And then comes walking in water. Or is it *on* water?

So *The End* does not necessarily "fall" on a Big Number, eh?

I knew that, even without counseling the POM ( [high]-Priest's Operating Manual)

So yes, (more than)occasionally, I know what you mean..(.)

heh. You have to love that <Chuck Heston>.

Did you ever see the old <eco-sciencefiction film> "Silent Running" with <Bruce Dern>?

You feel really bad when one of his assistant robots dies.

C3PO, on the other hand, is a Disneyfied cartoon "character". If he were drawn and quartered on screen, I'd laugh and cheer.

George made ONE GOOD FILM ONLY in his entire career: the science fiction film <THX 1138>- a brilliant and beautiful treatise of an escape from dystopian science.

His <Star Wars> stuff is DRECK, DRECK, DRECK.

It's as if <Kubrik> had made <The Killing> and then given up and made <Police Academy 1-50>.

Lucas: NUMBER ONE EXAMPLE of unexplored talent and promise.

Thank all that was ever beautiful in the universe that <DomDaniel> saved <Frogspawn> at the last minute.

Without <Frogspawn>, where would we Frogs go?

It's not safe for us outside now. thin skin, increased UV rays etc.

Frogspawn = asylum, sanctum, Elysium, Arcady, Nirvana for all us disaffected powerless overerudite folk who happened to be hopelessly addicted to chess.

On that last topic-- Playing only on weekends seems to have done wonders for my game.

I'm almost at so-called "Expert" rating now.

Approaching 2000 Yahoo ratings with the white pieces, 1700 with the black. And it's getting tougher and tougher to find opponents willing to play "long" games.

about 99 percent of Yahoo players over 2000 play Bullet. They don't even have the patience for Blitz. Just Bullet. Good grief that is not chess.

If I ever go to a country that has OTB classical chess again, I'm joining 20 chess clubs.

I

LOVE

CHESS

(and everything about chess).

When I come home from work most of my "TV viewing" is watching many, many free bits of <chess analyis video> posted by the kind folk at YouTube.

Oh <dom> I love you so much I can't really express it. So I will try in Korean.

You are my chin gun.

That's nice. All nine of us, eh? But if there were any more we wouldn't be so powerless... and we might have an erudition revolution. Or something.

JFQ for Chess Consul and Gubernatrix of Asia Major.

Bullet's not chess -- it's more like a 1980s video game, for which you need fast reflexes and some learned attack and defence patterns. Pawn-bish-check-sac-blam-mate.

It could never have been popular in the pre-digital age, because setting up actual pieces on physical boards takes too long for these maniacs. But when reset is just a click away...

Bang.

(I have no idea what time it is in <Erie>, and I'm waaaay too lazy to click on my "world time zone" site even though it's bookmarked).

Dom! I am facing tougher and tougher opposition on Yahoo.

they don't hang pieces, miscalculate exchanges, or allow me to pile up on pinned pieces or backward pawns.

By force, i'm learning about positional play.

Jostling for small advantages.

"In between moves".

Patience.

That sort of thing.

I am learning that tactics are only ever in the service of position.

Only position allows a tactical shot or combination in the first place.

And, the converse is also true.

A tactical shot or combination is only of value if it leads to a stronger position for the shooter.

Today I am very proud of one of the games I played because

A. I sacced a knight to open up his kingside

B. I knew (sensed) I had a winning continutation but I couldn't see it.

C. Instead of hurling pieces at his kingside, I took a long, long time to analyze the position. I remained calm even though every fibre of my being wanted to rip his guts open.

D. After almost 10 minutes, I saw a move. A "quiet move." just shifting a back rank rook over one file.

E. This move turned out to be murderous. Though the rook in question was not directly involved in my assault, shifting it over a file did two things at once. It threatened to either REMOVE A KEY DEFENDER or to BLOCK an escape square for his king.

He needed both-- an escape square and the defender in question.

He had to choose.

Either choice was losing.

