<As they were chatting thus together they arrived at Portsmouth. The harbor was lined with a multitude of people, whose eyes were steadfastly fixed on a rather stout man who was kneeling blindfold on the deck of one of the naval ships. Opposite to this personage stood four soldiers, each of whom shot three bullets into his skull, with all the composure imaginable; and when it was done, the whole company went away perfectly well satisfied.

"What the devil is all this for?" said Candide, "and what demon is it that holds such universal sway?"

He then asked who was that stout man who had been sent out of the world with so much ceremony. When he received for answer, that it was an admiral.

"And pray why do you put your admiral to death?"

"Because he did not put a sufficient number of his fellow creatures to death. You must know, he had an engagement with a French admiral, and it has been proved against him that he was not near enough to his antagonist."

"But," replied Candide, "the French admiral must have been as far from him."

"There is no doubt of that; but in this country it is found requisite, now and then, to put an admiral to death, so as to encourage the others.">

We may have questions for you from time to time. One such might be - though "clearly" it isn't yet - this:

"Are you in a diegetic position to shed further light on the ontological status of the entity known as JessicaFischerQueen?"

He doesn't seem too scared at the prospect of his demotion to the <unheimlich> Chair.

Maybe because he likes <Unheimlich>?

He's a Kafka scholar, for Cripe sake.

No <Heimat> for him.

<Candide>= excellent btw.

<trivia answer> No idea! <Nelson>? <Farragut>? <Benjamin Franklin>?

Not, sadly, in this case, as a conversational gambit to entice Ladies in Salons ("Aha, thank you, m'dear, that hanky is of some considerable sentimental attachment to me, as we cut it from a Frenchman's poop-deck during a Long Engagement" ... Lady swoons ...) but as a signal to nearby musketeers to fire their weapons, discharge balls of lead into his body at high velocity, and thus kill him.

Admiral Byng was executed in 1757 on board his flagship in Portsmouth. His crime was failure to engage the enemy at the Battle of Minorca, thus losing a Bit of British Empire. He dropped the handkerchief because one of the privileges of rank is that you yourself, rather than some jumped-up careerist underling type, may issue the command "Ready... take aim... right, chaps, kill me stone dead when I drop the hanky".

The French responded to this kerfuffle (satirized by Voltaire in Candide, as cited -- but extra marks were available for quoting the original French <"Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.">) by renaming the captured Bit of Empire Port-Mahon.

This means that (a) the French renamed a portion of the British Empire after an Irishman, General Mac-Mahon, and (b) Byng, in the long run, died in the service of Mayonnaise, also named after Mahon.

And I still don't know who painted the picture of Byng's execution, although a portrait of the Admiral had been painted by Thomas Hudson in 1749.

In 2007, a mere 250 years after his execution, some of Byng's family (aristos have long memories and longer bloodlines) petitioned Her Majesty's Admiralty for a posthumous rehabilitation - Byng had been cleared of the charge of personal cowardice, but convicted for not trying hard enough to win - "insufficient zeal". They were turned down.

Pardons are currently available only to victims of colonialism, oppression, slavery, famine, etc, and not to hard-done-by aristos. But these are persistent people -- they'll be back in 2057 for the 300th anniversary, and perhaps the political winds will have shifted by then...

More Byng-drinking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B...

Now that's something I can understand.

I'm not a 'reader' per se.

<Mayonaisse pun> GROAN!!! giggle

<byng drinking> LOL

<Dom> Here are some posts that sound suspiciously like advice you gave me when I was fretting about wasting so much time on chess, even though chess makes me feel happy.

"Chess has no social purpose... That, above all, is important." --<Du Champ>

<Hans Richter to Du Champ>: "Why chess, Mr. Duchamp?

<Du Champ>: "Why not, Mr. Richter? Do you think that life is so important and chess is not?"

Wisdom? Nihilism? Take your pick.

The Chess book I just read (title and author posted here yesterday)

It has those quotes and in fact the final chapter is structured around a chess exhibition the narrator and his IM friend play in front of Du Champ's Urinal right in the Museum.

Since I don't know what the word "ontology" means, I'm forced to kill <Insane Olde Batte> and reinstate <Jess>, whoever she might be.

C'est parfait, ca. Merci.

Earlier today I had to chide a friend of mine -- splendid chap, highly intelligent, knows lots of stuff, but persists in the curious delusion that politics is in some way important. Along with nations, wars, revolutions, republics, all that sort of stuff.

In particular, he clings to the odd belief that the people who had a revolution (or 'rising' - it sounds less, well, revolutionary and possibly more macho) in Ireland in 1916 were important and even heroic. Whatever that is.

Nonsense, I said. The era of Kafka, Einstein, Duchamp, Tzara, Joyce and Nimzowitsch? How can a provincial bourgeois revolutionary (or 'riser'?!) possibly compare with such titans? How can you seriously mention Irish independence in the same breath as My System and The Large Glass? Nationhood versus the Nimzo-Indian Defence - no contest.

This is not yet a popular point of view in these parts. But I'm getting there.

For <Aristotle>, it was <virtue> (Nicomachean ethics)-- happiness is important only so far as it increases virtue.

I'm with <buddhists and surrealists> on this one.

If everyone adored and played chess all the time, what need for politics?

Except <chess politics>, of course, which are well known for their amicable, reasonable, and mutually satisfying resolutions.

Except for all that other crap.

Not that I would recommend such 'close reading'. It can lead to hair on the palms, active glands, and deconstructionism.

The next phase of <Spare Room Theory> is almost ready for construction. But like all, um, revolutionaries, we may have to demolish some of the old supporting walls in the process.

Please bear with us if the ceiling collapses.

Ontology? Knowledge of Onts? I've never even met an Ont, let alone interviewed one...

btw, have you heard Sam Beckett's reply on being asked for an interview?

- But I have no views to inter.

"Don't worry, be happy, enter the Dragon..."

You kiddin'? Cum'on!

My face, is red. with anger, here!

Nah, I'm cool now..
In all honesty tho, being punny in a non native language can be a dangerous, nasty, backfiring thing. Risking it all in a fluffy of a second..

Syntactics Officer
Accepted
Jobriskovsky

(Here's lookin' at euclid) You were on a roll yesterday eve <Dom>, while I was off in space on some obscure mission unable to find the mothership.

Clubtime tonight! Bring'em on!

'Satire is not a social dynamite. But it is a social indicator: it shows that new men are knocking on the door.'

Were the cave paintings at <Lausanne> actually <comic strips>?

I need to know.

Somebody erased it!!

- growing <mobility> - mental <blockade>
- temporary <weakness> - winter <prophylaxis>

D'you want Bronowski in video or book form? Not saying I actually *have* either, mind. Just curious.