Articles Written By Matthew Baldwin
TMN Contributing Writer Matthew Baldwin has maintained the blog defective yeti for more than a decade. He is also responsible for Infinite Summer (an internet-wide reading of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest) and is a board games enthusiast. He lives in Seattle with his wife, his son, and a good-for-nothing cat.
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Op-Ed
Betting Wrong
Session after session, congressional battles have us rooting for one side or the other. But it’s not easy to tell who the good (and bad) guys are. A theory by way of He-Man and the Masters of the United States Congress.
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A Walk in the Park
Seattle
The Pacific Northwest stands tall when it comes to preservation and natural beauty—so why were New Englanders called in to design the Emerald City’s parks?
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Op-Ed
In Praise of Loopholes
There’s something to be said for working smarter, and not harder, and humans have been looking for—and finding—loopholes to enable it for centuries.
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Reviews
Panning the Gold
After all the outfits have been judged, the montages wept over, and the envelopes opened, there remains one last Academy Awards ritual to perform: grousing about who won.
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Books
Hard Case Crime
Judging a book by its cover is usually a recipe for mistaken impressions, but one glance at a Hard Case Crime novel and you know exactly what you're getting: guns,...
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Guides
2005 Holiday Survival Guide for Slackers
You made your list, checked it twice, and still haven’t bought a single gift. With just over 48 hours to go, it’s gift cards or IOUs—or these suggestions for the presents nobody will forget, no matter how much holiday cheer they down.
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Guides
The 2005 Good Gift Games
Being with friends and loved ones is what makes the holidays special—and once you’re fed up with that, it’s time to humiliate them over a board game. Here are this year’s best tabletop entertainments.
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Reviews
Lone Star Statements
The praise of professional critics hardly matters to the book-reviewing readers at Amazon.com. A compilation of the best of the worst… about the best.
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Web
Doukutsu Monogatari
I rarely play computer games, and Doukutsu Monogatari is the reason. It seemed a like a harmless and fairly uninteresting diversion when I started, but that was before I spent...
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Playing the Game
Endgame
Thirty-two hours in a van, scavenging for clues and solving puzzles—that’s “the Game,” a battle of smarts and endurance, and the competition is beyond fierce. Part three: Plowing through the final competitions and racing to the finish.
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Playing the Game
The Game Is Afoot
Thirty-two hours in a van, scavenging for clues and solving puzzles—that’s “the Game,” a battle of smarts and endurance, and the competition is beyond fierce. Part two: Cracking codes and scaring the locals.
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Playing the Game
The Pre-Game Show
Thirty-two hours in a van, scavenging for clues and solving puzzles—that’s “the Game,” a battle of smarts and endurance, and the competition is beyond fierce. Part one: Wooing the judges and preparing to be crushed.