Sitting in Masryk cafe, listening to good music across the road. There are musicians up and down the road, and if you're standing in the middle between two crosswalks, it can be quite dissonant.
Stalls of food dot the road, alongside booths of crafts and political advocates. People dressed as brides or flowers, wearing big heads, or walking on stilts.
It's nice to be out and about. Along with 5,000 other people.
Yehuda
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Downtown in Jerusalem
Here I am in downtown Jerusalem on Emek Refaim, leeching a connection outside of Masryk and listening to the bands tune up for an annual free concert / fair / food festival in honor of something or other.
I've never live-blogged, and I doubt I'll start now. I'm just waiting for my daughter to show up.
Applause Kills Conversation
I was listening to a BBC political discussion. Panel of five insiders across the political spectrum, and an audience of a hundred or so students. It was an hour long.
In the first five minutes, the questions were intelligent and the responses from the panel equally so; long and full of substance. Then the applause started.
It wasn't an immediate shift, but a few minutes after the first applause came the next applause. From then on, bouts of applause followed every thirty to forty seconds.
It wasn't that the panelists became more brilliant. Quite the opposite. As the applause became more frequent, the panelists became worse: more polarized, more sound bites, more extreme, less nuanced, more throwing down gauntlets. It was a feedback of descending value.
This is the death of political conversation: applause. This is why politics are the way they are: we are trying to win, rather than to inform. Impress rather than convince. Steal elections, rather than implement what the majority think is correct. The audience responds to simplistic sound bytes and fear, the politicians win by fortunately timed approval.
There are going to be a lot of people waking up on November 5 to find that the world hasn't changed much. Governments, problems, opinions, wars, and economies tend to move slowly, even with the occasional rapid descent into chaos. Save your applause for later.
I've never live-blogged, and I doubt I'll start now. I'm just waiting for my daughter to show up.
Applause Kills Conversation
I was listening to a BBC political discussion. Panel of five insiders across the political spectrum, and an audience of a hundred or so students. It was an hour long.
In the first five minutes, the questions were intelligent and the responses from the panel equally so; long and full of substance. Then the applause started.
It wasn't an immediate shift, but a few minutes after the first applause came the next applause. From then on, bouts of applause followed every thirty to forty seconds.
It wasn't that the panelists became more brilliant. Quite the opposite. As the applause became more frequent, the panelists became worse: more polarized, more sound bites, more extreme, less nuanced, more throwing down gauntlets. It was a feedback of descending value.
This is the death of political conversation: applause. This is why politics are the way they are: we are trying to win, rather than to inform. Impress rather than convince. Steal elections, rather than implement what the majority think is correct. The audience responds to simplistic sound bytes and fear, the politicians win by fortunately timed approval.
There are going to be a lot of people waking up on November 5 to find that the world hasn't changed much. Governments, problems, opinions, wars, and economies tend to move slowly, even with the occasional rapid descent into chaos. Save your applause for later.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Shabbat Gaming: Sanctuary
Shabbat lunch I went to Elijah and family, and after lunch we played Sanctuary.
Elijah and his father were old-style gamers before meeting me, and now they have a mixture of old and new style games in their house. The Settlers of Catan sits on the shelf on top of Illuminati, The Princes of Florence on top of Divine Right, and Die Macher next to various war games.
Sanctuary is a roll-and-move game from 1982 based on the Thieves' World series from Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey. As far as roll and move games go, it's ok. You get to roll three dice - 2d6 and a d10 - and then take two of the dice of your choice to move your piece and the other one to move one of the five bad guys closer to one of your opponents (or away from you).
That pretty much wraps up the neat factor of the game. The rest is cards with locations to which you have to go to collect money, bad guys who may move on you and send you to jail, and cards which cause random effects or can be saved to do random actions. Lots of dice rolling, lots of luck, a number of "take that" mechanics, and no strategy. There's a noticeable theme, but it's pretty thin. I won.
