Those brave few Polytropos readers who play Dungeons & Dragons may be interested in my “review of the Eberron Campaign Setting”:http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10455.phtml that appeared recently on “RPGNet”:http://www.rpg.net. As is often the case with such things, the fact that the review is excessively long is not an indication of how _much_ time I spent on it, but how little. Apologies in advance.

I’m eager to work Eberron into my current D&D gaming, partly because it’s well-done, partly because it’s always nice to get into something on the ground floor. I predict the setting will be a keeper, not because of WOTC’s frenetic marketing campaign (though that helps), but because Keith Baker, the lead designer, spends hours every day on the message boards answering questions, explaining things, and generally making people feel in touch with what he’s doing. You can’t measure the effect of stuff like that, but it’s huge.

The Polytropos clan is in West Michigan this week. Whether this will mean lighter-than-average posting (people to see, things to do) or greater-than-average posting (lots of other people around to watch Ella) remains to be seen. Consider this fair warning in case it’s the former.

Ah, the fate of the at-home dad: to forever be missing out on the movie everyone’s talking about, until finally, when he gets the chance to see it, the conversation has moved on. That’s me with Fahrenheit 9/11, anyway, which I got to see at a Reel Moms showing earlier today. (There are exceptions to this, of course, like the fact that I saw Spider-Man 2 on opening day. Priorities.) The Georgetown theater had twice the number of moms, babies, and ginormous stroller contraptions than on either of the previous two times I had been there. Strangely, there didn’t seem to be as much crying. Must be something about Democratically-raised infants.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is a proper and even important documentary; I wish someone other than Michael Moore had made it. The fact that he has so many damning facts on his side, and so much incredible footage, made me wince all the more each time he descended to innuendo, sloppy argumentation, and cheap visual shots. There were moments of brilliance and even poignancy, especially in the story of a patriotic social worker from Flint whose son died in Iraq. A more thoughtful and careful use of such material might have resulted in a movie that actually deserved the Palme d’Or. Instead, the kernel of truth—that our nation is currently governed by an incompetent wretch whose Administration has repeatedly misled the American people—gets wrapped around in so much other material that it becomes too easy to discount.

Despite all that, this film is a step up for Moore. He has done away with inaccuracies and falsehoods and remained safe behind the wall of misleading suggestions. (As always, Spinsanity is an excellent resource for a nonpartisan look at the specifics.) Plenty of people have noted that by not outright lying but by placing certain statements and images in juxtaposition in order to create a false impression, Moore isn’t doing anything the current Administration hasn’t already done. But that doesn’t mean it’s all right to do! I want a strong American Left, but even more I want a political discourse that is open and forthwright, that seeks to inform and persuade Americans, not mesmerize them with sophistry and innuendo. Because of that, I don’t want Michael Moore on my side.

I’d be better inclined toward the guy, and his movie, if he could learn how to keep his mouth shut. So many of the moments he presents, like Bush in the elementary school after hearing the news of 9/11, are devastating and completely sufficient unto themselves. Moore’s voiceovers aren’t just repetitive, they’re often the vehicle for an inapt comparison or gonzo conspiracy theory that actually weakens his case. But a quieter Moore is too much to hope for—it’s evident that easy entertainment and self-aggrandizement rank right up there with him alongside speaking the truth to power. I take the fact that there’s no left-leaning equivalent to Rush Limbaugh as a point of pride, not a gap that needs to be filled.

The interview material with Congressman Jim McDermott was some of the stronger material in the film. McDermott discussed the ways in which the Administration was cultivating a culture of fear, which reminded me of another Jim’s comments on the same topic a few months ago:

. . . this is the overriding issue facing the country right now: will we live bravely again or will we forever shiver in post-traumatic stress from our Very Bad Day two and a half years ago? And as I’ve said over and over, what’s despicable about the Bush Administration is that it wants us to wallow in perpetual, low-grade panic. That is what I can’t forgive.

Sitting there in the theater, it hit me: that’s what the whole kerfluffle over election day contingency plans is all about. Of course it isn’t going to happen (Kevin Drum puts that notion in the ground), but raising the possibility creates fear, and the Administration has been playing on our fear and unease for years now.

Fortunately, I’m less afraid now than ever before at the possibility of Bush getting re-elected. My money’s on it going the other way. But out there in the tangled threads of possible futures, there’s the one where Bush wins by a hair, not cleanly, but only because of fear-mongering, propaganda, and a touch of voting machine fraud. Michael Moore won’t be surprised by that future, so if it comes to pass I may have to concede a point or two to him. In the meantime, though, I’m holding out for a better gadfly.

