Another "phony soldier" heard from

Read only if you're ready for a lump in your throat:

http://armyofdude.blogspot.com/2007/09/real-deal.html

Game of the week: Clue

I grew up in a family that played board games, and my best friend's family played, too, so I got a lot of exposure to the limited stable of games available in the 1960s such as Go To The Head Of The Class, Sorry!, The Game of Life, Monopoly, Scrabble, Stratego, Operation, etc.
But somehow I missed out on Clue, which is another real classic, but one I didn't really get to play until fairly recently.
Clue is one of a fairly limited class of deduction games, where players use information gathered during the course of the game to deduce some hidden information. As such, it's a little rigorous compared to many other family games. You do have to think a bit. It's therefore a little hard for younger players to get into. Even some real "underagers" can play games like Monopoly with a little help because there's some luck involved and scope for advice and guidance because most information is open. Like Scrabble, Clue is really for a little older part oft he family.
For the ones old enough to get it, though, Clue is a good game and a lot of fun. It's a little clunky compared to newer games designs. The movement rules and spaces between the rooms are inelegant and inefficient, introducing a luck element that feels out of place.
I picked up the 50th anniversary edition, which comes in a tin and has deluxe pieces, including miniatures for the six suspects. This edition also has an extra weapon (poison) adding a little bit of challenge compared to the standard game, which has just six weapons.
All-in-all, it's a well-deserved classic game, still going very strong after more than five decades.

Air Force planning for Iran strikes

Here's an interesting report about a supposedly secret Air Force working group drawing up plans for an air campaign against Iran:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2512097.ece

This is interesting on several levels., but there may be less to the report than meets the eye. It looks like this is an Air Force show, so I'm not sure whether it's an actual planning group or a mere planning exercise. The planners don't seem to be working for the commander who would actually be conducting the campaign and jointness would normally mean that the Navy would be involved in the planning as well.
On the other hand, the Air Force is the one service that seems to believe, institutionally, that it can win a war all by itself, so there is some scope for concern if they're able to persuade the administration that some kind of "victory" or "success" is possible. Any war with Iran would necessarily have to rely on airpower, the Army being otherwise engaged.
The article mentions that they want to add a touch of "brilliance" to the planning. Now, there's nothing wrong with a little brilliance, of course, but a lack of tactical brilliance has not been our problem of late. Our conventional military superiority is so profound, that it's hard to see how being even more brilliant will make any difference in the outcome. If you're playing a High School JV football team would having Tom Brady's Patriots make any noticeable difference compared to having the Buffalo Bills on the field?
No, there can be absolutely no doubt that the U.S. can do whatever it wants from the air, destroying anything it can find while taking minimal losses. The question is what comes after that? What's the political outcome we desire and how is it brought about? Grand strategy has been our weakness and there's no hint that's about to change.

Game of the Week: Monopoly

Another old-timer this week.
My introduction to Monopoly came at my best friend's house when I was in grade school. Like most families, they didn't exactly play by the rules. Specifically, they were one of those families that played with money accumulating on Free Parking. It's well-attested that this rule tends to lengthen playing time by putting more money into circulation and I believe it, because the games never seemed to end!
It was great fun, however, and I still have fond memories of those marathon sessions.
Once I got my own copy later in life I realized that the rules didn't say that. Indeed. later versions of the rules are specific that free parking is just a free space. of course, late in the game a free space is a nice thing to find.
It is amusing, however, that the most popular family boardgame is played with the "wrong" rules more often than not. For many families Monopoly is the only game they may play. One of the slogans used by boardgame enthusiasts trying to spread the word is that there are games "Beyond Monopoly."
Still, as much as boardgame enthusiasts tend to diss Monopoly, there's no denying it's still on top of the heap in the general public's view, with no Chance that Puerto Rico or any of its ilk will take its place.

Game of the Week: Sorry!

