A variety of essays by New Yorker contributor and nonfiction stylist John McPhee. I especially enjoyed the one about canoeing at summer camp, and the one about golf's US Open. The one about obsessive fact-checking at the New Yorker made me wish that such a thing existed on TV and the internet. ...
Alaska, the early 1960s. Darkness covered the land. The latest winter storm, which by then had already lasted half a century, still showed no sign of ending. The cold and the snow were beginning to wear the proud Alaskans down. Then Russia invaded. Again. The fledgling state was unprepared ...
In role playing game theory, we identify three "motivations" for players to play--in rough terms, gamists who want the excitement of winning and losing, narrativists who want the plots and moral issues, and simulationists who want the settings and characterizations and reality of unreal events. I...