We had a political discussion during lunch which I kind of regretted. The vast majority of people around fanatically favor McCain, citing fears and apocalyptic scenarios should Obama win, and that kind of drives me a little crazy, and my denial of this apocalyptic vision seemed to drive my host a little crazy, too.
Yehuda
Elijah and his father were old-style gamers before meeting me, and now they have a mixture of old and new style games in their house. The Settlers of Catan sits on the shelf on top of Illuminati, The Princes of Florence on top of Divine Right, and Die Macher next to various war games.
Sanctuary is a roll-and-move game from 1982 based on the Thieves' World series from Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey. As far as roll and move games go, it's ok. You get to roll three dice - 2d6 and a d10 - and then take two of the dice of your choice to move your piece and the other one to move one of the five bad guys closer to one of your opponents (or away from you).
That pretty much wraps up the neat factor of the game. The rest is cards with locations to which you have to go to collect money, bad guys who may move on you and send you to jail, and cards which cause random effects or can be saved to do random actions. Lots of dice rolling, lots of luck, a number of "take that" mechanics, and no strategy. There's a noticeable theme, but it's pretty thin. I won.
We had a political discussion during lunch which I kind of regretted. The vast majority of people around fanatically favor McCain, citing fears and apocalyptic scenarios should Obama win, and that kind of drives me a little crazy, and my denial of this apocalyptic vision seemed to drive my host a little crazy, too.
Yehuda
Friday, October 31, 2008
Roundup: Three Years of Forty Fourth Week Posts
The first in a series of posts to alternatives to all-or-nothing winning results in games.One of my typical days wandering around Dallas before BGG.con
Last year's holiday gift guide was published early. Look for this year's soon.
Fifty original six word stories (total writing time: 35 minutes)
Ten Lesser Known Secrets of Blogging
The Problem With Blogs
Games in Transit
I auctioned off a slew of games and game books, and in the end got rid of nearly all of them. Could be because some of them went for as low as $0.01.
Rachel should be landing in Chicago soon with six packages to mail, and they will go out tomorrow (if post offices are open on Halloween) or Monday. She'll be returning with seven new games I ordered and shipped to a friend.
A number of them I sold or gave away in Israel. My games closet looks only packed, rather than overstuffed as it usually does.
I'm a big fan of recycling games. What we don't play, I'm happy to trade or sell, in order to get new games. And I'm happy to buy used. I'd be curious to know the first time someone sells/buys a used copy of It's Alive.
Speaking of It's Alive, Reiver Games took 840 copies of the game to Essen and only returned with 4 copies. Yes. He got rid of 836 copies of the game in three days. He sold 158 to passersby, sold 36 to shops, gave away 11 review copies, used 1 copy for demoing, and the remaining 630 copies went to distributors.
Nice work for three days.
Rachel should be landing in Chicago soon with six packages to mail, and they will go out tomorrow (if post offices are open on Halloween) or Monday. She'll be returning with seven new games I ordered and shipped to a friend.
A number of them I sold or gave away in Israel. My games closet looks only packed, rather than overstuffed as it usually does.
I'm a big fan of recycling games. What we don't play, I'm happy to trade or sell, in order to get new games. And I'm happy to buy used. I'd be curious to know the first time someone sells/buys a used copy of It's Alive.
Speaking of It's Alive, Reiver Games took 840 copies of the game to Essen and only returned with 4 copies. Yes. He got rid of 836 copies of the game in three days. He sold 158 to passersby, sold 36 to shops, gave away 11 review copies, used 1 copy for demoing, and the remaining 630 copies went to distributors.
Nice work for three days.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Bloggers and Pundits: Stop Spreading Fear
A campaign must be about issues, not fear. It must be about what some guy or gal is going to do over the next four years.
Instead of comparing the facts about policies and issues, left bloggers spend pages and pages on every gaffe, mistake, bad association, lie, and so on that McCain or Palin does or did.
