You connect, I cut.

Oh, I overdid it there.

Here, we relax, and hop about.

I already have Gandalf's collected games, but now <The Wizard from Rishon-le-Zion via Minsk> has risen even further in my esteem.

At the end of his 3rd game win vs Mamedyarov - a near-immortal pawn hurricane - he reached this position after ...39.Rb8:

click for larger view

... and commented ...

"And suddenly, all those pawns ... actually the most funny thing was that he lost on time. I don't know if that was reported. He lost on time. He had nine seconds to complete his 40th move and he was looking for a solution and lost on time. But if he should play 40.Bc1 and I think I would have played something like 40...Qc5 to reach the time control and then the position is won. But 40...Rb2! 41.Bxb2 axb2 is really beautiful. A chain of pawns, it's unbelievably beautiful. I don't think I would have found it with a few minutes left..."

What. a. Mensch.
Some players think a win on time somehow spoils the purity of victory - but Boris is amused by it, and goes on to show aesthetic delight in a variation he admits he'd probably have missed. Superb.

And there's more, on the subject of people who kibitz with engines and scoff at GMs who miss 'simple' moves.

This is fine, but it implies an Israeli perspective - arguably correct, as he is now an Israeli citizen. But if you're reading it in Minsk, then Boris *emigrated* to Israel.

Dear <Annie> uses the same construction in her profile, with a reference to a plan to 'immigrate' to Canada. Which looks to me like a plan to emigrate, but I've tried not to get picky about it.

The trouble is that the ostensibly neutral form, 'migrate', just won't work in some contexts. We're left with a choice between immigration and emigration, each of which has a directional bias.

My theory is that societies where immigration (people coming to the country) is the norm use 'immigrate' in most contexts, without really thinking about it. This is the case in Israel and the USA -- somebody moves, they immigrate, so what?

But in societies - such as Ireland - where people leaving the country is the historical norm, the form 'emigrate' is the standard. Somebody moves, they're an emigrant, and again so what?

The directional - and historical - bias runs deep.

If you're looking at her face, she's an immigrant.

If you're looking at her ass, she's an emigrant.

If you're looking at a majestic herd of wildebeast sweeping across the Serengeti, they're migrants.>

That, my dear wildebeest, is simply purrfect. Though I admit I immediately thought of a short poem by Lenny, the greatest living Canadian Jewish Buddhist:

<I did not Know
Until you walked away
You had the perfect ass.
Forgive me for not falling in love
With your face or your conversation.>

Such an old Platonist, isn't he? Always thinking of 'perfect forms'.

<Jess> you're absolutely right from the static point of view - that is, from that of a person other than the, uh, <ummigrants> themselves: from the POV of a citizen of the Olde Country, they are emigrants, from the POV of a citizen of the Shiny! New! Country, they are immigrants.

But I reckon <Dom> may be largely right regarding how the ummigrants view *themselves*.

So you two have defined two different POVs. :)

Also, we don't speak of either 'immigration' or 'emigration' on a daily basis here, becuz, that's, uh, English? And we have this here Hebrew.

In which, incidentally, the term for immigration (to Israel) is 'aliya' - literally, "coming up", while emigration (from Israel) is 'yerida', meaning, surprisingly, "going down". I mean, no bias whatsoever, right? ;)

Doesn't seem to work on me though. :p

However, in my case, I think it's a matter of where (on which country of the two) my focus is - and it's more on Canada, since the directive is not so much "I wanna get out of Israel, like, yesterday?", as "hmm, Canada is such a nice and beautiful place, would be nice to live there."

Of course I enjoyed being whisked off by limo to the set to meet the director and stars - it was shot partly in Oklahoma and partly in Ireland.

But, talking to Howard, I understood he saw it as a movie about *immigrants* - pioneering types like his grandpa who founded Oklahoma. The Irish scenes were like a creation myth - just folksy stuff about the poverty, bigotry, etc people had to flee from.

But the many Irish cast and crew members thought it was a 'fillum' about *emigration* - the tragedy of leaving your native land for a wild place full of armed savages, and that was just the cities.

The movie collapsed quietly into the gulf between the two points of view. I don't think Ron Howard - over two separate interviews - ever really grasped what I was trying to tell him about Ummigration.

In its way, the movie is up there with The Quiet Man -- not as entertainment, but as a symbol of that gulf between Ireland and American dreams of it (O'Bama and all).

It ain't always easy living in somebody else's creation myth. Or their Psychic Urheimat. But you knew that.

;]

PS -- 'Ummigration' for neologism of the year: the sense of existential dread that overcomes a person who doesn't know whether they are coming or going...

I had Howard the Duck lined up for interview once, but he fluffed it. Went down, almost.

So, do elevators (aka lifts) have recorded voices (or even flunkeys) saying "yerida, yerida ... go on, that's right, use the country like a springboard, bounce off somewhere else, somewhere less Jewish, you not entirely kosher pseudo-immigrant, you ..."

I remember another movie called 'I Went Down', a sort of crime caper comedy set in Ireland. All the title allegedly meant was "I Went Down (from Dublin to Cork to sort the locals out)". But I suspect they were sniggering to themselves.

Can I still say 'sniggering' or has it been blacklisted?

You mean that if you show up in Nirvana wearing sunglasses, Buddha might glare at you? ;s

<BTW, I was innarested to learn that the Israeli name Tal - there at least three young chessplayers with it - means 'dew' in Hebrew. This word is pronounced 'doo' in American and 'jew' in British. But it's rarely used in Ireland because everything is permanently damp anyhow.>

The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days."

Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C).

The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C.