Search Results for: geeks among us

Making the Unreal Real: An Interview With Kij Johnson

Marziah Karch

Remember how I said that Lawrence, Kansas is a secret hub of science fiction and fantasy awesome? Meet Kij Johnson, KU’s new fantasy professor, an award-winning writer of fantastic things, and one of the people that makes the city such a great place for geeks. She’ll be at Oxford this January for the inaugural Pembroke Lecture in Fantasy Literature. Recently, I sat down with her to chat about her work, her books, grad school, and life in general.

5 Ways to Sneak Math Lessons into Baking Christmas Cookies

Patricia Vollmer

Recently, I’ve acquired a couple of elves to help me bake Christmas cookies. My sons, ages 7 and 10, are old enough to do just about everything in the cookie baking process (with plenty of adult supervision). My youngest son loves cracking eggs, which is just the beginning of the educational value of this annual tradition. I offer to you five small math lessons that can pay dividends for any young person to have a fruitful future in cooking and baking.

I Am Was a Settlers of Catan Newbie

Jenny Bristol

Yes, until recently, I had never played Settlers of Catan. I’ve been to dozens of game nights where other people were playing. It looked too complicated at first, and then too boring, so I avoided it. Then it became a “thing.” Never having played it was such a rare thing among my friends that I held on to the distinction.

But times change, and my curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to try playing Settlers of Catan. My timing was good because a new app came out recently called Catan Game Assistant. It was designed for people like me, people who had never played the game. I knew it all had something to do with trading sheep for wood, but the rest of it was unknown to me. Even after watching Wil Wheaton and friends play it on TableTop, I still didn’t feel like I knew what the game was about. I suspected it was the kind of game that needed to be played numerous times to get a feel for the strategy, and figure out what works best for you.