It's National Games Week!

It's National Games Week, a time to promote non-computer board and card games.

So, perhaps it's appropriate that my game, Jedi Chess, was published on Chessvariants.org yesterday. I invite you to play it with your kids and have fun!

How to Vote

OK, it's election season, and past time to weigh in. Each year at this time we're treated to "get out the vote" messages ad infinitum, (as if simply getting large numbers to the polls is a good thing, which it's not). The problem is, most voters go to the polls not knowing a thing about the issues they're deciding. They're either voting blindly or they're casting a vote decided by somebody else who told them how to vote. (This is called cheating, and it's the reason children aren't allowed to vote.) Other people decide to lodge "protest" votes. Rather than voting on the candidate that best matches their interests, they vote for somebody -- anybody -- else to "send a message".

If you're in either of those categories, stay home. Democracy doesn't need you. The country doesn't need you. You shouldn't vote, because you don't know how. Fortunately, your lack of knowledge is exceedingly easy to fix.

So here's how to vote.

First, people often vote with a particular party without knowing what it even stands for, because their parents voted that way, or their friends, or their union says to. Before you say "I'm a Republican" or Democrat, or Libertarian, find out what that means. You may find yourself switching affiliations. If you're like most people you won't agree with everything any party says. Not even the candidates do. But you'll be close enough.

If you're a protest voter, do your protesting in the primaries. The general election is no time to shoot yourself in the foot. So if you feel like throwing the bum out, replace him with a member of your party... if you agree with your party's positions. When the primaries are over, put aside your "message" and vote in your best interests. Now -- days from the general election -- is not the time for your petty protests. If you voted in the primary, your message was received; if you didn't, then sending it now sends the wrong message to the wrong people at the wrong time. Above all, do not vote emotionally, ever.

If you don't know what the candidates stand for, or what the issues mean, or if you honestly do not care, then DON'T VOTE. I mean it. The world doesn't need you screwing up things blindly when the issues could be better decided by people who are informed, involved, and who care. There is no law that says you have to vote on every position on the ballot. Just vote for what you care about and leave the rest alone. You have strong feelings about your Congressman, but you don't know anything about the candidates for county Sheriff? Then vote for your Congressman and don't choose anyone in the Sheriff's race.

If you want to vote, then get informed. Go read your local newspaper, listen to talk radio, and go to http://www.dontvote.com. Read each campaign's literature. But don't use just one source of information. If you do that, then you're just voting for somebody else. Get the balanced info so you can make a real decision, because that's what voting is.

Five days from now, when it's time to hit the polls, if you're apathetic, uninformed, confused, or plain lazy, then do the right thing. Please stay home. Don't vote.

The Open Prosthetics Project

Once in a while you find something really worthwhile you just have to share. The Open Prosthetics Project takes the idea of Open Source beyond software. As stated on the website

The Open Prosthetics Project is producing useful innovations in the field of prosthetics and giving the designs away for free. By substituting public good for profits we believe that we can generate far more societal benefit than if we commercialized and sold our ideas. This project is an open source collaboration between users, designers and funders with the goal of making our creations freely available for anyone to use and build upon.

Now that says it all. To make the project as accessible as possible they've chosen Alibre Design Xpress as their 3D parametric CAD software.

Smell the Irony

In West Bank attacks on churches, Palestinians used guns, firebombs and lighter fluid, leaving church doors charred and walls scorched by flames and pocked with bullet holes. Nobody was reported injured. Two Catholic churches, an Anglican one and a Greek Orthodox one were hit. A Greek Orthodox church was also attacked in Gaza City.

ABC News: Pope Stops Short of Apology to Muslims

This was in response to the Pope having quoted a 15th-century Byzantine emperor who decried the violence of Muslims. The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said the pontiff sought in his university speech to condemn all religious motivation for violence, "from whatever side it may come."

The attacks were perpetrated by a group calling itself "Lions of Monotheism". Way to prove the Pope's point, morons.

Never Forget.

Five years ago, on September 11^th, 2001, the World Trade Center towers collapsed after being impacted by two hijacked airliners. On this same date, the Pentagon building was impacted by a third airliner, and similar damage to a target in our Capitol (likely, the White House) was averted by the heroic passengers of Flight 93.

This was not the result of some US government conspiracy, as is suggested by some, including the conspiracy lunatics who supplied this photo. Should you click through to read their retarded fantasies (which I invite you to do, since this sort of idiocy needs to be exposed), kindly click through to the devastating debunking available at skeptic.com

This damage was done by radical Islamic fundamentalists. They are terrorists and cowards who preferred to attack unwitting civilians to choosing legitimate military targets. They hide in mosques and schools and hospitals, and cry about human rights violations if they're discovered there. They demand rights and considerations that they would never in their most compassionate lapses grant to others. They have earned their deaths. It is our duty to deliver them.

Testing Windows Live Writer Beta.

Don't expect much from this post; it's a simple test of the Windows Live Writer program. To be perfectly honest, I like the idea of it. I'm not terribly enamoured of "web apps" (what these days are called RIAs, or "Rich Internet Apps"). I'm generally much happier with desktop apps that are capable of publishing to the web, of which this is an example. I've got a minor issue with the licensing at the moment, so I'm simply uploading an innocuous post with a picture of me staring intently at the screen.   I will say this: I like the preview capability. It's faster than Blogger, and I'll know in a moment whether it uploads correctly.

The Next Generation

I just have to pass this on, from Randy Cassingham's Jumbo Joke website: The Next Generation