Hodgepodge Second Post

ESPN.com finally confirmed that Peyton Manning has been released by the Indianapolis Colts. Why? From what I saw on SportsCenter, it seems to have something to do with the Colts picking up the remaining 4 years on his contract (worth $63.6 million), or paying him his $28 million bonus by a set date and then letting Manning go. At least, that's what I understand. If anyone has any insight on what the specifics are, please comment. I'm a little too lazy and nerdy to actually go onto ESPN.com and read about it. I'd rather just hear about it from the fine people who read this. :P

Anyway, back to the nerdy-ness of the author. I recently played a board game called "Civilization" with a couple of friends of mine this weekend. To the gamers of the world who might find this interesting, this was a board game that was based on the computer game. I thought board games came first. This may be the exception to the rule. But I digress...

This game is very dynamic in how one can play it, and there are multiple ways to win. Some of the ways you can win (I assume they are similar to the computer game) are called "economic victory", "military victory", "cultural victory", and "technological victory." To achieve an economic victory, one must accrue a certain amount of wealth before the other players (some call this an easy way to win, but I don't find that to be the case at all). In terms of the game, it pretty much means that you are able to buy anyone in the game off such that the victory will be yours, or something of the sort. A military victory, as one would come to expect from a strategy game in any medium, is to take over the other player(s) capital cities before they can conquer yours. This makes you seem like such an overwhelming military super-power that nobody can fight back against you. A cultural victory entails that you go through cultural events and gain "great persons," which entitle you to various advantages and abilities that other nations or players would not otherwise have. I don't know how the victory would be phrased in the game, but one of the great persons that I got while playing was Henry Ford, which allowed me to "increase my movement speed by 1." I was playing the game as the Americans, so it was a good fit whether or not I won. Finally, a technological victory was attained by achieving all the levels of technological advancement or intellectual stimulation, from philosophy to space flight. I thought it was funny that achieving space flight entitled a player to an automatic victory, but I couldn't help but wonder if that meant that I was ready to take on exploring the galaxy with a Warp 5 engine like they do in Star Trek: Enterprise. I really hope that's the case, because I'd love to have the ability to travel the universe at 10,000 times the speed of light and form a galactic federation. That would be so sick! ... oh crap, I got way off topic... but nonetheless, I stand by the fact that exploring the universe like that would be extremely exciting... I really hope that somebody is working to develop that kind of technology so I can go up into space and potentially interact with other life forms.

Boy, that was kind of a cluster of randomly thought up topics. NFL to Civilization to Star Trek... don't really know why that happened, but I had fun writing about it.

Archer, out!