Chicken Cha Cha Cha

My master plan of breeding my own gaming partners is coming to fruition. It started, as you may recall, with Simon's obsession with Star Wars, including his enjoyment of the Star Wars Lego games for the PS2. For several months earlier this year he and I played endless hours of that one together.

This was followed up by his love for actual physical Star Wars Legos. For about 3 months he saved up his $5/week allowance to buy himself the Lego Jabba the Hut Sail Barge. He and I spent the better part of a week assembling it because it was a bit complex and because we had to wait for Gwen to be asleep first. (Her ability to destroy such things is legendary.)

The latest bit of fun began a few weeks ago when he watched Barb and I play Niagara, which I'd borrowed from Steve. He really wanted to play with us, but although it is a fairly simple game, it is still a bit above his abilities.

Then, a couple of Fridays ago the guys were over for one of our regular gaming nights. Simon so enjoyed watching us play Goa that the next day he begged me to teach him how to play it too. This one is even more complex, but it inspired me to find a Euro-style game that was more his speed.

So, I did a bit of poking around on the net and found Chicken Cha Cha Cha from the ever reliable Rio Grande Games. It got great reviews and when I showed Simon the pictures of the cover and those posted on the Geek of happy children playing it he got very excited.

So, we ordered it and it arrived later that week. Over the last few days we've played a dozen or so games and I'm very pleased with it for several reasons. First, is the great production quality, including 4 large wooden chickens and very sturdy cardboard stock. No plastic here.

Most importantly, however, CCC is a simple game (rules can be learned in less than 3 minutes) but its the sort of game that kids excel at and adults don't. This means that Barb and I can play it with Simon and we can do our absolute best to try to win, but we can't. He beats us each and every time.

It plays like this: In the center of the table are 12 face down octagons with 12 different chicken related pictures on them. Around them, in a large circle, are 24 face-up egg shaped tiles with the same pictures (two face up eggs for each face down octagon). Each player puts one wooden tail feather in the back of their wooden chicken and puts them all equidistant from each other around the 24 eggs. The goal is to move clockwise around the eggs, one egg at a time. Each time you pass an opponent you take their tail feathers and add them to your own. The first player with all the tail feathers wins.

In order to move from one egg to the other, though, you have to flip over one of the octagonal shapes and correctly reveal the picture of the egg you want to move to. So at first it is just luck, but as players reveal more and more of the face down tiles you (in theory) learn where each picture is the game gets easier and easier. If you remember where they are, of course.

So, our games with Simon always go like this: Everyone starts out equally clueless and slowly turn over random tiles. Occasionally someone will remember 4-5 in a row and take an early lead, but no one gets very far ahead of anyone else. Then after about 10-15 minutes, Simon quite suddenly goes on a blitz and flips over 12-15 face down tiles in a row and passes each of us in a single turn and wins the game. It is incredibly cool to watch this process.

Our previous attempts to play board games with him were limited to the Dora version of Candy Land and other roll-and-move games, but these suffer from the evils of randomness, which plague all such games. Most kid's games are designed with a heavy handed amount of randomness so that the kids have an equal chance of winning and won't get discouraged over time. This has been our first attempt at a kids game that actually involves cognitive processing in a way that kids are just naturally good at.

So, now I'm looking around for other games we can get. I've got my eye on Blokus, as well as on Gulo Gulo, both of which appear to also be games that kids are naturally better at than adults. Blokus is a spacial relationship tile laying game and Gulo Gulo is a dexterity game where small hands and fingers prove more successful than larger ones.

Our normal rule about buying toys for the kids is this: Outside of birthdays and holidays, if you want it you have to use your allowance to buy it. This rule is exempted for books, which we buy for them freely and as often as possible. I think now we have to exempt board games as well.

Gwen is still a bit young, but I dream of the day when the whole family sits down for a 4 player game of Settlers or Puerto Rico and maybe someday, even a 12 hour game of Advanced Civilization! Civ needs at least 7 or 8 players though, so let me know ahead of time and we'll be sure to invite you. Nothing says "fun" like 12 hours of Civ!

EDIT:
Speaking of anti-randomness, I just found this cartoon on the geek:

What's funnier?

I can't decide. First I came across this lolcat:

Which cracked me up, but then I stumbled across this video of 1,500+ Filipino prisoners from the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center dancing to Thriller.



