My daughter and I have been playing "The Room" for the last couple of weeks. It is more of a puzzle than a game, and we have been doing it cooperatively rather than competitively which makes it even less game-like, but it is great fun. The puzzles are hard enough that you have to think a bit, but not so hard that you don't figure them out in finite time (and, of course, there are walkthroughs to be had all over the interwebs). And the game is visually stunning. Indeed, that may be its strongest feature. The sounds are fun too.
The piece does a very good job of highlighting the strengths of ethnographic work.
Of course, the policy paragraph at the end falls short of the standard set by the remainder of the discussion, but I suppose one can't have everything.
Local readers will be keenly aware that the most obvious thing that we lack around here is enough seminars to go to each week. After all, there are only two labor seminars, two public finance seminars, two development seminars, two macro seminars, an economic history seminar, an econometric seminar, a Ford School faculty work-in-progress seminar, two international / trade seminars, a health economics seminar, a new energy / environment economics seminar, two applied micro / IO seminars, a high theory seminar, the population center seminar, the survey research center seminars (including the joint program in survey methodology as well as a series specific to the PSID and another series), the quantitative methodology program seminar, the STEIT seminar, the research center on group dynamics seminar and probably some others that I am forgetting.
Given that we live in the center of a "seminar desert", I am delighted to note the arrival of a new seminar that looks to become one of my favorites: the ISQM or Interdisciplinary Seminar on Quantative Methods. You can find the schedule here. The initial meeting today features my friend Susan Murphy from the statistics department on (what I would call) statistical treatment rules. I'll be there.