Following Ari Marmell's lead, I decided to write to some congress-folk. I should have stayed on target, but after midnight, such focus simply is not in my nature. I decided to look around Mark R. Warner's senatorial website and found myself driven to distraction by the misinformation on his "About Virginia" page. Soon, my correction to Warner's " ( Read more... )

Today on Working on it: Things That Have Only Occurred to Me Recently!

It occurred to me recently that, though it's trivially easy to make a Vampire Squid from Hell in Dungeons and Dragons, the resulting creature does not at all resemble the real world animal of the same name.

Have I mentioned that cephalopods are totally rad? And that I am utterly ( Read more... )

I love the winter sky. These were the first constellations and objects I studied, and those that I studied most. Within seconds of stepping outside, I find Orion, pause, and reflect on what I've learned.

To say that I did not always appreciate my knowledge is an understatement; I used to despair that my enjoyment of music would be spoiled by ( Read more... )

Jonah Lehrer's words from Proust Was a Neuroscientist crystallize a dissonance that has been ringing in my brain since high school. Thus, in our culture, we have two epistemological extremes reflexively attacking the other. Postmodernists have ignorantly written off science as nothing but another text, and many scientists have written off the ( Read more... )

First a correction: I mis-remembered how West End Games-style dice pools work last time, and I shouldn't have mentioned them.

I'm having a great Thanksgiving holiday in North-Eastern Pennsylvania, and on top of that I've actually managed to get some stuff done. I've just finished the amazing Why Read by Mark Edmundson, and I'm about half-way ( Read more... )

... through a chance encounter with a former classmate (hi Rowan!) last night that I have talked about educational games and games for children in public, but - with the exception of The Princess Game - they've been entirely absent from this journal. Hopefully, this post should fix that.

The other day Lyle (lyleonline) asked me to help him with an ( Read more... )