Cold War Beer Pong

Cold War Beer Pong
I got a chance to design this game for a Cold War themed shindig, and I'm too proud of the rules not to share it. Please drink responsibly (or don't, I'm not your real dad).

• SUPPLIES NEEDED:
•  2 players = 16 cups, 3 beers (1 for proxy wars, 1 each side for Homeland and NATO/Warsaw)
• 4 players = 32 cups, 7 beers (1 for small proxy wars, 1 each side for large proxy war, 1 each side for NATO/Warsaw, 1 each side for Homeland)
• 8 players = 48 cups, 12 beers + 8 shots (or 8 more beers) (1 each side for each proxy war, 1 each side for NATO/Warsaw, 2 each side for Homeland, shots/extra beers for presidential/secretarial cups)  
• HOMELAND: Your final Homeland cup can't be sunk until all your other cups are lost (a hit still counts for Espionage)
• NATO/WARSAW PACT: Can be placed anywhere on your side
  
• PROXY WARS: If you sink a cup on your own side, it is still removed (and does NOT count for Espionage)
• NUCLEAR WAR: When your last cup is removed, your team launches a first strike on the opposing team, each of you shooting until you miss. Each cup sunk removes all adjacent cups as well. If the opposing team runs out of cups, victory is settled by one cup sudden death
• ESPIONAGE (4/8 Players): When all members of your team sink cups in a round, you may 'steal' any non-presidential/secretarial cup from the opposing team and add it to your Homeland rack OR remove one use of the opposing team's presidential/secretarial cup (opposing team must drink it)
• ASSASINATION/SUCCESSION (8 Players): Each team picks a presidential/secretarial cup in their Homeland. This cup contains either a shot (bourbon for USA, vodka for USSR) or a full beer. When this cup is sunk, it is drunk but replaced as long as your team has remaining leaders (4 total, suggested lists below)
  • USA: Truman → Eisenhower → Nixon → Reagan
  • USSR: Stalin → Khrushchev → Brezhnev → Gorbachev
     

4-Player Setup

2-Player Setup 

8-Player Setup

 

Final Thought: WOLVERINES!

#AATG - The Academic Article Twitter Game

As a current Pre-having-Doctorate Student, I'm spending a fair amount of time reading various research articles in my field, on top of my usual 'I'm a huge nerd' quota. Its not really a bad thing that the majority of these papers are inaccessible to the non-specialist - their purpose is by and large to communicate highly specific research between highly focused researchers. Scientific Journalism does its best to translate the arcana of academia for the masses, and when its not worried about presenting a 'balanced view', or dropping the usual cliches, it does a pretty decent job.

But its time to take it to the next level - by harnessing the power of social media, and the blogosphere, and crowd-sourcing, and other trendy buzzwords that undoubtedly resonate with the youth of today. And so I present (in a stunning example of consecutive conjunction-prefaced sentences): the Academic Article Twitter Game!

The goal is to summarize the conclusion or gist of an article in simple language via a tweet - don't worry about including methodology or data analysis details, and focus more on giving an accurate rendition than making it exciting.

• Must contain either a link to the article being summarized or enough information for a reader to find the article themselves
• Must contain the hashtag #AATG because hashtags are the MSG of tweets - everything tastes better with them and sometimes they give people headaches and this metaphor hasn't turned out as well as I had hoped
• Should be intelligible to a layperson - avoid jargon wherever possible
• An article merits multiple tweets only if it makes several different points

Here's an example for an economics paper I will probably never write:
BAD: #AATG [LINK] Agent-based models for unemployment improvable with logarthimic, rather than exponential, wage decay
BETTER: #AATG [LINK] Economic models improvable with a logarithmic function for people's wage demands following unemployment
BEST: #AATG [LINK] The wages that unemployed people are willing to work for may decrease slowly, then quickly, then slowly again over time

Have fun! And if you aren't reading academic articles you can instead play the I-have-a-real-job twitter game (#IHARJTG) where you just tweet like a normal person.

Things What I Done

"My goodness," you have certainly thought many times since my last post, "What on Earth has Austen been up to that has been distracting him from the important things in life, like updating his blog?" Wonder no longer, my dear reader!

Despite the condescending attitude of a certain Obi-Wan Kenobi (who I have heard is actually only a Jedi Bachelor), it was actually quite a bit of work. However I finished almost a month ago and since then I don't have any excuses. Mea culpa.

However I have managed to get my e-mail inbox down to only two items (a record since my undergraduate days) - and I also built this nifty Deadwood Faro board for a couple awesome friends of mine:

It can be used to play a classic game of Faro for anyone who likes the adventure of frontier gambling, or to play the Deadwood Drinking Faro game while they are watching the show! (The rules are at the bottom of this post)

So these days I'm just waiting around to hear about my potential PhD program - if everything goes well I'll be starting that up this semester, and if not I'll be on the hunt for a job in Sydney. Either way big fun changes coming ahead! I have no idea what this means for my frequency of blog postings, but if the past predicts the future, expect the next post promptly by 2014.

If you cannot wait until then, watch this video repeatedly and await further instructions.

Deadwood Drinking Game
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-Place your drink (ideally whiskey) on a card – move it only after you or another player drinks

- Drink whenever the event associated with your card occurs (see below)

- Banker refills empty beverages

A - Swearingen curses, kills someone, or abuses an underling

2 - Mr. Wu, Dan, Silas or Johnny curse or kill someone

3 - E.B. Farnum is abused or abuses Richardson

4 - Doc Cochran is frustrated with a patient or Merrick is pretentious

5 - Anyone says 'Cocksucker,' 'Hooplehead' or 'Pinkerton'

6 - Anyone mentions or alludes to gold

7 - Anyone takes or mentions dope (opium)

8 - Charlie Utter or Jane Canary curse or drink, or Wild Bill is mentioned

9 - Anyone curses, or is fleeced or killed in the Bella Union

10 - Anyone curses, or is injured or killed in the No.10 Saloon or the Livery

J - Anyone takes a drink

Q - A whore curses or mentions a sexual act

K - Bullock curses or becomes enraged, or Sol tries to be reasonable

High Card - Anytime any other character curses or dies