrayed as an excellent role model for teens in Marked (book one), but now seems to be a good example of a teenager who continuously makes bad choices. After going from three boyfriends at once to none in Chosen (the third book), she’s back to three again, seemingly sending the message that cheating is okay.

With only one interesting event that lasted about four pages, Hunted is utterly mundane.

Book Review: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

3 stars

Harvard symbologist, Robert Langdon is back in this follow-up to The Da Vinci Code.

This time around, Langdon is in Washington D.C. to give a speech at a conference hosted by a Mason and his mentor, Peter Solomon. However, things are not what they seem in D.C. Peter Solomon is kidnapped and the only way to rescue him is to unveil the secrets of the “Ancient Mysteries” – a historical concept that Robert Langdon considers to be a myth.

But this kidnapper is well-versed with the Ancient Mysteries and has Peter Solomon’s severed hand placed in the U.S. Capitol – an invitation to solve the mysteries – leaving Langdon no choice but to believe in it and to pursue the myth.

This book has its interesting moments but overall Robert Langdon is always in professor-mode as he explains the symbols that surround him to Director Inuoe Sato of the National Security. The chapters dealing with Langdon’s lectures can be boring, and the book is overly philosophical at times.

However, if you like reading philosophical books as well as learning more about conspiracy theories of secret messages in history, The Lost Symbol is a good read.

Book Review: The Dictionary of High School B.S. by Lois Beckwith

4 stars

Words often have multiple meanings, and this is never truer than in high-school.

From “dance” to “teacher,” a high-school student’s understanding of these words goes beyond the Oxford definitions of “to move about rhythmically alone or with a partner” and “a person who teaches.”

As our parents are wont to say, we kids do speak a funny language, and somehow they’ve managed to make millions of dictionaries for Croatian, Malay, Latin and Greek – yet no one has dared to make a dictionary of high-school jargon. Until now, that is.

Funny and brutally honest, The Dictionary of High School B.S. is a reference guide for anyone who is in high school or ever has been – love it or hate it.

Words like “dance” become the awkward social functions we all know too well and “teacher,” the psycho-manic person who whips out three hours of torture for you to accomplish as homework every day.

Beckwith’s witty humour and tell-it-as-it-is style makes this dictionary a very interesting read, despite the fact that it is an actual dictionary with words from A to Z.

Book Review: Tangled by Carolyn Mackler

4 stars

The years of an adolescent are just one big walking pimple – and this idea is captured beautifully in Carolyn Mackler's Tangled.

In the novel, we encounter four very different teenagers whose lives intertwine while vacationing in Paradise. None of them are psyched about being there, but what they don't know is that their small experiences will follow them in ways they never would have expected.

Jena is our average American girl who worries about two things: body image and boys. Skye is the stunning actress who emits perfection on the outside, but is emotionally damaged on the inside. Sex-crazed jock Dakota faces his first genuine obstacle and his brother Owen will get his first, fine taste of life offline when he detaches himself from his laptop.

Divided into four sections, readers are given the chance to get into the minds of the characters individually and experience their thoughts, feelings and insecurities. Mackler's fluid writing style truly embodies the voice of each complex character and allows readers to follow the story flawlessly.

Tangled is sure to please with lessons to learn and issues that teenagers can really relate to.

Book Review: Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy, Book 3) by Richelle Mead

4 stars

A suspenseful story that revolves around friendship, forbidden romance, betrayal and an abundance of humour, Shadow Kiss (the third book in the Vampire Academy series) is the perfect book for teen girls.

The novel, like the previous books in the series, is written in first person and narrated from the point of view of a 17-year-old female Dhampire (a person who is half human and half vampire) named Rose Hathaway.

All teen girls will love Rose’s entertaining sense of humour and dedication to protect her best friend, a royal Moroi (mortal vampire) named Lissa. But Rose’s growing love for her combat trainer, 24-year-old Dimitri Belikov, puts a strain on that dedication – and it doesn’t help that Dimitri is unable to fight his forbidden attraction to her either.

In Shadow Kiss, Rose must brave the many problems that confront her and the Academy, as well as choose between the two people who she loves most.

Book Review: Prism by Faye Kellerman and Aliza Kellerman

3 stars

Author Faye Kellerman teams up for the first time with her teenage daughter, Aliza, to co-write Prism.

In the Kellermans’ debut teen novel, three teenagers named Kaida, Zeke and Joy accidentally fall into a parallel universe when a school field trip goes horribly wrong. In this world, everything is exactly as it was back home… except that medicine does not exist! When people get sick, they are allowed to die without any help, until they are picked up and disposed of by the clean-up crew.

The storyline is definitely unique, but not very believable. It’s hard to imagine a world without medicine, because it goes against everything we believe in, as healing wounds is human nature.

Vivid descriptions of the parallel universe does help create some sense of connection to our present reality though. For example, the descriptions of sick or dying humans, all of whom are trying to hold on to life a little longer and avoid the clean-up crew, are very disturbing because it seems a lot like cities in real life: pretty on the outside, but always hiding some terrible ugliness on the inside.

All in all, Prism is a pretty good read, although the ending seems incomplete. For those who are into science fiction, this book is for you.

Book Review: Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception by Maggie Steifvater

First love is daunting and undeniably frightening – even more so when you add homicidal faeries and strange gifts into the equation.

Maggie Steifvater’s Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception is a beautifully crafted piece of young-adult fiction, which will appeal to anyone with a love of the fae as they appear in old legends: dark, sinful, seductive, deceptive and, lest we forget, deadly.

Heroine Deidre Monaghan, a painfully real 16-year-old, has uncanny music ability and psychic powers. Her sudden and intense romance with Luke, a boy with a terribly dark and abhorrent past, creates the perfect balance in this teen love story – with a supernatural twist, of course.

Steifvater carefully tackles fragile family issues in this fast-paced piece. I would highly recommend this book to fans of Holly Black, Melissa Mar and Charles De Lint.