Monopoly City

I give Monopoly a lot of crap, but that's only because it deserves it. Hasbro is a game company that, on a corporate level, decided to make quality in games a second-tier consideration. To use an analogy, they built hotels on St. James Place and Tennessee Avenue -- not the "best" properties in the game, but the ones you land on most often.

Hasbro has milked Monopoly like the prize cow it is. Everybody with an IP has licensed the game (which is really just lawyer insurance because you can't copyright or patent a game mechanic). And every few years, they produce a new clutch of games with the word "Monopoly" on the front, and I assume those sell well enough to make it worth doing.

This year Hasbro produced Monopoly City. On boardgamegeek.com the reviews boil down to "It's not that different. If you didn't like Monopoly already, you won't like this one either."

BUT! There's a free Web game to promote it, Monopolycitystreets.com. Great idea Hasbro! It's got a good gimmick, in that you're buying real-world city streets courtesy of Google Maps. It's fun to look at your neighborhood and buy your street and build tall buildings on it.

It's still a crappy game though. There's a little strategy, but not a ton. Like board-game Monopoly, it's a game about wheeling and dealing, because the cheap stuff you start with won't get you to the top. You'll need to save up money and buy other players' more profitable streets, because the best stuff is already taken. Except why would a player sell their best stuff?

The only reason I can think of is that the player got bored or distracted and dropped out. Player interaction is extremely limited, so you can't negotiate well. The nominal endgame (Be the richest real estate magnate in the world!) is sort of boring. Only the highly motivated will work on it. Find a half dozen of those people (who I'm pretty sure they're already playing) and the top of the game will stagnate.

The good thing though, is that you can see on the blog that the people running the game are taking this seriously. There's room for improvement too. Right now, it's a really nice skeleton of a game, and they could make it more. If tended properly, this could become the Hasbro's own social networking platform. That's worth keeping an eye on.

Regardless of my callous criticisms, it's fun for a while. In case you want to get into it, you can read tips and FAQs at the fan site: monopolycitystreetshq.org.

Also, if you're related to me in Philadelphia, I already own your street. OH IT'S ON.

More ooky science

I wish the future would hurry up and get here already. I'm tired of all this mortality.

Baby goop heals wounds 3x as fast
They call it "baby butter" in the story, but my term is more marketable, I bet.

Grow teeth like sharks
Wouldn't it be awesome never to have to brush your teeth again? M and I are both (unfortunately) dedicated teeth grinders. This would allow us to not have to solve our deep-rooted stressors! Great idea!

Synthetic lethality kills cancer tumors
I'm frightened and thrilled by the phrase "synthetic lethality." That's a dystopian term waiting for application. Who knew it wouldn't involve androids and laser pistols?

Pixar, stickin' it to the Man!

I wrote the skeleton of this post a few months ago, and forgot to post it. During Blogaday though, nothing goes to waste.

How is Pixar stickin' it to the Man?

By not caring about the Man. That is the very best way the Man gets stuck:

Perhaps Wall Street would not care so much if Pixar seemed to care a little more. The co-director of “Up,” Pete Docter — who also directed “Monsters Inc.” — said in a recent question and answer session with reporters that the film’s commercial prospects never crossed his mind. “We make these films for ourselves,” he said. “We’re kind of selfish that way.”

John Lasseter, a co-founder of Pixar and now Disney’s chief creative officer, routinely says in interviews that marketability is not a factor in decisions about what projects to pursue. Instead of ideas that feel contemporary, he aims for stories that are rooted in the ages.

“Quality is the best business plan” is one of Mr. Lasseter’s favorite lines.

I don't know what my takeaway from this is, but I like remembering and posting things about creative ventures that inspire me. And really, who doesn't Pixar inspire?

Empire of Animals

I ran across a bit about the ravens of the Tower of London, and how King Charles II ordered that there was to be at least six ravens at the Tower at all times, to forestall the fall of the British Kingdom.

Among all the peoples of the Earth, the British most enjoy taking nonsense seriously. So to this day, there is a full-time Raven Master among the guard at the Tower, and numerous raven understudies are kept in the wings lest tragedy befall the main six.

As I read this, it seemed like Britain had several of these superstitions. A couple quick searches netted:

The London Stone
This is the rock the Romans used to measure distances from throughout their British holdings. According to the BBC, the rock was mentioned in works by Shakespeare, William Blake, and Charles Dickens. The legend is that as long as the stone is safe, London will flourish.

The Barbary Apes of Gibraltar
These monkeys, or possibly apes -- macaques, whatever those are -- live on the rock of Gibraltar. It's said that if anything happens to these monkeys, Britain will lose control of Gibraltar. I've actually been there, and those monkeys don't seem all that politically savvy. I think Britain's put a lot on a longshot here.


