Fate of the World

I recently found a computer game called Fate of the World. The premise of the game is to make decisions that guide the world from the year 2020 to 2200 while meeting various objectives. For example, one objective that is common is to reach the year 2200 without having the global temperature rise more than three degrees above the year 1750’s temperature (1750 being the start of industrialization according to the game). Another common objective is to raise the human development index (HDI) in different parts of the world; this can be done through expanding their education system, giving them better access to medicine or improving their infrastructure.  The game has you balance these objectives with the needs of the people in the game; they need food to eat, coal to power there industry and oil to drive their cars. Each of the aforementioned things helped raise the global temperature (food production not as much), so you have to maintain a balance of preventing global warming while accommodating the peoples other needs. To address the needs and wants, as well as global warming, the player is given a budget every turn, which they use to provide the wants and needs and implement policies that are used to combat global warming. The game is broken into turns of five years (36 turns total) each to allow the player to react to new situations and remove policies that don’t appear to be working. The world itself is broken down into various regions, each with their own wants and needs, so you can have a place like India who starts the game wanting improved medicine while North America wants more oil. This makes the balancing act even more difficult since each region is only given so many slots to fit their wants and needs, and the region will kick you out of it if you are not meeting their needs.

In my experience Fate of the World is a challenging game. Keeping all of the needs of the people met while combating global warming can be quite difficult because the needs are always changing; so one turn the people in Russia may need oil and the next they may want better crop yields. This adds a new level of difficulty since you will have instances of many regions wanting similar things that you can’t provide to all, because of either funding issues or because there is not much of what they want. I will admit that there is a bit of a learning curve, and it can be slow at first, since Fate of the World is a turn based card game at its root. Once you get into it in however, the game is lots of fun and challenging. There is even a mode where the game switches your role from the goodie goodie savior of the world to that of a James Bond villain. Here the game has you working to raise the global temperature, kill off endangered animals or even try and make humans extinct.  Overall, I would say if you have a chance take a look at Fate of the World, it is a solid strategy game that is loads of fun that is quite challenging once you get the feel of it.

The Trillion Dollar Coin

Today I saw an attention-grabbing article about the debt ceiling, it talked about various options that the President has if the debt talks in Congress fail. The one option that really caught my eye was the idea of creating some trillion dollar coins. The theory behind the idea is that while the treasury is limited on the amount of cash it can print there is no limit on the amount of coins it can press (at least according to the author of the article who I assume knows what they are talking about). So if this is true then the President can have a few trillion dollar coins made, then deposited into the Federal Reserve and use the proceeds from those coins to pay the bills. Now this theory interests me for two major reasons. The first being, a trillion dollar coin would be pretty cool, I have always enjoyed obscure coins and paper currency and what would be more obscure than a coin that was one of two or three.

The second reason why this theory interests me is because of the fact that it may get something done about the whole debt situation. This assumes that the idea is both possible and legal, which from what the article seemed to say, is true (though it did admit that there may be legal issues that they were unaware of). If the President were to make an order like this congress may feel (rightfully so) that the President is sidestepping them and taking power from their branch of the government. This may encourage them to work together if only to prevent something like this from happing in the future.  They may just get together and create a reasonable way to handle the debt situation or a method to address future debt and debt ceiling problems. On the other hand, congress may just sit on their butts and do nothing, which is what I would expect them t do given the current political climate. Either way, the concept of a trillion dollar coin is cool; I only hope that the face that they put on it is Warren G. Harding.

Grid Towns in Maine

During high school a good friend of mine and I would go, from time to time, to the state of Maine. Some trips to see his grandfather and others to visit colleges that we were thinking of attending after graduating from high school. Every time that we would go up there I would look at maps of Maine from our map book to try and plot the roads that we would take, since this was before the day that everyone had access to GPS technology. One day I noticed something strange when I was looking at some of the map sections close to the Canadian border, there were not many towns, in fact much of northern Maine was just divided into numbered grids.

In areas of southern Maine and other states in New England the areas of nothingness (that is no human population) would typically be incorporated with some town or another. So you would have a town like Petersham, MA with nearly seventy square miles of land with all of one thousand people in a small town center type area. Rather than take a similar approach, either because of the remoteness of some of these areas or a simple lack of people, Maine decided to make numbered grids. The only practical use of these grids is for land identification purposes especially for the logging industry, since as you may imagine, northern Maine has a lot of trees.

The Two Dollar Bill

For many years now my favorite denomination of United States currency has been the two dollar bill. When I am given the option of getting my cash from the bank I would love to have twos. This is not always an option, some banks have few twos if any and other times I need other denominations for various reasons. When I do have two dollar bills I try to use them when I buy things, in particular when the clerk that I am dealing with seems new to the job since they may not know where it goes since many cash drawers do not have enough slots for the two dollar bills (it is always good to surprise new clerks, surprises keep them alert and on there tows).  I love them so much that I still have the first two dollar bill that I ever came across back home in my old room. 

The fact that not many people use two dollar bills is something that has always drawn me to them. When I worked in retail I handled hundreds of ones, fives, tens and twenties as well as many fifties and one hundred dollar bills but twos were always rare. A mediocre shift would turn into a great one with the simple act of a customer paying for something with a two dollar bill. This is because, deep down, I knew that they too loved the two dollar bill since they went out of their way to get it (this is at least the case for when I go to get them). One of these days I hope that I will be able to pay for all of my cash transactions with two dollar bills. That statement may seem preposterous but with the ever rising tide of debit and credit card transactions it is safe to say that while it may be within my grasp, well maybe in a decade or two.

Two More Years

My roommate and good friend suggested that I start a blog, which he would follow for two years so at the very least I know I have him. He made a point that people may find some of my ramblings or thoughts enjoyable so here is hoping that this turns out to be true. While he said that he would follow me for this two year period I am very suspicious of this, not because of a lack of commitment on his part but because it seems more and more likely that there is doom around the corner. Whether it’s a total economic collapse, a super flu or, God forbid, the global warming; we and our way of life are pretty much screwed. 

Now I do sincerely hope that I am wrong, I would love to wake up one day and go “there is no doom on the horizon” but if history shows us anything it’s that there always is doom on the horizon. Right now it’s the collapse of the global (well first the American and then the global) economy, before that it was terrorists who wanted to kill all the freedom loving people (terrorists who use terror for its own end none of the wishy washy “oh they are freedom fighters” since they do exist and use terror as a means to an end rather than an end in its own right), before the terrorist there was the comforting threat of mutually assured destruction from the red menace, before that there were the Nazis, before the Nazis there was the great depression and the dust bowl, before that there was a massive flu epidemic, the war to end all wars (I don’t think it accomplished that goal), global imperialism (which is doom on the horizon for those getting imperialized and in the long run for those who were doing the imperializing since it created strife between the two groups), before global imperialism there was well imperialism goes back a ways so you’re at a point where the average life expectancy is quite low so dyeing young because of a slew of random things is another type of doom on the horizon. Run-on sentences aside, there has been and will most likely always be one doom or another for us to look forward to.

On the other side of that coin there is the revelation that while there has been and may always be doom ahead of us we have always moved past it. We have cured disease, stopped the Nazis and averted nuclear war. This may very well indicate that we have the ability to move past our perceived doom through our determination. This may indicate that we may one day move to a time where we can wake up and think to ourselves “there is no doom on the horizon” which would be pretty cool.