Show me an oxygen planet and I'll show you two things: trees and suburbia. Unless the inhabitants of the latter have cut down the former, and died out.

"Doing nothing" is a lot more difficult than some people think it is. Just ask any Zen Master or Mistress,

"Nothing doing" ... ? Well, that's a whole nother story.

Mitt ein 'W', Switzerland is the place that had centuries of peace and came up with the cuckoo clock. Or so said Harry Lime: in reality we'd have to factor in the SWARM (a Swiss Opening Line until the Armenian invasion); Calvin's Geneva, Zurich's needle park, and The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Nazi Singalongs by the Campfire ... mountaineering (a century of practice for the Himalayas), eg various faces of the Eiger, conquest of the Matterhorn, Moriarty and Holmes doing Jujitsu on the Reichenbach Falls ... oh, and Clint Eastwood.

Like global spice trading in the 17th century, the rewards of narratology are almost limitless. But too many die trying.

Spice *girls*, that's what we need. We could name them after spices, like Miss Basil and Senorita Jalapeno.

Xalapeno in Nahuatl. A fire god, associated with volcanic eruptions and tongue pincers. Ah Puch, the death god, and Ah Qaaq, the corn god, had mated unnaturally to create Xalapeno.

There's space and space. We're all in the imaginary Newtonian/Euclidean Grid pervading the universe - abstract space. Problem is, it (like the Urban Spaceman) doesn't exist.

So let's distinguish between those of us down a gravity well under an atmosphere blanket, and those on the outside. The latter are in space.

The former, but since those terrifying few minutes in a Galway hotel room I have come to realise that such distinctions are fairly meaningless.

Afternoon <Dom>. I am currently reading a book that I *insist* you must read too.

The book is 'The Comedy of Entropy' by Patrick O'Neill. It is as if the whole thing were written for you and you alone. Its subject is what O'Neill calls 'entropic comedy': that's to say, 'the expression - literary or otherwise - of a form of humour whose primary characteristic is its own awareness of its status as essentially *decentred* discourse.'

According to thermodynamical theory entropy is defined as the amount of chaos present in a given system...

I guess it must be an interesting book...

That's a little odd... Nobody can speak English where I live.

Speaking of which-

<Young Dom>: I just posted a strange variation of the <Winawer> that nobody ever plays in <Eyal's> forum, and I hoped that if you had a chance you would give me your opinion on this variation.

I have a lot of trouble playing White in the <Winawer>, but it's the only French variation I know passably, so it's the only one i ever play.

<mack> and other Frog enthusiasts also please let me know what you think of

<5...cxd4?!?> in the Winawer.

I've never faced this move myself, but I was just idly thinking today that I wouldn't like to face it- and so wondered why nobody ever plays it.

Which led to me wasting two hours well you know what happens.

Bloody Chess websites.

JG Ballard wrote that the Vietnam War was a module by which the United States was able to enter into the kind of relationship (with the rest of the world) normally characterized by the term 'love'.

The whole tamale. I didn't just send it roses and valentines and hint that eventual marriage -- after a, y'know, standard sexual compatibility try-out - might conceivably be mutually beneficial.

No, I went further. I swooned. I felt faint. I saw its face on every corner. I thought about it *Springer and Lawrence*. My heart skipped beats whenever I saw a Winawer, especially those played by Korchnoi or Vaganian. (Short has played fine games on *both* sides of the Winawer: but, to be honest, the Nigelesque approach to the opening leaves me cold.)

It's a matter of taste, not the fact that he plays both sides: Mat Bartel, to name one other, has played both sides brilliantly (specializing, and this I like very much, in two different non-mainstream [C17] lines: 4.e5 c5 5.Bd2 as white, and the infamous SWARM 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Ba5 as Black.)

The existence of this opening line makes me want to write the chronicle of an alternative history in which somehow, despite all the tribes and nations and empires and seas and mountains between them, Switzerland and Armenia went to war. Two mountain fastnesses surrounded by more powerful empires, somehow each transmits force across half a continent ... Berne is in the Armenian occupied zone and Geneva is under French protection, when a Swiss strike force captures Yerevan and forces stalemate ... but that's another story.

Yes, I loved the Winawer. Note the past tense, for ardor has cooled in the arbors of Ardis. Mainly because there are insufficient White players playing 3.Nc3: I've played exactly six - out of approx 75 tournament/etc games as black - since my return. Both the Exchange 3.exd5 and the Advance 3.e5 have turned up at least twice as often.

