The forum system is being rejigged to reflect this new phase of the game. Two old regulars, the Strategy Forum and the Devil's Advocate Forum are now suspended. I'd like to thank <Open Defence> and <YouRang> for hosting them so well right through the middlegame.

The new system reflects the fact that we're moving into the endgame. YouRang is hosting a new FEN Shui Parlor, which features FEN diagrams of the basic queen and rook endings. It's like a visual version of Artar's Leviathan - use it to see the endings at a glance. The main lines of analysis are also included.

I would have gotten back to you earlier, but my home LAN is in all sorts of trouble and the technical assistance department (my son) has been tearing his hair out trying to fix it. Between several bung motherboards, dud CPUs, subtly incompatible hardware, three PCs, two Macs, network cards of dubious efficiacy and a suspect router, we're in doo doo.

I'm posting from work now, but hopefully I'll be back on line in the next day or tow.

If you still want me to coordinate the forums, I might need a briefing of key developments cause I haven't been keeping up with the full day to day detail of what's been happening.

Well, the CEO - that's you - *did* order me to be more proactive and bosslike.

Seriously, there is a reason for YouRang's new venture, the FEN Shui Parlor. Analysis can carry on in the usual forums - this is more like a visual complement to Artar's Leviathan, but with fewer branches.

It's somewhere that people can see what the basic endings look like, along with the current top analytic lines. Still needs some tuning, but I felt it was needed.

My main interest is the Queen ending after 36.Qd8 Qe8 37.Qb6 etc, and also checking Black's Q+R alternatives to ...Re3 and ...Re2. My previous look at the Q-ending had White wins in many lines without even having to move the King. But I'd also like to probe the couple of lines where the king *does* come out.

I've only had a quick look at the 36.b4 lines, but the idea of Qf4 to follow sounds good. We seem to be on much the same wavelength most of the time - I can't understand why anyone would want to trade queens, short of a stone-cold 100% win in the Rook ending. If that emerges I'll happily vote for it, but meantime I'd rather use all that Queen power.

Yes, I would still like you to take over again for a few days. I've just learned that more work is expected of me next week, so maybe you could take over from Monday 18th to Thursday 21st? Then I should be OK through to January. Will your computer problems and schedule allow this?

Assuming GMAN makes the two forced moves in 24 hours, the week looks like this (in Euro-America-centric terms):

Weds 13: Bxg7
Thu 14: ...Rxf3
Sat 16: Rxf3
Sun 17: ...Kxg7
Tues 19: 36.Qd8/36.b4/etc.

So Monday 18th lands you back in the hotseat just in time for our next real voting decision (but I can handle the forum coordination after GMAN's 35...Kxg7). The forums will presumably have developed by then, but I won't try to second-guess them now.

Other stuff: this week-long sequence is almost as good as a time-out. It gave me time to rejig the forums, and I might even get some analysis done next.

More importantly, it should mean that almost every voter who cares will have time to do the same, even if it only means playing through Leviathan's options.

I'm still trying to maintain the dual purpose idea with forums -- both a support system for the stronger analysts, and an info resource for those with less time or experience. The FEN Shui Parlor is really more for the latter -- the serious analysts won't need it.

We seem finally to have some really good endgame analysts emerging. There is still the sorting of wheat from chaff to be done, though. The forums should help there.

One other point -- with both Strategy and the Devils gone, we don't really have a 'discursive' forum anymore. I'm not sure if we need one at this stage: as people keep stressing, it's about lines of analysis now.

It's impossible to say what effect the holiday period will have. Some will be away with families etc - others will be on a break from work and may even have more time to spend here. I plan to be in the same house, with the same computer, and much the same schedule - the EYE don't blink for no mere holiday. There may be odd noisy relatives hanging around waving bottles of alcohol at me, but that's nothing new...

