Top Ten Lies For Your Next Dinner Gathering

Hopefully to be quoted on Snopes some day ...

1. The word "sex" when used for the activity is actually a short form of the term "sexual intercourse", and as such, properly requires a period when used in a sentence (e.g. "they had sex. in the back seat.") "Sex" without a period refers to gender, or sexual characteristics.

2. The number one cause of injuries for teenagers in the U.S. is due to skateboarding; and actually it's the bystanders who are most often injured in these types of accidents.

3. The number of people on the planet is exponentially growing, and as more humans drink more water, more of it is returned to the environment as urine, which ends up evaporating (with impurities) and then raining down into our water supply. In this way, our fresh water supply is getting saltier with each passing year.

4. The two most popular street names in the world are "Main Street", and "Chang Street"; yet, there are no cities or towns in the world that contain both of these street names.

5. If you cut two parts of your body (such as thumb and forefinger) and then hold them together for a long time (a few days), the skin from each part will eventually grow together into a seamless whole. This was a common practice of the Mayan people.

6. The United States Dairy Association (USDA) and the United States Beef Corporation (USBC) have a long history of feuding. During the Great Depression, the president had to hammer out an agreement to help decide the percentage of cows that each side would be able to use. This agreement still governs both industries today.

7. The old joke about asking God to win the lottery, only to be told by God, "Help me out; buy a ticket," is actually misleading. In the history of the lottery, more people who won the lottery were given or found the ticket than those who bought tickets for themselves. So the fact is: you have better chances of winning the lottery not buying a ticket than you do buying one!

8. Dogs can't get rust poisoning, but they can pass it on to humans.

9. More people watch The Daily Show each night than have watched every other television program, combined, from 1920 until 1996. As a result, Jon Stewart now makes $1,500,000 an episode.

10. A report by Pew Internet Research on ten thousand blog articles found that %92.3 of them contained misinformation, errors, or complete fabrications. The percent for ten thousand mainstream news articles on the same subjects was %89.4 .

Yehuda

Beyonce Got Game

In the very important world of celebrities and their board games, Beyonce bares all about her meeple-lust:

"My favourite game is Guess Who. It's like charades and I love Connect Four. I'm really good at it." "I swear, I could kick anyone's a** at Connect Four."

I didn't get to game this this weekend, but that doesn't mean that games made no appearance in my life.

On Friday evening, after I returned from dinner, we hosted some friends for a Tu B'Shvat seder, which is a meandering Hassidic custom about fruits, trees, and wine. This bored me until I brought out the only thing we had that could represent barley to the table, namely the remains of an awesome bottle of scotch. The evening picked up from then on.

Meanwhile, one of the guests are my friends with two kids, said kids who own a stack of games in the living room and always play, but have never played anything good. I took advantage of their being in my house to introduce them to Betsy, my game cabinet. I taught them Yinsh, and the two kids, a girl around 13 and a boy around 11 sat down to play on the living-room floor behind us.

They made it through one and a quarter game. Throughout the game, even though the rules are not that complicated, the boy kept complaining that the girl was cheating whenever she made a legal play. Either he didn't like the play, or he was unable to grasp the full implication of how to play. He kept trying to move rings without placing the disks, jump rings, and all sorts of other things that you can't do. And all the while, accused her of cheating.

Naturally, the girl won, and though she made a game attempt to try another game with him, she had to abandon it when he became more vociferous. But she liked the game, and her parents, who had kept half an eyeball on the goings-on, gave some indication that they may be interested in picking the game up.

After a game with rules didn't work, I tried to interest them in Zero-In, which is simply a bunch of cards where you guess a celebrity's name from a series of clues and an extraneous set of rules, but they couldn't cooperate enough to try again.


Nevertheless, I heard many interesting things, and thought many interesting thoughts over shabbat, about winning and politics and law, and about evil and god, some of which may turn up in future posts. Regarding the latter (evil and god), I will simply quote Levinas for now: "Ontological absence means ethical presence".


Many sites cover the World of Warcraft board game expansion. Just so you know, I often don't bother to cover news items that are extensively covered on other sites.

Both Chris Bateman (on "logistical play") and Bernie DeKoven tackle competition and challenge, as does the mainstream press icWales, the latter of which asserts that competition in childhood can lead to a wealthier life.

Yehuda

January Gaming at the JSGC

These games were played at the Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club last month. As usual, the list does not include games that I personally played outside the club.

Amun Re - While I no longer have a copy, some of the members do. This remains a favorite of the group. I also enjoy it, although as a second tier, not a first tier, gaming experience.

Bridge - The classic card game. We'll still be playing this, probably unchanged, in a hundred years.

Caylus x 3 - I finally hit my limit with this one. It was always annoyingly too long for me, but this time I got fed up with its length and fiddliness. Others still enjoy it.

Children of Fire: the Board Game x 2 - A nice blind-bidding area control game with pretty design and elegant play, but with a few end-game flaws. The game needs a turn limit, and possibly some changes to the scoring structure.

Cosmic Encounter - A classic game of alliances and wild mind-bending fun.

El Grande - An excellent area-control bidding game.

Feurio - An awful excuse for a game, with one good mechanism. I apologize to the designer, but that's our experience.

For Sale - Bugs me, but I will bring this out as a very quick light introductory game for any group of 3 to 6. A bit more luck than I like in a game, but no denying its elegance and appeal.

Go - The best two-player abstract game for four thousand years, and for a reason.

Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation - A Stratego-like game that is thematic and fun.

