Spanning the Globe

...to bring you the constant variety of Mark's mind... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of intellectual competition... this Mark's blog!

Somebody drop Jim McKay a line & tell him I'm very, very sorry... but then again, he helped foist Superstars on us, so there.

For anyone still reading, here's the highlights for April 22, 2007:

• I'll blog more about it later, but I had the opportunity to see Meet the Robinsons with Braeden on Thursday night. Amazingly, they managed to capture the feel of William Joyce's book, A Day With Wilbur Robinson, yet create their own story.
• I just finished reading Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer - another great page-turner from the author of the Harry Bosch series. (Warning: this is a dark book, as are most of his novels.)
• The Apples Project is winding down - the final voting is finished & I'm in the process of compiling the top ten lists of participants to compare to the overall results & to the game ratings at BGG. Hop on over and check out the last few categories... be esp. on the lookout for Strongly Themed games, which yielded the most interesting list of games.
• I've finally given up on the Anno 1503 expansion, Aristokraten & Piraten. This is the classic "it seemed like a good idea at the time" expansion for a game I that I dearly love... unfortunately, all it adds is extra time & fiddliness and manages to take away some interesting decisions in the process. Sigh - it's on the trade pile for anyone who's interested. (Speaking of the "agony of defeat", I got clobbered in the original game by William & Richard at our last game night.)
• Braeden's newest "favorite" game is Screaming Eagles - no, not the more recent Mission Command version, but the original. Yes, he's almost six & the box says 10 & up, but he's got a pretty good feel for when to do what. So far, we're 1-1 against each other solo... and I beat him & his mom in a 3-player game. (If you've never played, it's worth your time to try it - this is a really nice design that feels like a Top Gun dogfight.)
• Cardinal Industries took 3 months to answer my e-mails & finally send me the missing pieces to Lost: the Game which I received for Christmas. I appreciate them finally getting their act together - but what took so dang long?!
• I finally caught up last night with Heroes (thanks to NBC's 3 hour marathon) and all I can say is "Wow." I'm hooked again - I've been taping 24 & trying to catch Heroes on iTunes. Starting tomorrow night, that's reversed - because, frankly, much as I love Jack Bauer, Heroes is the better show. (Well, right now... things could change.)

And finally, a quote from Randy Alcorn's The Grace & Truth Paradox to finish this out:

Truth is quick to post warning signs and guardrails. Yet it fails to empower people to drive safely, to avoid plunging off the cliff, and fails to help them when they crash. Grace is quick to post ambulances and paramedics at the bottom of the cliff. But without truth, it fails to post warning signs and build guardrails, and therefore encourages the very self-destruction it attempts to heal.

Grace without truth deceives people, and ceases to be grace. Truth without grace crushes people, and ceases to be truth.

May you have both.