It begins with the moves

< ... the classic:
36.Qd8 Qe8 37.Qxe8 Rxe8 38.Rb3 Re4 39.Rb6 Rxd4 40.Rxa6 Rb4 41.Rb6 Ra4 42.b4 Kf6 43.a6

BTW, the image IS nice - looks a bit like an Escher painting, though I don't think it's actually by Escher.

For a treatise on how Oz can easily become obsolete, take a look at Jared Diamond's chapter on Oz in "Collapse" subtitled "How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive."

<Side issue: my ex moved to Port Moresby and we stayed in touch. I even learned a little about Tok Pisin and other PNG pidgin languages. Some bits of it come direct from Strine.

F'rinstance, the word 'arse' or 'ars' has been generalized to mean the base, support, fundament or (ahem) root of just about anything. 'ars-bilong-tri' is the root of a tree. Foundations are 'ars-bilong-haus', and so on. Now, in Arabic, al-qaida means 'the base' - I wonder how Osama goes down in Papua with a name like that. Does he style the firm 'ars-bilong-Allah' or what?

One of my copious obscure writings deals with a character named Ars-bilong-Rambo.>

Close parentheses. Where were we? Yeah, Jared D -- I think he deliberately praises the corps and zaibatsus, knowing that (tough though it is for the green/left to accept) only sound business propositions with actual bottom lines (ars-bilong-paper) can save the planet now. Otherwise we should all stock up on paper-bilong-ars.

It actually provides an insight into his private pessimism. He's a frequent visitor to the Australian National University in Canberra, and last time he was here, he reportedly and inadvertantly (via the Big Issue - a street paper) revealed his angry pessimism about the future in a private unguarded moment.

He <has> to be optimistic publically, as otherwise his work is pointless. Only governments and corporations have the resources for the huge scale of work that needs to be done and done quickly, and just how likely is this?

Kim Stanley Robinson's being doing some work - in fictional form (Forty Signs of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below) about how international efforts may coalesce - after the weather has fallen apart - in environmental amelioration projects. Similar sort of corporate theme as Diamond's I suppose but seen from the perspective of some US scientists trying to influence the policy process in Washington. Even with relatively optimistic results politically, the environmental outcomes are still horrendous.

We're in for a few dozen millenia of bad weather and bad crops I suspect, undercut further by mass extinctions, before there's a new equilibrium (which one of my colleagues in the Department of the Environment thinks is a somewhat optimistic thought as the limits of runaway greenhouse effects can't really be calculated). And probably slightly (...) elevated mortality rates across all demographics except perhaps for the top socioeconomic tenth of a percentile.

Guns, Germs & Steel is a classic. Some of his more recent stuff puzzled me. But as you say: if he can't try to push the positive line, why bother? He's not the only one doing this.

A very weak analogy: imagine what the kibitzing would be like if the situation on the board was reversed.

Yeah, I know it doesn't really work.

It must be maddening. Oz is in deep doodoo and it's run by an elected neo-troglodyte. A reminder that, like his pal Dubya, there are still plenty of powerful people making things even worse than they are already.

At least, somewhere in their corporate limbic systems, biz people want a world that still contains customers in 200 years time. Far from a priority, but it's somewhere in their to-do list. Many politicos can only think to the next election - beyond that, there's the govt pension and delusions about being vindicated by history.

Oh, we could both rant for days and nights on this one...

As for our PM...it gets worse. Gore thinks Howard's a key player on the world stage as he's the only Western leader keeping the US from being completely isolated on Kyoto, (and for that matter Iraq if the Poodle gets clipped).

When I think of Howard having that sort of leverage, I just want to wake up from what I hope is a particularly droll episode of Sliders and an ugly alternate reality to a world where rationality serves equity, not greed.

It's just too much, Howard's such a loathsome bastard.

On a recent interview ealier this year on one of Australia's most popular chat shows (Andrew Denton's "Enough Rope"), Billy Connolly recently described Howard as a "vulgarism" and "a boring little man..a silly boring little man."

Unfortunately, an inordinately influential silly boring little man. Gak.