<boz & Eyal> Thanks for reminding me to reinstate 'I used to be somebody else... but I traded him in.' Jess, quite correctly, couldn't recall the line from the film The Passenger. I cheated slightly there: it was actually the line used on the advertising posters, not heard in the film.

I was trying to add yet more material to the Nickel File when I overstepped the limit. Not seeing any 'restore' option, I figured that just clicking back to 'profile' would reset the earlier version. Uh huh. Wrong move. I emerged with a big blank.

The Internet is a dangerous place. I trust the carbon-based component of your identity is intact?

We couldn't do without you, Holmes.

First, the Nickel game sucked energy out of my life in all kinds of ways. It was massively time-consuming, it was completely exhausting, and I loved it - it probably qualifies as a bona fide addiction. But I have to go cold turkey now to retain some grasp on the rest of my life.

<Jess> wondered why I could be found here at almost any time of day or night. That game, is the short answer.

Then, when the White-vs-Black challenge game began, I thought I could participate passively. Just checking in occasionally and posting a vote. Of course, inevitably, I soon got drawn in deeper. And in such cases I feel an almost moral commitment to stay involved: vanishing mid-game would be A Poor Show.

So it seems to be all or nothing for me.

But nobody here is indispensable. And definitely not me. The system set up by <twinlark>, with support from <Ohio> and me, doesn't actually need any of us to operate it. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of people who've learned from the methods and success of the Nickel game. I know they'll find their own way of organizing the team to play Yury.

Actually -- rowing back already -- I probably *will* get curious/bored and check in after a while. But not during the opening: I saw last time how futile and circular such arguments can be.

Actually, there's a point there worth making again to the people who desperately want their favorite Najdorf, or whatever. It doesn't matter at all in CC: any sound opening is fine, as long as you have access to reference materials. And who hasn't, these days?

So I'll probably show up after about ten moves, and then <try> to keep my input on a modest (ahem!) scale.

As we get older we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and today I am fifty-five,
And this time last year I was fifty-four,
And this time next year I shall be sixty-two.

Those whose desires are in the shape of clouds.
And dream, as raw recruits of shot and shell,
Of mighty raptures in strange, transient crowds
Of which no human soul the name can tell.

I look forward to your analysis and organisation in the Shulman game as well.

I'll do my best to contribute but I prefer to post my own lines.

<Deffi> Heh. I didn't say anything about retiring from Freelance Nuisancedom, now, did I?

<twinlark> The back arrow, eh? *Now* you tell me...

Actually, there's no harm done. YouRang's original Nickel File is safely backed up, and the rest of the stuff was overdue a springclean. I'm only sorry that my thank-you note to everyone on the team didn't stay visible for long.

As for annotating World-vs-Nickel -- it's almost impossible. You'd need a whole book. Since the game ended, I've already done two short versions: one giving variations and key alternative moves, and another trying to recall some of the human subtexts -- like the cliffhanger votes, the debates, the fears, the times I wanted to play a wrong move, the psychological turning points, etc.

That's just two approaches. A vastly deeper analytic version is also possible. So is a positional and strategic view. Or one that tries to integrate Arno's comments with our understanding at the time. I even thought it might be fun to go back and pick out a Most Inappropiate Kibitz for each move (yours truly not exempt) - or even just a version with the collected 'thoughts' of Sharpie and the Wolf (<You patzers are lost! Stop insulting the Grandmaster! Resign at once!>). Am I gloating too much?

Thank you for the kind words. I'm only a part time poster - mostly leading up to and during the big tournaments. Started dropping by here because it was the best window on the Nickel game, which I was following with great interest. And look what I found! Lots of interesting things, and that includes you.

So I went ahead and read your profile and it looks like you read mine too. <Eyal> is right on the money. "Le Voyage" it is. Boy, that guy sure knows his stuff.

That's all for now. Voices are calling me. I'm sure we'll meet again in one of the many corridors here.

Intact, but not always tactful.

Carbon? Covalent bonds? *Sharing* electrons? What kind of basis is that for a lifeform? Silicon-Nitrogen, SiN, seizing rather than sharing, is the future...

Other names for Nitrogen: Stickstoff (German), Choke-damp (earlier English), Azote (French)...

I bought a new Hawking book a few days back, despite contraindications:

(1) The title, God Created the Integers, a well-known quote from a 19th century German mathematician. Publishers know that putting God in the title helps to sell pop science books, even when the author is an agnostic/atheist who only uses the God term metaphorically. As in Einstein's line about HerrGott not playing dice.

(2) Hawking himself. A Brief History of Time is notorious as an unread bestsellers. Buyers were seduced by the image of the author, the voice, the wheelchair, the celeb guest spots on Star Trek and The Simpsons. I actually read it, and I wouldn't rate it among the best of its genre.

(3) The cover. Blake's The Ancient of Days, showing an old-testament-style deity with white hair and beard, constructing the universe with a compass. Ironic or tacky? Tacky.

(4) Hawking's name in large letters on the front. Closer examination showed he was just acting as editor for a collection of writings by others.

Those others were the reason I bought it: original texts by Euclid, Newton, Laplace, Fourier, Turing. Some really good source material, parts of it never before translated.

On the negative side, I keep finding errors in Hawking's contributions (he writes an introductory essay on each contributor). Some are stylistic (eg, 'enormity' meaning 'great achievement' rather than 'atrocity'); others are mathematical. He writes that the meter was defined as 1/10000th of the distance from equator to pole. Hmm, that's a distance of 10 kilometers.

Nixon, alone in the Oval Office on the night before his resignation, drinking, waving a gun around, gradually revealing a vast conspiracy from which he emerges as the unlikely hero. Watergate was a set-up: Nixon's way of sacrificing himself for the greater good. He couldn't just quit: he needed to be forced from office and shamed, in order to frustrate the plans of the guys who had owned him since the 1940s. All he had left was 'secret honor'.

Cut to portraits of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe...

Nixon: "They talk about the founding fathers..." [takes aim at Washington, fires gun]... "The founding fathers was a bunch of English pricks..."