Time for a change. I personally have no ambitions to be prophet, messiah, pope, or author of the holy book. Charisma always ends up being routinized by the bureaucrats anyway. Just set me up with a quiet little number in the inquisition department, I'll be happy. Meanwhile, we'll probably need a tenet or two...

How about this: the deliberate destruction of a chess engine, except in case of upgrade (please provide serial number and proof of purchase), shall be regarded as murder.

I've interviewed film directors (Peter Greenaway, Ken McMullen) who consciously inserted visual anachronisms in historical scenes, partly to break through the dominant conventions of period film.

But errors do occur in fiction. Pynchon is full of playful anachronisms but this one, from Mason & Dixon, seems to be of a different order:

Mason (then a surveyor) and Dixon (assistant astronomer royal) meet for the first time, c. 1752. Dixon, trying to impress with his reading, says "I've been taught the lot, Celestial Mechanics, all the weighty lads, Laplace and Kepler, Aristarchus..."

Hmm. Pierre Simon de Laplace was born in 1749, making him about three at the time. He published his Celestial Mechanics in 5 volumes between 1799 and 1825. I know this because I've been reading it: the bits I actually understand are magnifique...

<In> reference to new religions, or novel ones, any of you <in> to <Lex Lutheranism> yet? <In> case you haven't heard of it, it <in>volves worshipping Kryptonite, hating <Superman> and subsisting solely on a <Diet of Worms>

<In> all s<in>cerity,

By the way <Domdaniel> if you are curious about the Burroughs-Juvenal connection (I know, it's been awhile) compare Js piece on Greeks , < in the third satire to Burroughs' "do-rights" <Doctor, when I die I want to be buried right in the same coffin with you> from, I forget which book. The penguin translation of Juvenal by Peter Green is good (but you probably know Latin, Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphs too).

Of course I was thinking of Burroughs the satirist, not the junkie and wife-killer. Same guy, I guess. Now that I think of it, Juvenal is really more like Celine, anyway.

The party has already started for the Yury match! Come and enjoy the fun!

In some cases, though, we're obviously dealing with a pervasive - and "creative" - use of anachronism. This is a major device in what may be termed the post-modernist historical novel (or fantasy) - e.g., Fowles' "The French Lieutenant's Woman", Fuentes' "Terra Nostra", or Reed's "Mumbo Jumbo".

I really think <twinlark>'s forum system was the key. Without it, the single-page analysis would have been much more confused -- even Thorsson would have had less impact. We might have fallen back on RV's engine baseline -- which was also vital, but was never going to be enough on its own. Moves like 18.Qd2! needed human planning.

During my first few years in university, the annual registration form had a box for religion: I used to make one up each time. Harvey's Bristol Witnesses was one. Another was Paradoxical Hedonism (one who seeks pleasure but knows it can't be found). Callow, I know.

Then my girlfriend got a part-time job in college admin, and discovered that made-up religions were always added to the 'Catholics' pile. On the grounds that only lapsed RCs would bother inventing such tripe, and what right had the young pups to lapse in the first place...?

That's when I realized that the 'official' statistics of the old Ireland (up to the 1970s) were seriously skewed - the ones that claimed the country was 96% Catholic, 3% Church of Ireland, 0.8% 'other' Christians, 0.1% Jewish, 0.09% Muslim, and 0.01% everything else. It was all sham, and it collapsed very suddenly.

<And great King Spike - last of the notorious Windsor-Milligan Dynarchs - waved his broadsword in the air, and spake: "Portsmouth, old son, it's room 101 for you, so be off with ye now before I set my Q on ye..." And lo, it came to pass, verily.>

Assuming that a Spike can be said to have Spake, of course. Why do they talk like hobbits in the post-meltdown 31st century? Because they learn it from the last surviving copy of Lord of the Rungs, a sacred relic (missing bits filled in by techno-scribes) held in the Brutish Museum on the Isle of Wales. Portsmouth itself will have been long submerged, but Avalon-style legends linger on... a golden ladder emerging from the deeps, the king ascending, rung by rung...

Fully agreed: ORGANIZATION was one of the winning cards we played into the game.

Whether we will meet again for other games (I warmly hope it will happen), let's not forget this key issue.

About the organizational matter, am I allowed to make a suggestion?

Due to family and job engagements, my help in the team was limited to spot contributions: when I came back to the team, it was really hard to understand which lines were under discussion in some posts.

Of course I might get bored in a few days and change my mind. But at most it would be occasional analysis rather than the total immersion experience.

Actually, I'm just stalling while I try to translate him into Latin. If he was a Renaissance scholar he might have been Donaldus Vlietius (from Don Van Vliet). But the full Imperial version ought to be something like <Capitaneus Cardiacus Bovis>.

The interesting little word 'Cardophagus' does not mean an eater of hearts. My 4-year-old niece told me at Christmas that she wanted to eat Santa Claus's heart. For a moment I wondered if she was being brought up Aztec-style... parents are capable of anything these days if it's fashionable enough... but Santa proved to be made of chocolate, with a big heart on the outside.

<Dom> if you ever deleted one of my posts, know that I would never be incensed. I understand that I am a guest when I post in anyone's forum. Yours is obviously one of my favorites.

Cheers, this forum is quite a bit more educational than my actual classes,

I'd played very little chess for years before that -- although I'd always continued to analyze games with engine assistance. Maybe I'm just less interested in the purely competitive side: I know I lack the will to win I see in others, let alone the Fischer/Kasparov killer instinct. As a result I've always drawn too many games - going through weekend tournaments unbeaten, but out of the prizes. Once, in a strong-ish (2000-2400 range) tournament, I had seven draws. None of them easy, and some quite sharp: but they all somehow balanced out in the end.

One bit of preparation I did last year - given that I usually open 1.Nf3 and play positionally - was to play a lot of wild gambits - Muzio, Belgrade, etc - against various engines. It sharpened me up.

I considered a new opening repertoire, then reasoned that would take a lot of work, and waste the accumulated experience of the old openings. So I tried out some new variations and transpositions instead.

Or one for the Anagram Menu, with a mini-narrative thrown in:

Whig met lord.
- Weight, M'Lord?
- Worm Delight?

Also, most religions - Lutheran or otherwise - already have too much Lex in them. As in The Law.

Wasn't it Rufus and Martha's Dad, Loudon Wainwright, who had a song going "I can walk on water and I can raise the dead/ It's easy, I'm the Way..."?