Everyone is familiar with the board game Monopoly. I assume that everyone is aware that there are numerous fill-in-the-blank-opolies to appeal to alumni of some universities, residents of come cities and states, and so on. They make great regifts! By which I mean, they’re popular gifts that nobody really wants.

Right-winger Michelle Malkin and left-winger Scott Keyes both apparently love the German board game Settlers of Catan. So apparently, do a lot of people:

Last Christmas, I tore the wrapping paper off a rectangular box, expecting at best I’d see an iPad, at worst a Kindle. Instead, I was staring down at a board game: Settlers of Catan. In an era of Xboxes and Wiis, my gift ranked just above a framed photo of the gift-giver and just below nose hair clippers.

But multiple marathon gaming sessions later, Settlers of Catan stole my heart.

I’m not the only one. Over the past few years, Settlers of Catan has transformed from an activity enjoyed by a small niche of gamers into a mainstream hit. With sales nearing 25 million copies worldwide, Settlers of Catan is becoming the most popular board game since Risk and Monopoly.

After Settlers was first released in 1995, a small but passionate following emerged. It wasn’t until a decade later that the game’s popularity began to blossom. “The start of the tipping point was 2008,” said Bob Carty, a spokesman for Settlers manufacturer Mayfair Games. “Settlers is three to five years away from being a household word.” Last year alone, the game’s sales grew 35 percent. Carty said that the game is mainly played by families, but it’s also popular on college campuses and as a team-bonding activity at companies.

I’ve never played Settlers of Catan before. However, as with Fill-in-the-blank-opoly, there is a Mormon version that I did play once: The Settlers of Zarahemla. Zarahemla being the name of a prominent location in Mormon lore:

Zarahemla was once a great city located somewhere on what is know as the American continent. Probably it was located in or near what is now called Chiapas, Mexico. Zarahemla was the capitol city of a great ancient culture. Actually it was a point of merging of two ancient cultures. It was the home of prophets of God. It was also the home of wise and honorable statesman. It was both a battle ground and holy ground.

Long-time readers of this site will recognize the name. When I started the blog, I scanned my Book of Mormon for the names of the early cities to use for Deseret. If I recall, I found most of them in the part of the book where the cities were being destroyed. But don’t quote me on that. It’s been a while.

Anyhow, unsurprisingly there is a version of Settlers based on the Old Testament, as well.

Incidentally, Mayfair Games (who distributes Settlers) also created DC Heroes, the only dice-rolling RPG I ever played. Since it’s the only one I ever played, I have nothing to compare it to with regard to how good or bad it is. Mayfair lost the rights to DC properties at some points and some no-name company (Pulsar Games) picked it up and ran with it, releasing Blood of Heroes, only to discover that they didn’t actually have the rights to it, either. Which is a shame, because Pulsar actually put a lot of work into creating an elaborate superhero universe with some impressive work (albeit with 6th grade editing). Apparently, DC Comics owns all the copyrights thereto and since they have since released another RPG, they have no reason to even try to negotiate or settle with Pulsar.

In response to a quote suggesting that men should never wear shorts, Drew Magary writes:

Then I have The Awl bitching at me about it too (“Men should not wear shorts. That is all.”). You listen to me, you anti-shorts gay mobsters: I WILL WEAR SHORTS IF I GODDAMN WANT TO.

I don’t give a shit what you deem appropriate or tasteful. I live in Maryland and for the next four months it will be 50,000 fucking degrees outside, and it’ll be so goddamn humid I’ll have to wear flippers to swim through the air. It’s HOT. It’s fucking deathly hot already. They don’t even have spring here anymore. There’s winter, then it rains a for a couple weeks, and then the entire landscape turns into A FIERY PIT OF HOT LAVA. There are elephants basting themselves with rain puddle water down my block. It is hot as shit.

Tom Ford, who is the guy staking out the anti-shorts position, would go crazy in the south or southwest. It seems that everyone wears shorts there for most of the year. And flip-flops, for that matter. Aesthetically, I actually agree with Ford. I think that men look better in long pants and consider flip-flops to be a little too casual. But the utilitarian in me does respect the fact that people who buck this preference are not frying in the heat. Which is pretty much what I do. I have finally given in and wear shorts in some circumstances. Limited mostly to expressly casual events, such as barbeques and family get-togethers at the Corrigan Compound or Shell Beach. But I’m never comfortable doing it.

Much to Clancy’s lament. She very much likes me in shorts. I have rather substantial legs (and did even when I was bone thin).

