Eh, Fluxx isn't bad, but there are better games out there, especially since they made it so symmetric, so there's virtually no strategey involved.
Looney Labs also makes a game called Chrononaughts, where you have to go back in time, change events, and patch the resulting paradoxes so that you achieve your goals (some of which are randomly assigned and secret). It takes a bit of space to spread out, but how can you beat shooting Hitler, unkilling him, and then killing him again?
I've played a good number of cheapass games. They're fun, but I've gotten the most use out of them in the interval between ordering food and recieving it at restaurants.
I'd reccomend "Give me the brain". Note that is it mandatory, when bidding for the brain (there is only one brain at Frieday's, Fast Food Restaurant of the Dammed, to pass around between all of the zombies) to read the card out loud in an appropriate voice.
"Gibe me da bwain! My tung is stuck in the fleeza!"
(give me the brain! my tounge is stuck in the freezer!)
I have to agree, it's a very good game. Then again, I'm a real fan of Kniza's games (the designer). Like most of his games, I found this one to have a small number of rules which seem rather strange when you're reading them, but which make perfect sense when you start to play.
Other Kniza games I'd reccomend: * Through the Desert (think multiplayer Go, but this may be quite hard to find, as I don't believe it's been reprinted yet) * Samurai * Schotten Totten/Battle Line (two player card games, and quite portable. I'm not sure if they're currently in print, but they're easy to make with two decks of cards) * Tigris & Euphrates
Some other good games which would work well as gifts: * Lost Cities (2 player card game, simple but addictive) * Guillotine (multiplayer card game where you get to collect the heads of French nobility. funny and silly, even my mother likes it) * Bohnanza (great card game I've found works well with non-gamers. being cooperative is good strategey, and the cards are cute) * Warhamster rally (hamsters!) * San Juan (reasonably simple and quite fun) * El Grande (this is more complex, but easy to learn and play)
This is just a short list based on what I have in front of me. If I were looking for gifts for people who don't play games regularly, I'd have to look at www.boardgamegeek.com for ratings, and start by looking at Bohnanza and Lost Cities. If you want a party game, try Apples to Apples.
I'd also be curious as to whether it includes such costs as increased road maintenance from increased car traffic/accidents, welfare for people who can't get to work without the bus, etc. There are a lot of external costs to driving, and a lot of external benefits to public transit which are quite difficult to account for.
Engagement in one's community is also something to be desired, and the ability for disabled, elderly, and injured people to retain some level of autonomy without driving. Many elderly drivers scare me, because of their slow reflexes and comprimised eyesight. I'm quite happy that they can ride the busses around where I live, instead of driving over me in crosswalks.
Most states in the US also have good samaritan laws. Nevada is (or was, a few years ago) an exception.
(A student at UC Berkeley was in Reno with his friend. He saw his friend lure an 8-year-old girl into a men's bathroom, where the friend raped and killed her. This student would be charged under the good samaritan law in most states, but not in Nevada. There were quite a few protests aimed at getting Berkeley to dismiss him.)
> because it kills innocent gobs of discarded embryos
I have been trying to read all the information I can find about the Bhopal disaster in the last few days, so I found this comment of yours (sarcasm about opposition to stem-cell research) rather eerie.
One of the effects of the gas was to cause spontaneous abortion. We're not talking "the embro died of exposure". We're talking "running away from the gas and blood and the embryo come rushing out while you're running". I'd rate that as rather horrific, myself. In addition, there has been a wave of reproductive disorders and severe birth defects.
This must never happen again. Safety features need to be at the base of design and operation, and people must be held criminally liable for negligance.
Google pointed me at quite a few sites when I looked around. This one gives an overview of why they do not believe the US gave reasonable grounds. (It came up #1 in google.)
When one buys a company, one buys its liabilities along with its assets. If it were otherwise, I bet that certain companies would play fun shell games:
1. run up debt 2. make another company 3. buy the first company for a pittance 4. stick tongue out at debtholders 5. profit!
I'm sorry, Union Carbide owned 51%, and the Indian government owned 26%. The union carbide site, bhopal.com, even says so.
I've read that the refrigerant safety system (meant to slow/stop the chemical reaction that takes place if water gets into the storage tank) had been shut down and the freon shipped TO ANOTHER PLANT. That wasn't the act of a disgruntled employee, that was management.
It surely could. It's slightly less likely, just due to the mechanics of the situation. It's probably also less likely due to the power relationships that exist between the genders in many areas where HIV infections are widespread. For example, the UN has suggested in the last few weeks that a major problem which needs to be addressed to check HIV is making sure that women have the ability to say "no" to sex.
