Friday 28 August 2015

shall i tell you what this blog is really useful for?

If I don't blog, I literally never clear my tabs. But what is the point of clearing / memorialising them. It's sort of in case I need them again, sometimes. It's sort of because I'm in the habit of wanting to tell people about things.

Anyway, I liked this story of a not Nazi gold bar found in a lake, but nothing like as much as the story of the lost Nazi gold train. It's easy to think nothing on land can stay hidden, but forests are amazing. And canyons, but especially forests. One of the most useful things I have ever read - in terms of helping me understand lots of little other things I read from time to time that have to do with lost stuff - was a book which pointed out that explorers hunting a lost Amazonian civilisation walked within five feet of a major city on numerous occasions before finding it. If you don't touch it, and the forest is really thick, it's like it just isn't there...

The other incredibly useful thing - tangent - that every human should be forced to do is play Murder in the Dark in a large enough space for people to be able to flit between rooms, bits of outdoor, and so on. I've done it a few times and all the people I've done it with have radically, and I mean absolutely radically, changed their view of the reliability of eye-witness testimony. You can be clever, more or less sober, concentrating and be certain of a thing that happened five minutes ago, and totally wrong.

Crowdfunding board games (what about the Cones of Dunshire*), which reminded me of the best board game on the planet article, which reminded me I haven't played the best board game on the planet.


* Oh, actually the people behind Settlers of Catan had a go at Kickstarting Cones of Dunshire! But failed.