The Shotocup Kata Classic returns for its 5th year and will be held on September 29 at the Whitney Institute. A spokesperson said, “The Shotocup Kata Classic is back for its 5th year, and we are excited to announce this landmark event will be held on September 29, 2024, at the Whitney Institute, Bermuda. This […]

The 5th Annual Shotocup Kata Classic was recently held at the Whitney Institute. A spokesperson said, “The 5th Annual Shotocup Kata Classic, held at the Whitney Institute, marked another significant milestone in Bermuda’s martial arts history. With fierce competition, remarkable performances, and breakout stars, the event showcased the immense talent and dedication of karateka from […]

Maddy Schindel represented CI Trinity College School Port Hope at the 2024 Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations [OFSAA] cross country championships. The OFSAA cross country championships, renowned as the second-largest race of its kind in North America, brought together top high school runners from across Ontario. Schindel competed in the novice girls’ 4km race, […]

The Bermuda Karting Association [BKA] has turned the spotlight on junior driver Roman Wilkinson, who received his Tag Junior class title at the recent awards ceremony at Café Lido at Elbow Beach. Wilkinson led his class standings in the Rubis National Championships with 918 points, with Jonah Moniz second with 863, Lucas Flood third with […]

The Bermuda College Library is set to host a Movie Night on Thursday, November 21st at 6.00pm, featuring a screening of Bob Marley: One Love, followed by a discussion on peace facilitated by Karim Creary. Trailer for Bob Marley: One Love This event aligns with the library’s annual theme, Cultivating a Culture of Peace, inspired […]

Bermuda Craft Brewing announced BEERMUDA, a festival of live music, beer tasting, food and fun at the National Stadium North Field on September 27 and 28. A spokesperson said, “Local brewery, Bermuda Craft Brewing, is excited to announce BEERMUDA, a festival of live music, beer tasting, food and fun at the National Stadium North Field […]

Bermuda Craft Brewing hosted the BEERMUDA event, a festival of live music, beer tasting, food, and fun, at the National Stadium North Field this weekend. “BEERMUDA will showcase top international and local musicians while offering guests the chance to taste more than 40 specially selected craft beers from around the world. On tap beers will […]

Minister of Economy and Labour Jason Hayward held a press conference today [Nov 6] to announce the launch of the Bermuda Coders Initiative, a “groundbreaking digital skills education programme made possible through a partnership with the United Arab Emirates’ Government Experience Exchange Office.” Minister Hayward said, “Developed by Udacity, a global leader in digital education, […]

[Updated] There is no access to Bermuda College this morning [Oct 9] the police have confirmed. A police spokesperson said, “Please be advised there is currently no access to Bermuda College due to an industrial accident on the compound. There have been no reported injuries at this time. Police and Bermuda Fire and Rescue Service are […]

“We learned a lot from the America’s Cup in 2017″ and so we could “probably do it a little better” however there are “some other things that we should also be going after,” Bermuda has a “strong and long history” with sailing, and “rinse and repeat is not a tourism strategy,” are a few of […]

MP Zane DeSilva was charged today [Oct 26] in Magistrate’s Court with allegedly violating the Proceeds of Crime act. The charge alleged that between April 2018 and August 2018, he “entered into or became concerned in an arrangement, which you knew or suspected facilitated the use or control of criminal property by or on behalf […]

Nascent Group Ltd. announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Bermuda Compliance Consultants Ltd, and the acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2023. A spokesperson said, “Founded and headquartered in Bermuda, Bermuda Compliance Consultants Ltd. [BCCL] provides compliance advisory services to the insurance and the fund markets. Alison Morrison, […]

Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport Owen Darrell recently attended Caribbean Week hosted by the Caribbean Tourism Organisation [CTO] in New York from June 16 – 21, 2024. A Government spokesperson said, “This year’s event at the InterContinental New York Times Square, marked the organisation’s 35th anniversary. It brought together the region’s finest tourism representatives […]

The MS Nautica cruise ship arrived in Bermuda on Saturday [Sept 14] and a ceremonial welcome reception and plaque exchange was held. A Government spokesperson said, “The MS Nautica arrived in Bermuda on Saturday, September 14, with 626 passengers on its inaugural voyage. It was scheduled to dock in St. George’s first, followed by Hamilton, […]

