by James Dykstra

Sometimes statistics don’t mean what they seem to mean. According to figures released by Statistics Canada a few years back, there are 20,000 of them in Canada. They have joined 53,000 in New Zealand, 70,000 in Australia, and a startling 390,000 in the United Kingdom. Who are they? They are Jedi.

If you’re not a fan of the Star Wars science fiction films, you might not have heard of the Jedi. In this series of movies – six so far – Jedi “knights” wield the good power of the “Force” to fight against those who would seek to destroy the universe and enslave it to evil. It’s a weird sort of Eastern mystical “Force” where both good and evil originate in the same source. The Jedi wield the power of good found in the Force while the “Dark Side of the Force” is used by the arch villains.

By now you’ve probably spotted the problem with the Statistics Canada census. 20,000 Canadians claim to believe in a religion – “Jediism” – that exists only in Star Wars movies. How can that make any sense?

by Conrad van Dyk

Perhaps one of the few positive things that has happened since the recession hit over a year ago is the dramatic rise in the sale of board games. And it’s not only companies like Hasbro and Mattel that have done well. People have been staying home to save money, and traditional pursuits from knitting to reading to board games have benefited greatly.

However, there’s a sense that these are the kinds of pastimes reserved for desperate times, for when you need to bunker down until the storm passes. Now that the sun is once more peeking out from behind the clouds, people are starting to seek other forms of entertainment. Monopoly and Scrabble will be replaced with the Wii, the ball of yarn will only be touched by the cat, and librarians will no longer be cool people (if they ever were). What for a while was nostalgia and tradition and good old family times will once more be old-fashioned and boring. As in the Game of Life, the game is over when you have enough money to start enjoying life.

Unfortunately, when it comes to traditional board games the joke about bored games holds a certain amount of truth. Everyone knows that Risk is usually won by the person lucky enough to get property in Australia, or that in the original Trivial Pursuit your best guess is always either Shirley Temple or Gary Cooper. And either games are entirely luck driven (think Chutes and Ladders) or else they favor those who have turned a pastime into a course of study – the professional Scrabble or bridge players, the chess masters, or those malodorous individuals known as war-gamers. It’s sometimes hard to believe that in the old days games – especially those with dice or cards – were often taboo, as they might lead to gambling and other vices.

So in this article I’d like to diverge from my usual focus (literature) and write something about the value of board games. Of course not everyone likes games – and that’s perfectly fine – but I think often we’re not aware what a positive form of entertainment board games can offer. In addition, many are simply not aware that there are different and more interesting games out there then what they’ve grown up with, or what they might see on the shelves in Wal-Mart.

New games on the block

In 1995, a German game designer called Klaus Teuber came out with a board game called The Settlers of Catan. The game has sold over 15 million copies and was revolutionary in making specialty games popular in North America. You see, specialized games with unique themes, interesting mechanisms, and deeper strategy had always been more popular in Europe, and especially in Germany. As hockey is to Canada, or chocolate to Belgium, so board games have long been an intrinsic part of German culture. The Settlers of Catan succeeded because it was a kind of cross-over game, mixing luck and strategy brilliantly. It had enough complexity to lend itself to repeated plays, yet not too much to be off-putting to newcomers.

Yet while Settlers was successful, fifteen years later it’s still only the occasional specialty game that breaks through to the mass market. For instance, my local Chapters bookstore has recently started to stock rare games like Agricola (a complex game about farming set in the 17th century) and Pandemic (a game where players work together to save the world from the outbreak of an epidemic). To most these remain esoteric curiosities, and people seem happy to buy the odd TV-show trivia game which gets played once and then collects dust. The result is that finding good quality games is almost a game in itself: you have to know where to look. So further on in this article you’ll find some practical advice to help you along.

