<Eyal> If you allow the Gaelic word 'slan' (meaning 'goodbye') then Sarah Palin = Slan, Pariah.

Ok I'm afraid that you may have been a little parsimonious with the parsing here.

Viz= I can't figure out what you're talking about.

OK- do you mean people are gossiping about me here or in the BLOGOSPHERE?

Do you mean there is a new user here named <Jessica>?

Do you mean someone (besides me) has made a sock puppet of my name?

Do you mean there is someone named <Jessica> who is current in the so-called "real news," meaning things people talk about outside of this website?

Or do you mean something more abstruse?

Please fill me in!

Mrs. Gravel Pit

hahaAHAHAHAHAAH

At least they did in my corner of the multiverse.

I don't agree with stinking holograms.

You do realize that already 90 per cent of Hollwyood films are CGI comic books or video games CRAP and that soon there will be no real actors.

Cyborgs can shove it, so can holograms and Philip K Dick tried to warn everyone, but in 20 short years the <vid kid generation> will have all the power and we will expire as a species as the Globe Melts and "adults" fiddle with Holograms and video games.

I find this absolutely disgusting.

Do I sound like I'm 70 years old yet?

Mrs. Can't Stand it.

Bring back cavewoman days please.

We can play chess with rocks and sticks.

OK????

Actually, my angle was *slightly* different. I wanted to get rid of actors, and let the holograms - or '3-D Toons' as we called 'em in those days - take over.

My so-called rating isn't doing any better. Is there an Elo equivalent of 'bankrupt'?

You can have it if you like, since you are a film writer, and I stole it anyhows.

I used to be one of those, until you came along.

But now, as the deconstruction dodgers might say, the locus of meaninglessness has shifted ...

Was it the <Hee Bee Jee Bees> who sang:

I note that our own "batgirl" <SBC> has posted a message on a little-known connection between Charles Sanders Peirce and Chess. You might find it worthwhile:

http://blog.chess.com/batgirl/the-p...

Peirce was only a few years younger than Paul Morphy !

Hope you are in good spirits.

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

If there is, Ponomariov is suffering from it. I just read an interview with him at www.chessbase.com and suddenly realised I had forgotten all about his existence.

Wasn't he supposed to be the next big thing? Now he is 22nd on the rating list?

He claims his problem was winning the world championship too young...

Luckily I had yet another extra day off here so i totally wasted it playing chess and then spending around ten hours investigating historical chess opening theory.

I could have been out playing with the ants, but I suppose it's too late now.

Anyhoo,

I came across what may be a stunning find in the <archaeology of comparative national chess openings>.

I'll have to triple check this before posting the evidence, but I'm afraid it's bad news for the English.

You *are* English, aren't you?

Mrs. Has Trouble Distinguishing since the "Union."

bad news for the <French>, rather.

Good grief.

I get confused because *you* are English, but your forum is devoted to <French Opening Theory>.

Ok all will be clear when I post the evidence.

Tomorrow night, "normal time", I will post it.

Right now I have another headache, so you'll just have to be patient.

Its 'inventor' was supposedly asked on his deathbed how he came up with the idea. "Sure, I didn't see that the pawn was protected", he said.

This whole sorry escapade is obviously based on feeble racial stereotypes pertaining to imbecility. If anything, of course, the opposite is true - the place is bursting with geniuses. But they're too canny to reveal this - the genes for ratlike cunning, camouflage, and <pretending to be a potato> have been strongly selected for.

Meanwhile, the actual potato has been moving in the opposite direction, genetically speaking. There have been several cases of spuds who looked like Elvis or Mother Teresa.

The two trends seem to meet in <Tatum O'Neal>, but this is a worldwide phenomenon: the Korean version is <Kim Tatum>.

BTW, I'm sure you are aware of the danger of trusting Wikipedia, but I found a particularly amusing (or horrifying) example yesterday. I happened to look up the poet Seamus Heaney - right at the top, Wiki said that his full name is <Seamus Blowin Heaney>.

His middle name is actually Justin. I don't know if Blowin is random nonsense, or a reference to Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind, or the Irish insult 'blow-in' which is still used to demean somebody who has moved to a new place and is seen as insufficiently native. Some people would find that funny, I suppose.

Whatever the explanation, I imagine thousands of college essays and papers are being written about Seamus 'Blowin'. Scary.

Your "Nosher" expertise is needed pronto at <Woody's>.

<For now-- <Domdaniel> knows everything there is to know about the <Nosher> anagram story, and also the meaning, history, and etymology of the word "nosher" and "git" etc.

Post your "nosher" questions at <Dom's> forum and I GUARANTEE he can answer every one of your nosher-related questions accurately.

OK see you guys after work.

I DON'T WANT TO WORK I WANT TO GOSSIP ABOUT CHESS

I mean really. >

1. Tony Miles invented the anagram <Nosher L. Git> for Nigel Short.

2. Nigel didn't - and doesn't - like it. Shortly after he began to post on CG somebody addressed him as 'Nosher', thinking it was a sort of matey nickname. Nigel went ballistic.

3. A 'git' is one of the 18,000 words in the English language denoting a 'miserable or worthless person'. 'Nosher', I'm not so sure about: 'nosh' means food or grub, so perhaps a nosher is a glutton.

4. The relations between Short and Miles were strained at best, though Miles used to deny this in a way that only added more fuel to the fire. For instance, referring to a couple of his early losses to Short, he said he saw no reason to bear a grudge regarding games played against a foetus. And, quashing the rumour that he and Short were 'not on speaking terms', he explained that he had said 'hello' to Nigel about eight years previously in Moscow - and that Nigel, never the quickest of thinkers, was presumably still trying to come up with a cutting reply.

5. For more details, see <It's Only Me> (another anagram) - a book of Miles's writings put together after his death by Geoff Lawton. I'm not aware of any definitive Short version of the story.

6. References here in Frogspawn to somebody named Kurtz can be elucidated with a German dictionary, though Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' is also useful.