The crowd was treated to a fantastic finish in our contest. <lostemperor> won 2 golds, and thanked his adoring fans by telling them, "Highlight my life of, this the is." <Winky> snuck in for 1 gold and reminded the crowd that the first round of the next contest would start 2 hours early and to plan accordingly. <Pengo> accepted his gold medal with his usual humility, and thanked <OCF>, <chessmoron>, <WinKing>, <chessgames.com>, the internet, the CEO of Tata Steel, all the tournament players and organizers, all the winners in this contest, all the other conestants in this contest, the inventor of chess, and many other people. Unfortunately, everyone fell asleep halfway through his acceptance speech and the rest is lost to history.

In other news, <jessicafischerqueen> had the inspired idea to enter her last round picks after the games were concluded. The plan was to take the results and tweak them a little bit to not be so obvious about it, and score like 100 points the last round. Unfortunately, she tried to copy the results of last year's tournament, or something, and her picks were as bad this round as they were the rest of the contest. But the creativity and will to win were greatly admired by <OCF>. <chessmoron> decided to give the Arbitrary 10 point bonus to <GE> this round, in recognition of his literally crawling to the contest to make his entries for the last 2 rounds. <juan>, who made a last ditch run to the medal stand was last seen pleading with the tournament organizers to add just <one more round> to the contest in hopes he could move up to the gold. <OCF> was last seen in the playing arena shouting insults at Vidit, who played like a total patzer the last few rounds and ruined every chance <OCF> had in every contest to win a medal.

<ohiochessfan> is civil and polite in general and he does not post excessively in this forum unlike <george Wallace>/<big pawn> and <diceman> , so I treat <ohiochessfan> with civility and respect.

And I recommend that all of you people talk to <ocf> respectfully and in civil manner even if/when you disagree with him.

That way you guys can always say like "we want to have civil , mature conversations and that is why we treat <ocf> with respect and if <big pawn>/<george Wallace> and others stop being vile, indecent , offensive , we would extend the same courtesy to them also. Even now , most of us show remarkable self control in response to their vile , indecent , offensive posts "

Great , then perhaps , we can together help increase 'goodness' in the world and this forum by having a productive/constructive conversation outside the domain of 'right/wrong' and instead try to expand/deepen our understanding through this conversation .

And therefore , I would invite <Gregor samaa Mendel> also in this conversation . I like <gsm> . He too is civil , mature , honest and sometimes when talking with him in past , I was not as mature as I would have liked .

However , encouraged by the attitude of <ohiochessfan> , I intend to expand my maturity through this conversation.

<Gregor samsa Mendel > asserts that objective moral values do not exist . I disagree . My position is - objective moral values exist but personal god is not needed for omv to exist.

Also , Encouraged by the response of <ohiochessfan> , I commit that from today onward I would be civil towards <big pawn>/<george Wallace>, <diceman> , <Keyser soze> , <gezafan> - at least as long as they are civil towards me .

Well , may be <ohiochessfan> is right in a way . We will see.

We need to understand <objective moral values> deeply.

And we need to inculcate teachings of Jesus - especially impersonal love of Jesus .

<  nok: Routinely calling your political opponents @#$#@ and now you complain?

>

So , how do we end this destructive cycle ?

<George Wallace>/<big pawn> is hopeless.

But we can try to have a constructive conversation with <ohiochessfan>

Can we try to understand each other instead of abusing each other ? Calling <ohiochessfan> the kind of names that <bureaucrat> is calling - is that not violence ?

I have invited <bureaucrat> to understand <objective moral values> umpteen times but he is not interested. Perhaps , like <al wazir> he too has me on ignore now.