A game must have something going for it to be in print for more than 7 decades, so the success of Sorry! since its 1934 debut deserves some consideration.
The game's best attribute is its family-friendly nature. I have fond memories of playing Sorry! when I was a kid back in the 1960s and I know that my youngsters now love to play whenever we get the chance.
Unlike Snakes & Ladders, Sorry! is not a game of pure luck. Players have some control over the outcome, although perhaps not as much as they perceive they do. I say this because it's been my experience that no matter who is playing and what they do, it always seems like at least 3 out of the 4 players always have a shot of winning the game. In many games this would be a flaw, but in Sorry! it's a virtue. It's important that the young players have a shot of winning, even though they're far from being able to engage in strategic play. Yet the older children and adults can have some fun making what seem to be strategic choices that might help them win in the end.
What you end up with is one of the few games that you can literally play with a group ranging from 8 to 80. Actually, precocious 4- and 5-year-olds can play. It's a good game for teaching such beginning level game playing skills such as counting spaces and playing habits such as waiting your turn.
The genius behind the design is the card mix and even the use of cards at all. While a Parcheesi-style game, unlike most of that genre Sorry! does not use dice. The use of cards just about guarantees evening out the luck factor. A typical game will see the players going through the deck several times, so everybody will get every card many times. The requirement for landing on home by exact count provides a lot of scope for come-from-behind victories as the guy in the lead can wait a long time for the exact card needed to get that last piece in.
Another key part of the game is the Sorry! card, which means no one is ever really out of the running. As a matter of fact, the more behind you are, the more you can use a Sorry! card. The leading player may very well have no pawns left in their start, so any Sorry! cards drawn are just a wasted move. Meanwhile, the unlucky player who's been landed on by everybody and anybody can get right back into things. There are 13 cards that can get a pawn out of Start (five 1's, four 2's and four Sorry!'s) so no player should despair about being behind. This, also, proves to be a good game-playing and life lesson that will be handy later on in life.
Like some of the other classic "family" games Sorry! doesn't get too much respect from the "serious" gamer, but it may deserve more respect than it gets. Sorry! lays the groundwork for more serious gaming later on, while being a lot of fun.

USAF has a big oops

The Air Force lost track of some nukes recently:
http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070904/NEWS01/70904040
Much of the media coverage of this misses the point, surprise, surprise.
The important point is not that some nukes were flown over the country. That happens all the time. It used to literally happen ALL the time when we had bombers on alert 24 hour a day.
The key thing is that the bombs were not where they were supposed to be, and that is supposed to be impossible. Some serious heads should roll for this one.

Craig not out?

Now Craig's saying he might not go.
I have very mixed feelings about this case.
On the one hand, I think he's a hypocrite and he probably was trolling for sex in a men's room, which certainly isn't the kind of behavior we should expect from a U.S. senator.
On the other hand, I'm not sure what he actually did, (as opposed to what he might have done, if given the opportunity) amounted to a crime. I'd like my crimes a little more concrete than tapping feet and running hands along bathroom stall edges.

Media cowardice

Apparently a couple dozen newspapers,including the Washington Post, are not publishing this Opus cartoon out of fears that it might offend Muslims:
http://www.salon.com/comics/opus/2007/09/02/opus/

Needless to say, none of those papers have refused to publish similar cartoons that might offend Catholics, Jews, or Evangelicals. Indeed, the point of a cartoon like Opus is to be provocative. If it doesn't offend someone (Republicans, Democrats, Corporations, Environmentalists, Soccer moms, human beings, ratty cats or penguins) then it's probably not a very good Opus.

It really doesn't serve the long-term interests of the media or Western society to self-censor like this. One of the fundamental ideas that have to become generally accepted among Muslims is that they will sometimes be offended, just like everyone else. So the Post and its several dozen like-minded (if weak-willed) colleagues, deserve their brickbats.

I'm proud to say that the newspaper I work for did run the cartoon.

Credibility

One of the truisms of fighting a counterinsurgency is the information war is vital. One unfortunate corollary of this is that there's a natural tendency on the military's side to start trying to manipulate the numbers. There's nothing wrong with making your best case and it's useful to try to influence the perception of all parties concerned so long as it's done smartly and honestly. But it's very important that the military doesn't lose sight of the true facts of the situation. It's very easy to delude oneself and tendencies in that direction have to be resisted. if they are not, reality will eventually bite you in the ass.
One of the worst failings of the current administration has been its willingness to not only spin, but apparently believe it's own spin. This can only lead to a disaster in wartime. We made a lot of fun of Baghdad Bob and his ilk during the first part of the war. Not only did he spout nonsense, but there's every indication he believed it. There was a case of an Iraqi general who was captured in his personal car by U.S. troops during that initial campaign who had no idea the Americans were in the city. Unfortunately, it's not so funny now, as evidence mounts that our side is doing the same thing.

