#321 words

Death’s been hanging around close to home this last week or so. I told you how our family cat, Tanna, passed away. She was an old kitty and lived a good life. She died in her sleep. We’ll always miss her. 

After that, my uncle died. He was 65. He hadn’t spoken with his sister--my mom--in over 15 years. He had just spoken to his wife and a few minutes later, she comes home and thinks he’s asleep in his recliner. Something similar happened to my dad’s sister’s husband. He just sat down outside his school, needing a breather before going inside to teach. 

My friend’s brother died. I don’t know the details. Just that it’s painful. 

When I entered the bedroom, she slept on the furthest edge, arm hanging down from the edge. It’s quite possible there was slobber on the pillow.

I shook my head, walked towards her and opened the first buttons on my shirt on the way. Then I put two fingers to her arm and whispered: “What a pleasant surprise~”

Mana screw is a result of other aspects of the game which couldn't exist in their current form if mana screw weren't always a possibility.

First among these is the color pie. By dividing the mechanics of the game among the colors so as to encourage players to play multiple colors in order to gain access to certain mechanics, you also make it more likely that decks running more than one color get mana screwed. This division of mechanics is essential to Magic as a game.

Second, mana screw is fundamentally tied to deck construction. Determining the proper mana base for a deck is a test of skill when building decks. A version of Magic in which the land base doesn't need to be built into the deck (perhaps like Hearthstone where your available mana replenishes and increases by one each turn) would eliminate mana screw and also remove a great deal of skill from deck building. The presence of mana screw also creates a situation where deciding when to mulligan and when not to is much less obvious and therefore a big test of skill. Even among pros, the ideas about when to mulligan and when to keep are varied and contested. It's not simply a matter of seeing if you have some spells you can cast early and some combo pieces, but also comparing your mana base in hand with what you need to actually play the spells in hand. Again, a system like Hearthstone's eliminates such considerations.

Ehrenhaus and Owen’s (2007) article, Race Lynching and Christian Evangelicalism: performances of faith, explores the connection between violent acts (such as lynching) mainly in the deep South of America, and Evangelicalism. The article opens with a highly detailed report of the burning of Sam Hose in Georgia in 1899. It immediately captured my attention as it revealed the seriousness of the lynching and the extreme level of violence that was involved in such an act. What surprised me even more was that two thousand people attended the event and watched it happen. The authors asked the question that I was thinking: how could “such obscene acts of human depravity” be performed by anyone, let alone those who are considered “devoutly Christian” (p.227)?

Although I found the analysis of the connection between the Evangelical faith and violence such as lynching very interesting, there were some elements, which I disagreed with. Ehrenhaus and Owen wrote, “the explanation for such sadism and bloodletting is not found in a retreat from Christian doctrine, but in its embrace” (p277). Later in the article, however, they write concerning the Evangelical faith is that, “Christ’s sacrificial death – neither his life nor his preaching – is key” (p.278). From this, I believe that it was not the embrace of Christian doctrine, because the doctrine is more than Jesus’ death, it was his life also. Only focussing on one aspect of a doctrine and not the rest, no matter how closely that one aspect is followed cannot be considered embracing the doctrine. Therefore, I believe it was a selective reading and misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine rather than its embrace.