I am, of course, entirely double-standard on the issue. When i first met Clancy, she was wearing shorts and her marvelous legs were the first thing I noticed about her. She had a big bruise on one of the legs. Not only did that not deter my admiration, but it gave me an excuse to look at them. Though even with women, my feelings are mixed. Most of the time, I think that women look better in long pants (and full-on shoes). But as a “leg guy”, it seems partially tragic that they should cover them up.

On a sidenote, Redstone High School apparently does not have a minimum pant-length on shorts. For girls. They really, really should. Guys, meanwhile, are not allowed to wear shorts at all.

Meanwhile, some folks think that guys shouldn’t tuck their shirts in:

Pete has everything going for him. Including all of his aforementioned attributes, he’s a funny, gregarious, likeable guy. Pete’s makin’ it happen. Except for one thing. Pete tucks his shirt in too tight.

So what?… you say. Big deal. So Pete’s neat. He wants to be presentable. Look his best. Clean cut. Professional. An upstanding citizen. He should tuck his shirt in, and as tight as the lug nuts on his truck too. Right? Wrong.

And let me make this clear, I’m focusing on the social aspect of shirt tucking, at work, tuck to your hearts content. I’m not the boss. Maybe he likes it that way. They’re usually ‘tight tuckers’ too.

Socially, it never fails. I’ll step out with my buddies – and one of them (sometimes more… unfortunately) has their shirt jacked in so tight it looks as if it was painted on. It also never fails that when they make their approach (some are better than others) the first thing a woman notices is the ultra tight tuck. It’s never good, regardless of shirt type. Here’s why…

Bah. Just as pants (with beltloops) ought to have belts in them, shirts should be tucked in. Everything should be fastened, buckled, and tied. That’s just… the way it should be, dag nabbit. In addition to that, I typically tuck in my shirts because I wear the belts and without tucking in my shirt, the belt buckle can make contact with my skin, which is a sort of uncomfortable feeling. Clancy thinks I should almost always leave my shirts untucked (and thinks that of most men), but I just have trouble with it. I have trouble with things not being in their rightful place, and a shirt tail’s rightful place is tucked in. I actually take it to very unfashionable extremes, tucking in Hawaiian shirts and sports jerseys some of the time. Both are no-nos. And I recognize that it looks a little goofy, but that’s society’s problem. There is a practical element to it, too. I keep my phone on a belt holster (another fashion no-no, actually) and it’s more accessible when my shirt is tucked in.

The article mentions four things in particular that shouldn’t be tucked in and I actually agree with one of them. Sweaters should not be tucked in. It also mentions jerseys, which I agree is the norm but am iffy about myself. He’s wrong on button-downs and t-shirts, though.

The only real exception are for people who are overweight or have really odd body shapes. The only time I stopped tucking in my shirts was when I hit my peak weight. I bit the bullet, got a ton of undershirts (intentionally too small, though now they’re too big), and let the shirts hang. When the weight came off, that bow to aestheticism came to an abrupt end.

Incidentally, they also have an article on belts, which I actually agree with (for the most part)! Especially the parts about belts and shoes matching. Despite my devil-may-care attitude towards phone holsters and the like, I am meticulous about this. My boots, belt, and watch all need to match. I keep brown and black variations of each and, unless I’m off my game, all three are brown or black. When these three things don’t match, it just feels wrong.

All of which is to say that there are reasons why I had trouble with the ladies prior to meeting my wife.

Businessweek ran an article on the Postal Service that’s creating a lot of buzz. Basically, it’s in pretty bad shape. What else is new? In this case, it’s actually running close to complete implosion:

Since 2007 the USPS has been unable to cover its annual budget, 80 percent of which goes to salaries and benefits. In contrast, 43 percent of FedEx’s (FDX) budget and 61 percent of United Parcel Service’s (UPS) pay go to employee-related expenses. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the postal service’s two primary rivals are more nimble. According to SJ Consulting Group, the USPS has more than a 15 percent share of the American express and ground-shipping market. FedEx has 32 percent, UPS 53 percent.

The USPS has stayed afloat by borrowing $12 billion from the U.S. Treasury. This year it will reach its statutory debt limit. After that, insolvency looms.

A few years ago, when the USPS was talking about cutting out Saturday deliveries, there were howls of protest. I’m not entirely sure how many would protest that now. The USPS would actually have been better off if this had happened five years ago, when the prospect of life without the Post Office might have seemed scarier.