From Obsidian Wings/Andrew Sullivan we find out that the military's accounting of Iraqi civilian deaths is getting funky:

UPDATE: IraqSlogger has a useful story on changes in the Pentagon's figures. A graph from the story, courtesy of Ilan Goldberg of the National Security Network:



And an explanation:
"Goldberg explains the abnormalities as best he can:
Abnormality A: Between August and November 2006, DOD started reclassifying “casualties” as “deaths by execution” and suddenly you see a dramatic drop in killings. For example, in March 2006 right after the Samarra Mosque bombings you go from 1,750 “casualties” to 750 “deaths by execution.” Between November 2006 and March 2007 “Deaths by Execution” becomes “Sectarian Murders” but the numbers remain the same.
Abnormality B: Between the March 2007 report and the June 2007 report there was a dramatic change in the number of killings that were reported for the second half of 2006. In both cases the numbers were described as “sectarian murders.” The impact here is that it makes the “pre surge” situation look extraordinarily dire and therefore signals progress thereafter.
Abnormality C: Somehow the reclassification that occurred between the March and June 2007 reports caused the violence numbers in April and May of 2006 to drop dramatically. This was in the months following the Sammara bombings in February 2006 when sectarian violence was escalating."

War With Iran

The President rattled some more sabers against Iran yesterday in a speech before the American Legion. Glenn Greenwald has a long post today raising the alarm anew.
It's hard to know what to make of this. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't be too worried. The downsides of a war with Iran are so profound, the chances of success so slim, that one should be able to dismiss the thought out of hand. Yet Bush, and the various other actors pushing for this war, have a demonstrated record of recklessness so extreme that nothing can be taken off the table.
And clearly, as president and commander-in-chief of the military Bush has it within his power to simply order acts that will necessarily bring on a war. One can argue that this is not what the founders intended and shouldn't be so, but it's the current reality.
Unless the Iranians are utter fools they will avoid any overt act against the United States, so the most likely scenario is an American attack on Iran that will attempt to destroy their WMD, air defense and command & control infrastructure. It may even be a surprise attack, in order to enhance its effectiveness.
Now, for some reason, even though the Bushies and Neocons claim Iranians desire freedom like Americans and everyone else, they can't seem to absorb the fact that Iranians are also proud and patriotic people who love their country like everyone else. When the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor they ended all debate in America and unified us in a grim determination to prevail at any cost. It can be argued that Japan "lost" the war through this one act, in that there was no chance they would achieve their war aims. Can there be any doubt that an American attack on Iran, especially a surprise attack, will fail to unify the Iranians and fill them with an intense resolve to avenge themselves?
We are currently fighting two wars. The one in Afghanistan could be going better, but the long-term prognosis is pretty good, especially once a new administration takes office if it devotes sufficient attention and resources to success. The war in Iraq is not going well, and we're unlikely to leave under happy circumstances. Our political failures in Iraq will have negative consequences for years to come, despite our military successes.
Starting a new war with Iran, however, raises the real possibility of military defeats for us. Iran is much weaker than America, of course, and there's no chance Iranian troops will be marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. But it's idiocy to think defeat requires that scene in order to be a defeat.
Iran is a big country. It has a capable military establishment. And, aroused by an unprovoked U.S. attack (in their eyes), they will be formidably motivated. While powerful, the U.S. cannot use all its power. The Army and Marines are tapped out. There's only so much the Air Force can bomb. Iran is a land-based power the Navy cannot subdue, especially if the Iranians have the support of the rest of the world.
If substantial numbers of Iraqi Shiites turn against us our troops in Iraq will be placed in an untenable position. It's possible entire units could be captured or besieged, especially if regular Iranian units assist the Iraqis. The Iranian Navy has been studying for years how to fight the U.S. Navy. We must be wary that they've succeeded in finding ways to hurt us. Sinking or severely damaging an aircraft carrier would be an tremendous political victory for them, despite its military unimportance.
And the American People, already disillusioned with our current wars, will not be enthusiastic about a new one brought about through questionable circumstances. Wars, even just and successful ones, always involve setbacks. The American people will not be in a proper mood to absorb them in this case.
There is a near certainty of disaster and a minimal chance of success, minimally defined. We would call a man a lunatic if he played Russian Roulette for a buck. What do we call a man who starts a new war when he's failed to win the ones he's already started? The last dudes who did this back, in the 1940s, brought catastrophe. (And the analogy is apt. Japan started its war with the U.S. and Britain despite an ongoing war in China. Germany launched its invasion of Russia despite a defiant, undefeated Britain still in the fight.)