Nick (the grandparent poster) has actually been at Berkeley since his undergrad. (Hi, Nick!)
Now, one of those lovely things about going to a research university as an undergrad is you have a lot of opportunities to do cool and interesting things. There are a lot of professors, and they're a) thrilled to talk about their research and b) would just love to have you work on something with them. I would say this is the #1 benefit you're going to be able to get out of a big-name school (as they're generally big-name because of research, at least in CS).
As a grad student, getting a degree from a good university matters insofar as it affects who you have as an advisor and who you work with. (It also may affect your funding situation, and lack of funding can keep you from doing Real Work, but I can't really speak to that.) Working with smart, competent people with interesting ideas is a huge leg up in getting cool, interesting things done. Guess what people hire PhDs on: 1. what they've done (published); 2. good reccomendations for good people. The reputation of the school is important insofar as it's generally a place with good people.
So I can't speak to whether going to Berkeley affected his opinion, but I don't think it did in the way that you're implying.
some of us here really do do computer science. I'm willing to bet that computer scientists make your life easier, faster, and better. I didn't want a computer engineering degree, which is why I got one in computer science. I can tell you that math and theory are much more helpful to cryptographers, thank you very much.
No offense, but don't forget that there are people doing all sorts of things out there.
> Now, if you want to design a relational database server, compiler, or OS, you better get some real computer scientists with big-name credentials.
At least according to the prof I took graduate databases from, database management systems have become sufficiently complex that optimizing them really requires a PhD in the field. Improving them, doubly so. I don't work in that field, but I can certainly believe it. AIRES is a pain in the butt, enforcing different levels of concurrency control while speeding everything up is also a pain, and I'm not even going to think about distributed databases.
At a certain point in everything, more math and more rigorous theory is going to help everything you want to do.:)
I found that making those relationships at a quite large school was more than possible. Now that I'm a PhD student, I feel qualified to say why I found it easy: I asked profs about their research. I asked good, sincere questions, and thought about the answers. Researchers are suckers for this; we spend so much time thinking about things, we want to tell everyone else how incredbily cool our little corner of the universe is.
In general, I believe that schools (in the US, at least) do a terrible job of teaching critical thinking and logic. It's only taught in math classes now, and they're turning math into an incredibly boring exercise in number crunching. Even lower-division math (at least at Berkeley) was mostly like this.
It's an incredibly valuable skill for EVERYONE, not just mathematicians.
Discrete math, as I've encountered it, has meant combinatorics, algebra, and graph theory, mainly. It tends to concentrate on countable sets, and objects built from them; real numbers are generally not included.
I'd really love to know how a 3rd party can give tests for many PhD classes. Some of them are based on pretty cutting-edge research, and change depending on the whims of the people teaching them. I'm not saying this is bad. I'm just saying that testing would be hard to do. Visual and performing arts classes might also be very time-consuming to judge by 3rd parties.
Keeping kids under 18 from working can also remove some rather nice internships they can have. I'm assuming anything unpaid would be excempted, though, and all of this stuff would revert to unpaid work.
However, there are kids working to support their families now. Solving the problem that kids need to work to support their families is the job of the social safety net (and labor laws). I'm not sure how banning them from doing this will help them focus on school. The consequences from their parents not being able to make ends meet will probably be at least as bad as working, and they'd almost certainly work under the table. I'm not saying I can solve this, or that it isn't a problem now, I'm just saying that banning kids from working misses the point.
There was a vote, and it wasn't moved, but it may be in the future. The other visa issue that was being considered is that it's very hard for academics with visas to leave the US for conferences. My advisor actually had to miss a conference where we had two papers and she was on the program committe because of this. It's quite a mess.
There have been a good number of students barred from reentering the US for 6-9 months while their visas were re-evaluated. (Keep in mind that everyone has to go home once a year to reapply in their own country.)
I was at CRYPTO this year (a top-flight crypto conference, held every year at UCSB in california). A student's visa to come into the country to present her own paper was held up so long she couldn't even make it to the conference. Why? Because crypto is apparently threatening, even when it's publically available crypto. (This being the purpose of the conference, after all.)
Slashdot Mirror
If I remember correctly, The Castle is a 2-player standalone game in the Carcasonne family, designed by Renier Kniza.
Carcasonne + expansion is good and non-confusing. The original set isn't as well balanced, I agree.
Lea
Eh, Fluxx isn't bad, but there are better games out there, especially since they made it so symmetric, so there's virtually no strategey involved.
Looney Labs also makes a game called Chrononaughts, where you have to go back in time, change events, and patch the resulting paradoxes so that you achieve your goals (some of which are randomly assigned and secret). It takes a bit of space to spread out, but how can you beat shooting Hitler, unkilling him, and then killing him again?
