Hoss-fightin' hosses and such

Role-playing game handle: Horse de combat

via flickr.com

While the illegal sports of dogfighting and cockfighting are better known, the blood sport of horsefighting is also practiced in some parts of the Far East, despite a fair amount of outcry.
Combat by proxy is not limited to vertebrate species. There are enthusiasts of fighting crickets in China

Perhaps one could redirect this interest to virtual depictions of blood sports in the context of video games, so that actual animals would not suffer. There is already a series of Alien vs. Predator games which one could consider to be a variation on this idea, albeit one that is a little easier to market.

Posted via web from Poor Poor Thing

Unreal pennyloafer edition

Attention Flash game developers: Please create a first person hurler game in which one's goal is to toss footwear at various major world leaders, earning points if you score a solid hit. In easy mode, you just throw and try to hit stationary heads of state, in medium they will dodge and try to take cover behind furniture, and in hard there should be aides and allies attempting to shield their commanders.

As you go up in level, maybe you might progress from sandals to sneakers to espadrilles to pumps to stilettos. Not sure where steel-toed boots would fit into the sequence, but I would guess that clogs would require some sort of cheat code.

I am sure someone who's written these kinds of things in the past could hack something out in an afternoon's worth of work.

A modest economic proposal

Administration officials, Wall Street executives, media pundits, average people in the street, and everyone else is complaining about the unavailability of business credit these days what with the shocking, shocking revelations of people playing fast and loose with other peoples' money. I ask, why not monetize scrip that everyone probably already has, in the form of board game money?

For instance, Milton Bradley's Game of Life has always had an extensive collection of scrip, including stock certificates and promissory notes. The 1960's era set had $100000 bills bearing the face of trusted television personality Art Linkletter. The Treasury could simply declare some or all of these bits of paper to be backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States Government, and there would be an immediate infusion of cash as people would unearth their bounty hidden in their attics and basements and start using them as instruments of monetary exchange.

The Promissory Notes are interesting as they are essentially debt obligations made between the player and whoever was playing the banker (in my case, this would often be my cousin Estelle). Perhaps we should reserve these for small businesses to replace the lost short-term credit opportunities that are besetting them now, in the expectation that once the system has been re-primed, they will be able to make good on the note plus interest when it matures, same as if they had obtained funds in the commercial paper market.

Some might complain that the allocation of this windfall would be unfair, purely at the whim of whether a person had packrat tendencies or not. My reply is that it is certainly less unfair than the TARP program, which gives money to the some of the very people who made the crisis as bad as it is, and just about nothing to the average citizen boardgame-playing or not.

If the amount of stimulus is too little, the Treasury Secretary could go on to phase two of the program, which would monetize Monopoly cash and perhaps also the little metal tokens they used to package in the box. One hopes that the government would not have to resort to a third round involving Scrabble tiles and the like.

More action saints

The venerable Cracked magazine's website has a post up about six saints who had astounding physical prowess. This fits in nicely with my previous video game proposal, on which I have heard exactly zero reaction from the hierarchy. An opportunity is being missed, one which could feature St. Olaf swinging a great big two-handed broadsword in 3D, and it is a pity. As far as I know, the only video game saints one can play with today are the ones based in New Orleans.

Odd that there's no mention of St. George drilling a dragon. It's just that ugly "legend" label keeping that boy down.

First person vocation processing

Saint Francis of Assisi and his Stigmata,
originally uploaded by Leo Cloma.

If the United States Army can devise a video game for recruiting, couldn't the Catholic Church with her priest shortage do something similar?

I picture a first-person preacher where you travel through Assisi and environs and experience both cruel oppression and sublime ecstasy, with your spiritual score updated based on your actions. I think the Stigmata scene would have to be unlocked only after you have progressed to a pretty high level so that it would be especially meaningful.