The right has latched on to the notion that this is a public sector unions issue. But it does deeper than that. The main issue is that the USPS is an uncomfortable mixture of independent and governmental. They are independent insofar as they are expected to fund themselves. They negotiated their own deals with the unions and such. But they’re governmental insofar as the government can prevent them from doing some of the things they would need to do in order to become solvent again. It’s not just the unions that don’t want post office locations to close, but also congress. And their relationship with the government makes it difficult for them to raise prices to the extent that they can become solvent again. There’s really no excuse for them to be losing money on junk mail, for instance, but they can’t unilaterally raise the price. (Is there a junk mail lobby that stops congress from doing this? I’m not sure. It wouldn’t surprise me if this were an issue where of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs where the concentrated beneficiaries have undue influence.)

But ultimately, this brings to light the question of what, precisely, we want from the post office. And how much we’re willing to pay for it. The Postal Service incurs costs that UPS and FedEx don’t due to statutory requirements that they delivery to everywhere and that they do so every day. There are many that are suggesting that if left to the private sector, some places wouldn’t get mail delivery or would do so only at very steep rates. As though that is what is causing all the problems. While it is true that there are some places that UPS and FedEx won’t deliver, they are actually very few. Mostly parts of Alaska and on reservations. They really aren’t the problem. And FedEx and UPS actually charge pretty competitive rates whether a package is being delivered to the city or the country. I ran some checks on Glasgow, MT (pretty much defined as the middle of nowhere) and Denver and Seattle in a package shipped from Tampa. Sometimes the delivery was more expensive. Sometimes it was cheaper. But it was never a huge difference.

So at least in theory, we could simply have a stripped down USPS that delivers to the places that UPS and FedEx won’t at a fraction of the price. That still leaves the issue of door-to-door mail. Right now, the Post Office ostensibly has a monopoly on that, though when you try to pin down what exactly the monopoly consists of. It’s illegal to use mailbox and I’ve heard from at least one person that they can’t deliver “non-urgent” envelopes. But even if they could, I doubt they would do so competitively with the USPS. Or that they would want to so long as the USPS actually exists. So if you got rid of the USPS, would either of them step up? Would both? I would imagine that at least one would, but the price increase would probably be substantial.

So I think that the answer for the Postal Service falls into one of three categories: (1) beef it up and offer services that post offices in other countries offer, such as scanned mail and bill-pay, (2) raise prices and reduce costs as necessary to be profitable, or (3) marginalize losses by scaling down and becoming the sender of last resort. I think a lot of the services they would provide in the first would give a lot of Americans the heebie-jeebies. The second is difficult or impossible between the union contracts and congressional meddling to go forward with. The third would likely involve will-call and weekly deliveries, which would also be difficult to square with the unions. So all of these are pretty problematic, leaving to the fourth option: just pay the piper. Undo the legislation that forced the Postal Service to be solvent in the first place. That, I suspect, is what is going to happen.

Regarding the unions, I have three things to add. First, I agree with the left that union wages are not the primary issue. There are reasons why the USPS would spend a higher portion of its money on people: you need them to deliver door-to-door. You spend on people what FedEx and UPS spend on planes. And salaries at USPS are not actually higher than those at UPS, from what I understand. Second, while salaries are not the issue, the inflexibility regarding hiring and firing are. The most obvious route to solvency appears to me to be a reduction in services. But the cost savings would come from personnel reductions that would be hard to negotiate. Third, I do believe that the government has to live up to the pension promises that it made. I think that there is a grace period to such things, but the grace period has passed as far as the USPS is concerned. However, and this is important, this is why we should never, ever make these promises to begin with and making alternate arrangements for new employees to whom these promises have not been made. When you find yourself in a hole, the first step is to stop digging.

I’ve had this song stuck in my head for about two weeks now. Its music video has a rather bizarre sense of morality.

Man reminisces. He met woman (Silk Spectre!). Drives irresponsibly with her in car. Parties with her. Cheats on her with her roommate (Felicity!) gets caught. Woman finds new guy who treats her well. Man comes back crawling. Realizes that she slept with someone else. Hypocritically goes ballistic. Chases her away. Misses her.

Inexplicably, we’re supposed to feel sorry for the man in this tale. Because he will love her always. Except when Felicity is in the room. And except when she falls for somebody that treats her nice after his own infidelity. Always. Almost. Poor guy.

A couple weeks back I had a few jobs at Pitts Elementary, which (along with Clark) is among the spottiest schools in town. And I was told, from start, that I was being handed a “problem class.” I was excited to discover that I would have not one but two “prep times” while the kids were in music and library respectively. Unfortunately, I had to stay in the classroom through music because a couple kids had been banned from the class and so I had to sit them. But other than that, things had actually gone pretty well. Right up until recess.