A lack of will

An excellent laying of the blame where it truly belongs:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/08/more-grit-hilzo.html#trackback

John Wayne would be mortified, not to mention Patton, Reagan, Audie Murphy or even Rosa Parks

Sad to say, the "Flour Terrorist" story was right here in Connecticut, too.
John Cole of Balloon Juice has an excellent summary here: http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=8613

Please, people. Let's stop being wusses. It's like the damn "security" at airports. It's stupid and pointless. The inefficiencies introduced into our economy must add up to billions already, with no end in sight.
Meanwhile, this is the same country where people in most states don't even have to wear helmets when riding motorcycles! More people die every year in motorcycle crashes than were killed on 9/11.

Game of the Week: Backgammon

About 25 years ago I remember backgammon had a surge in popularity. It seemed like everybody had a leather-bound travel case with them. The gambling aspect appealed to a lot of folks, I think, although poker seems to have captured the fancy of most young gamblers these days. While its possible to make a living a professional backgammon player, it's money earned bit by bit, without the huge windfalls that make the World Poker Championships on TV so exciting.
Among friends and acquaintances, though backgammon still has its place as a nice past time, with some low-level gambling possibility. The advantage backgammon has over poker is that it's a two-player game, so you don';t need to get a group together like you do for poker.
Backgammon evolved from the ancient "tables" games, examples of which were played by the Romans. The game took its present shape a few hundred years ago, although the doubling cube only came into use in the 1920s. Playing with the doubling cube adds an additional level of strategy while also bringing hopeless games to a close earlier.
Unlike most other classic games, backgammon does include a significant luck factor, which turns off some people. Understanding probabilities is necessary for decent play and I think it's a good mechanism for teaching probability to kids.
Games seem to go through cycles of popularity so I wonder if backgammon will regain some of its popularity anytime soon. It is one of the more popular games online.
One place where there isn't a lot of action is at the casinos. Unlike most other gambling games there's no house advantage, so the game is too fair for casino use.

World Boardgame Championships

Well, this year I was able to pop in to the WBC for a day, at least.
I had a good time, if not a particularly successful one, at the con.
I was able to play Battle Cry. I got my hopes up with an early victory in the first game of the 3-round Swiss-style tournament (New Market scenario- CSA) but the next two games came a cropper. My opponent in the New Hope scenario was able to get some good early shots in, which didn't give me the time I needed to really pick apart his defenses. As a matter of fact, he was able to be aggressive and attack me and I wasn't able to make that into the mistake it should have been. I was the USA in that one.
The final round was Brandy Station. The tournament was large enough that it was clear that only players with 3-0 records were going to advance, so my opponent and I already knew this game was the final one for each of us. I tried some aggressive moves that didn't pay off and the game ended fairly quickly, albeit bloodily. I was again the USA.
I enjoyed wandering around the vendor area, A lot of interesting stuff was available, but I restrained myself from much in the way of new game purchases. I picked up the Battle Line reprint, which I've wanted for quite a while. It's a highly regarded game on Boardgame Geek. As far as brand-new designs, the only one I go was Cowboys: The Way of the Gun, the Wild West Gunfight game by Worthington. It looks like a very streamlined version of Gunslinger, which is one of my favorite games. Unfortunately it'd be very hard to get someone into Gunslinger these days as its a really complex, detailed and slow-moving game, which is why I decided to pick up Cowboys, which is much more in tune with today's gaming community.
I also picked up some additional material for BattleLore, Wizard Kings, Down In Flames, Close Action and Heroscape.
The highlight of the trip, however, was finding my friend Harve Mossman in the Open Gaming area. He was busy playtesting Columbia's upcoming game Athens & Sparta, but we had time to catch up a bit on things and make arrangements for a visit later this year.
I wish I could have spent more time at the con, of course, but I'm thankful for the time I did get.