That might serve well to boost interest in the OFM, but how about the rank and file diocesan clergy ranks? I think in this case one could rework the classic book by Georges Bernanos Diary of a Country Priest struggling with the day-to-day challenges of leading his flock, only giving it a little bit of action and flash, to appeal to the younger set. Perhaps you could choose a setting which isn't provincial France of the 1930s and instead pick an inner city parish where the parishioners (and the unchurched) would have a somewhat different outlook on life.

To incorporate more exotic locales, one could turn to the lives of the missionaries. But one would have to have a certain degree of cross-cultural sensitivity to avoid offense.

In Vitro

p1=1; p2=1; So let it be written. So let it be done.,
originally uploaded by Josh Sommers.

I would like to see a chess set with a cell biology theme.

The board would be clear glass, alternately clear and frosted, with shallow wells in each square. You could put liquid or agar gel in the wells if you were really hard-core.

These would be the pieces:

King	Neuron
Queen	Oocyte
Rook	Osteocyte
Bishop	Epithelium
Knight	White blood cell
Pawn	Stem cell

I think they could be sculpted in the shape of the corresponding cell, and visually the size of the pieces would help clue in the viewer as to the role in gameplay. Or else they could be in little sealed cuvettes shaped like the old Staunton set, etched with the type of cell contained inside. In either case, maybe one side could depict normal cells and the other side would be malignancies.

This is the set that would have worked really well in the Bergman movie.

The 6.6 Million Dollar Man

Tacked on an additional quarter million.



And now, it is all gone. Back to reality.

Previously here and here.

Virtual gains

A while back I posted about how I was entering CNBC's Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge. Now, going into the last week of the competition, it's time to take a look at how well I have been doing.

So you see, all five of my portfolios funded initially with a million dollars of play money are above water, even despite the frightful bear market. A bunch of the bucks on each account were gained by answering trivia questions on the CNBC site, but even taking that into account, all of the five are solidly in the black, though not nearly to the extent of being anywhere near winning one of the prizes. It isn't as if one of the market strategies did a huge amount better than the other, even despite the great differences in maintaining the individual portfolios. I never did come up with the multibagger play in the Earnings reports, even though a few dozen stocks have come and gone through the process. Conversely, there were a few holdings which experienced wrenching falls (the rules of the game do not allow short selling), but there was enough money spread around so that the downside effect was also diluted.

The one addition to the mix of portfolios to round out the five came in late because it was a pure currency trading play, and this capability was not turned on in the contest at the very beginning. 10% of the initial stake was available for trading a number of European, North American, and Asian currencies during hours extended beyond the normal equity market hours.

Next week, all the pretend money goes away. I won't be missing it all that much, though it was fun to have while it lasted.

Virtual riches

gold coins,
originally uploaded by technicolor.

CNBC is running another one of those fantasy investment contests, runnng from now until July, and I've signed myself up. Why not? The prizes are

1. Five Hundred Thousand Dollars
2. One Hundred Thousand Dollars
3. Fifty Thousand Dollars
4. A Trip for Winner and one Guest to see Game Three of the 2008 World Series.
5. A Trip for Winner and one Guest to the Sea Island Golf Resort.
6. About $5000 of Sony stuff.
7. A Trip to Jamaica for Winner and one Guest.
8. A pair of TAG Heuer Watches.
9. A Florida golf clinic with (recently retired) Annika Sorenstam, plus other perks.
10. A Trip to Turks and Caicos for Winner and one Guest.
11. A weekend in a Bentley.
12. A Trip for the Winner to play in the Main Event of the 2009 World Series of Poker.
13. A Trip for Winner and one Guest to see the 2009 Super Bowl.

You just have to outsmart a few hundred thousand other players, that's all.

