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- The Vulturn
chiliad (chill'-ee-add) n.
1: a group of 1,000. 2: millenium [from Greek chilioi
"thousand."]
Indian Runner :|
Intriguing message,
but too chopped up and bloody
once it's delivered.
 
It's a Big Ad
"This game is so simple we couldn't believe it! Draw
one, Play one...Then the rules change. My video game crazed children
LOVE Fluxx. Now when their friends come over they ask to play
Fluxx. What better review is that?? 9, 10 & 11 yrs olds ask
to play cards instead of Playstation!! OH! I haven't seen any
of the children get mad or frustrated when they lose either...the
rules change so quick no one has time to get mad! ;-)" -- L. Kambarn (Chincoteague, VA), commenting
on Fluxx at Amazon.com
   
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A 3-Day Tie-Dye Marathon /
The Lost Pledge |
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 This
weekend, our friend Josh
came to visit, and he had an agenda: Tie-Dying. Alison
and Kristin
have long been wanting to undertake a major Tie-Dye project,
and discussions at Origins
and Dragon*Con
inspired Josh to come visit, with a plan of spending a whole
weekend doing just that.
So, Josh came to town for the weekend, and the 3 of them tie-dyed
non-stop for 3 days. I'm serious, it's ALL they did for 3 days
straight, stopping only to eat and sleep as required. (Well,
OK, we also got in a few games, here and there, including a very
exciting game of Homeworlds.)
Actually, Kristin sneaked off to work
from time to time, but this was made up for by various friends
who dropped in now and then over the course of the weekend, to
join in on the coloring of clothing. As for me, I didn't get
involved with the tie-dye project at all.
Why not? Well, it's not that I don't like tie-dyes -- far
from it, I love them. I wear something tie-dyed almost every
day, and I'm really looking forward to trying out some of this
beautiful new gear. I'm just not into the actual manufacturing
process the way my friends are, much as it seems to be fun for
them. Instead, I squirreled myself away (like the hermit I am
at heart), working on my own projects (mostly my big scrapbook)
while the tie-dye factory took over various rooms of the house
(not to mention the front yard).
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 The
photo above shows Josh displaying one of their new masterpieces,
which they called Alt-Shift-Rainbow, and as you can see from
this second photo, they also tie-dyed a bunch of Martian chessboard
bandanas.
Astute Icehousologists will recall that before we made Alison's
Chessboard Bandana, we made a Martian Chessboard bandana.
It wasn't as fancy as Alison's, but it was specially-designed
to enhance the experience of playing Martian
Chess, since the chessboard was subtlety divided into quadrants.
Unfortunately, the print job was really sloppy - so much so we
decided we really couldn't sell them. Kristin put them in a box
with plans to tie dye them, as a way of covering over the printing
problems. Also, much as we tried to make the Canal marks subtle,
they still proved annoying when you were using these Bandana
for any game other than Martian Chess, hence the redesign during
the new printing.
Now, after years of sitting in a box, waiting for this day,
the original Martian Chessboard Bandanas have now been reborn,
like Phoenixes, in dazzling new colors. The tie-dye crew colorized
44 of these bandanas, and as soon as we figure out how to index
and describe them, we'll be making these bandanas available in
the Dangling
Carrot.
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 In
less happy news, we learned this week that our card printer screwed
up one of the cards in the printing of EcoFluxx.
Sadly, it's one of those really unfortunate errors that suck
but which aren't severe enough to warrant throwing away the print
run and doing it again, so we all just have to live with it.
(But Carta Mundi is doing their best to make amends...)
The card in question is called the Pledge card. One side --
the one shown here -- will appear in the game just as it should.
But the back was supposed to feature a wonderful essay (penned
by Luisa)
called We
Pledge Allegiance to the Earth. (You can read it on the EcoFluxx home
page.) Instead, what this card will have on its back is an ad
for our Mad
Lab Rabbit program, which will also be appearing in the new
edition of Fluxx (version
3.1). The mistake happened because we're printing the two
games in conjunction with each other, and the back plates are
almost -- but not quite -- exactly the same.
OK, so there are worse things that could have accidentally
been printed on the back of the Pledge card, but obviously it's
a major bummer for us that the Pledge will not appear as it should
in the first print run of the game!
So how are we going to fix it? Carta Mundi has agreed to print
up a whole bunch of extra, loose copies of the corrected Pledge
card. They'll make nice little ads for EcoFluxx in their own
way, plus of course we'll be trying to make it possible for anyone
who buys EcoFluxx to get one of these cards as a replacement
for the screwed up one in their deck. We'll be tossing a Pledge
card in with each EcoFluxx deck we sell direct from our website,
and we'll be making them available to our stores in little packets,
for our
retailers to give away to their EcoFluxx-buying customers.
Those who get a deck and later realize they didn't get the replacement
card will be able to request one for free, with a SASE or with
any order from our website. So that's the deal on that.
But the good news is, EcoFluxx is almost done and will be
shipping soon! Yay! Pre-order
your copy today - either from your favorite neighborhood game
store, or from our website.
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 Thanks
for reading, have a great week, and Don't Forget to Play! |
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Here's a phrase I wish people would use more often: "I
was wrong." For me, one of the most annoying things about
President Bush, and many people like him, is his pointed unwillingness
ever to admit a mistake. (His doing so last week regarding Katrina
was a first!) Yet mistakes are one of the most important things
in life: often, the only time we actually learn something is
by making a mistake. So there should be no shame in saying, "Oops,
I made a mistake before, but I've learned from it." And
yet, ego or pride or sheer stupid stubbornness often keep people
-- men usually -- from being willing to say those 3 simple words,
the hearing of which makes all the difference to those who knew
the truth all along. The only thing worse than being unwilling
to admit a mistake is being unwilling to even imagine that what
you earnestly believe is true might actually be completely false.
(This mentality is summed up for me by the expression, "I
may not be right, but I'm sure.") As a scientist,
nothing is more frustrating to me than stubborn unwillingness
to change one's mind about something, be it important or minor,
even in the face of obvious proof to the contrary. I really can't
deal with people like that. |
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"New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable
to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal
government has been working with state and local officials in
the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood
relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May
1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana
Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next 10 years,
the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent
$430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations,
with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial
projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic
Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans
continued to subside. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars
toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide
the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well
as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax
cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles
in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the
cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control
dollars." -- Will Bunch, "Did
New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?" |
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"They didn't listen to the Army Corps of Engineers when
they insisted the levees be reinforced. They didn't listen to
the countless experts who warned this exact disaster scenario
would happen. They didn't listen to years of urgent pleading
by Louisianans about the consequences of wetlands erosion in
the region, which exposed New Orleans and surrounding parishes
to ever-greater wind damage and flooding in a hurricane. They
didn't listen when a disaster simulation just last year showed
that hundreds of thousands of people would be trapped and have
no way to evacuate New Orleans. They didn't listen to those of
us who have long argued that our insane dependence on oil as
our principle energy source, and our refusal to invest in more
efficient engines, left us one big supply disruption away from
skyrocketing gas prices that would ravage family pocketbooks,
stall our economy, bankrupt airlines, and leave us even more
dependent on foreign countries with deep pockets of petroleum.
They didn't listen when Katrina approached the Gulf and every
newspaper in America warned this could be 'The Big One' that
Louisianans had long dreaded. They didn't even abandon their
vacations." -- Senator John
Kerry, speaking at Brown University, September 19, 2005 |
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