War and Spin

The Iraqi parliament has left for a month-long vacation, although it doesn't appear that they'll be particularly missed, as they're not accomplishing anything anyway.
The administration and its allies are busy laying the groundwork for the September-is-too-soon-to-judge argument about the "surge" and we should give Petreaus at least until November now. This is, of course, merely a variation on the tried and true "the next six months is critical" story line we used to get during the pre-Petreaus era. Like tomorrow, the next six months never comes, though. It's always in the future.
The administration's allies have been energetic lately, with aggressive attacks on bad-news bearers and defeatists. They've drummed up some selective statistics and made up others when needed to provide a veneer of respectability to their arguments. They have been especially energetic in arguing that we are making some "military' progress with the surge strategy and therefore it's working.
Of course, in a counterinsurgency it's fairly common for there to be "military" successes. Indeed, any military "failures" such as a base being overrun, a platoon or company-sized unit being defeated in battle or the insurgents seizing nontemporary control of a town or region is a serious sign of the probable imminent collapse of the government.
What we are seeing very little evidence of is any progress at all on the political front, which is by far the most important part. Absent something there, the endgame will be the same.
The American people, however, are past spinning, and the administration and its allies in punditry are fast running out of time. Having been told September is the time, I'm not sure how much more time Bush can buy himself. I suspect that the clock will run out for good with the end of the year and Americans will demand an end to the war in 2008. 2009 will not be an option.

Game of the Week: Dominoes

During a visit to Jamaica last summer I was struck by how much of a game-playing culture it was -- of at least one game, anyway, dominoes. In Kingston, especially, there were thousands of tiny street-side pubs (which usually had a half-dozen stools or so) and almost invariably had a hand-built sturdy dominoes table in front. More often than not there was a game in progress, too.
When Jamaicans play dominoes, it's obligatory to slap the domino down firmly with a loud crack. The sturdy little domino tables are carefully fashioned to help make that sound, with a relatively thin table top well-mounted within the thick frame. The overall effect is similar to a well-built Japanese Go game, albeit with a rustic island feel instead of the painstakingly wood-worked construction used in Japan.
In the U.S. dominoes is usually played with a rule that a player without a play must keep drawing from the graveyard until play is possible. In Jamaica the style is is allow a player without a legal play to merely pass.
This style of play probably keeps the games a little closer than the alternative U.S. rule, which can result in someone getting stuck with a big draw out of the graveyard that kills any chance of winning that round.
Dominoes are like standard playing cards in that the term really describes a set of game-playing fools, rather than a distinct game because many games can be played using the same tools. Still, there seems to be a basic "dominoes" that most people understand as being "the game" whereas card games are more distinctly differentiated in popular use into games like poker, bridge, war or solitaire.

Game of the week: Chess and Chessfest 2007

Chess, similar to Go, is a tough game for the "gamer" to get into. By a "gamer" I mean the sort of person who likes games generally, as epitomized by the folks over at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/.
The problem is that Chess,like Go, is a profoundly deep game of longstanding and intense devotion among a fairly large group of players. It has its own literature, clubs and professional players. It's been intensely analyzed to such an extent that a casual player will have no chance of winning against an aficionado. Unlike Backgammon or Poker, where the presence of a certain amount of luck provides scope for an upset, in Chess and Go there's no external factor that can help the casual player.
Being a gamer of eclectic tastes then, it's no surprise that I'm only an indifferent chess player. I have a few books, coached my kids' chess club in school and fiddled around with playing for about 40 years. But I've never devoted any study to chess openings, which is pretty much a prerequisite for serious play, so I don't consider myself a serious chess player.
But I do enjoy watching a good game and like to see the game become more popular, so it was nice to see that the local Chessfest event in New London seems to be off to a good start. I missed it entirely last year because of military duty and I wasn't able to take part this year because of some local "family taxi" chores, but I did get to observe some of it. It looks like several dozen people took part in three divisions -- youth, amateur and open. It was a diverse group too: Male and female, tiny and grey-bearded, American- and foreign-born.
I do think I'll go ahead and take a stab at it next year. I may not do very well, it it sure did look like everyone was enjoying themselves.

