• The Most Popular Answers Contest: The Results

    Last week, I asked people to enter what they think the most popular answer would be to each of 10 prompts. Sixty-seven of you responded, and here are the results! I had a lot of fun putting this together, I learned a bunch of lessons, and you guys seemed to like it a lot, so…

  • The Most Popular Answers Contest

    Inspired by a similar concept I saw somewhere on the Internet a while back, I would like to present the Most Popular Answers Contest! The rules are simple: Go to this form and give what you believe will be the most common answer to each of the 10 prompts. You get one point per person…

  • The Supersun of 2020

    On January 5, 2020, the Earth will be the closest it will ever get to the Sun in the 21st century, at a nice and cozy distance of 91,398,199 miles. The pair will be about a million and a half miles nearer to each other than they are on average, which is over six times…

  • How Big is Northern Virginia?

    Some months ago, I was at a party where one attendee lamented not living in Northern Virginia and having to drive back home all the way to Centreville. This led to an animated discussion about whether that town was part of NoVA and what constituted the region. I started to wonder if it’s possible to…

  • How much is a gold coin worth?

    In most role-playing games, gold is the universal currency of choice. It provides some relatability with the fantasy world (gold is valuable!), and it’s an effective method for transporting wealth that is light enough to not encumber its owner. It’s ubiquitous to the point where it simply becomes just a number. But what exactly does…

  • The Board Game Interactivity Scale

    Board games nowadays come in many levels of interactivity. Some can almost be considered multiplayer solitaire, where each player does their own thing with little or no regard to their opponents’ actions. On the other end, games can be entirely zero-sum, where any action anyone does comes at the expense of another player. Neither extreme can…

  • Applying Physics to The Avengers

    (WARNING: The following post contains physics as well as spoilers for a certain film.) A couple months ago, I was watching The Avengers for the third time, and when the portal opened to start the alien invasion, I noticed that they kinda ignored the physics of the whole thing. The most obvious one (at least…

  • The Concise States of America

    Let’s face it – there is an overabundance of states in the USA. According to the completely unscientific survey known as Sporcle, less than half of people can name all the states even if they’re given a map. This is generally considered to be a grave embarrassment and an example of why Americans are falling…