Make something special for dinner with this pizza made using cauliflower as the crust. Yes, cauliflower the vegetable.  Cauliflower and Mozzarella cheese are blended, then pre-baked into a crust. Then top with your favorite pizza toppings and bake. This pizza turns out very well and if no-one was watching you, they might not know that they were …

"In sum, 'White Fragility' is an utterly ridiculous book. ... Everything about 'White Fragility' is poisonous garbage, and it's not an overstatement." Continue reading →

Elected Republicans, almost all of them, are in no hurry to stop the disorder. They appear to believe what we're watching is a version of the Rodney King riots from 1992. People saw an upsetting video on the internet, they're angry, and that's understandable. But they'll calm down soon, and we can get back to cutting capital gains taxes and sanctioning Bashar al- Assad. That's their view of it. They are wrong. This is not a momentary civil disturbance. This is a serious and highly organized political movement. It is not superficial. It is deep and profound. It has vast ambitions. It is insidious; it will grow. Its goal is to end liberal democracy and challenge Western civilization itself. This is an ideological movement. The ideas that fuel it have incubated for decades on college campuses. We paid for all of it, by the way. The rest of us were so thrilled that our kids got into Duke that we decided to ignore what Duke was actually teaching them and are continuing to send big checks. That was a mistake. It was one of the greatest mistakes we've ever made. Continue reading →

Democrats and elites are making straight white men the enemy of their new world order. Blacks, hispanics, gays are now the good guys; straight white men are the bad guys. Continue reading →

The government is instructing social media companies what should and shouldn't be allowed to be on the internet, these are the people least competent to judge what is misinformation. Continue reading →

Henry Barajas' Death To Pachuco , a Chicano noir set in the Zoot Suit Riots, is now live on Kickstarter

Hi Everyone, it's me, Grace. You might remember that a couple of years ago I earned my Canine Good Citizen award with my foster dad. Well, my mom said to me about a month ago, "Hey Grace, I know you already know this stuff, but what do you say you and I take the Canine Good Citizen test again?" So I told her I would do it again, just for her if it would make her feel good.


So we practiced all these things like sitting, staying, coming, not pulling on the leash, and passing by dogs nicely without staring at them. I didn't mind it at all, because she gave me lots of treats for doing it.




This past weekend I went with my family to this place with a ton of dogs. They called it a "dog show", but there was no TV there. Anyway, I had to wait for a long time and finally, I heard them call my me and my mom's names and we went into this fenced area. There was a lady with a blue shirt and she told my mom to have me do all these things. She kept saying "nice" after I did them.




After about 10 minutes of doing what she asked me to do, my mom looked very happy and gave me a delicious beef tendon and told me we had passed the Canine Good Citizen test. It was a great day.

REVIEW – Look at my fancy coffee maker! The PINKAH Stainless Steel French Press Coffee Maker is a contemporary take on the French Press design that features an innovative leakproof pouring mechanism and a double-walled design that keeps your beverages hot for hours. We love all the coffee things, so let’s learn more. To the […]

I really love the card game Lost Cities, designed by Reiner Knizia. When my husband Christopher and I were first getting to know each other, we used to meet up at Starbucks sometimes and play games. Lost Cities was one of our frequent picks. It’s a head to head, two player game in which both players are trying to outscore each other by laying down ascending runs of card suits on a small board between the two of them. There’s a theme laid over the mechanism (completing expeditions in the lost world) but it’s basically pasted on and so that is the last we will speak of it. So there we were, newly in love, eyeing each other across the table, smiling and flirting, and doing our best to beat one another at Lost Cities. It was awesome. And now, with the roll & write genre having made an impressive rebound a few years ago (let’s not forget the mechanism has actually been around since the 50s with Yatzee), Knizia has ported his award winning game Lost Cities  into this format, releasing Lost Cities Roll & Write  in 2021. 

You can play the new Lost Cities  with up to 5 players, but in an ode to our romantic beginnings, Christopher and I played it exclusively with one another in successive matches.  The components are compact, lacking the pretty illustrations of the original game, and few in number – the rule book, a scorepad, three pentagonal trapezohedron dice (that’s 10 sided dice for the uninitiated), and three 6 sided custom dice with color suit symbols. Oh, and some pencils. That’s it. We could have played on an even smaller Starbucks table if we had this back in our dating days.

