I forgot that I do actually use a house rule, when we play, a roll of 7 will give you any 1 resource you want. I’ll have to try out the other variants.

Good to know about the hexes, sounds like you have a pretty sturdy board now.

Regarding two players, we’ve tried a number of variations. Most include:
1) No robber; or, on a roll of 7 the robber goes to the player with the fewest visible victory points; and/or re-roll a 7 the first two times it appears
2) Double roll – each person rolls twice for resource cards during their turn
3) Play in stages: There’s a winner at 12 victory points, 14, and 16 victory points

Recently, we tried…
1) Create a 3rd player – have a fake 3rd player play that both players control. None of the aforementioned special rules apply. All decisions made by the 3rd fake player must be accomplished through a unanimous decision from the “real” players (such as, what to build, where to send the robber, what to trade, etc…). This led to the unexpected result of the 3rd player winning, despite the real players ganging up on him!

We’re going to try…
1) Each player play two players. I’ll let you know how it goes…

I was most interested in how you tuned the game for 2 players? I have played the game straight out of the box with 2 and had a good time. So I was wondering what you did differently.

Thank you!

Historically, when Facebook was founded, it was open only to college students. People in this generation typically grew up in an environment of ubiquitous communication: their own cell phones for talk & texting and their own internet-connected computers with some instant messaging client installed. Consequently, they’re much more “open” and connected with their peers. I’ve heard it said that “kids” collect FB friends like collecting baseball cards. Some they keep and treasure; others they discard without any personal emnity.

Eventually Facebook went public and allowed anyone to sign up. And in the past few years, the largest demographic to join is those aged 35-54. For these people, the major incentive for use is to reconnect with people they’ve lost touch with in the past. Personally, I’ve used various social networks to reconnect with past acquaintances from undergrad, high school, and even elementary school. The unconscious predicament of using social networks is in answering the question “Are these people _still_ friends?” Time and experience change us all, for better and for worse.

Ultimately, Facebook (and similar social networks) circumvent the rules of self-disclosure, i.e. the natural process of how we communicate and reveal ourselves and become “friends.” (This goes to the core of _my_ opinion of Facebook, but that’s for another discussion). On Facebook, all your information is out there, all at once. For the younger generation, is this a problem? I know a lot of significantly younger people, and many say they aren’t so much, but I think they just haven’t thought out the ramifications. For the adults, well, many of my cohort can be opinionated. And by that, I mean judgmental. Enough said?

Each of us belongs to several distinct overlapping and non-overlapping social circles, and Facebook’s “failure” lies in being greedy and trying to cater to every group and every taste. Over the past few years, I’ve watched as Facebook features expand and the site emulate other specialized networks. With Facebook, you can send messages, chat, post status updates and notes, share pictures, give virtual gifts, take quizzes, “like” stuff… no wonder the site’s privacy settings are confusing! Jack of all trades, master of none.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled on for too long now.

John Taylor – no, it probably doesn’t have to do with ingesting barbed wire! As far as I know, there’s no answer. But we do know that many different animals exhibit the ability sense Earth’s magnetic field. How? We don’t know yet! Even some bacteria have magnets: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70882

I love a good science blog, but can I suggest that you actually link to the real study in these kinds of posts? So many good journals are available for free now. It took me literally 10 seconds to locate this study using . . . Google. I suspect Yahoo Search would have done the same.

Good scientific writing is readable by anyone with a college education. This paper is really interesting and well-written. (I’m not involved with these guys, tho I am a professional scientist.) Encourage people to see the real science!

Also, one of the hazards of being a scientist is we tend to get on soap-boxes with little provocation. It’s why we’re no fun at parties.

Still, if only I could find those cow images they were looking at. It’s worse than a needle in a haystack!

It is further possible that the electrical lines merely served as a search image that drew researchers’ attention to nearby cows that would have been otherwise overlooked?