From _The Councils of the Wise Osnar_, trans. I.M. Nazeri:

With these four things man becomes more destructive,
Drinking a lot of wine, and lusting after women, and
Playing a lot of backgammon, and hunting without moderation.

Well, at least I’m only guilty of three out of four. Wait — did I say three? Two! I meant two out of four!

That quote is one of a number of gems to be found in “The Games of Chess and Backgammon in Sasanian Persia”:http://www.sasanika.com/MPtext.htm, an article by Touraj Daryaee. It’s less a systematic look at the history of the games, and more a grab-bag of translations from a variety of obscure Persian sources — not that that’s a _bad_ thing. The inimitable Jeff Brower forwarded it to me, which is fitting in that he was the one who set me on the trail of “backgammon and divination”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000468.html (in a comment to “this entry”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000453.html) in the first place.

Longtime readers may recall the “story of backgammon”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000115.html as related to me once by an Iranian backgammon player:

As everyone knows, chess was invented in India. The King of India brought a chessboard to the King of Iran and taught him to play. “It is a great game,” said the King of India, “Because, as in life, wisdom and logic shape one’s course.” Years later, on a visit to India, the King of Iran brought a game he had invented: backgammon. “My game is a better model of life, I think,” he said to the King of India. “For in backgammon, logic and _fortune_ determine what becomes of us.”

With that in mind, check out this passage from the article:

. . . when the Indian king sent the game of chess to the Sasanian court to figure out the logic of the game, Wuzurgmihr, as a challenge designed and sent the backgammon board and its pieces to India to challenge the Indians. The Indian sages could not find the logic of the game and as a result Wuzurgmihr brought more glory to the court in Iran along with much booty and honor. Since the Indians could not find the logic of the game, the King of Kings, Xusro I asked the sage to explain the game. Wuzurgmihr’s answer is central to Zoroastrian beliefs. The passage clearly demonstrates the cosmological significance of the game as described by Wuzurgmihr. His explanation of the game is analogous to the processes of the cosmos and human life. Wuzurgmihr makes fate the primary reason for what happens to mankind and the roll of the dice in the game performs the function of fate. The pieces represent humans and their function in the universe is governed by the seven planets and the twelve zodiac signs. If we are to accept that Wuzurgmihr suggests _fate_ (Middle Persian _baxt_) to be the principal determinant for one’s life and action and accept
Eznik of Kolb’s statement that in the Sasanian period, the God Zurvan was equivalent to baxt, then we should consider Wuzurgmihr as follower of the Zurvanite doctrine. What is important is the difference between the game of chess and backgammon. While the game of chess is a game likened to battle, backgammon is based on the throw of the dice, meaning based on one’s fate.

It’s the same story, more or less. Daryaee’s article also includes some verse translations of ancient Persian texts in the British Museum that touch on the whole “humans and their function in the universe” bit:

The turning and revolution of the pieces by the die is like people in the material world, their bond connected to the spiritual world, through the 7 and 12 [planets and constellation] they all have their being and move on, and when it is as if they hit one against another and collect, it is like people in the material world, one hits another [person] . . .

And when by the turning of this die all are collected, it is in the likeness of the people who all passed out from the material world [died], and when they set them up again, it is in the likeness of the people who during the [time of] resurrection, all will come to life again.

I’m never going to think of getting off the bar the same way again!

Sadly, with all the information about the cosomological roots of backgammon, the article doesn’t describe any use of the game itself as a tool of divination, which is the thing I was after in the first place. One of these days I’ll find it . . .

Don’t you hate it when there’s stuff you want to know and it isn’t on the Internet? I’ve been meaning for a while to write a little piece on backgammon & divination, but even with the almighty Google at my beck and call, research results have been limited, to say the least. This is exactly the sort of information that could probably be found by poking around in a good library or used bookstore, which is exactly the sort of thing I’d make time to do if I was gettin’ paid, but doesn’t quite meet the threshold for an everyday blog entry—and a backgammon blog entry, no less.

What I failed to find was a clear instance of the game of backgammon, as we know it, being used to tell the future or otherwise commune with the Powers that Be. Certainly the trappings of the game are plugged into the warp and weft of the world: twenty-four points, just as the hours of the day; thirty checkers, just as the days of the month; alternating day and night in both the points and the dice. But that sort of thing has more to do with backgammon’s precursors than its actual usage. Dice games (and board games in general) have their roots in religious ceremony.

