much (mild) debauchery was had!

redactrice and shy_kat joined john_arundel and me for Chinese food, huge bottles of Newky Broon (just me and Peter), and a lengthy playing of Joan of Arc.

www.gamecabinet.com/reviews/JoanOfArc.html
www.funagain.com/cgi-bin/funagain/04466

I'm surprised that these reviews are so negative; we quite enjoyed the game (and while, as France, I managed to win, the Peter [les rosbifs], Chris [Brittany], and Melissa [Burgundy] all seemed to enjoy it too). My impression was that we all wanted to play it again.

Would anyone be up for a gaming day, either the first weekend of October (2/3) or one of the last two (23/24 or 30/31)? I have a pile of stuff to play, and folks would always be welcome to bring their favourites.

UN warns of population explosion

The population of developing countries will soar unless donors give more funds to reproductive health programmes, a UN Population Fund report says.
The world's 50 poorest countries will triple in size by 2050, surging to 1.7 billion people, it predicts.

from the BBC

In light of a recent discussion of theories of population *shrinkage* (which so affected the originator that he apparently deleted his journal (!), I thought this was interesting.

I have a feeling there's a lot more going on here than meets the eye

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3657744.stm

news, o my fellow pilgrims

from here:

New Line has confirmed that the four-disc extended edition of Return of the King will arrive on the 14th December. The set will include around fifty-minutes of additional footage, including the highly anticipated confrontation with Saruman. Stacks of extra material will also be featured, including cast and crew audio commentaries and multiple behind the scenes documentaries and featurettes. The SRP will be around $39.99. Also arriving on the 14th will be a collector's giftset which includes the aforementioned four-disc extended edition, along with a Sideshow/Weta statue of Minas Tirith and a Howard Shore Creating the Lord of the Rings Symphony DVD. The retail price for this will be set at around $79.92. We will bring you further details shortly, but for now, here's another look at the artwork. Our thanks to Kami for the shots.