Survey: People are Stupid

And neither can CNN.

At least you can always turn to CNN for all of the most important news.



I promise I'll make a real post on this blog soon. =(

Cylons on CNN

Cylons appear to have made the news today. Guess it's just business as usual at CNN.

The US Senate...

... a bastion of positive racial stereotypes. From http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/17/business/aig.php:

"I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed," Mr. Grassley said in the interview. "But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say 'I'm sorry,' and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide."

The Saga Continues

I've got a pair of Chinese Firebelly newts, and the female has just begun laying eggs for the first time. Not sure what it is about our aquariums, but I hope it means we're doing a good job. She's been laying anywhere from 3-10 per day for the past week or so. She does this by folding a leaf over with her hind legs and making a newt-egg-taco. One. Egg. Per. Leaf. She's really finicky about this.

My new tank is still growing in, and she's been doing a real number on the plants, often crushing two leaves for ever egg she lays. I've tried fake plants, strips of plastic, and anything else that I found recommended on line, but she only likes the real deal.

Finally, I plopped some java fern in today--the stuff grows like a weed in our other tanks--and she went to town on it instead of my nice plants. So, crisis *mostly* averted. Now I just need to find someone who wants a bunch of baby newts when they hatch...

See, I'm Not Cutting My Fingers At All!

Does anyone else find Lisa Kudrow to be remarkably creepy in this commercial?

Thebes: Real Archaeology Version

Last night at Peter's birthday party, it seems Jan, Yar, Varun and I unintentionally invented an interesting variant of the board game Thebes that we have named Real Archaeology. To play this variant, simply extend the game one year beyond what is intended for the number of people you're playing with. This year is then spent doing the following:

• Digging in Egypt for 12 weeks and finding nothing but rubble.
• Digging in Crete for 12 weeks, finding nothing but a single broken plate, and getting unduly excited over it.
  
• Going around Europe competing to give talks.
• Stealing grad students that you don't intend to put to work.
• Sitting around reading a lot of books for no real reason than because you have nothing better to do with your time.

We think this must be what Real Archaeology is like.

More Games!

With the highly anticipated Ghost Patrol coming up this weekend, it was quite a pleasant surprise to get an email for a game being planned for Fall 2009. Orange Snood will be running a Muppet Movie game and will be blogging about it. I'm always interested to see how other GCs work and what their philosophies are on various elements of games. Especially after Red's posts on the NMS Forum, I'm very curious to see Orange Snood's approach to games.