Christmas family gaming season begins!

We played a card game called "500" tonight. It's a bit like bridge, but simpler -- two sets of partners bid on how many tricks they can take. First pair to 500 points wins.

Final score: children, 630; parents, -180. Whoo! Who knows what will happen next time? Also, who knows what our next game will be!

E. holds that we should develop a cross-game scoring system to tally total Game Points earned over the course of the holiday season. Such a system could potentially scale the points accrued in a game to correspond to the length of time spent in-game. (Rank matters, not in-game points.) That way, the points accrued from winning a game of Risk would be roughly twice those from winning Settlers of Catan and the winning player/coalition in Diplomacy would likely rake in at least twice again as many points. Although many different aspects of a cross-game scoring system are potentially interesting, we have settled on a relatively simple one which encourages both lengthy and social gameplay.

In this metric, tonight's game wins 2 point-hours each for L. and E., 1 point-hour each for M. and D., and 0 point-hours for A. (who was not playing). So participation is slightly rewarded. Winning a game of 6 individual players earns a lot more points than winning a two-player game of the same length.

Current vacation Game Point tally:
D. 1
M. 1
L. 2
E. 2
A. 0
[everyone else] 0

Grilled piglet van

I saw this van whilst walking in Brno and took a picture, sure that its text could only enhance the illustrations: a chef at a barbecue, a pig, and a stein of beer.
I was right. According to Google, the van advertises "piglets grilled to order," a "year-round garden," and that the Grilled Piglet Van does "celebrations and banquets." How excellent! I wonder if grilled piglets taste different than grilled pigs...

How does a blender work?

"How does a blender work?" is the thinly-constructed "motivation" for another lovely application of high-speed video cameras. If we ask a question, then setting things on fire is science!

Slow motion: bullets through candy

The Discovery Channel video podcast is sometimes so cool. They can afford the nice, expensive cameras to shoot this:


I am impressed that the sharpshooter can hit a candy that is smaller than the bullet.

Hunter S. Thompson

I've wondered if Hunter S. Thompson is accurately represented in the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Here are some youtube videos of Johnny Depp reading letters from his correspondence with Hunter S. Thompson: 1, 2, 3. In particular, Mr. Depp admits,

If I do a remotely decent job of portraying you, you know there’s a very good chance you’ll hate me for the rest of your life.

Here is an interview that youtube suggested I watch after these videos: Hunter S. Thompson and David Letterman (1988).

I am astonished at the degree of faithfulness that Johnny Depp achieved with his performance. And I hope that Hunter S. Thompson does not hate it.