The best example of that is the ancient Egyptian game of senet. The Game Cabinet has a good overview of its structure and a speculation about its rules, though this: “It appears that Senet began as a simple game and later acquired a symbolic, ritual function . . .” has it backwards. Senet and early games like it probably began with a ritual function, and got more gamey as time went on. Senet boards were placed in the tombs of buried pharohs—perhaps as a way for their ka (ghost) to pass the time, or perhaps because winning a game or two against the gods would lead to benefits in the afterlife. Indeed, the final squares on the board, like the Per Nefer (Beautiful House) and Per Mu (House of Water) represent the steps and pitfalls of the afterlife journey.

By the time a game recognizable as backgammon was around, it no longer carried much religious significance, but was instead a form of gambling. One reason less is known about the history of backgammon than chess, even though backgammon has historically been much more widely known and played, is that backgammon was played for money, and thus frowned upon by the religious authorities of both Christianity and Islam.

But we’ve strayed from the topic of divination. The use of dice for such things persists. Certainly it was around in Aquinas’ time, since the subject came up in the Summa Theologica:

To this second species of divination, which is without express invocation of the demons, belongs that which is practiced by observing certain things done seriously by men in the research of the occult, whether by drawing lots, which is called “geomancy”; or by observing the shapes resulting from molten lead poured into water; or by observing which of several sheets of paper, with or without writing upon them, a person may happen to draw; or by holding out several unequal sticks and noting who takes the greater or the lesser. or by throwing dice, and observing who throws the highest score; or by observing what catches the eye when one opens a book, all of which are named “sortilege.”

More fun vocab: cleromancy is the practice of divination by tossing lots on the ground. Beans, bones, stones, dice, you name it. Astragali—the knuckles of sheep or goats—were the precursors to dice that were used for this purpose. Senet, incidentally, didn’t use dice, but a set of four jehau, or counting sticks, each with a colored side and an uncolored side.

And if I ever do find a reference to backgammon itself being used in divination, I’ll be happy to predict the future for you.

From “Terry Teachout”:http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/ via “Crooked Timber”:http://www.crookedtimber.com/, an irresistible quiz of sorts: the “Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index”:http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/archives20040704.shtml#82118. If you had to choose, which would it be:

(to save space I’ve deleted the ones where I had no preference and/or no clue)

2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? _Sun_
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? _Ellington. easy._
4. Cats or dogs? _cats. even easier._
5. Matisse or Picasso? _Picasso_
6. Yeats or Eliot? _close. Eliot._
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? _Chaplin_
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike? _O’Connor_
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? _Casablanca_
11. The Who or the Stones? _Stones_
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath? _Larkin_
13. Trollope or Dickens? _don’t care. Dickens._
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? _Ella. duh!_
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy? _this is a good one, in that the answer seems more likely to tell you something about somebody. clearly, Dostoyevsky._
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair? _Moviegoer_
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? _hamburgers, but brats go above either._
19. Letterman or Leno? _Letterman_
20. Wilco or Cat Power? _Wilco_
21. Verdi or Wagner? _Wagner_
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? _Marilyn_
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? _Johnny_
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando? _Brando_
29. Red wine or white? _red, clearly_
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde? _Wilde by a mile_
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? _High Fidelity_
36. Comedy or tragedy? _looking at it, I decided ‘comedy’ in my head, but then actually typed ‘tragedy’. you decide what that means._
37. Fall or spring? _fall_
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? _aaiiiee! no fair! apples and oranges! but must pick, so: Simpsons._
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? _Conrad_
42. Sunset or sunrise? _sunset_
44. Mac or PC? _PC_
45. New York or Los Angeles? _New York_
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? _Van Gogh_
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? _oh please. Costello._
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? _in theory: equal. in practice: blogs._
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? _Olivier_
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? _Chinatown! don’t insult me!_
54. Ghost World or Election? _ooo! toughie. Election by a hair._
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny? _Daffy all the way_
57. Modernism or postmodernism? _they’re indistinguishable when you get up close._
58. Batman or Spider-Man? _Spidey_
60. Johnson or Boswell? _Johnson_
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? _wow, I get to dis James and Austen in one quiz?! too cool. Woolf._
66. Blue or green? _green_
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It? _”I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”_
68. Ballet or opera? _opera_
69. Film or live theater? _in theory: equal. in practice: film._
70. Acoustic or electric? _are we talking Royal Albert Hall here, or in general? like it matters. Electric._
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? _Vertigo_
75. Sushi, yes or no? _you betcha!_
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? _TW_
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? _hey, I already dissed the guy, don’t make me pick…_
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? _Wright_
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? _Norah. she’s cuter._
82. Watercolor or pastel? _water_
83. Bus or subway? _subway_
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? _extra super teeth-testing crunchy_
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? _Dreiser_
87. Schubert or Mozart? _Mozart_
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? _Twenties_
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? _Moby_
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? _Joyce_
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? _that’s odd — seems like this one should have provided another actual_ poet _to compare with Emily…_
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? _who’s gonna dis Lincoln?_
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann? _ah, good one. Mann._
95. Italian or French cooking? _Italian_
97. Anchovies, yes or no? _nein, nein!_
98. Short novels or long ones? _in theory: equal. lately: long_
99. Swing or bebop? _swing swing swing_
100. “The Last Judgment” or “The Last Supper”? _Judgment_

