I had previously been under the impression that one of the pivotal characters was a child (of perhaps nine or ten), not an eighteen-year-old. I found that this affected my enjoyment of the story; the character makes a mistake with consequences (not following directions, in a really big way), and when I thought those mistakes were being made by a child I had more sympathy. As it is, it's hard for me to really appreciate this character's angst. The story is also somewhat a product of its time (the 50s); the other main character makes a point of saying he would have handled things differently if it had been a "man". (Aside: she's a "girl".) It's still a good story, but I liked it better with my mistaken impressions. :-)

There was a Twilight Zone episode based on the story (the series from about a decade ago, which I mostly missed due to not having the right cable channels available). I'd kind of like to see that.

ralphmelton

mrpeck

I had a lot of fun playing. I also learned a valuable lesson about rule construction: that the rule-maker thinks it might be too easy does not make it so. Ok, next time I will not construct a rule based on primary versus non-primary colors... oops. :-) (At one point Ralph guessed a rule that could have been correct, but for one counter-example on the table. It was, ironically, the one counter-example that had been vexing everyone throughout the game. Before I noticed it I was strongly considering declaring his rule to be correct even though it wasn't my rule, but I couldn't.)

Short takes:

Real Live Preacher's epic struggle with a raccoon: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Quote from tonight's D&D game: "does the 'mirror image' spell pass by value or by reference?" (The question, put another way, was: are the extra images of the caster sym links or copies? By reference, or sym links, as it turns out.)

"[Introverts] tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours." -- Caring for your Introvert, link courtesy of metahacker. I'm not sure I agree with a lot of the article, but I do like this quote -- and I've definitely been in meetings like that.

I haven't read the last couple hundred issues of Cerebus, but Dani brought home the final issue, #300, so I read it. Um, I think even if I had had the context from the current story line I would have felt that it was kind of pointless. Also a quick read, not counting the essays from the author, so nothing really lost. But it was weird.

It's a collection of pseudo-science essays (hey browngirl, this might be something you'd like), some very good and some only so-so. The title essay is quite amusing; I'll have to share it with Johan the civil engineer. Anyway, as I was reading through it, I came to "Digging the Weans" by Robert Nathan.

Aha. That is why I bought this book. Now I remember.

When I was a sophomore in high school I had a fantastic history teacher. Dr. Wasilack (possibly misspelled) was the first history teacher I ever had who wasn't fixated on names and dates; he wanted to teach us how to think and analyze, and he did it against a backdrop of world history. I was already that sort of person, but he still maanged to teach me a lot. He was one of a very small number of outstanding teachers I had in the public schools.

At one point, he was trying to teach us how to think critically about evidence. We were studying some analysis or other of some archeological find, and most of us were buying what we were reading, and we shouldn't have been. And then he read us an analysis of artifacts from the point of view of archeologists thousands of years hence, and that opened a lot of eyes in that class.

I've carried that memory around since then, but had been unable to remember many details. I did remember that the archeologists concluded that this nation was called the "Weins" (actually "Weans", but I never saw it written back then) because the country was called "US". And I remembered that there was some analysis of an important document that contained the phrase "nor[th] rain nor hail nor snow", and that the Wean city-states were ruled by Queens like "queen of the may" and "the raisin queen".

Eventually, I googled my way to the title "Digging the Weans", and that led me to this anthology. So today, after almost 25 years, I finally read this story.

This is exactly the kind of story that I want everyone in the SCA who does any research to read. It's artfully done and demonstrates just how important a healthy dose of skepticism is when looking at sources.

Sadly, I did not get all of the references. I do not know what the giant metal (sometimes stone) praying-mantis figures in southern California are, for example. I'll probably feel really stupid when someone points it out to me.

I thought the discussion went ok but that I didn't have a good-enough handle on how to run such a thing, nor did I have a good-enough handle on the material. That is, I think I did a decent job of absorbing and summarizing the material in the book, but there are issues that the book didn't get into that are important, and I hadn't done any supplementary reading. (For example, the book talks about the Protestant reformation, but I know there was a lot more to it than what is described in the book, but I don't personally have a good understanding of some of those issues.)

The other people there seemed to think it went very well, and I've gotten some nice compliments since then. One person pointed out that it people weren't enjoying themselves they wouldn't have stayed for two hours. :-)

( I warned you. )