Books reviews, current events, and other musings

 
My girlfriend and I played Carcassonne earlier today. We purchased it on a whim several months ago, and it ended up becoming one of our favorite games.

Two to five players take turns drawing a random tile and playing it next to the existing tiles. Each tile contains some combination of cities, roads, farmland, and cloisters. You can optionally claim one of those regions. You score points based on the total size of your cities, the number of cities that your farms support (are adjacent to), and so on. Though the rules are straightforward, there's a lot of room for strategy. Interesting geometric patterns emerge as the game unfolds.

Carcassonne manages, unlike most games, to be both relaxing and engaging. And no, I don't work for Rio Grande Games, the company that sells it.
posted by Julian at 11:48 PM

 
Well, I'm about to send out an email announcing Julian's Jabberings to the world (or at least the portion of the world in my address book). To all of you who are here for the first time... thanks for dropping by, and let me know what catches your eye!
posted by Julian at 9:16 AM

 
An Israeli astronaut poses a question that the Talmud doesn't discuss - when to celebrate the Sabbath in orbit (from Plastic):

Colonel Ilan Ramon, who will become the first Israeli to leave Earth as part of the crew of Columbia in July, has caused consternation among rabbis by asking how -- or more precisely, when -- to mark Judaism's day of rest.
...
Aboard the space shuttle, however, Col. Ramon will orbit the earth every 90 minutes, with each orbit counting technically as a day because from his perspective the sun has risen and set. The stars will be visible to him at all times.

posted by Julian at 8:38 PM

 
According to the UK Guardian, John Ashcroft was negligent in addressing the terrorist threat (from Democratic Underground):

On September 10 last year, the last day of what is now seen as a bygone age of innocence, Mr Ashcroft sent a request for budget increases to the White House. It covered 68 programmes, none of them related to counter-terrorism.

He also sent a memorandum to his heads of departments, stating his seven priorities. Counter-terrorism was not on the list. He turned down an FBI request for hundreds more agents to be assigned to tracking terrorist threats.
...
Mr Ashcroft's agenda comprised "basically violent crime and drugs" and when Mr [outgoing FBI director Louis] Freeh began to talk about his concern about the terrorist threat facing the country, "Ashcroft didn't want to hear about it".

Actually, I don't blame top-level Bush officials for 9/11. A new administration has lots to do, and it's reasonable that a distant potential threat would not be the highest priority. Still, Ashcroft-bashing is always fun.

More significantly, poor decisions by mid-level officials and organizational problems within the intelligence agencies kept the US government from learning enough to prevent the 9/11 attacks. Disregarded reports from agents in the field, weak analysis, and a risk-adverse political culture all got in the way. The New York Times has an excellent article on the subject (registration required).

Now, the best course of action is to investigate what happened and find ways of improving US Intelligence operations. That's what the Democrats, and some Republicans, are advocating. Unfortunately, Dick Cheney lashed out at members of Congress for requesting such an inquiry.


And, on a lighter note, a Japanese researcher built an artificial finger out of candy to fool fingerprint scanners (from Red Rock Digest):

Matsumoto performed his experiments on 11 different biometric fingerprint scanners using a fake finger molded out of gelatin. Matsumoto made a plastic mold of a real finger, and then created the false finger by injecting gelatin into the mold. The gelatin finger was able to gain unauthorized access through the 11 fingerprint scanners about 80 percent of the time...

posted by Julian at 7:52 AM

 
I saw a wonderful movie today: Kissing Jessica Stein. It's a sweet, funny, and witty girl-meets-girl romantic comedy. The characters were three dimensional and the relationship lifecycle was very believable, avoiding the standard cinematic cliches. Interestingly enough, the two lead actresses wrote the script.

The last comedy that I enjoyed so much was Keeping the Faith. There's actually a common thread in both movies... New York Jew finds an amazing shiksa girlfriend.
posted by Julian at 9:14 PM