Anybody know any other objects or animals that could lead to the downfall of the British empire? Mad cows? Simon Cowell?

Nobel Prize 2009: from Oslo, with prejudice

I almost didn't want to mention the president's receiving of the Nobel Peace Prize. I wasn't sure I had anything to add to the embarrassingly universal understanding that the award manifested as a bald political statement this year.

But Maggie's Farm pointed me to a collection of other 2009 nominees, and I hope that maybe I can do just a smidge to help bring attention to people who might have been more deserving by spreading that information.

The partial list is at the Weekly Standard blog. This is only a partial list because the Nobel Foundation does not reveal the nominee list for 50 years. They have revealed that they received 205 nominees, 33 of which were organizations. Some nominees were made public in other ways, however.

Some of the nominations appear to be merely symbolic. (They're all symbols, it's just that some are only symbols.) A couple, notably Dr. Denis Mukwege, are doing good, hard work in the world, and could probably get a lot done with a cool $1.4MM.

However, even the revealed nominees deserving of honor do not seem to meet the criteria set forth in Alfred Nobel’s will, that the prize be be given, “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Despite the roused rabble, President Obama seems to have made strides in that direction. His administration has made unambiguous noises toward nuclear disarmament, Middle East peace, and diplomacy with pugnacious nations. But those strides are not fraternity or abolition. They are just overtures. Nobel's original goals appear lost and irrelevant to the considerations of the recent Prize Committee.

Despite his original misgivings, maybe this year we can all agree to remember that Mr. Nobel invented dynamite instead. At least its constructive potential is clearer than what the Prize has become.

Paint fumes: the solution

My latest million damn dollar idea: Scented Paint.

We've been painting our bedroom, and the work has been dormant for several days due to travel, sickness, and ennui. But even dried paint still smells a little bit like wet paint.

BUT! What if it was lilacs instead? Or bubblegum -- whatever people like to smell, I don't know. What if you could engineer a way for that smell to linger, so your freshly painted bedroom smelled like lilacs for months after? You could make it scratch 'n' sniff. Unscrupulous landlords could hide odors AND stains by painting over them.

Some chemical scientist get on that, and send me my royalty check when you're done.

Le Voyage dans la BOOM

We shot a missile at the moon. We punched the moon.

I think we can all agree that humans in America got problems, but I'm gonna risk some hyperbole to say I don't think there's ever been a more amazing time to be conscious.

Kiva.org microlending

My sister-in-law, Alison, gave me a gift certificate to Kiva last Christmas, and I've enjoyed it a lot. If you haven't heard of Kiva, here's my plug.

Kiva is a charitable microfinance organization. You put, say, $25 into the system, and choose a borrower to lend it to. A bunch of other people throw in some money too, until together you reach the amount the borrower asks for. A few months later, the borrower has invested the money, seen a return, and pays you and your co-lenders back. Sweet!

I've been doing this all year, and it seems to work great. I've already made 3 loans, mostly with the initial gift certificate moolah. In fact, it works so great, that I decided to start a lending team! And you can join!

If I were to send you an email inviting you to join, this is what it would say:

I want to recruit you to my lending team, Quickstart, on Kiva, a non-profit website that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur across the globe. You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.

If you join my lending team, we can work together to alleviate poverty. Once you're a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva "count" towards our team's impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you - but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team's collective portfolio, so our team's overall impact will grow!

I wouldn't try to replace conventional giving with this (some people don't have the wherewithal to pay you back, even though they still need help), but I love being part of it. Join Team Quickstart, and start loaning money today! Like, now!

It's official: Monopoly might last forever

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the numbers have been crunched, and a game of Monopoly has a 12% chance of never ending:

Anybody who has ever played Monopoly knows the feeling. The game can be interminable, with no victor ever seeming to emerge.

That's a real mathematical possibility, Cornell University researchers said in a new study. They calculate that there's a 12 percent probability of a simple, two-player game of Monopoly never concluding.

Does this make Monopoly an even more quintessentially American game?

Thanks to Purple Pawn for the tip-off.

SkyMall demographics

Spending a quarter of a day on airplanes this weekend (and another quarter in airports), I had a lot of time to peruse the literature. I did the crossword puzzle twice, and looked through the SkyMall catalogue a bunch.

As far as I can tell, SkyMall thinks its customer has:

• children (or grandchildren)
• an ornamental interest in geography
• strong fear of home burglary
• a small dog
• a cat
• a large dog
  
• a number of minor aches and pains
• annual income over $200,000
• a pool
• hypochondria
• a preoccupation with getting the best or most in anything they acquire
  
• poor judgment in consumer goods

It's like they know me!