The personal blog of Paul Krohn, writing in San Francisco.
Can’t remember why, but something I was reading linked to a creationist web site. I prowled around and found this gem: a book(let) trying to explain away carbon dating, written by a fellow by the name of Mike Riddle.
For starters, “disproving” carbon dating by citing the bible is a bit comic/sad, but if your name is Riddle … you just can’t make this shit up.
While up in Collingwood, we played a lot of Risk, and I even played some poker, which I normally avoid. I’m a pretty risk-averse person, so why do I enjoy Risk?
Obviously, the risk is compartmentalized completely within the game (assuming there is no betting!). So I guess that answers why I am not averse to it.
I think the real reason is that I like what I call “responsive planning”. You have to be able to assess each player’s strength, predict how that strength is likely to change over a few turns, and plan appropriately. You only get a few turns (10 at the max), so you need to make effective use of your opportunities to do something.
Anyway we played about 4 games, all of them “Capital Risk”, two of which I won and one of which I could have won on my next turn, since I had two sets of cards to cash in for troops.
Here I am in usual position, playing black, starting in Australia, and drinking beer.
My friend Dom organized a trip up to Blue Mountain* for a big group and convinced me to try snowboarding. Several things about snowbarding are tue:
He convinced me to buy another friend’s 5×7 pass (at the pre-season price), since I’d be around all week. I don’t think Dom thought about it this way, but this was the perfect storm of irresistibility for me:
He took me out Saturday night for a lesson. The result of this was that, having fallen, fallen, fallen, I was bruised all over and previously unheralded muscles were sore. It mattered not! I went out again Sunday. I learned to go down facing the hill and even tried a few S turns. I still fell, fell, fell on my elbows, tailbone, shoulders, and knees.
I went out again Tuesday, trying to teach Jacquie what I had learned. It didn’t go well, since it was a perfect storm of issues for her:
From this I learned that Dom is a better teacher than me! I’ve also learned that after one’s 39th birthday is perhaps not the time to learn something that involves falling, falling, falling.
I went out again Tuesday, but I discovered I was so sore I had no place left to favour when I fell, so I called it a day after just 2 runs. I’ll call it a success because I tried something new and had some fun and I am pretty sure I’ll recover from all the injuries. W00t! Thanks Dom!
* which is an escarpment and not a mountain, but whatevs