My wife and I are obsessed with different versions of the German game
Carcassonne:
These games require players to establish control over an undefined territory by placing tiles on a flat surface. It is somewhat like the Chinese/Japanese game Go, except that it is less esoteric and philosophical and tries to employ stronger medieval and historical issues about control of resources and balance.
We had been playing the two-player version of
Settlers of Catan, but the games were long and difficult to set up. I bought
Hunters and Gatherers for my wife for Christmas. It has a prehistoric theme in which players compete to complete different landscape features: forests, rivers, meadows. My wife usually focused on completing complex forests while I hope to control the meadows and get a huge payoff at the end of the game. We are about even in out performance.
We recently bought
The Castle. This game has taken over our lives. It is based on developing resources within a fortified medieval enclosure (perhaps something like a city growing within a burh). Whereas players of other versions of
Carcassonne expand the playing space outward, this game is more clautrophobic in that the shape of the playing space is already defined.
BTW, my wife has kicked my ass in every game of
The Castle that we have played.
Posted by:
Nathanael / 4:34 PM :
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Gay Marriage, Federalism and the Cities
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The effort of the city of San Francisco
to hand out marriage licenses to fifty same sex couples reveals a different, unrelated problem of American law and rights. Cities do not have this type of authority, nor do they have any real authority that is not granted to them in law by either the federal government or the state governments. According to SCOTUS (quote in Gerald Frug):
The state ... at its pleasure may modify or withdraw all city powers, may take without compensation city property ... repeal the charter and destroy the corporation. All this may be done, conditionally or unconditionally, with ot without the consent of the citizens, or even against their protest.
Cities have few competencies that are completely their own--even utilities tend to be either semi-private or intergovernmental corporations. Even as the US Constitution grants broad and vague powers to the states (all those not reserved for the federal government), it never mentions urban corporations and constitutions or the rights granted to sub-state territorial actors. American federalism is a limited concept that has little application beyond the relationship between the federal government and the states. Furthermore, American political culture is wary of granting autonomy to communal corporations like cities.
The actions of the San Francisco municipal government are admirable. However, their actions will be too easily appealed without referencing the problem of unequal rights. The
hotel de ville or the
Rathaus, both institutions which have stood as alternative sources of values and authority in Europe, might have the legitimacy to take on the problem of equal rights on their own. But the problem will not be solved by the American city hall.
Posted by:
Nathanael / 11:01 AM :
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Thursday, February 12, 2004
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War on Terror: Aging Cuban Jazzmen are dangerous terrorists?
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Posted by:
Nathanael / 2:16 PM :
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Baby steps toward the Rapid Response Force
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Britain and France have jointly committed 1,500 troops to be deployed within 15 days anywhere in the world. This occurs as the EU is having problems establishing its own force, and NATO is currently under review. (
Reuters article)
Posted by:
Nathanael / 11:04 AM :
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Joe Biden on Foreign/Security Policy in Democratic Party
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Posted by:
Nathanael / 10:59 AM :
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Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Posted by:
Nathanael / 10:20 AM :
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Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Great professor who taught at University of Wisconson:
George Mosse.
Closest relation to go to University of Wisconson:
my dad (medicine).
Future great from University of Wisconson:
the Angry Crafty Girl.
Posted by:
Nathanael / 12:41 PM :
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Sunday, February 08, 2004
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We ought not care about what the intelligence said!
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The news media is coming down hard on Bush jr. because of Kay's conclusion that there exist no WMD in Iraq. To them this represents the failure of Bush policies. I think that it is a little late to point out this failure. The question of the validity of the intelligence could only be proved through invasive measures. What should be it issue is not the validity of the intelligence (or whatever Bush and Cheney did to make it more persuasive). Instead, the patterns of US foreign and military policies must be given greater scrutiny. It is not true that US should not have gone to war because the intelligence was flawed,
but because the non-military remedies had not been exhausted. To focus on the intelligence is a childish way of examing the failures of Bush policies. It puts Bush into a debate about what was known or not known. It is as if we are examining Bush policies on a decision tree--given that we knew A, should we have chosen course of action B or C. This is a debate that Bush might yet win. What must be examined is the entire decision tree.