Lea
I've played a good number of cheapass games. They're fun, but I've gotten the most use out of them in the interval between ordering food and recieving it at restaurants.
I'd reccomend "Give me the brain". Note that is it mandatory, when bidding for the brain (there is only one brain at Frieday's, Fast Food Restaurant of the Dammed, to pass around between all of the zombies) to read the card out loud in an appropriate voice.
"Gibe me da bwain! My tung is stuck in the fleeza!"
(give me the brain! my tounge is stuck in the freezer!)
Lea
I have to agree, it's a very good game. Then again, I'm a real fan of Kniza's games (the designer). Like most of his games, I found this one to have a small number of rules which seem rather strange when you're reading them, but which make perfect sense when you start to play.
Other Kniza games I'd reccomend:
* Through the Desert (think multiplayer Go, but this may be quite hard to find, as I don't believe it's been reprinted yet)
* Samurai
* Schotten Totten/Battle Line (two player card games, and quite portable. I'm not sure if they're currently in print, but they're easy to make with two decks of cards)
* Tigris & Euphrates
Some other good games which would work well as gifts:
* Lost Cities (2 player card game, simple but addictive)
* Guillotine (multiplayer card game where you get to collect the heads of French nobility. funny and silly, even my mother likes it)
* Bohnanza (great card game I've found works well with non-gamers. being cooperative is good strategey, and the cards are cute)
* Warhamster rally (hamsters!)
* San Juan (reasonably simple and quite fun)
* El Grande (this is more complex, but easy to learn and play)
This is just a short list based on what I have in front of me. If I were looking for gifts for people who don't play games regularly, I'd have to look at www.boardgamegeek.com for ratings, and start by looking at Bohnanza and Lost Cities. If you want a party game, try Apples to Apples.
Lea
Let me tell you, shopping is much harder. Let's do cryptography!
Lea
I'd also be curious as to whether it includes such costs as increased road maintenance from increased car traffic/accidents, welfare for people who can't get to work without the bus, etc. There are a lot of external costs to driving, and a lot of external benefits to public transit which are quite difficult to account for.
Engagement in one's community is also something to be desired, and the ability for disabled, elderly, and injured people to retain some level of autonomy without driving. Many elderly drivers scare me, because of their slow reflexes and comprimised eyesight. I'm quite happy that they can ride the busses around where I live, instead of driving over me in crosswalks.
Lea
>5 years of care is no small thing though, regardless of how much it costs
For people who have been disabled for life, it's helpful, but rather insufficient.
Lea
Most states in the US also have good samaritan laws. Nevada is (or was, a few years ago) an exception.
(A student at UC Berkeley was in Reno with his friend. He saw his friend lure an 8-year-old girl into a men's bathroom, where the friend raped and killed her. This student would be charged under the good samaritan law in most states, but not in Nevada. There were quite a few protests aimed at getting Berkeley to dismiss him.)
Lea
In the US military, I am told one has a responsibility not to carry out illegal orders. However, it still might get you shot.
Lea
> because it kills innocent gobs of discarded embryos
I have been trying to read all the information I can find about the Bhopal disaster in the last few days, so I found this comment of yours (sarcasm about opposition to stem-cell research) rather eerie.
One of the effects of the gas was to cause spontaneous abortion. We're not talking "the embro died of exposure". We're talking "running away from the gas and blood and the embryo come rushing out while you're running". I'd rate that as rather horrific, myself. In addition, there has been a wave of reproductive disorders and severe birth defects.
This must never happen again. Safety features need to be at the base of design and operation, and people must be held criminally liable for negligance.
Lea
Google pointed me at quite a few sites when I looked around. This one gives an overview of why they do not believe the US gave reasonable grounds. (It came up #1 in google.)
0 38 11000.htm
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2120/stories/200410080
When one buys a company, one buys its liabilities along with its assets. If it were otherwise, I bet that certain companies would play fun shell games:
1. run up debt
2. make another company
3. buy the first company for a pittance
4. stick tongue out at debtholders
5. profit!
Lea
I'm sorry, Union Carbide owned 51%, and the Indian government owned 26%. The union carbide site, bhopal.com, even says so.
I've read that the refrigerant safety system (meant to slow/stop the chemical reaction that takes place if water gets into the storage tank) had been shut down and the freon shipped TO ANOTHER PLANT. That wasn't the act of a disgruntled employee, that was management.
Lea
It has been claimed on some Bhopal-related sites that that is enough for 5 years of medical care.
