Current location:	home
Current mood:	happy
Current music:	Zoe Keating, "Fern"
Entry tags:	civilization, comics, politics, travel

Answers
Parasailing was awesome. As Sarah put it, "it's cheaper than therapy and so safe that you don't have to sign a liability waiver."

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There was a Civ game at a friend's house yesterday. One new player, stoic rule in effect, no civ card limit. I drew Babylon, and had one of my best trading games ever. My border was pretty much solely georgetowner (Assyria) and after some initial kerfluffle, we settled down in a way which was much more to my benefit than his. Matt left one turn before we finished (yes, we actually finished the game on shabbat, with enough time to davven minha!), and we declared his stuff to be "pirates" at that point, but I think that the final outcome would have been a lot closer had he not left. I had just lost about half of everything to a civil war (with Matt as the beneficiary), and he would have really had an opportunity to hand my butt to me.

My final score was 4607, and toward the end of the game I had the overwhelming majority of the high-point-value cards (Philosophy, Democracy, Monotheism, Theology, Mathematics, Mining).

I tried one thing this game to great success: I didn't buy low-value cards at the beginning. My first four cards were Music, Deism, Agriculture, and Engineering, in that order. The other trading key is that the five and six card stack are totally the best ones to collect.

Of additional note is the steady improvement of shoshiboo (Africa), who finished second - she's gotten a lot more aggressive, and that's doing well for her.

I do think that a civ card limit would prevent one player (me, in this case) from running away with the score - I probably ended with about 20 civ cards.

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Gov. Palin's resignation is disappointing to me - I do understand that she's become a whipping girl for the left wing, and that due to this, the Alaskan government may be better off without her than with her. However, it's still disappointing: an essential component of the Western-style-grit which I found so appealing is never surrendering in the face of adversity. So I'm disappointed.

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From Ari comes this Sluggy Freelance image. Now THAT is an American sentiment, in full-on Toby Keith style...