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Xeroxen
petitio principii
(peh-tish'-ee-oh prin-sip'-ee-eye) n. a logical fallacy
in which a premise is assumed to be true without warrant, or
in which what is to be proved is implicitly taken for granted.
A Mighty Wind :)
Though very funny,
quite possibly the saddest
comedy I've seen.
 
How
To Road Trip
Errant Story
"I'm a PhD student at The University of Texas and I just
recently won a set of Icehouse pieces in a Go tournament held
at Great Hall Games (in Austin). I've enjoyed several of the
games that can be played with the Icehouse
pieces, specifically IceTowers
(for the family), Icehouse
(with 4 players), and Zendo
(probably my favorite). While I was looking for the game rules,
I spent some time reading the wunderland.com webzine. I really
appreciated all the effort that you've gone to over the *years*
to keep that interesting and full of new content. Keep up the
good stuff!" -- email from a fan named Anderson
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Sharon's Day and the IceTowers
Box |
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I'm very pleased to say that the IceTowers
box artwork has gone to the printer! Scroll down
to see what the box will look like...
 Over
the weekend the 3 of us (Me, Kristin, and Alison) met up with
my brother's family (Jeff, Judy, Sharon, and James) at Busch
Gardens-Williamsburg (a similarly long road trip for both groups)
for an annual day of fun we call Sharon's
Day. As I explain here every year, I'm Sharon's Godfather,
and as such I've made it my mission to give her a special day
each year when she is the star, since (through no fault of her
own) she must always share her birthday with her twin brother
James.
Sharon and James are 6 years old now, so we decided it was
time for their first visit to one of my favorite theme parks.
It was strange going to a place with several really great roller
coasters and not riding any of them, but the lines were really
long and we were there to hang out with the kids, not go off
on rides they couldn't handle yet. (Anyway, by the next trip,
I'm betting that Sharon at least will be ready to give some of
them a try!)
So instead, we went on rides like the carrousel and the railroad
and the leisurely boat ride, and watched as they went on the
little rides they won't let grown-ups go on. We also enjoyed
stuff like the bird show and the Land of the Dragons. Sharon
really wanted to go on one of the big flume rides, but sadly,
we arrived at one just as they were closing it for the day (because
of their special Halloween events), and then, after working up
the nerve to go on the other, more scary flume ride, and journeying
over to the other side of the park, we AGAIN arrived just as
they were closing it down for Halloween re-theming! They really
should have posted signs somewhere, indicating the early closings.
It was a major disappointment, but really, it was just a bump
in an otherwise excellent day. At least we were able to get her
onto the kiddie flume. And as you see in these photos, James
and Sharon both got to ride the horseys they'd yearned for on
the carrousel:
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And I'm happy to say I was successful in my quest to get for
her exactly the toy she said she wanted most of all the things
she'd seen in the various gift shops we'd passed through during
the day: a sparkly pink furry monkey, wearing sunglasses and
a hawaiian print outfit.
[OK, so this may be a bit boring and indulgent for most of
my readers, but trust me, this stuff will be really cool years
from now when the twins are old enough to start reading about
themselves on our website...]
As for IceTowers, last
week I showed you what the underside of the boxed
edition will look like. Here's a look at the top:
Alex Bradley did
the painting (is it really a painting, since he did it all digitally?)
and I'm absolutely delighted with it. I'm also really pleased
with the logo, created by Alison,
which didn't come together until the very last minute, after
several false starts. We experimented with extruded letters and
art deco fonts, but ultimately found inspiration in my collection
of books about past visions of the future, specifically in the
form of the logo from the Futurama at the 1939
New York World's Fair. Alison's lettering has a wonderful
retro-futuristic look that feels kind of like a neon sign, thus
fitting perfectly which Alex's vision of my imaginary urban landscape.
Well done! And thanks!
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Don't Forget to Play!
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"If people are violating the
law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to
be convicted and they ought to be sent up."
-- Rush Limbaugh, on his own radio show, 10/5/95
[Florida law provides for sentences of up to 5 years for illegally
purchasing prescription drugs, a crime Rush Limbaugh admitted
to on the radio 8 years later... shouldn't he be going to jail
then, instead of rehab?] |
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"If he comes out of rehab and says, 'I was
wrong about our approach to drugs,' he could single handedly
change the way America looks at this problem... But he's gotta
keep it real when he gets out. If he starts living the morally
indefensible double standard he has been defending his whole
career, game over. He learned nothing, or is too weak to admit
it. That would be a shame, because I think he has it in him to
do this, and the power and accomplishment from turning this battleship
around would be, well - a rush." -- Bill Maher,
in his blog entry for 10/13/3, regarding Rush Limbaugh |
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"You guys know who Philo Farnsworth
was? He invented the television, in a little house in Provo,
Utah, at a time when the idea of transmitting moving pictures
through the air would be like me saying I had figured out a way
to beam us aboard the Starship Enterprise. He was a visionary.
He died broke, and without fanfare. The guy I really like though,
was his brother-in-law, Cliff Gardner. He said 'Philo, I know
everyone thinks you're crazy, but I want to be a part of this.
I don't have your head for science, so I'm not going to be able
to help much with the design and the mechanics of the invention,
but it sounds like you're going to need glass tubes.' You see,
Philo was inventing the cathode receptor, and even though Cliff
didn't know what that meant or how it worked, he'd seen Philo's
drawings, and he knew that he was gonna need glass tubes! And
since television hadn't been invented yet, it's not like you
could get them at the local TV repair shop. 'I want to be part
of this,' Cliff said, 'and I don't have your head for science.
How would it be if I were to teach myself to be a glass-blower,
and I could set up a little shop, in the backyard, and I could
make all the tubes you'll need for testing.' There ought to be
congressional medals for people like that. [Anyway...] I can
help. I can make glass tubes. That's what they need." -- William Macy's character on an episode of "SportsNight"
I accidentally taped |
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