What makes a good family board game?Many holiday shoppers will buy board games this year, and some will be disappointed later when their purchases sit on the shelf year after year. Rather than settle for what everyone else is buying, a Gettysburg College professor recommends looking for a well-designed game that all members of the family will enjoy. "A good game has attractive, high-quality components, interesting design innovations, simple rules and a balance of luck and skill that makes it accessible to all ages," said Todd Neller, assistant professor of computer science, who has collected more than 100 games and has created word games and puzzles. Neller also advises looking for a game that is played by 3 to 5 players within a two-hour time period.
Star of Bethlehem may have been supernovaWas the Star of Bethlehem a supernova sighted in the skies? It's possible, says Laurence Marschall, Gettysburg College physics professor and author of the 1988 book "The Supernova Story." The New Testament reference to a "star in the East" is one of the earliest written records of a sudden and new change in the heavens. The Biblical evidence, however, is inconclusive. The star may have been a comet, or it may have been a supernova -- a dying star that explodes with the power of a billion billion hydrogen bombs, according to Marschall. "It also may have been an astrological sign intelligible only to the Wise Men from the East," he said.
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