When the kids came back from recess, a kid named Lucus was whining that Deric hit him in the hallway. Lucus had alternated between being helpful and being one of the biggest problems in the class. I basically told him that I didn’t see it and so there isn’t much I can do about it. Then I saw Deric with his head buried in his arms, crying. I’m not proud of my inclination to just ignore Lucus, but there it is. Crying kids are harder to ignore, however. Marko and Lucus basically said that Deric cries a lot (along with Lucus reiterating that he was hit by Deric) and that the regular teacher always ignores it. I was less than entirely comfortable with that (with substitute teachers, I guess, crying works better than mere whining). So what happened, Deric? Todd hit me! Todd, did you hit Deric? Todd replies that he’s not getting involved. I tell him he’s already involved. Todd says he only hit Deric after Deric hit him. Lucus reiterates that he was hit by Deric. A neutral party, Marin, says that Deric did not hit Todd prior to Todd hitting Lucus. Marin, it should be said, is the kind of girl that I hope Clancy and I have if we have a girl. So I start preparing what I’m going to say to the principal and am informed (by Lucus, confirmed by Marin) that it’s actually the recess monitor’s responsibility and not mine.

Before I could get this settled, they had to go to the library. Since they were in the library, I thought I would get confirmation that it’s “not my problem.” So I went to the principal’s office with a kid that had been banned from the library. As a brief but not entirely irrelevant aside, when I was walking him to the main office, I got two or three inquiries about What Did Branden Do This Time? In fact, Branden had been well-behaved and helpful throughout. When I got to the main office, I had planned to just ask the clerk, but nobody was there because it was around lunchtime and the office-workers double as food-servers. The principal was in his office, though, and overheard me talking to Branden. He came out and chided Branden, saying that he thought Branden was going to start doing better. Actually, this is not about Brandon. Oh? So then with Brandon’s help, I explained everything and asked if this was something that I concern myself with or if it’s a recess monitor’s responsibility.

The end result was that the principal immediately took control of the situation. He pulled Lucus, Todd, Deric, and Marin out of the library and into his office. Lucus, I gather, quickly backtracked on his complaints about being hit to get out of the principal’s office as quickly as possible. Marin was out once she told him what she knew. Deric and Todd both ended up getting detention, surprise surprise. On the one hand, nobody saw what happened and so it’s difficult to discern (Todd’s story was – or became – that Deric hit him earlier in the day, and so Marin didn’t see it). One might be quick to say that this student is a troublemaker so we should assume he was at fault, but the assumptions about Branden made me particularly skittish about that in the afternoon. On the other hand, when I passed out the detention notices, Deric started crying again while Todd was showing it off to all of his friends. That, more or less, tells me what I need to know.

Bakadesuyo reports on whether playing hard to get works and what the most desired age difference in relationships for men and women. Notably, marriages like mine where the husband is younger than the wife do not do as well, though cases where the man is nine or more years older do even worse.

ED Kain asks if public universities still exist. I found the title extremely offputting, but since I enjoy ED Kain’s writing, I read it anyway and am glad I did. I disagree with his conclusion. There is virtually no risk that public education will no longer be available to a large portion of the American people. That’s part of the problem: you don’t have to have any money. Nor do you need a roadmap to being able to pay back loans. You just need to be willing to sign on the dotted line. If this system collapses, the results could be horrific, but the price of college will go down to a reasonable and sane level.

Related: An article on for-profit universities. I really don’t have a problem with for-profit universities as such, but the way that we fund schools makes a lot of problems. The corners they cut wouldn’t be such a bad thing at all if they resulted in lower costs. But since costs are set by the student loan apparatus, they get the best of every world and their students often get screwed.

A disadvantage to clinging to Windows Mobile is that I can’t do cool things like this. I keep trying to find a use for my old phones other than as obsolete Pocket PCs. If they could make calls, that would be pretty cool. Maybe there is a way and I just haven’t found it yet.

The science behind helmet stickers. I’m reminded of a culture clash when I was working for Monmark-Soyokaze, a Japanese-owned company. The US branch liked to give out awards and such, but the Japanese there didn’t like the receive them because they thought individual recognition was distasteful. They struck a compromise where my boss would receive an award, but it would be unengraved and he would give it back as soon as the ceremony ended.

Why Germany’s unemployment rates are lower. Germany’s policies directed towards reducing workforce mobility stands in contrast to ours. It seemed foolish when our unemployment levels were ridiculously low, but not so foolish now. On the other hand, outside the public sector where they are often boxed in, Americans respond with great hostility towards taking a pay cut.

Is male birth control finally here? I have no fear of needles, so I could actually live with an injection.