Made-up Lincoln quotes "If I had six hours to chop down a tree"

One of my more amusing past times is tracking down made-up quotes attributed to famous people. I happened to come across one today that sounded so fake I just had to check it out.
The quote is "If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe."
It's cute, and it makes a worthwhile point, but as soon as I read it I doubted that Lincoln ever said it.
A very quick Google search (which anybody can do in seconds) finds a fair number of uses of the quote, but none that provide any actual citation. The uses all seem pretty recent, too, so I'd guess this made-up quote has a recent origin.
It's not uncommon to have quotes that a misattributed to some famous person. I guess the thought goes: I may make a good point, but if Lincoln made the same point it's even better. Lincoln is much more credible than little old me.
I'm sure this motivation prompts the initial creation of the misattribution. From there it takes off with the uncritical use by others and next thing you know, it's a "Lincoln quote."
Well, Abraham Lincoln said a great many good things, but this one wasn't one of them.
As this made-up quote seems to be in its early stages you can amuse yourself by being on the lookout for it and see how many time you spot it. It does have its usefulness, by the way. You can judge that anyone who does use the "quote" hasn't done even the minimal amount of homework required to legitimately use a quotation, and you can assess the rest of their work accordingly.

Harry Potter

Got my copy Saturday morning and started reading after lunch. Aside from one break I read until I was done.
When I have some time, I plan to go back and read the whole series again, searching for the clues I missed the first time around. I'm expecting there will be some kind of special edition (maybe next year) that will provide all seven books in a nice hard-cover format. Certainly, if I were a marketer that's what I'd do.
Meanwhile I'm also revisiting the Lod of the Rings trilogy with a reread of that. If a book is good, it's good for reading again.
The whole project is really an astounding one.

Game of the Week: Checkers

It isn't often boardgames make the news, but a rather big deal was made this week of checkers being "solved" by a computer program. Turns out that there are a finite but measurable number of possible board positions (500 billion billion) and if played perfectly the game will invariably end in a draw.
Here's a link to one of the many stories about this development: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/07/the-game-of-che.html

Like most "serious" gamers I "moved on from checkers a long time ago. Compared to chess, it seems a much less involving game and I'm not surprised that it can be solved.
What does impress me, however, is that there's much more to the game than I would have guessed. 500 billion billion is an awful big number. It's a big enough number that it makes me reconsider not just checkers, but games in general, especially abstract games. If checkers has 500 billion billion possible board positions, then how many must more involved games have?
Non abstract games, such as wargames, may have uncountable possible positions, although it appears to me that wargames are generally more subject to factors that make many different board positions meaningless variations that really don't affect play. I think that in abstract games minor variations in board positions may genuinely represent different things more so than in some other games.
Still, this was astounding news and gave me a deeper appreciation of checkers. I don't look at it as a kids game so much.
Another fact related to checkers that came out in these stories was the incredible record of a certain Michael Tinsley, who lost a grand total of seven competitive games of chess over the course of four decades -- and several of those losses were to computer programs. He played thousands of games against top-flight opposition and lost just seven!
The news stories called him the greatest checkers player who ever lived. I can't think of a similar record of dominance in any other game or sport. Even the Yankees, Celtics, Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan could never dream of 1000+ to 1 win ratios. Indeed, has there ever been anything like that in any game? Games with random elements such as poker, backgammon or wargames would make achieving such a record impossible. The dice and cards would ensure that.
But even games with no randomness such as chess, go or Diplomacy see nothing like this guy's record.
The gentleman passed away without much fame outside checker-playing circles, it appears, but it was a singular achievement.