SO HE RESIGNED!!!!

This is not the Jessica I knew.

The Jessica I knew would have thrown pieces at his kingside in bloodlust.

O my goodness for the first time in my life I'm starting to actually play the kinds of moves I've only read about for so long.

Who knew this would ever happen?

Who knew that only being able to play on the weekend would improve my game?

Oh I'm so happy. I feel like a chessplayer.

I love chess.

I can't help it.

<Who knew that only being able to play on the weekend would improve my game?> Let me answer that for you..

I did! About two months ago!

The way you put the entire experience- and your reflections on it, into words, is a joy and in fact a treat, to read.

BRAVO, Jess!

Keep going like this and report to <Frogspawn> weekly, preferably! ;-)

And to think this is just (sort of) the "start" is amazing..

As that other Fischerperson once said, I think you just "got good".

I have some curious news to share with you and I believe <Frogspawn> is the place to share it, for obvious reasons.

CG.com has been pruning my forum for a week.

They are systematically culling all 290 pages and deleting posts.

HOw do I know this?

Oh wait....

Good grief I am stupid.

Or confused. Maybe you can help.

OK my "personal post" number is not going down, so MY posts in my forum are not being deleted.

but it just ocurred to me-- i put around 7 people on IGNORE recently because I just couldn't stand to see their inanities any longer.

If I put people on Ignore, does it shrink the number of my pages in my forum?

Like, does it show 291 (as it does to me today) only to me, but a larger number to other people?

Because my forum was at 294 pages a month ago and it was at 292 pages yesterday and today it says (to me) that I have 291 pages.

Will you have a quick look at my gaff when you get a chance and tell me how many pages YOU see?

I'd appreciate this. I don't really care if CG.com erases the whole thing, but I want to know what's going on as well.

Am I being erased, or is this happening because I put everyone on ignore?

Never mind!!

CG.com hasn't deleted a thing.

My forum is "really" at 296 pages.

OK now to put those people back on ignore and shrink back to 291 in "my reality."

Ahem. Science. Just the facts, Ma'am. Righto, then...

Your forum, at 13:15 GMT (heh) Monday, has... oh shyte'n'onions I've forgotten the number I'll have to *bloody* go back and look again... has (drum roll)... 296 pages. From my POV, that is. And for the record I still have *nobody* on my ignore list.

Really pissed me off, nobody did.

I recall during the GMAN game there was talk about devoting a forum to a sort of kibitz index, pointing out where in the vast archive of pages certain important posts were located. One problem, though, was that page numbers might vary depending on who was on one's Iggy List.

One heroic volunteer -- I think it was either Tabanus or Whiteshark aka Weisse Hai (where *is* the old monster of the deep these days?) -- put *me* on his Ignore list. Strictly in the name of Science, of course. And discovered that the GMAN forum shrank by about 35 pages as a result.

I think that solves your problem. Rather, you'd already solved your own problem, and you just needed somebody to say "that makes perfect sense, Jessica".

hello

yrs truly

a very mixed up composite animal of mythological disproportion

Inspired by your witty history, I have cleared out my Ignore list.

I suppose I can "pretend" to ignore them.

I wanted my pages back!!!

Only 4 more pages now till 300 forum pages, which is 10 times the amount of <shekels> Judas got for selling out Jesus. Now 4 x 300 is of course 12, the number of Books in the <Odyssey>. Oddyssey has 7 letters, the number of <Heaven>.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, <Judas> got to go to Heaven despite his being rather a poor friend.

Numbersology proves it!!

Remember, <Maths> are always correct.

Except <Quantum maths>, which, if I'm not mistaken, disprove themselves, thus proving that <maths> are never correct.

Well I hope that's been of some help.

Did you enjoy <Middlemarchavich> dismantling the <Sputnik> today?

I lasted about an hour, and despite the exciting game, I fell asleep.

It's just too early in the morning for me to get up, dang it.

And I"m on vacation and I can't even get up to watch the dang games properly.

sigh.