We’re all for cleaner air and avoiding the Global Warming apocalypse, but that nuclear stuff is scary! The Swiss will be able to breathe easier now. Next time they are hit by a tsunami, they needn’t worry about a meltdown.

Microsoft makes more money off Android than Windows Phone 7.

NSFW: Naked girls with masks.

Map: CO2 emissions by county.

The folks over at The League have kindly given me a forum to talk about why I believe that the end result of increased fuel costs, fuel taxes, or road taxes will result in the strengthening of the suburbs at the expense of cities:

Peak Oil has been right around the corner for decades. Global warming requires a response that is going to make energy – oil in particular – more expensive. Commuters and drivers are subsidized with general funds. The solution to all of this is, of course, to stick it to the commuters. It’s nothing personal (ignoring everything negative we’ve said in the past about suburbanites), but we’ve got problems and it’s going to be up to them to change their lifestyles (which, coincidentally, we’ve never really approved of anyway). They’ll just have to take public transportation and live in walkable neighborhoods, like we do (or would like to, if it weren’t for the car culture making it nigh-impossible).

There seems to be an assumption, on the part of a lot of urbanists*, that solidifying our future (in terms of energy needs and/or the environment) or basic fairness (in terms of taxing negative externalities or subsidizing roads) will lead to a world more of their liking. If we just taxed gas or stopped requiring highways and parking (or if gas simply gets more expensive), the world will simply have to acclimate to their preferences.

As it happens, I do not oppose a carbon tax. I am in favor of increasing road taxes and fees so that the car culture subsidizes itself (though I do worry about it being regressive taxation). But I get off the train when we talk about the effect that these policies are going to have. Namely, while road construction and maintenance (for instance) subsidize suburban residents, they also subsidize downtown business. While the growth of suburbia was assisted by tax policy, now that people have gotten used to it, and now that our urban/suburban infrastructures have been built, I have enormous difficulty seeing mass conversion to smaller abodes, more restricted mobility, and so on. Not without a fight, anyway.

“But whether they want to or not, they’ll have to!”

Except that they won’t. Arguably, they will not be able to.

{Continue Reading…}

I’ve come to learn that teachers’ pets are actually a little like pets. Some are like hounds or shephards, and they can really help you out. Others, for the most part, just want to hump your leg. Then there are those that are exceptionally nice to you because they know that when you walk upstairs, you’ll discover that they pooped by your bed.

My first assignment had a teacher’s pet named Marinda. I really thought she was a godsend as she helped guide me through the class. The first half-day, she was quite helpful. By the end of the second day, I found her to be extremely annoying. I would specifically ask others for help, when I needed it, because she simply wouldn’t stop… everything. She just wouldn’t stop. I’ve learned to pick up on this type pretty quickly and go to others for help. If nothing else, there’s usually a quiet girl in the back of the class who likes things orderly and tidy and will answer any of your questions to keep the status quo. I can more easily understand teacher bias towards girls in this respect. At least in grade school, they like orderly and tidy a lot more than boys.

Most of the helpful boys fall into that third category. They’re actually not the best behaved kids in the room. Sometimes, they’re among the worst. They know this. It seems like they really can’t help themselves. They try to compensate by, when they’re not being bad, by being as helpful as possible, hoping to mitigate the negativity in the note I leave behind. Or else, the bad behavior and the help both trace back to the root cause. Outgoing kids with pent up energy. An inability to be quiet and sit still. A natural force that can be used for good, evil, or frequently both.

It’s difficult to understate the degree to which substitutes have to rely on classroom helpers. Or at least I do. No amount of note-leaving by the teacher will explain everything. A lot of times, if you do something “wrong” (something other than the way it is usually done), you will have ten or so objections at once. Of course, sometimes it’s contradictory. I’ll pick a certain way to do something and the kids who prefer it that way will say “Yeah, we do that sometimes” while the rest will say “nuh-uh!” Fortunately, you can tell by a straw poll and by the words they use “we do it that way sometimes” versus “we always do it this way.” That’s when it gets complicated, though, because you have at least a couple kids excited about what you said you were going to do. Their hopes were up and everything.

Interestingly, one thing I haven’t really seen that I would have expected to is animosity towards teachers pets. I would think that Kid A would be upset with Kid B when Kid B informs me that the teacher doesn’t let the class do what Kid A is doing. But really, the Kid A’s seem to accept their fate with a stunning grace. Oh. Well. Busted. At most, they’ll try to negotiate. But whether they’re guide dogs or leg humpers, the teachers pets do not seem to be as ostracized as I would expect. It makes it easier to ask that quiet girl in the back of the class what we are supposed to do, knowing that I am not putting a target on their back.