The " Metamagical Themas " columns ranged over many themes, and included, to name just three, one on patterns in Frederic Chopin's piano music ( particularly the études ), another on the concept of superrationality ( choosing to cooperate when the other party / adversary is assumed to be equally intelligent as oneself ), and one on the self-modifying game of Nomic, based on the way in which the legal system modifies itself, and developed by philosopher Peter Suber.

There is even a version in which the players are games of Nomic themselves.

One spin-off of a now-defunct Nomic ( Nomic World ) is the Fantasy Rules Committee, which adds every legal rule submitted by a player to the ruleset until the players run out of ideas, after which all the " fantasy rules " are repealed and the game begins again.

The fictional game Calvinball, played by the main characters in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, is sometimes compared to Nomic.

The game of Nomic is particularly suited to being played online, where all proposals and rules can be shared in web pages or email archives for ease of reference.

Another facet of Nomic is the way in which the implementation of the rules affects the way the game of Nomic itself works.

While Nomic is traditionally capitalized as the proper name of the game it describes, it has also sometimes been used in a more informal way as a lowercased generic term, nomic, referring to anything with Nomic-like characteristics, including games where the rules may be changed during play as well as non-gaming situations where it can be alleged that " rules lawyers " are tinkering with the process used to amend rules and policies ( in an organization or community ) in a manner akin to a game of Nomic.

* agoranomic. org is the homepage of Agora Nomic, one of the oldest living nomics.

The council system is based on the game Nomic.

Legal ideas from other systems are turned on their head: someone pronounced " innocent " ( guilty in other terms ) by the court is torn to pieces by angry spectators ; judges may have bias (" if I can decide for my side, I will "), though not prejudice (" I will decide for my side, regardless "); defendant and plaintiff are chosen at trial by the side bringing the complaint choosing one role or the other ; torture is permitted ; and all procedural rules may be violated, but only by finding conflict within procedural rules ( an example of Nomic ).

ATITD has a legal system, a controlled variant on Nomic which is generally restricted by what the developers can code, as well as the nature of such a system.

Within actual entertainment games, the term metagame is used to describe either a game system layered over the game system, to increase enjoyable complexity, or a game system by which game rules are created, such as Nomic.

Nomic is a sophisticated and simple example of a metagame popular as a pastime among philosophers and mathematicians, but has also spread widely among other people as a recreational option.

Not only can every aspect of the rules be altered in some way over the course of a game of Nomic, but myriad variants also exist: some that have themes, begin with a single rule, or begin with a dictator instead of a democratic process to validate rules.

Others combine Nomic with an existing game ( such as Monopoly, chess, or in one humorously paradoxical attempt, Mornington Crescent ).

* Nomic, a game in which all rules are subject to change

The game of Nomic was first introduced to the public in this column, in June 1982, when excerpts from a book ( still unpublished at the time ) by the game's creator Peter Suber were printed and discussed.

Although many of the Future Culture list were vehemently opposed to making the archives of their postings publicly available, a selection in a Web based game called Nomic.

: For the map projection see Gnomonic projection ; for the game, see Nomic.

Nomic actually refers to a large number of games based on the initial ruleset laid out by Peter Suber in his book The Paradox of Self-Amendment.

B Nomic, by contrast, was once described by one of its players as " the equivalent of throwing logical hand grenades.

* The Nomic page of Peter Suber contains, among other things, a list of Nomic games past and present.

Such games of Nomic sometimes last for a very long time – Agora has been running since 1993.

* nomic. net contains a Nomic Wiki, the Nomic FAQ, a Nomic Bulletin Board, links to Internet Nomics, a large archive of dead games, and a variety of other resources.

The game is not worth the ammunition it would cost.

He kept his attacks on Republicanism for partisan campaigns, but that is part of the game he was born to play.

After all, when one has asked whatever became of old Joe and Charlie when one has inquired who it was Sue Brown married and where it is they now live when questions are asked and answered about families and children, and old professors when the game and its probable outcome has been exhausted that does it.

Politics is an accelerating game.

The long-range objective of habitat management is to make it fully productive so as to support fish and game populations to contribute to the need for public use and enjoyment.

And due to modern resource-use and game management practices, there is still game to shoot, even with the ever-expanding encroachment on land and water.

Nor is it an accident that baseball, growing into the national game in the last 75 years, has become a microcosm of American life, that learned societies such as the American Folklore Society and the American Historical Association were founded in the 1880s, or that courses in American literature, American civilization, American anything have swept our school and college curricula.

There is much to be said for a college that, while happily attuned to the sophisticated Ivies, still gives its students a chance to get up early in the morning and drive along back roads where a glimpse of small game, deer, or even bear is not uncommon.

But there is one small episode that a few New York fans who happened to sit in the cheap seats for one World's Series game in 1926 like best to recall.

`` Kelsey is very doubtful for the Rice game '', Meek said.

-- Held out of Texas Tech's sweat-suits drill Monday at Lubbock was tackle Richard Stafford, who is undergoing treatment for a leg injury suffered in the Raiders' 38-7 loss to Texas A & M Because of its important game with Arkansas coming up Saturday, Baylor worked out in the rain Monday -- mud or no mud.

it must play a game in which there never is a winner.

It is almost axiomatic that golfers who dominate the game of golf for any period of time attack their shots with a vehemence bordering on violence.

The effective tit for tat strategy is one game theoretic example.

This song is also used in Ellen Raskin's The westing game.

The game Orphan Feast on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim website is loosely based on A Modest Proposal.

Asteroids is a video arcade game released in November 1979 by Atari Inc.

The object of the game is to shoot and destroy asteroids and saucers while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers ' counter-fire.

Asteroids is also the first game to use Atari's " QuadraScan " vector-refresh system ; a full-color version known as " Color-QuadraScan " was later developed for games such as Space Duel and Tempest.

The game is over when the player has lost all of his / her lives.

The maximum possible score in this game is 99, 990 points, after which it " rolls over " back to zero.

The Asteroids arcade machine is a vector game.

** Every infinite game in which is a Borel subset of Baire space is determined.