Alert reader Bryan reminded me that Edwards getting the VP nod was something I had “predicted in my dreams”:http://polytropos.org/archives/000262.html. Now we just have to worry about the bears.

Apologies for the lack of new posts. It’s been a busy long weekend. Stuff I learned:

1. BBC’s _The Office_ is so funny it makes we want to cry. Perfect Netflix fodder.
2. Micronesia is a somewhat-independent nation, but uses the U.S. postal system and currency. Under a UN charter the U.S. was supposed to help make the place self-sufficient, which hasn’t really happened.
3. The latest edition of the excellent party game “25 Words or Less” has way, way tougher clues than earlier editions, which makes it _much_ cooler.
4. In all this time, there has yet to be an Xbox game that surpasses Halo. And Halo is even more fun with six players than it is with four.

(You’ll be warned before any spoilers)

The fights are spectacular. The rest of the movie could suck and it would still be worth seeing for the fights. Spidey and Doc Oc struggle up and down the sides of buildings and in and around a subway car, a whirlwind of mechanized limbs and twirling red and blue. Just about every webslinging trick that Spidey’s ever pulled has its place, from the net to the slingshot to little web projectiles—the only thing that’s missing is the web parachute (even when I was a kid that one struck me as rather implausible). The action is steeped in the comic book tradition, but seeing it presented as one kinetic whole is a terrific thrill. No other superhero movie matches it.

Fortunately, the rest of the movie does not suck. The worst that can be said is that, in laying on the whole “power ‘n’ responsibility” theme, the writers forget about “show, don’t tell” and trot out monologues for things that are abundantly clear without them. The other thing that gets laid on thick is just how much Peter Parker’s life sucks, but that’s not a problem: Raimi, with his obsession with slapstick, is the perfect director to show Peter being tripped, blindsided, and thwapped upside the head by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Slapstick isn’t the only Raimi touch here—this film shows the quirks of its director much more than its predecessor. When Doc Oc wakes up in the hospital, the ensuing mayhem is a straight-up homage to Evil Dead, complete with chainsaw. More importantly, Raimi lingers on lightly comic scenes, like Peter squaring off against the snooty usher (Bruce Campbell’s splendid cameo), or sharing cake with the landlord’s daughter who has a crush on him, or Spidey riding an elevator down from the top floor because his faith in his powers is shaken. The time for those sorts of scenes comes at a premium in a summer blockbuster, but they’re in there and the film is better for it. In fact, explosive battles aside, the film’s pace is patient, even slow.

(Don’t read on if you’re averse to minor spoilers)

Alfred Molina is splendid as Dr. Octopus, but competing with him for the Oscar are those four arms. Unlike in the comics, the arms are vested with artificial intelligence, and writhe of their own will like mechanical snakes. Dr. Octavius’ descent into villainy begins when the inhibitor chip that keeps them under control is smashed in an accident. The up side: giving those arms an (insidious) will of their own is a great touch. The down side: Octavius’ villainy comes too easily. There’s nothing to ponder there about the dark side of human nature, just a broken chip.

I loved the dark ending of Spider-Man, but by the time we get around to end of the sequel, Peter has been through so much that a ray of hope is required. And it’s there: after all the crap he puts up with, he finally has things more or less together. A good thing, too, because in addition to the unequivocal foreshadowing of the return of the Green Goblin, we meet at least two more potential future supervillains in Spider-Man 2, stacking the deck for future installments. We should be so lucky.

*dueling is legal in what country* — Not enough of them, not near enough . . .
*greek mythology legos* — I am _so_ there. That would be awesome.
*army piranha ammo* — All I can say is, if the army stole my idea for a shoulder-mounted piranha-launcher, I’m going to be _pissed_.
*choose-your-own-adventure online girlfriend finder game* — Get a life, dude! Although actually, “this game exists”:http://www.swytpinay.com/gfquest/. And it’s not even prurient. What’s the world coming to?