Mad Vlad Get Off Of My…
Tag Archives: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
World Series Baseball in Georgia
October 30, 2021
From the Right
Coronavirus Task Force Advising Southern Governors
Virus Hits Hard Across Georgia
By Alan Judd
Confirmed cases up 472%; Death rate climbing
Georgia is under a particularly brutal siege from the novel coronavirus, a situation unlikely to end for weeks or even longer
https://epaper.ajc.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&pubid=8e0858ee-1443-484d-9e94-f8b8a1eaaaff
This can be found on the front page of the Friday, March 27, 2020 Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Unfortunately for Georgians this, too, can be found on the front page:
Governor says drastic measures not yet needed state wide
I cannot help but wonder what percentage the number of cases would have to increase for the thief who stole the election by suppressing the vote to enact “drastic measures.” It will come as no surprise to learn Brian Kemp is a Republican. Any sane person would see what is happening around the country and do everything in his power to PREPARE for what is coming, if not already here.
In addition, how many have wondered what would be happening if Stacey Abrams
had become Governor of the Great State of Georgia? How many wonder how different things would be if Hillary Clinton
had not been cheated out of victory by Russian interference, and those traitorous scoundrels who welcomed, and used, assistance from the nefarious Russians?
Waffle House Persona Non Grata
I was born in the back seat of a 1949 Ford convertible on the way to Emory Hospital. By the time we arrived my Mother and I were “we”. I am a Southerner from the Great State of Georgia. I am from Georgia in the same way General Robert E. Lee
was from Virginia. When push came to shove, General Lee went with his state because at that time the states may have been “United” but the state was still paramount. This changed after the War of Northern Aggression. The states became “united.” In order for US to become united the northern people came south, devastating the Southern region, laying waste to any and everything in their path, while perpetuating war crimes against Southern civilians.
I am proud to hail from the South. An article years ago detailed a survey which found that out of all the regions of the United States, people from the South most identified with their region. The survey made no distinction between the skin color. Some years ago I was waiting for an order at Captain D’s. It was Senior day and the music playing was from the era of my youth. The tunes happened to be Motown music. Before rock & roll we listened to the sounds emanating from Motown. I noticed an older gentleman with dark skin, also waiting for his order, tapping his feet. Thing is, I, too, was tapping my feet. The song was:
I said something to the man about the song just as this song, which means more than a little to me, because Otis Redding
is from Macon, Georgia, which we discussed. It was also the song playing in the car as I “made out” for the first time,with the daughter of the Band leader at our high school. Since we were about the same age there was much to discuss, so we sat together and ate our lunch while conversing. We talked about the things we had in common, such as listening to the same music and eating the same food, etc. When finished he said, “Sir, you have made my day.” The reply was, “Back at ‘cha!”
Waffle House is one of the restaurants founded in Georgia. The original Waffle House museum is within a short drive from where I sit. Another restaurant originating in Georgia is Chik-Fil-A. I came of age within a short drive from the original Dwarf House,
located in Hapeville, the home of Delta Air Lines. It would be impossible to count the number of times I ate at that particular restaurant. Favorites were the Steak Plate and the Hot Brown.
https://thechickenwire.chick-fil-a.com/inside-chick-fil-a/dwarf-house-serving-the-soul-for-70-years
At one time or another I have been seated at each and every one of those seats.
Moe’s Southwest Grill originated here, too. The original location on Peachtree Street in Buckhead
was within a very short walk from an apartment shared with the love of my life. There is a Moe’s within walking distance of the apartment in which I currently reside. At the end of Ken Burns
series, The Civil War, for PBS, the author Shelby Foote
mentions something a young invading soldier asked a boy far too young to be fighting, holding a piece of wood cut in the shape of a rifle, a question. “Why are you fighting?” The reply was, ’cause ya’ll down he’ar.” I am writing this because I’m “down he’ar.”
The article which follows is being printed in it’s entirety, without comment, so you will understand why I will never, ever, set foot in a Waffle House. The ‘thinking’ demonstrated by Joe Rogers Jr., the 73-year-old sole board member of the nearly 2,000 restaurant chain is the reason our United States will be devastated in the days to come. I am willing to wager my life that this Fool In Power is a Republican.