Then, there's the Mr. Lee CatCam. It seems a certain cat owner was curious about what his cat did all day as it roamed the neighborhood so he strapped a modified digital camera around its neck. I admire people who see their crazy ideas through to fruition.

Finally, there's Tony vs. Paul:


But this one isn't so much funny as just freakin' amazing.

These made my day.

The Correct Answer is 5

Last Friday I went to my local Rite Aid in Detroit to pick up a bottle of soda. No big deal. I paid cash and the clerk printed out my receipt which included one of those "Call this number and do a survey to be entered into a drawing to win $10K!" at the end. The clerk hastily told me I didn't want to do the survey and tried to toss my receipt, but I thought that was strange and told her I DID want to do the survey (I didn't really care, but why was she so insistent that I not do it?)

The clerk then informs me that if I want to do the survey, I have to speak to the manager first, and I probably don't want to do that, do I? Are you serious? Yes, I have to speak to the manager if I want the opportunity to fill out a survey for Rite Aid. Well, now I am dying to know what is going on so I said, yes, I definitely wanted to do the survey and she promptly called in the manager.

In walks the manager who tells me I have been *randomly* chosen to fill out a survey for their store and he wants to know how my Rite Aid Experience was today. I said it was fine, I bought my soda, and that was it. He then went on to ask me if I was completely satisfied with my shopping experience that day, and I said, "Sure, why not." Mr. Manager then proceeds to tell me that if I was completely satisfied with my service and I did the survey, that the number for completely satisfied was "5" and I should select "5" if I was completely satisfied that day.

I left the store feeling a bit incredulous--was the manager actually trying to "sway" my score on my survey? I really, honestly do not care about these surveys, but the fact that this manager needed to speak to me before I would be "allowed" to complete my survey piqued my curiosity as to whether or not this was a Rite Aid "policy". I called the 1-800-Rite-Aid number to find out if this was indeed how they were supposed to run their surveys, and express my *concern* that if they really wanted to improve their scores, maybe they should improve their stores rather than just try to raise their survey scores by making customers speak to managers before they are allowed to complete the survey, not to mention I thought the practice unethical if this was truly to be an honest, *random* survey.

I really didn't expect any answer to my questions, but less than 2 hours after filing my *complaint* if you want to call it that, I received a call from none other than the district manager for the Rite Aid stores in my area who let me know that some of the stores which had been receiving lower scores were "encouraged" to have managers speak to customers who had received a survey to try to resolve any problems right away so that the customer is satisfied which in turn my have the effect of raising the scores for these stores.

So I had to protest further. Again, I said you cannot take a "random" survey, demand the people who receive this survey speak to the store manager before they can complete the survey, coach people how to answer the survey, and then claim you have improved your stores. If the manager is only choosing to speak to customers who receive surveys, only the customers whose opinion MIGHT be recorded in a survey will change. In fact, I told them, had I NOT had to speak to the manager, I would have rated the store a "5" as completely satisfied, but having to waste my time to speak to a manager BEFORE I can answer a 3-question phone-in survey compelled me to rate the store a "1" - completely dissatisfied - as I thought it was very unethical and missing the point of the survey in the first place. I would rather have the option on the survey to call in a complaint than to have to speak to a manager when I am trying to buy my Coke and then get to work on time.

Keep in mind here...I really really don't care...I was surprised anyone called me. I understand that Rite Aid managers may be pressured to "improve their scores" but seriously, is coaching a customer on the correct way to answer their survey the best way to improve customer satisfaction? Improving the scores this way obviously is not leading to improved overall customer satisfaction, but better scores probably mean life made easier for a manager in a store whose rating is normally low.

I was called AGAIN on Saturday by the store manager of this particular Rite Aid Store and was told this was in NO WAY their policy to MAKE a customer speak to a manager before they could complete their survey and that the clerk (oh! No!) was the one who made the mistake of telling me I had to speak to a manager in order to do a survey (yeah, right!) but now this clerk was properly coached on how she should "handle" this situation again. Sigh...I asked the manager if the clerk (who I see daily when buying my morning breakfast Coke) was reprimanded in any way because of this because I HAD NO PROBLEM WITH HER, but with the MANAGER of the store with whom I had to speak before being handed my receipt and survey, and he tried to assure me that she was not disciplined--merely "coached" as to how to handle this situation in the future. Great....thanks. I will feel bad if the person I deem to be the innocent party, the store clerk, was disciplined for doing what she was told to do (which I believe is the case as I could see how uncomfortable she was when trying to dispose of my receipt).