I've set up four of the allowed five million dollar portfolios for myself, and so far none of them are in the red. These are themes of the portfolios:

1. Earnings reports The weekly prizes are based on largest percentage change of a portfolio, and I figured that the best way of catching a lucky coinidence of a number of stocks "popping" was to chose those schedued to have earnings reports that week. Last week, I started with Brocade Communications, Sony, BMC Software, and Nordstrom turn in good performances for me, with Urban Outfitters posting a loss after missing the analysts' expectations. This week it will be instead Hewlett-Packard, AnnTaylor, Campbell Soup, Saks, and Staples.


2. Tech tech tech The sector that hasn't had to bear too much of the brunt of the slowdown these last few months. I've put together a port with Ansys, IDC, Microsoft, Oracle, and CommVault which is the best-performing of all so far.


3. Take me The other way a stock can get a big pop is if it suddenly finds itself on the receiving end (or occasionally the issuing end) of takeover activity. So I looked for some solid, defensive stocks with a decent amount of cash and built a port consisting of CSC, Heinz, and NetApp. A shot in the dark, really.


4. Vice As the words of the hymn say,

   Tempted and tried, we're oft made to wonder
   Why it should be thus all the day long
   While there are others living among us
   Never molested, though in the wrong

   So with this in mind I thought about some industries which flourish by causing other folks dismay and came up with this list: MasterCard, Fortune Brands, CACI International, Halliburton (duh), Altria, British American Tobacco, Baidu, Las Vegas Sands, and Foundation Coal Holdings. Just sayin'.

Any suggestions for a theme for my final million dollar portfolio? Put them in the comments. Or let me know if you are a fellow player and how you're doing. (There's still time to sign up.) If I think of it, I'll post an entry about how these strategies of mine ended up faring.

Mix 'n match

I think if I were to start a gaming store which included products of a military sort, I could do worse than to name it Rocket Propelled Games.

Alternatively, please enjoy this picture

of a Role-Playing Grenade.

Rien ne va plus

The game of roulette has been on my mind lately, for no good reason, and I have been thinking of what it would be like to stretch the concept out mathematically by altering the number of pockets the ball could fall into for any given spin.

Roulette Wheel,
originally uploaded by refmo.

Instead of having just 38 pockets, how about increasing it somewhat by replacing the plain old integers with something more transcendental? Of course, you couldn't build a physical wheel with enough pockets to accommodate all the transcendentals (or even the ones over a finite interval of the number line), but notionally you could rig something up which would choose a random real number by spitting out an infinite number of nonrepeating digits after the decimal point, and if it matches the one you had selected in advance, you get to win all of the bets placed. The house would have an edge corresponding to the zero and double-zero slots by taking all bets when a rational number comes up.

For it to be a sensible game of chance, you would want to be tossing your bet in against a pot of transfinite cardinality - either or more bettors placing finite bets, or else a denumerable number of bettors making transfinite bets would do well to make the pastime worth one's while. To keep things moving along, it would be well to have the random number generator spitting out digits at a faster and faster rate so that the process converges in a finite time, and I presume those betting would use similar random digit devices to select their own numbers to bet on as well. Rather than having something with an infinite number of lottery balls to construct their pick, or choosing one of the known transcendentals, or something, that is.

In the happy event that the house pays off on a bet, that person would have the privilege of figuring out what to do with a transfinite amount of winnings in such a way that does not destroy the economic basis of civilization.


At any rate, this scheme seems better than the opposite extreme: a roulette wheel with only a single pocket on it. Ugh, boring. Especially if you are the casino.

Extreme geocaching

A former acquaintance of mine is into the sport of geocaching. I was thinking that it would be a more thrilling pastime if one introduced mild hazards into the mix — nothing deadly or terribly hazardous, but just distateful. Tear gas, not nerve gas, if you like. Along with the cache, what about secreting a very ripe durian? A cluster of wolf spider eggs? A small pail brimming with saliva? A paintball booby-trap? Or an emotionally disturbing snip of video?

The finder could be awarded points for getting to the cache having bypassed the hazard, making it more like a bomb-squad mission of sorts for the finder, and like an evil overlord experience for the person setting up the cache.