Some media sources figured the chess stuff was too weird and chose to describe Kirsan as a 'Russian official' or 'Russian diplomatic source'.

- No glot, clom Fliday.

This line, incidentally, was very popular at GM level - even among the elite - about 10 years ago, played by Khalifman, Akopian, and many more. Then it suddenly dropped out of sight. I'm still wondering why.>

I've been trying to learn the French since my last visit here. And I came across Vitiugov's "The French Defence", which, in a note, mentioned the Swarm. He said that 5...Ba5 is only rarely played now because "Andrey Volokitin demonstrated an analysis, which proved to be unpleasant for Black." Vitiugov then gave the game A Volokitin vs Lputian, 2004.

"I believe that if theory ends with this really unpleasant endgame for Black, the variation with 5...Ba5 cannot be recommended at all," he said.

So far, this is the closest I can get to 'authority'.

If all else fails, there's always 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 (I went through a phase of playing moves like 4...b6 here, but I've gone right off the idea -- all the really good French lines feature ...c5) 5.a3 ... and now 5... cxd4!?. Watson has a chapter on it in Dangerous Weapons: The French, and it seems quite playable.

Lately, I've been looking at something very different - the French's 'dirty little secret' that nobody likes to talk about, the Exchange Variation 3.exd5 exd5.

I suspect the majority of 'real' French players wince when they see it, as the structure is so un-French. With the e-file cleared of pawns, it's actually identical to a main line in the Petrov - they rarely transpose, though, as Black has an extra tempo in the French.

Like the Petrov it has a drawish reputation - but at my level, and I reckon for anyone below 2400, the idea of a 'drawing opening' is a pipedream. If it was that easy, we'd all be able to draw with GMs.

I've lost a few games in the Exchange by trying to win too quickly with Black against lower-rated opponents. The best plan seems to be patience - Black shouldn't force things - plus asymmetry: if a White Knight goes to f3, put the Black one on e7 rather than f6.

It's possible: there are a number of scenarios. Perhaps we all inhabit the cuboid version of planet Earth, a 'Bizarro world' called Htrae. (Its native science fiction fans would presumably call it 'Arret', and use a medicine called 'earth' to treat that awkward condition, Aehrraid or Aeohrraid.)

Superman's prankster foe, Mr Mxyzptlk, came from Htrae, which had six flat square continental plates meeting at right angles, and where it was a crime to 'commit good'. Not unlike New York on acid, really.

A simpler solution is grammatical. Several languages use a restricted set of pronouns, and some make no distinction between 'I/me' and 'we/us'. The minimal set, found in some Australian aboriginal languages (which, of course, are highly complex and sophisticated in other ways - there are no 'simple' languages, apart from Humanish) is a two-pronoun system, extending to cover verb forms: a group including the speaker, and everyone else. It's the old us/them dichotomy, except I is us.

Other exceptions include the 'Royal Wee' ... "In Windsor Castle, the Royal Wee is carefully collected by Prince Charles, and boiled to create phosphorus. He likes to make his own matches."

In the late-19th century dimensional fantasy, Flatland, a Square can be hard to tell apart from a triangle, a line, or even a point, especially when one-dimensional fog covers the landscape. Abbott never explained whether such fogs magically floated 'above' the plane of existence, or were embedded in it.

A comparison with human weather - profoundly unpredictable because of its source in the 4th dimension - might help. Or not.

Finally, something is happening, but you just don't understand what it is (where what is?), Mr Jones. Sometimes you have to be square to be hip.

As Lewis Carroll said, "I was thinking of a plan to dye one's garters green". (Or was it gaiters? Goiters? It's not easy being green, as Saint Kermit tells us.)

This gave me the notion of producing *green* chess pieces. If Gawain Jones could be persuaded to endorse the Green Knight, heads may not have to roll after all.

Today's other literary tropes are: "No-one Writes to the Colonel" (Marquez) and "Squares of the City" (Brunner).

And there's Neil, of course. It shouldn't take him long to write a song called 'Planet Neil'.

As for the topic of post-school learning, the internet era has masked the near-extinction of the old-fashioned working-class autodidact. Or any class of autodidact, ackshly ... but the working ones were more impressive, as they did 14-hour shifts down some proto-Murdochian filth mine, then went home and studied maths by candlelight.

Or chemistry and magnetism, like Michael Faraday, or literature and theatre and history, like Sean O'Casey.

Despite the ocean of data and the ease of access, the desire to learn is gone -- apart from geeky data-collecting, which is much like stamp-collecting or trainspotting. Philately is a toy version of capitalism. When Karpov said that his hobbies were "stamp-collecting and Marxism" he was really saying "making money while adhering to current political norms".

I've never personally wanted to spot a locomotive or collect a stamp ... though Nabokov may have had the right idea about butterfly-hunting.

<Despite the ocean of data and the ease of access>

'Because of' works. I like 'despite' too, though, even if logically it's the opposite. More rhetorical and journalistic, despite having two syllables and requiring a subclause.

Hmmm. Is that the one about a 'lovable' serial killer? Or one with redeeming features of some kind? There we go. Magnus has many redeeming features, I'm sure.

They're probably both charismatic, and their images have been used to sell stuff.

Checkmate is a kind of killing. Sublimated, natch. The Breivik bastard showed how - in one unique case - a Norwegian who plays with guns instead of pawns, and whose stupidity and failure of empathy leads him to a racist ideology and a cretinous 'solution' - can have terrible consequences.

Not that chess is proof against racism. Two world champions, Alekhine and Fischer, crossed the line into ugly anti-semitism. GM Milan Matulovic, sentenced to jail in Yugoslavia for killing a woman in a car crash, is reported to have said that the sentence was too harsh as the victim was 'only a Bosnian'.

Matulovic was accepted back into the chess community - where there seems to have been more fuss made about his habit of taking back moves, which gave him the nickname <J'adoubovic>. A few years later Yugoslavia fell apart, and others perhaps saw where his comment about Bosnians was coming from.

Idiocy abounds. But I digress.

Innarestingly, 'magnus' and 'dexter' are both Latin adjectives, meaning 'big' and 'right'.

Yep, that's dope all right.

Neat irony, though. LaShawn was beaten in the final by 0.03 seconds ... which we compute as *exactly* the same as the increased wind drag caused by a membrum virile magnum. Without even getting into questions like oxygenation and blood flow (maybe he needed to redirect some to his brain?).

There's even a distant chess link here. The new regulation in athletics means that a false start in a race means disqualification for whoever, er, jumped the gun. A number of favorites have been knocked out as a result.

It seems oddly similar to some of FIDE's 'instant disqualification' rules, particularly the 'one second late and you're out' rule employed at the last olympiad.

Are you suggesting we just move in together, dear? Or was that just one of those "your place or mine" things? ;)

PS - plz not to mention that German pun you are thinking about. :p

Kindergarten, quoit. I was amazed to read that the complainant claims to have a 'job' involving computer use. Have work standards fallen so precipitously?

And there's the usual gripe. People asking questions whose answers can be found nearby (like further up the page) or with minimal digging. It's like they don't know how to dig, and want everything handed to them.

In my day, we had to work 28 hours a day down t'data mines for the privilege of seeing actual data. And dig with our bare brains.

<Heh. Und hoch heh. I didn't even think of repeating the German - well, half-German - pun. But my thoughts had slithered along the same track.>