I have been to the same Rite Aid two times since Saturday and both times received my survey without any question from the clerk (not the same clerk in either instance as my Friday Rite Aid Experience.) I wonder if my calling actually made a difference? At least it made a little stir...Who knows...

However, if I am all of a sudden randomly selected to win $10K, I will be very suspicious. :)

Pearl and Will Ferrell Videos

After watching these I think there are a few new words I need to teach to Gwen...

The Landlord

Good Cop, Baby Cop

Happy Birthday Heinlein

It turns out that today is Robert Heinlein's 100th birthday! I spent many a night in my adolescence staying up late and reading his books. Fans apparently went crazy and planned a big gala celebration to mark the event.

Although I did enjoy his adolescent SF, along with Starship Troopers, Friday and Job: A Comedy of Justice when I was young, I think the book I appreciate the most and the one I still really like is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Some of his more famous books I found kind of boring, like Stranger in a Strange Land and some even just annoyed me. I remember getting about 3/4 of the way through I Will Fear no Evil (which is about a rich old man who has his brain transplanted into the body of his hot, young secretary) and throwing the damned book across the room because I couldn't take it any more. I mean, I'm not above a good appreciation for the lascivious and bawdy, but come on, enough is enough!

I've always liked many of his themes, like rebellion against society, sexual liberation, anti-authoritarianism, self-determination and experimentation with group marriage, notwithstanding his recurring fixation with older men as mentors / father figures for young, attractive and adventurous women, but overall I think he's best as a young person's SF writer. I can't imagine my youth without him, but few of his works still make me want to pick them up and read them again.

The picture at the top will be recognized by fans as Michael Whelan's cover art for Friday, which was the first Heinlein book I read when I was about 14 and which I'm surprised hasn't been made into a movie yet. For almost 25 years I've had a deep crush on the woman in that painting and I can't imagine the main character looking like anyone else. Of course, in the book itself the character of Friday is described as being dark skinned...

Whelan deserves his own blog entry, along with Boris Vallejo, Frank Frazetta and Neal Adams who painted the covers of the Tarzan series back in the '70s for their effect on my appreciation for Fantasy and SF. (See here for some great super hero art from Boris Vallejo and his wife Julie Bell.)

To close, because Heinlein was a great source for quotes, here's one of my favorites:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

— From Time Enough for Love

In any case, Happy Birthday Mr. Heinlein! You are missed.

The Lost Tools of Learning

I just came across a 1947 essay by Dorothy L. Sayers which sounds very much like it may be the piece (or at least a piece) which inspired Susan Bauer to develop her "Trivium" based classical education.

The essay, "The Lost Tools of Learning" is reprinted here.

Below I've copied a paragraph I like which describes the "Rhetoric" phase as one which encourages a large degree of freedom for the individual student. This belies some assumptions made about "classical" education which think of it as highly proscribed and dictatorial.

_________________
It is difficult to map out any general syllabus for the study of Rhetoric: a certain freedom is demanded. In literature, appreciation should be again allowed to take the lead over destructive criticism; and self-expression in writing can go forward, with its tools now sharpened to cut clean and observe proportion. Any child who already shows a disposition to specialize should be given his head: for, when the use of the tools has been well and truly learned, it is available for any study whatever. It would be well, I think, that each pupil should learn to do one, or two, subjects really well, while taking a few classes in subsidiary subjects so as to keep his mind open to the inter-relations of all knowledge. Indeed, at this stage, our difficulty will be to keep "subjects" apart; for Dialectic will have shown all branches of learning to be inter-related, so Rhetoric will tend to show that all knowledge is one. To show this, and show why it is so, is pre-eminently the task of the mistress science. But whether theology is studied or not, we should at least insist that children who seem inclined to specialize on the mathematical and scientific side should be obliged to attend some lessons in the humanities and vice versa. At this stage, also, the Latin grammar, having done its work, may be dropped for those who prefer to carry on their language studies on the modern side; while those who are likely never to have any great use or aptitude for mathematics might also be allowed to rest, more or less, upon their oars. Generally speaking, whatsoever is mere apparatus may now be allowed to fall into the background, while the trained mind is gradually prepared for specialization in the "subjects" which, when the Trivium is completed, it should be perfectly will equipped to tackle on its own. The final synthesis of the Trivium--the presentation and public defense of the thesis--should be restored in some form; perhaps as a kind of "leaving examination" during the last term at school.