Comments fixed

Thanks to Clark for pointing out that my comments here weren't working. I've fixed them now, so have at it! You know you've got comments just stored up...

Game review: Swap!

I'm adding a new feature to my blog: game reviews. I'm not a video gamer or role-playing gamer, though, so if you're looking for that, sorry. I'm talking about board games and card games, primarily. Feel free to suggest some of your favorites.

This first review is of Swap! Card Game, by Patch. You can find this game at Wal-Mart for about $4.

Like UNO, the point of Swap! is to get rid of all the cards in your hand. The manufacturer lists it as appropriate for ages 7 and up, but my 5-year-old was able to play without any problems. The only matching to be done is by color; there are no numbers or letters, so no reading is required. There are cards to change colors, and Slap cards where everyone has to slap their hands down quickly, but most importantly, there are cards that require players to swap hands (hence the title). This can change the game rapidly and really levels the playing field, so that children have an equal chance of winning the game. Of course, my children absolutely love it.

A round usually only lasts 5-10 minutes, so it's a quick, inexpensive, and fun family game, especially for families with younger children who know their colors and who can't wait for a chance to beat Mom & Dad. Enjoy!

How to distract your readers

I've been reading Phillip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, and am almost finished with book three, The Dark Design. I completely agree with the reviewers at Amazon.com who comment on Farmer's “asides” that give him a chance to include his own philosophy, thinly disguised as a character's thoughts, dreams, or whatever. The later Terry Goodkind books have the same flaw. So, to you budding writers out there, avoid this error.

But, frankly, even more distracting to me is the ridiculous attempt at multiculturalism (I can only assume) by including most measurements in both English and metric system, or both 12- and 24-hour time. This results in ludicrous phrases like:

Jill had assumed, along with everybody else she knew, that the mountains were from 4564 to 6096 meters high.

What? Nobody assumes such ranges with figures like that. They'd say something like “4500 to 6000 meters [or metres?] high.” Or worse:

On the average, The River was 2.4135 kilometers or a mile and a half wide.

or

The first mate, Tom Rider also known as Tex, stood about 5.08 centimeters or 2 inches shorter than Frigate's 1.8 meters or 6 feet.

About 5.08 centimeters? Are you sure it wasn't about 5.080036 centimeters?

Whatever the merits of inclusivity, this is not one of them. Please, if anyone reading this (is anybody reading this?) is thinking of writing, never, never, never do this.

(That said, I did notice that the Ensign has started including metric system estimates (in parentheses) where relevant. They do a much better job than the above quotes.)

Vote for me!

I've seen lots of discussion about a liberal bias in the media. Well, if they're trying to prop up John Kerry's campaign, either they're doing a lousy job of it, or Kerry has a really lousy campaign.

I have my share of concerns about Bush, but if anybody wants me to vote for them, they better tell me some specifics about their ideas for governing the country, not just tell me how poor a job Bush is doing.

I can say, as well as Kerry does (or maybe better) how Bush didn't act quickly enough, or too quickly, or didn't get enough international support, or is implementing the wrong policies, or isn't implementing intelligence reforms quickly enough, or that I wouldn't have made the same mistakes Bush made. So, why not vote for me?

And what I heard of John Edwards' convention speech wasn't much better. It's nice to hear that we can have affordable health care for everyone, that we can have equal education for everyone, etc., but if you don't tell me how we can, it's just a bunch of hot air.

Give me specifics! The only specifics I've heard were that Edwards was going to pay for everybody's health care and education by making the richest 2% of Americans pay for it. There's got to be more than that.

Community theater

My wife and two oldest boys recently performed in Cross Community Players' Brigadoon. Despite their fears, it turned out to be a really good show. This was the first play for my two oldest (aged 8 and 6), and they had a great experience. I'm very happy that they enjoyed it; I hope that we can make a family tradition out of community theater.

Only problem is, now I have the theater bug worse than I have in the past eight years, since my last community theater play!

There's something about theater, both in terms of performing and watching, that is very different from a movie. There's a connection between audience and performers, and a flow to the performance that really makes a difference.

A little mo life...

Since “real life” has been keeping me so busy, I should surely have something to post on my personal blog, right? I hope to revive this blog and maybe someday even be ready to participate in the Mo Life Blog Club...

Fresh apricots

We just ate our first fresh apricots of the season. Mmmmmm... reminds me of being a teenager and climbing my grandparents' apricot tree in the backyard, eating apricots right off the tree. Hard to beat that.

Wal-mart and digital music

Wal-mart has taken up the second spot in online music sales, after iTunes. One likely reason for this is that they price tracks at 88¢, rather than everyone else's 99¢. The NPR story on Morning Edition today remarked that this is Wal-mart's typical strategy: undercut on price by taking advantage of economies of scale. But how does that apply to digital music? Where are the economies of scale that Wal-mart is taking advantage of that are not available to other online music sellers like iTunes? It seems to me that digital music levels the playing field, so to speak. The overhead of selling and distributing music online includes application development, server hardware, bandwidth, etc., but it's not clear to me how Wal-mart has any advantage there.

Still, I'm glad to see what may be the beginning of price wars among digital music sellers. Like the commentator, I think the sweet spot for me is somewhere around a quarter a track.

Silly language innovations

It seems that one of the driving forces in (American) English public communication is the search for one-word nouns that encapsulate ideas. Unfortunately, this leads to some very silly innovations, like the one I heard on NPR the other day. They were discussing the recent reports of abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and the fact that the military had outsourced interrogation to private contractors. The reasoning behind this outsourcing was not merely financial, the analyst said, but also because the politically-driven desire to be distanced from such unsavory activities. “It's the politics of it,” said the analyst, “It's the optics of it.”

Optics?!? What does the study of the refraction of light have to do with motivation to outsource interrogation?

Yes, I understood what he meant: that it has to do with how such interrogation appears to people -- with how it looks. Some people would say that's sufficient; after all, he chose a term to communicate his meaning and I understood it, and isn't that what communication is all about? True, but there's a lot more to communication than merely conveying a meaning. The words we choose say something about us and our audience, and I'm not sure I like the connotations of his choice to use “optics” to describe this. It's too much PR. I suppose that's only fitting in a culture like ours where optics appearance is everything...

Bush Democrats?

I just finished reading Orson Scott Card's recent essay at The Ornery American (dictionary.com doesn't recognize the “onnery” pronunciation). Last year, Card called himself a “Tony Blair Democrat,” but it seems from his recent essays that he's really a Bush Democrat: socially conservative, fiscally liberal, and a hawk. Bush certainly hasn't been very fiscally conservative in this term (though he may not be spending the money where Card would prefer).

Is there something to the old saw about becoming more conservative as you grow older?