I don't have any particular post in mind, but there have been several of this type, most recently during the Moro-vs-Kramnik game yesterday. And, to judge by other posts, the people who say these things are *not* absolute beginners.

We all go through phases where master play is mystifying -- Bill Hartston wrote somewhere that this process should recur again and again, as every time something clarifies and you think you understand top-level play, you start to glimpse new mysteries and become bewildered all over again. He was right.

Jess's recent chessic quantum jump is a good example -- everything clarifies and coheres for a moment, then deeper mysteries become visible. (I'd love to know whether being in a new language environment affects the process, but that's a side issue... for some other day).

The games that elicit those 'baffled of CG' responses look like typical GM games to me -- not even specifically elite-GM or 2700+ stuff, just routine GM play. Where both players understand that direct attack won't work, so they maneuver, provoke, regroup, threaten to threaten, etc. Often in the Kasparov style, with ultraviolent tactics just below the surface; sometimes in the Karpov mode, where the latent threat is more liable to be a positional squeeze and a slow cruise into a won ending.

None of this is remotely new. Capa anticipated and influenced Karpov. Alekhine played with Kasparovian aggression, and was also one of the pioneers of in-depth opening preparation. He beat Capablanca the way Kramnik beat Kasparov: by deep prep, identifying tiny weaknesses, working out a means to exploit them, and carrying through ruthlessly.

So... what? I just find it puzzling that people can acquire some familiarity with (and ability at) chess, without even encountering such mainstream ideas.

Openings also come into this. Some kibitzers (not *necessarily* the same ones) seem almost contemptuous of anything outside the current elite repertoire (Spanish, Petrov, Slav, Catalan, QID and Sicilian, mainly).

All the semi-open defences to 1.e4, everything from B00 to C19 in ECO codes, seem to be fading away. The Sicilian is clinging on, but it's a far cry from the time when it was the single most popular opening. The French and Caro-Kann are seen less and less. And the Scandinavian, Pirc, Modern, Alekhine's, Nimzowitsch, Owen's and St George are endangered species to various degrees (at least among elite GMs and those who follow them). Ditto the Benoni and Dutch (my own two favorites) against 1.d4.

Yesterday's Benoni -- and the way it was reached by transposition from a Symmetrical English -- caused some consternation.

I'm really not trying to put anyone down here, just figure out the phenomenon. It seems to be a product of chess's post-Gutenberg era, where people interact with the game almost entirely online. They play blitz and bullet with a limited set of aggressive openings, they play for direct attack (largely via open games) -- and they can become surprisingly good. They're not book readers -- they may work with a chess engine like Fritz, or use sites like CG to look at openings and endgames.

Until recently, I'd have said that it was all but impossible to become a strong player this way. And that still holds where GM-style positional play is concerned: it's simply what you have to know when your opponent is too strong to succumb to direct attack.

But you can become tactically alert and capable of quick calculation in sharp positions. Does any of this matter? Is chess moving inexorably away from print? Am I an old fart in Gutenberg Ghetto?

Nothing new to report there, then.

Are you and Jess in the same timezone now (with only a hemisphere in between, and that equator thingy)?

My theory is that the equator is really an infinitely thin colony of Ecuador which circles the globe. It was created as an up-yours gesture to their neighbours in Chile -- "You think you're special, huh, with your long thin country? Well, senors y senoritas, let us show you something *truly* long and thin... the one, the only, el solo, the Ecuadorian Equator!"

*Related Insane Patriotic Slogans*
(show me a patriotic slogan that *isn't* insane...):

- Quito 'r get off the pot.

- Quito while you're ahead.

- Not me, baby, the inframince.

... and, from the other side:
"Space is a province of Brazil"
- John Wyndham & Lucas Parkes, The Outward Urge.

I switched on the TV last night for, I swear, one minute, during which I saw both George Lucas and Jessica Alba doing soundbites about superheroes. (Like, er, James Bond. Superpowers: being British and having a powerful attraction for the ladies.)