Waffle House chairman criticizes coronavirus limits on businesses
The chairman of Waffle House, a chain known for getting its restaurants back up and running after natural disasters, is worried that many political leaders are headed down the wrong path as they battle the coronavirus outbreak.
Recent mandates, such as banning in-restaurant dining and closing some businesses, are “totally out of proportion,” said Joe Rogers Jr., the 73-year-old sole board member of the nearly 2,000 restaurant chain based in Norcross.
“American leaders have to lead people through ruinous times, but leaders don’t lead people to ruin,” he said later, warning that many large and small businesses might not survive.
Rogers has urged elected officials in Georgia to not adopt tough restrictions similar to those imposed on businesses in other states. His remarks came before a Thursday announcement by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms
60th Mayor of the City of Atlanta
that she had signed an executive order temporarily barring in-restaurant dining and closing down nightclubs, gyms, movie theaters, live music venues and bowling alleys in the city.
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Rogers also bemoaned “doom and gloom” talk from the White House. “Any leader in the world that was dealt this hand might not have played it any better,” Rogers said of the president, “but we have to play it better going forward.”
Federal, state and local political leaders “are trying to do the right thing,” he said.
The Waffle House chairman said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has shown appropriate restraint.
The governor has asked people to remain home as much as possible and avoid public gatherings. But Kemp hasn’t ordered statewide shutdowns of businesses and events, saying in an interview with radio station Q99.7, “I don’t know that our citizens would buy into that.”
Waffle House, which operates in 25 states, saw sales drop 25% last week, Rogers said. Now, as more states limit restaurants to drive through or to-go business, sales in some areas have fallen 60%. He said the chain will survive, though “we are going to lose money like crazy in this.”
The important thing, he said, is to remain open and keep pay flowing to the chain’s 40,000 workers, most of whom are hourly employees. If Waffle Houses are forced to close across broad areas, the company wouldn’t continue to pay employees who don’t work, Rogers said.
The company has increased sanitization efforts. It also is encouraging social distancing though “we haven’t taken out a tape measure,” he said. “We have let everybody eyeball their own reality.”
Waffle House doesn’t have the flexibility of some other chains, particularly fast food restaurants, such as Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A. Some of those already generate most of their sales via drive throughs. Waffle House has just one drive-through, near Stone Mountain.
My father worked at the AJC before moving to the much more conservative, ill-fated Atlanta Times. I delivered the AJC before moving to the Times. Delivering the Sunday paper was a bitch.
Death to the Dewey Decimal System!
Gwinnett libraries closing for 3 days to banish Dewey Decimal System
By Tyler Estep, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Death to the Dewey Decimal System.
Every branch of the Gwinnett County Public Library will be closed Monday through Wednesday as staff embark upon a mission they’re calling the “bookshelf reclassification project” — rethinking how books are organized and doing away with the decimal system that has long flummoxed schoolkids and grown folk alike.
Officials said the GCPL experience will be more like bookstore browsing when branches reopen Thursday (Jan. 9).
https://www.ajc.com/news/local/all-gwinnett-libraries-closing-for-bookshelf-reclassification/c3qP9ULR7b0As1ohTH5avJ/
Dewey Decimal Rap
Melvil Dewey
Album Deweylicious! Library Hip Hop
[Chorus]
Hi! My name is Melvil Dewey!
Nice to meet ya, how you doin’?
If you need info, you know where to go, go to your library!
Hi! My name is Melvil Dewey!
Nice to meet ya, how you doin’?
If you need info, you know where to go, go to your library!
[Verse 1]
Once upon a time in Library Land
I was lookin fo’ information, man!
Couldn’t find it anywhere
Books scattered everywhere
Books over here, books over there, books everywhere
Man, I swear!
So I said, “There needs to be
Organization in the library!”
Use numbers, one two three
And name that system after me!
[Chorus]
Hi! My name is Melvil Dewey!
Nice to meet ya, how you doin’?
If you need info, you know where to go, go to your library!
