The Price of Admiralty

Joshua was admiral for one side in a Close Action game today. One of the key points about Close Action is that normally both sides have several ships--three to thirty on a side--but each player only commands one ship. That means that in order to maneuver coherently, avoid collisions, and ultimately win, you have to work together as a team. Or, sometimes, you just have to be a disorganized mob but slightly less disorganized than the other mob.

Josh texted me a few times during the battle:

• 1:32     Seriously, why can't I be a team on my own?
• 3:07     I hate my captains SO MUCH
• 6:08     I have sent eight signals. Six of them have been variations of "Engage more closely." They didn't.
• 6:22     We won, 147 to 119. I don't know how.

I told him that now he knows how Suffren felt.

Chinese censorship

It has been determined that this blog is not accessible from Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Apparently this blog could be a threat to a communist empire that rules over a billion people. Granted, it's not me in particular, it's any blogger or blogspot site. Still, I'm rather pleased.

Wisdom

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.
--C S Lewis

Back to Africa

Mom and Dad went back to Macha, Zambia.

Walrus and the Warwolf

A couple of months ago, I got The Walrus and the Warwolf. It's a serial collected into a book. I get the feel that the writer woke up every Monday morning, said "I need to mail in another installment on Wednesday, what shall I do to Drake this week?" and rolls a dice to see which plot thread to pull. Drake struggles for power and reputation, evades the hunters sent by his former master, tries to win the woman he lusts for ("loves" would be overstating it, at least at first); he lies and schemes when he can, fights when he must. It's pretty much the fantasy literature equivalent of cotton candy. It would be the perfect thing to read if you had the flu and couldn't focus on anything that required thought.
Two notable points:
1.   There are a couple of places where at least one page worth of text is missing. For instance, you're reading about them escaping through the desert, and when you turn the page Drake is saying "What is it to me if Jon was kidnapped?". You don't miss anything important (in fact, you can skip the whole book and not miss anything important), but it's an editorial mistake I'd never run across before.
2.   China Mieville's foreword said that the whole point of the book was that Drake never grows up, never matures. Drake does mature, and the book has at least one chapter of soul-searching on this subject, so it's not entirely subtle. Mieville is simply wrong. This is the only occasion on which an author has managed to lower his standing in my eyes by the foreword he wrote.

Kayaking Season 2011

The weather for the past few weeks has been "beautiful on work days, cold, windy and rainy on weekends." Today was cloudy but good enough to take the kayak out for an hour. Something moving in the marsh grass; I silently paddle up and watch from about fifteen feet away, until the raccoon suddenly sits bolt upright, looks at me, and scampers off. Fish jumping, geese swimming with their heads bobbing back and forth, an osprey hovering overhead.

Grey's Law

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.