The uses of board games

Last year I came across an interesting little game called Ten Days in Africa. It’s basically a Racko variant, but with a much more interesting theme. The idea is that you collect cards that represent either a country in Africa or a plane or car. Your job is to chart a 10-day journey by having the cards in a correct order. The game is not incredibly strategic, but what I found remarkable is how well it teaches geography. After playing it a few times I once more had all the countries memorized along with not a few of the capitals (it’s especially fun to say “Ouagadougou”). Even my six-year old daughter quickly learned the rules and could recite many of the countries off by heart. It strikes me that this is exactly the type of game that should be a staple in the classroom. It makes learning fun, and allows the mind to retain information at a deeper level than rote learning often does.

Aside from the educational benefits of board games (many more of which could be used in the classroom), here are some other positive aspects (this is by no means an exhaustive list):

1. Board games support social interaction

by Martin VanWoudenberg

With many clear dangers and temptations on the Internet, and the prolific use of it among all age groups, it’s logical that many would seek a filtering solution. How can you ensure your teen isn’t looking at things he/she shouldn’t? How can you keep your pre-teen safe from online predators? How can a family man fight the temptation he faces, when nobody monitors what he’s doing late at night? Enter Covenant Eyes. It promises a suite of tools for keeping Internet users safe and accountable.

Over the course of several months, I ran the program through its paces to see how easy it might be to trick, break, or work around its system. Its ability to prevent access to offensive sites, and report ones that may be questionable is key to its usability and success. But does it work, and should you buy it?

What it is

Covenant Eyes’ primary function is as an accountability service. A person, the “user,” creates an account, installs the software, and then selects an “accountability partner” – someone who will receive a detailed account of all the user’s surfing habits, including search terms they typed in, sites visited, and time spent online. 

by Jon Dykstra

What follows is the text of a brochure that was delivered to more than 20,000 houses in Edmonton, Alberta. It got a lot of people talking... and quite a number of them screaming. It turns out the title was the cause of their conniptions - they thought the brochure was an attack on women. Of course the title was not meant to be taken seriously, but when it was explained that, rather than being an attack on women, this was a defense of the unborn, much of the screaming continued. It seems humorless feminists are also pro-choice.

Our rights come from what God prohibits

by Stephen Pidgeon

Human rights. A noble phrase, to be sure. But in a godless world, there are no rights, because a human right, to be a right, must demonstrate an authority greater than the authority of the state. This is why in a fascist state there are no rights, because there is no authority recognized as being superior to the state. Where there are only the edicts of the state, there are no rights, only privileges and crimes: privileges the state grants (and can take away) and crimes it forbids.

Rights, privileges and crimes all have similar natures. They all spring from prohibitions. Take the edict “you shall not commit the crime of murder.” The crime is defined by a prohibition on human behavior. Similarly, the right to life springs from the Godly prohibition on human behavior found in the commandment “thou shall not murder.”

This is the common nature between crimes, privileges, and rights. However, when the state respects no authority greater than the state (fascism), rights become nothing more than privileges that are granted by the state. Only when the state recognizes Divine Authority is there an opportunity for human rights. 

When Coulter came to Canada

by Jon Dykstra

To say American author and columnist Ann Coulter is “outspoken” is rather like saying Solomon was  “a smart fellow.” Both statements are correct, in so far as they go, but they really don’t go far enough. Ann Coulter can, in a single sentence, be brilliantly insightful and insulting, and that – along with out-of-context quotes broadcast in five second clips on the nightly news – has made her controversial.

So when she was scheduled to speak March 23 at the University of Ottawa it was predictable that there would be protests. What wasn’t predictable was the escalation of hype and hysteria that caused the speech to be cancelled. The hype was started by a letter written the previous week from the University of Ottawa’s provost, Francois Houle. He warned Coulter that she should be careful what she was going to say, or else run the risk of criminal charges.

On the evening of the 23rd a mob of two thousands students surrounded the speaking venue, preventing many from entering. Those that did get in were subjected to screams from a handful of students who also made it inside. “There were five of us in there. We were loud,” one of the students told Global TV, “It was amazing that five of us could shut it, could just have them stop speaking.” Another admitted that, “Yes that was our aim, to stop Ann Coulter from speaking.” Outside students banged on the doors while others screamed: “This is what democracy sounds like! This is what democracy looks like!”