The cards from the original game (wager cards and numbered cards 2 to 10, in five different suits) have been translated into dice roll results. On each turn, one player rolls all the dice and chooses one of the six sided dice to represent the suit and one of the ten sided dice to represent the number. A zero on the number die can represent either zero (mimicking the wager card from the original game which serves as a multiplier for the total score in the selected suit) or ten (mimicking the highest card in each suit).

In place of the tableau built up on a central board, each player tracks the progress of wager and number cards they’ve collected for each suit in color coded columns on their individual score sheet. Wager cards have been transformed into little circular boxes to be marked off from a suit column when rolled, while the numbered cards from the original game have expanded to include the number 1 and are recorded as numbers written manually in the square boxes running up each column. Whereas in the original game, only cards higher than the last card played in a suit were permitted to be played on subsequent turns by the same player, in Lost Cities Roll & Write, numbers that are higher than or equal to the last number recorded for a suit may be written into the column after future dice rolls. Expanding beyond the concepts from the original game, Knizia has included artifact icons on select spaces in each column and when those spaces are filled by a player, they may fill in one of the jars in the artifact column. Likewise, he’s included arrow icons on select spaces and when those spaces are filled by a player, they may fill in the next box in one of their suit columns with the number from the previous box in the column – note that it does not have to be the same column in which the arrow was filled.  There’s also a column for filling in dice shapes to represent rolls where a player could not or did not want to use any of the dice results. The latter column is particularly tricky to manage effectively, as it provides a similar point progression as the rest of the columns (negative scores for the first 3 boxes filled and then positive score for the rest) up until the last box in the column. If you color in that box, your score for the dice shapes column drops from 70 to 0. The bonus points awarded in the original game (20 points for laying down at least 8 cards in a suit) have been implemented in Lost Cities Roll & Write  for each column (including the artifact and dice shape columns) as a 20 point bonus to the player who is the first to fill in 7 boxes in the column on the scorepad. The roll & write game ends when either both players have filled in the dice shapes column completely or all eight columns have passed the bonus point marker. In our experience, the completed dice shapes column is a much more common trigger.

I’ve played a ton of roll & write games over the past few years. Some are instant objects of adoration, while others are infuriating piles of poo (I’m looking at you Imperial Settlers R&W). Lost Cities Roll & Write is fantastic; a great addition to the genre. Knizia did an excellent job of translating the feel of the original game into the new mechanism. The iconography is clean and easy to read and the game can be taught and played in less than a half hour. And of course, it takes up very little table real estate, making it perfect for travel or tight spaces (when traveling as a passenger, simply roll the dice into the box cover). If you twisted my arm and forced me to choose between Lost Cities or Lost Cities Roll & Write, I’d be forced to pick the original, but only because of the lovely artwork on the cards and the sentimental value I have attached to the game after my love and I played it in our early days. But who would go around doing such arm twisting? Nobody. Therefore, with a retail price point under $15 for each of these, unless you’re down to your last $15, I recommend you pick up both. Play the card game with someone you love when you have a little more table space. Play the roll & write anywhere, with up to four additional friends. 

-------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Kosmos
Players: 2-5 (We played with 2)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): about 20 minutes per game
Game type: roll & write, dice rolling

Rating:

Rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Some of the most common trials to face JPs nowadays are the Section 172 cases that arise from the ubiquitous speed cameras. Some people (such as Christopher Huhne) simply lie about who was driving the speeding vehicle, and others claim not to know the ID of the driver, but the consequences of being caught can be nasty. These cases tend to be listed in just a few courts, which can be pretty tiresome for the bench members. As it happens these cases are a rarity in my court, so this week the S172 that appeared on my list was the first that I have ever done, in about 30 years on the bench. The evidence was pretty thin, and we acquitted. The clerk told us later that these cases often fail to stick.

They are a tidy source of revenue for the various loophole specialists in the legal profession, as many people will cough up a hefty sum to keep their driving licence.

The “Wow!" signal has a new explanation, and an ultra-cool experiment advances quantum sensing in space. Plus, making an asteroid go “boom!” might work, depending on the circumstances.

NASA is preparing to launch its flagship mission to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa. Launching sometime in October 2024 and arriving in 2030, the mission will explore the icy world with a subsurface ocean that scientists think could have conditions favorable to life.

For a mission that doesn’t aim to find alien life, Europa Clipper may come surprisingly close.

Europa Clipper will soon head for Jupiter's icy, potentially habitable moon. Without the advocacy efforts of The Planetary Society and our members, the mission may never have been possible.

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft launched today aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.