From the latest issue of Scientific American:

by way of anneball

Okay,We Give Up
From the Editors

There’s no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don’t mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there’s no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.

In retrospect, this magazine’s coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence. ( Read more... )

Drinking Scrabble

(personally, I prefer strip Scrabble)

Scrabble With a Nuanced Twist
Wet Hot American, By Nick Summers
October 22, 2004

I first learned about the history of Scrabble from the excellent 2002 book Word Freak, the story of a Wall Street Journal sports writer who took a year off to play the game competitively. The book describes how Alfred Butts meticulously invented the details of Scrabble, counting letters on the front page of The New York Times to get an accurate alphabet distribution, agonizing over blank tiles, arranging bonus squares just so. You come away with the impression that the game is perfect--incapable of improvement. But I've never had great respect for the status quo, so on Wednesday night I set out to add to Scrabble a little je ne sais quoi, which is French for "alcohol."

Drinking Scrabble is just like regular Scrabble, except it gets harder to play well as the game goes on, so your turns devolve from OXIDIZE and ZEPHYR to RAT. My friend James, aka Spectator's real editor, accepted my challenge. We'd played once before, a total barn-burner that he took, 376-312, on the strength of a single seven-letter play. We're both serious Scrabble nerds--the board had been dense with obnoxious two-letter plays like AE and NE.

The tactics Wednesday night were, uh, not so nuanced. Part of the problem was that we started the game at 1:30 in the morning, after Game 7 of Yanks-Sox, so even going in we weren't the picture of sobriety. We hammered out the rules: take the other guy's score for each turn, halve it, and drink that many sips of beer. Bingos and triple-word scores were worth a shot each. Our friends left to go out to the bar like normal people, and we sat down for a game that would make Alfred Butts spin, like my deluxe rotating board, in his grave.( Read more... )

It's safe to call Drinking Scrabble the single worst idea I have ever had. I can think of nothing redeeming about the experience. I don't think I've been this upset about the game since the time my mom challenged SPAGHETTO (n., singular) off the board and I didn't speak to her for two days.

Alfred Butts knew what he was doing. Next week in Wet Hot American: games you can play in church.

license plate bingo

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/64077343.html

In other news, I've set the thermostat to 63 during the day, since no one is home. Except that I have it set to go back up to normal temps at 5, and I keep getting home before then, and wondering why my feet are so cold. Brr.