Speaking of which ... has anyone defined 'Liberty' as <Trouble at t'Mill>?

Merely a quibble, of course. But a qubit of quibbles makes the medicine go down.

I still prefer SF to the sort of fiction that, while deriding SF for being set in an imaginary world, plonks itself in other imaginary worlds (the past, the romance, etc). But my ideal is a kind of metafiction with the capacity to absorb and use ideas from any of these zones - which is where Pynchon comes in.

I can do a passable Pynchon pastiche, for a page or two. His ability to keep it up for hundreds of pages, weaving more intricate patterns all the while, is phenomenal.

So I *am* Thomas Pynchon. And I can prove it, up to 1000 words, to anyone who can demonstrate that they're not one of Them.

<mack: Law porn>

That sort of stuff, I imagine.

<In his quiet Hoadley Street apartment, Jim Donner folded his sweaty socks in neat squares, placed them in the laundry hamper and stepped into his clean new slippers. The chess pieces stood ready, as always, and the postal worker was anxious to settle down to it. The latest issues of Chess Life and Review had arrived that morning and there were many games to play through, as well as news and gossip to catch up on. Sitting on the toilet, Donner had already flipped through the magazine and seen that it contained a couple of games by Duncan Suttles, the unpredictable Canadian grandmaster. Donner would enjoy those. A year ago he had seen Suttles in person in a major tournament. Suttles had opened the game with P-QR3, which was almost the craziest move you could begin with, as far as Donner was concerned. Still, the man was a grandmaster and he won many games (including the one Donnner witnessed).>

Definitely a case where realism is more convincing than some invented GM.

Did that story appear in a chess magazine? Seems like the right demographic, and it's vaguely familiar.

I thought you went out of your way to be civil. I think this is a fine quality in any debate, but it seems like some people have other values.

But whilst everything is at its core chaotic and constantly evolving, I do think that some terms are more chaotic than others. The language of yoof, for example, seems to change with each generation. Text language may well overtake everything one day and we will all write about CU L8er and the like. And while legal terms are often amibiguous and uncertain, they don't seem to change quite so quickly.

What I find a little odd is that chess seems to have such a huge variety of definitions ... and consequential arguments. As far as I know (or should that be AFAIK?) other sports, hobbies, pursuits tend over time towards common definitions. So just what is so different about chess?

Perhaps it is because chess is largely a game played in silence and not often talked about. Or because FIDE is a weak governing body.

Final thought before I close for the day. Fans of Star Trek used to complain that "beam me up Scotty" was impossible because of the Heisenburg uncertainty principle. All of your atoms are constantly in a state of movement, so it would be impossible to recreate your body accurately at the other end.

<Once> I'm not certain that other games and sports have reached a kind of nomenclaturial stasis (wow, I'm writing legalese now ...?!) ... but yes, chess does seem to have special problems.

Partly due to the game's migration onto the internet, where it is incessantly played, analyzed and talked about. And then there's the existence of a vast chess literature in many languages, going back centuries. And the all too human trait to prefer the definitions one learned starting out. It adds up to terminological chaos, with bursts of unpleasant flaming.