Instead of comparing the facts about policies and issues, right bloggers spend pages and pages on every gaffe, mistake, bad association, lie, and so on that Obama or Biden does or did.
What the hell is wrong with you people? Of course fear works. People are ignorant and fears prey on them. So do guns, blackmail and bribery. But civilized people are supposed to be above disgusting tactics such as these. If you're smart enough to read and write an opinion, you're smart enough not to resort to one-sided political coverage. You complain about the low level of political discourse, and you're the one continuing it.
In the words of Bob Newhart, Stop It. Just stop it.
Lefties, I can't stand Bush's foreign or domestic policies either, but most people in America aren't yet dead, sick or poor. Four more years of similar policies aren't going to "destroy the country". You may not like McCain's policies. But is he really going to run the country into the ground out of stubbornness? You think he hates America?
McCain is a gentleman and a decent man as far as I can tell. He has political experience - not that experience means much if I don't like the policies that he bases on this experience. When he speaks, he generally exceeds my expectations. I really don't care if he gave political favors to friends of his ten years ago.
Righties, you may not like Obama's policies, but for goodness sake. He's not in league with terrorists, he's not going to drive the country into the ground, and he's not going to let terrorism run wild. He loves America and he supports Israel, just like nearly every other member of the government does.
He has different policies which may not work, but they don't include watching the world go to pieces and doing nothing about it. If things get to crisis levels, even he can change course. I really don't care if he was friends with a Palestinian sympathizer five years ago.
Argue about the issues and elect the one with better policies. Stop harping on their bad friends and colleagues, slipups, mistakes, gaffes, and labels. Sure, most votes are going to be cast because one's black and the other's white, one's a socialist, one's a terrorist, one's an old guy, one's out of touch, one's this, or one's that. That's because most of the people writing or talking about the election are not doing their job.
Instead of comparing the facts about policies and issues, left bloggers spend pages and pages on every gaffe, mistake, bad association, lie, and so on that McCain or Palin does or did.
Instead of comparing the facts about policies and issues, right bloggers spend pages and pages on every gaffe, mistake, bad association, lie, and so on that Obama or Biden does or did.
What the hell is wrong with you people? Of course fear works. People are ignorant and fears prey on them. So do guns, blackmail and bribery. But civilized people are supposed to be above disgusting tactics such as these. If you're smart enough to read and write an opinion, you're smart enough not to resort to one-sided political coverage. You complain about the low level of political discourse, and you're the one continuing it.
In the words of Bob Newhart, Stop It. Just stop it.
Lefties, I can't stand Bush's foreign or domestic policies either, but most people in America aren't yet dead, sick or poor. Four more years of similar policies aren't going to "destroy the country". You may not like McCain's policies. But is he really going to run the country into the ground out of stubbornness? You think he hates America?
McCain is a gentleman and a decent man as far as I can tell. He has political experience - not that experience means much if I don't like the policies that he bases on this experience. When he speaks, he generally exceeds my expectations. I really don't care if he gave political favors to friends of his ten years ago.
Righties, you may not like Obama's policies, but for goodness sake. He's not in league with terrorists, he's not going to drive the country into the ground, and he's not going to let terrorism run wild. He loves America and he supports Israel, just like nearly every other member of the government does.
He has different policies which may not work, but they don't include watching the world go to pieces and doing nothing about it. If things get to crisis levels, even he can change course. I really don't care if he was friends with a Palestinian sympathizer five years ago.
Argue about the issues and elect the one with better policies. Stop harping on their bad friends and colleagues, slipups, mistakes, gaffes, and labels. Sure, most votes are going to be cast because one's black and the other's white, one's a socialist, one's a terrorist, one's an old guy, one's out of touch, one's this, or one's that. That's because most of the people writing or talking about the election are not doing their job.
Session Report, in which we tire of fiddly rules in Power Grid
The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up. Games played: Carcassonne: The City, Power Grid.
First play in a while for C:tC.
First play in a while for C:tC.
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