Lost Cities - Many other groups seem to think this is a great two-player intro card game, but so far our reaction has been "eh."

Magic: The Gathering - A modern classic game design, the collectible card game. Always enjoyable.

The Menorah Game x 3 - My own game design, we tried a few variants to the tile distribution for more players and weren't happy with it. Still best 3 to 4 players. I have a few copies of the prototype left to sell.

Metro - A light game which I didn't get to play, but understand that it's ok.

Mykerinos x 2 - A nice mid-length area-control game. Remains to be seen how it holds up.

Netrunner x 2 - The second CCG I've played (the first was Magic). I've played twice so far, still don't fully grasp the rules, and I love it.

Palazzo - Supposed to be a better version of Alhambra, which doesn't say much, and it isn't much. It's ok.

Poker - Those who like this sort of thing already know what it is.

Power Grid - A great heavy game, even for new players, although a bit high on the math at the end-game. Also sometimes hard to catch up. But always interesting. Five players may be too many, six definitely is.

Princes of Florence x 2 - An excellent sedate game of calculations, auctions, and planning. Our quietest heavy game. Seems to get better with time, oddly enough, although it could use an expansion (I created one on BGG).

Puerto Rico x 2 - Still the number one board game, a great experience every time (except with five very slow players).

Saboteur - a light filler game for 3 to 10, it seems fun. The game is unbalanced with too many or too few saboteurs, however.

San Juan - A nice mid length filler for 2 to 4, although not much new after a hundred plays.

Santiago x 2 - Still an excellent auction game, very elegant with a bit of math near the end (but less than Power Grid).

Settlers of Catan - The best introductory game, still. People sometimes outgrow it, but that's fine.

Tichu x 4 - A very nice partnership game alternative to Bridge, much less deep.

Wall of China - I didn't see this, so I can't comment. It was well received.

Wildlife x 3 - A nice heavy mid-to-heavy game, but five or six players is too many.

Yinsh - A very nice two-player abstract.


Yehuda

XBox, Settlers, Ho Hum

Old news, really. Check out the screen shots in the mainstream press, if you like.

Project Goldfish presents Perilous Gateways, another entry into the grand epic starship -based combat board games. And they're looking for designers to help them draw the ships and aliens (commission based pay).

If work and games isn't your thing, how about education and games? Apparently, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet ponied up a million dollars to teach Bridge in middle schools in Winston-Salem. A million bucks to teach Bridge???

In India, the National Institute of Design is offering a two-and-a-half-year degree in toy and/or game design.

And in The Mayor of Casterbridge dept, a man bet his wife in a card game and lost, prompting the wife to divorce him and leave with the winner.

Yehuda

Make Phone Calls Right From Your Telephone!

That's right! Now you can call anywhere in the world right from your telephone!

And it's easy, too. Just pick up the handset, enter the phone number of the person you're calling, and you're connected, just like a real telephone call! It's cheap, and it doesn't require any fancy computer hardware or special peripherals, just an ordinary telephone that you can buy for less than ten dollars.


And the latest in my technology products gets even more unbelievable!

- Add color pictures to any size or shape of piece of paper for pennies!

- Store, edit, and erase personal phone numbers and addresses in something the size of your pocket that doesn't need any batteries or recharging!

- Take pictures of up to fifty million pixels with a camera that costs less than an optical mouse!

Send $2.50 for a product catalog.

Yehuda

More Blogger woes, and Ryanair

Blogger Woes

I am more and more amazed that this thing is out of Beta.

Dozens of times yesterday and today I've been getting access errors when trying to access pages on my blog. The latest error page includes a "code":

We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

When reporting this error to Blogger Support or on the Blogger Help Group, please:

* Describe what you were doing when you got this error.
* Provide the following error code and additional information.

[[[code]]]

Additional information
uri: [[[uri]]]
host: jergames.blogspot.com

This information will help us to track down your specific problem and fix it! We apologize for the inconvenience.

How long is this going to go on? Anyone else having these problems?

RyanAir

As long as I'm on the subject of things I can't believe, someone tell me how Ryanair can offer flights from London to Glasgow for 79 pence. Yes, that's right, not pounds, but pence.

OK, I get that they don't pay air ticket printing costs, credit card fees, advertising, and so on. I get that they charge you for luggage and food. I get that it doesn't include all mandatory taxes and so on which run about 35 pounds. I get that they use cheaper and more inconvenient airports.

But they have to pay for airplanes, maintenance, parts, fuel, staff, service, rent, and branding, don't they? Do so many people pay for extras such as luggage, changing ticket times, late booking, or sandwiches that they can make up the difference?

Seems batty to me. Yet their safety record and service is supposed to be as good or better than regular airlines.

Tu B'Shvat

This shabbat is Tu B'Shvat, one of the four "new years" in the Jewish tradition. This one is the new year for trees and produce, so all the supermarkets in Israel have changed their usual displays of cheap cakes and wafers to nuts and dried fruit.

Some people like to do a Tu B'Shvat "seder", sort of like a Passover seder, where they introduce all of these nuts and fruits and carry on about the land overflowing with milk and honey and so on.

I made brownies.

Yehuda
Causing confusion is a goal, not a side-effect.

Session Report Up, in which we get a new American visitor

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up here. Games played: The Menorah Game, For Sale, Go, Wall of China, Mykerinos, El Grande, Santiago, Cosmic Encounter.

I will be moving my session reports to a new blog, and dumping freewebs eventually, I guess.

As others have pointed out, the Economist does another article on computers, AI, and Go.

Yehuda