I suspect, in my case, that I have a reputation for knowing the French very well (actually now an exaggeration as I get so few chances to play my pet lines). So people pick the 'anti-theory' moves 3.e5 and 3.exd5 (of course there's tons of theory - I have three recent books on the Advance alone).

But love is a crash, an auto-immune disorder, a virus from inner space, usw. Whenever I heard the footsteps of the Winawer outside my little blood-pump went into hyperdrive. Once, I left my pump in San Francisco. Another time, the Winawer broke my pump in three places. I've been a miner for a pump of gold ...

I can't even begin to offer you my favorite lines or games: there's too much of it. But I shall try, after this, to make some rational comments of the <French Defence Mainline Winawer> with doing a smitten adolescent routine.

I used to have a book - a 1970s Batsford publication - by John Moles (whom I knew very slightly, at the level of having played in a couple of the same matches and tournaments and exchanging six words). Yes, arguably I 'know' Svidler and Korchnoi better.

But his book must have been among the most line-specific ever. Almost all of it was devoted to White's options on move 13. Almost all out of date now, I'm sure: I sold my copy during the Dark Ages when chess was not played and civilization hung by a thread.

We survived. We came through. Like those Gothic monsters hung on Notre Dame ...

I'll look at 5...cxd4. Actually, I already have, as Watson considers it in <Dangerous Weapons: the French>. I'd play it if my opponent *expected* a Swarm, but this hasn't happened yet.

1.e4 e6
2.d4 d5
3.Nc3 Bb4

click for larger view

With 3.Nc3 White chooses the most active and aggressive way of defending the centre. By comparison, 3.Nd2 slows his development, 3.e5 leads to blocked pawn chains, and 3.exd5 tends to sterile equality (structurally similar to a Petrov).

Is this not simply the default Western assumption that an addiction of any kind is a *bad thing* because it limits one's opportunities, confines one to a rut, and is frequenty immoral or illegal?

Utter tosh. The immorality and illegality are mere contingencies, easily reversed. And the confinement or limitation can easily be seen in other ways.

For instance, smoking - both of tobacco and opium - both arrived in China in the 17th century. At first, as with most expensive and narcotic imports, they were restricted to the upper classes. Later, as use began to spread to the peasants, the aristos tried to distinguish themselves by the exquisite severity of their addiction.

In one biography of a high-ranking aesthete it was written that he suffered agonies after just a few hours without a pipe of tobacco or opium. To the writer, this indicated - not some feelthy 'addiction' - but a sensibility of such exquisite refinement that its needs went far beyond the needs of ordinary mortals. Addiction was a sign, essentially, of being really posh and full of buckets of blue blood.

Combination: a matching set of underwear.

Chemistry: a powerful attraction between two individuals, or a sense (in dramatic acting etc) that each complements the other perfectly.

Men: all units on a chessboard including both pawns and pieces.

----

Combination: a series of punches in boxing

Chemistry: colloquial term for pharmacology and pharmacy

Man: the male human animal; any adult human with testes (etc) in place of a normal womb (etc); a parasitic gender in some species, a vestigial penis in others.

---

If I have ten definitions of each of the three key terms, and access to a <Laputa Crank> - a proto-computer invented by Jonathan Swift in the 1720s (encountered on Gulliver's third voyage to the flying island of Laputa) - capable of churning through any finite number of combinations (sic - the sense here is 'permutations') in a finite time - then how many possible meanings can be given to the phrase "combinations and chemistry are your only men" ...?

10 x 10 x 10 = 10^3 = 1000, the same as the number of options in a 3-digit combination lock. Small beer.

We need to enlarge both terms. Increase the number of meanings to, say, 40, and increase the variables to include other words ("it depends what you mean by is").

With 7 variables and 40 meanings each we get 40^7 = 163,840,000,000

OK, maybe the guys get J = 8 as well. 'Jejune' and 'juvenile' are boy words, and a large numbers of significant males had the initials JC. Johnny Cash and Jimmy Carter, f'rinstance.

BTW, I *did* play through Team White vs Team Black, 2008, though without an engine and only when it was over. I thought black was better through moves 20 to 30, both before and after the queen exchange -- but white might actually have had a winnable ending with knight vs bishop. I could be quite wrong: very superficial impression.

Interesting game, though. I've played 7...0-0 a few times, but I never followed it with ...f5. I think I tried the older ...Ng6(?), which isn't so good. But generally I prefer to let white play Qxg7 (or else deviate much earlier, with the Swarm 5...Ba5 or even Petrosianic lines like 3.e5 Qd7).