I played two games at Beachhead last night. The games were Blood Bowl, where I got destroyed by going against the people on the games that they decided to push harder than their other matches. I also played gauntlet of fools where I won one of three games. The game I did win it was very close, and I got all the gold quickly, and died first.
I love this book. It is a book that I would gladly listen to several more times, even though I understood mostly everything it was talking about. This is using applied game theory to talk about inequalities and market forces. It shows how many things that don’t make sense on a macro scale can make sense on a aggregated micro scale. It talks about how special interest groups can get really far ahead without anyone caring that they are being abused by them. It also supports the manufacturing of incentive programs in specific ways to drive the results you are looking for. I will recommend this book to many people as a way to understand game theory in practice.
This is the history of scientology, not it’s beliefs. The history is incredibly interesting, especially in the way they go into the psychology of the group and how they used different systems in unintended ways. They used the legal system to harass, they used lie detectors to tell lies, and they used words to mean different things. They did have some really impressive methods that can be used in less sinister ways. I’d be somewhat interested to read a bit more about the beliefs of Scientology to see how strange they really are, but I’m not that desperate to find out.
Yesterday, Stephanie and I hosted a chocolate tasting at my place. She set up the chocolates and I set up the wines. I served a white (the heinz eiffel riesling), a rose, and a red. Jonathan brought some Sherry, which was very tasty. The night was very nice and we had a pretty decent crowd show up.
There were 12 different chocolates, 1o of which we got from the Chocolate Garage. The others were the best we could get at Safeway. They tasted like wax when comparing them to the Chocolate Garage chocolates, even though they were the best from Safeway. I feel very spoiled now that I have had really nice chocolate.
I took all the leftover pieces in a plastic bag with me to work, and enjoyed them on the train ride to and from SF.
This evening when I got home from work I did some push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups then went on a short run. I felt very invigorated after a long day at work. I know tomorrow is going to be an even longer day so it is nice to prepare. I also got a lot of juicing in and had a ton of it for dinner. It made me feel really good and I’m surprised at how tasty it is always turning out. This non-taster gene is fantastic for drinking vegetable juice. I got a lot of audiobook and podcast listening in, as well as a few load of laundry before biking to Stephanie’s.
This draws a lot from the Bible in all of the stories and parables. I noticed a very consistent theme to the book, Jews and Christians are OK just misguided, God is merciful for not destroying you for the smallest transgressions, and if you don’t believe in the Abrahamic form of God you should be destroyed. One interesting point that is made in the book is that “if God wanted it to be so, then it would be so.” The interesting part is that doesn’t seem to apply to non-believers. There was surprisingly little about God, and most about the stories and how a person should live a good life. I’ll have to read more on religious analysis of the Koran before I can understand everything that it is saying and what that means.
Last night we decided that the testing wasn’t a good idea, since we were all full and the juice doesn’t keep. This morning I woke up early and made some for Stephanie, Nick, and myself. I kept the bitter items out of theirs, asparagus and broccoli. I put the asparagus and broccoli in mine, and took out the apple. It is incredibly tasty to me, and makes me glad that I’m a non-taster.
This morning I took about an hour to make 3 cups of juice and clean up afterwards. The clean up took a long time and the cutting up of veggies took a while as well. I think I should be able to keep the time required down by preparing a good portion of the cutting and washing to the day before, and then being more familiar with the juicer. It was pretty easy and the juice was tasty. I felt full this morning and even felt decently full into lunch. I had a small lunch and smaller breakfast due to it that I normally would have. We are going to taste test some veggies tonight, to see how they taste and which ones have the bitter that Steph and Nick don’t like.
This was a nice episode and some really cool things happened in it. They are still changing parts of the book so that fewer characters are needed. Some of the changes are really nice, some are a little strange. They also added in a part about Varys that was really disturbing, but endeared him to me in a really strange way.
Simon hosted the night and made some really amazing food. He got most of the base food from Fresh and Easy, but then included in it lots of more spicing that was really good. We are going to be hosting next week and I’ll have to pick up something that will be really tasty, but I can prepare after we get home from sailing.
It's an Exciting World 