Crap as it is in its own right, Star Wars (with some help from Roddenberry's Trek franchise) had an insidious, almost *evil* effect -- it infantilised science fiction.

Sci-fi movies became SFX-driven, with a CGI arms race (and too many dumb acronyms). The written form -- which had been enjoying a literary/subversive 'new wave' thanks to Ballard, Dick, Delany, etc -- also reverted to idiocy. With just William Gibson and a handful of others still writing stuff worth reading.

Seemingly there's an impassioned debate among longtime Lucas fans about the 'correct' order in which to show the six Star Wars movies to their children. Poor kids.

I interviewed the star of a Lucas movie once, but I couldn't possibly tell you which one.

I'm not a fan of galactic empires. Many of my favorite movies are SF without effects: Stalker, Alphaville, Friendship's Death, and a couple by Alan Rudolph. Even A Clockwork Orange, relatively speaking. And I like all three Mad Max movies too.

I agree about THX 1138. All that visual blank plastic whiteness, great look, intelligent dialog. The chase routine is a bit of a cop-out, but I guess he had to give the money guys something.

<Answers in manuscript on good vellum, please.> Brilliant! May comply, if able, a bit later! (you covered most of the bases, you "ghetto-guy"!)

(They play "bullet" in the ghetto, I've heard..)

My clock handling was a disaster. I lost and drew won positions because of time shortage. In one game I even misread the clock, bashed out moves in the belief I had to make 20 moves in 3 mins, while I actually had 33 mins. Went from a clear pawn up to being mated.

Finished on 4/9, 30-somethingth out of 60-odd. Not a disaster, but I'd have liked to make 50% at least.

That's enough info on that. Not sure when I'll play again -- I live in Cork, I haven't been in a club since the 1980s in Dublin, and I've never played in either Bunratty or Kilkenny. But there's always a first time.

(Euclid had a proof of this over 2000 years ago, when letters were used to represent numbers, equations had to be written out in words 'cos there were no /*/- sysmbols, and even zero wouldn't be invented for centuries. I find this amazing, like having Philidor's Mate without chess notation or Bach without music notation...

Anyway. 28 = 4 x 7, where 4 = 2^2 ('two squared') and 7 = 2^3 - 1 ('two cubed minus one'.

The key property of a perfect number is that if you add up every factor -- every smaller number that divides into it evenly without remainder, including 1 -- you get the original number again.

28 = 4 x 7 = 2 x 2 x 7
so 28 = 2 x 14 = 4 x 7
and 14 + 7 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 28.

Therefore the next perfect number is 496.
496 = 2 x 248 = 4 x 124 = 8 x 62 = 16 x 31
[and 16 = 2^4 and 31 = 2^5 - 1)
and
248 + 124 + 62 + 31 + 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 496

The weirdest thing, which Euclid knew, is that this recipe only works when the 2^n - 1 factor is prime, as 7 and 31 are (but not 15 = 3 x 5, or 63 = 7 x 9.

The next perfect number is 8128
[= 127 x 64]

and the one after that is 33550336
[ = 4096 x 8191].

The Book of Perfect Numbers endeth here, although the scribe, inspired to the zeroth degree by an infinite number of deities, could've gone on forever. The theory is that somebody -- Pythagoras is a prime suspect -- whacked him before he could spill any more magic to the peons.

Heh - I'm reminded of the scene from <Notting Hill> where the character played by Hugh Grant interviews the crew of a newly-released SF movie, without knowing anything about it:

WILLIAM: Did you identify with the character you were playing?

INTERPRETER: Te identicaste con el personaje que interpretabas?

FOREIGN ACTOR: No.

INTERPRETER: No.

WILLIAM: Ah. Why not?

INTERPRETER: Por que no?

FOREIGN ACTOR: Porque es un robot carnivoro psicopata.

INTERPRETER: Because he is playing a psychopathic flesh-eating robot.

WILLIAM: Classic.