Lea
It surely could. It's slightly less likely, just due to the mechanics of the situation. It's probably also less likely due to the power relationships that exist between the genders in many areas where HIV infections are widespread. For example, the UN has suggested in the last few weeks that a major problem which needs to be addressed to check HIV is making sure that women have the ability to say "no" to sex.
Lea
Nick (the grandparent poster) has actually been at Berkeley since his undergrad. (Hi, Nick!)
Now, one of those lovely things about going to a research university as an undergrad is you have a lot of opportunities to do cool and interesting things. There are a lot of professors, and they're a) thrilled to talk about their research and b) would just love to have you work on something with them. I would say this is the #1 benefit you're going to be able to get out of a big-name school (as they're generally big-name because of research, at least in CS).
As a grad student, getting a degree from a good university matters insofar as it affects who you have as an advisor and who you work with. (It also may affect your funding situation, and lack of funding can keep you from doing Real Work, but I can't really speak to that.) Working with smart, competent people with interesting ideas is a huge leg up in getting cool, interesting things done. Guess what people hire PhDs on: 1. what they've done (published); 2. good reccomendations for good people. The reputation of the school is important insofar as it's generally a place with good people.
So I can't speak to whether going to Berkeley affected his opinion, but I don't think it did in the way that you're implying.
Lea
*cough*
some of us here really do do computer science. I'm willing to bet that computer scientists make your life easier, faster, and better. I didn't want a computer engineering degree, which is why I got one in computer science. I can tell you that math and theory are much more helpful to cryptographers, thank you very much.
No offense, but don't forget that there are people doing all sorts of things out there.
Lea
> Now, if you want to design a relational database server, compiler, or OS, you better get some real computer scientists with big-name credentials.
:)
At least according to the prof I took graduate databases from, database management systems have become sufficiently complex that optimizing them really requires a PhD in the field. Improving them, doubly so. I don't work in that field, but I can certainly believe it. AIRES is a pain in the butt, enforcing different levels of concurrency control while speeding everything up is also a pain, and I'm not even going to think about distributed databases.
At a certain point in everything, more math and more rigorous theory is going to help everything you want to do.
Lea
I found that making those relationships at a quite large school was more than possible. Now that I'm a PhD student, I feel qualified to say why I found it easy: I asked profs about their research. I asked good, sincere questions, and thought about the answers. Researchers are suckers for this; we spend so much time thinking about things, we want to tell everyone else how incredbily cool our little corner of the universe is.
:)
It's really worth a try.
Lea
In general, I believe that schools (in the US, at least) do a terrible job of teaching critical thinking and logic. It's only taught in math classes now, and they're turning math into an incredibly boring exercise in number crunching. Even lower-division math (at least at Berkeley) was mostly like this.
It's an incredibly valuable skill for EVERYONE, not just mathematicians.
Lea
Discrete math, as I've encountered it, has meant combinatorics, algebra, and graph theory, mainly. It tends to concentrate on countable sets, and objects built from them; real numbers are generally not included.
Lea
I'd really love to know how a 3rd party can give tests for many PhD classes. Some of them are based on pretty cutting-edge research, and change depending on the whims of the people teaching them. I'm not saying this is bad. I'm just saying that testing would be hard to do. Visual and performing arts classes might also be very time-consuming to judge by 3rd parties.
Keeping kids under 18 from working can also remove some rather nice internships they can have. I'm assuming anything unpaid would be excempted, though, and all of this stuff would revert to unpaid work.
However, there are kids working to support their families now. Solving the problem that kids need to work to support their families is the job of the social safety net (and labor laws). I'm not sure how banning them from doing this will help them focus on school. The consequences from their parents not being able to make ends meet will probably be at least as bad as working, and they'd almost certainly work under the table. I'm not saying I can solve this, or that it isn't a problem now, I'm just saying that banning kids from working misses the point.
Lea
There was a vote, and it wasn't moved, but it may be in the future. The other visa issue that was being considered is that it's very hard for academics with visas to leave the US for conferences. My advisor actually had to miss a conference where we had two papers and she was on the program committe because of this. It's quite a mess.
Lea
There have been a good number of students barred from reentering the US for 6-9 months while their visas were re-evaluated. (Keep in mind that everyone has to go home once a year to reapply in their own country.)
I was at CRYPTO this year (a top-flight crypto conference, held every year at UCSB in california). A student's visa to come into the country to present her own paper was held up so long she couldn't even make it to the conference. Why? Because crypto is apparently threatening, even when it's publically available crypto. (This being the purpose of the conference, after all.)
Lea
Try reading /Eats, Shoots & Leaves/.
5 92 400876/qid=1101790298/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-5435 784-4225553?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1
Lea