Hi! My name is Melvil Dewey!
Nice to meet ya, how you doin’?
If you need info, you know where to go, go to your library!
[Verse 2]
My Dewey Decimal System
Classifies information, son
My Dewey Decimal System
Organizes information, son
My Dewey Decimal System
Is so very easy to use
My Dewey Decimal System
Here is what you got to do!
[Verse 3]
Say 000! (000!)
Generalities! (Like bibliography!)
Say 100! (100!)
Philosophy and psychology! (Oh!)
Say 200! (200!)
Religion! (Like the Bible!)
Say 300! (300!)
Social sciences! (Like political science!)
Say 400! (400!)
Language! (Like Spanish!)
Say 500! (500!)
Natural sciences! (Like astronomy!)
Say 600! (600!)
Technology! (Like engineering!)
Say 700! (700!)
Artistic stuff! (Like photography!)
Say 800! (800!)
Literature! (Like French literature!)
Say 900! (900!)
Geography & history! (Oh!)
[Chorus]
Hi! My name is Melvil Dewey!
Nice to meet ya, how you doin’?
If you need info, you know where to go, go to your library!
Hi! My name is Melvil Dewey!
Nice to meet ya, how you doin’?
If you need info, you know where to go, go to your library!
[Verse 4]
But Melvil, can you tell me
Where to find info on sharks, please?
Yeah, I can! No pro-blam!
I type it into my computer and…
Ka-blam!
597.3 – Sharks
But Melvil, can you tell me
Where to find info on Italian recipes?
Yeah, I can! No pro-blam!
I type it into my computer and…
Ka-blam!
641.8 – Italian Recipes
But Dewey, can you tell me
Where to find info on the Titantic, please?
Yeah, I can! No pro-blam!
I type it into my computer and…
Ka-blam!
910 – Titantic History
[Chorus]
Hi! My name is Melvil Dewey!
Nice to meet ya, how you doin’?
If you need info, you know where to go, go to your library!
Hi! My name is Melvil Dewey!
Nice to meet ya, how you doin’?
If you need info, you know where to go, go to your library!
Hi! My name is Melvil Dewey!
Nice to meet ya, how you doin’?
If you need info, you know where to go, go to your library!
RepublicaNazi’s
One of the things I liked about playing Chess was the people whom I met along the Chess road. The road led me to twenty five states in which I participated in a USCF tournament. Some people make a point of attempting to play in every state. In my case it was happenstance.
I came of age in the South. You can take a boy out of the South, but you can never take the South out of the boy. My father was a Southern Baptist; my Mother was not. My father said he “knew” he was going to heaven. My Mother asked, “How can he know? Nobody knows…” I am agnostic.
Southern Baptists are very conservative people who feel threatened by change, or by anyone who is “not like us.” They do not like anyone who is “different.” The people among whom I came of age did not like John F. Kennedy because he as a “Catholic.” They hated “Jews” because they had killed Jesus Christ. I pointed out Jesus was a Jew and was turned on with venom. “Jesus was NOT A JEW! Jesus was GOD!”
My parents voted for Barry Goldwater
because he was a “conservative,” which was a code word for “racist.” My father worked for a new newspaper, the Atlanta Times, because it was an alternative to the “liberal” (pronounced “liBRUL”-as in “He’s one of ‘dem damned liBRULs!) Atlanta Journal & Constitution, for whom my father once worked. The newspaper was ahead of its time and went belly-up, and so did my father, who had put EVERYTHING into the paper.
I can still recall the first time I saw an American of African descent. An older, dark-skinned woman was walking on our street, about to head up what we called, “the hill.” One of my sisters noticed her and yelled for us to come to the picture window. There were black people living within walking distance of us, but we never saw them because that’s just the way it was in those dark days. The high school I attended, College Park, was integrated the year after I graduated.
Chess helped expand my horizons. I met a fellow whom we called “Mad Dog” with affection. He was really a meek and mild kinda guy, except when sitting across from you at a Chess board. Someone said he played the Alekhine defense “like a mad dog,” and it stuck. I, too, would play the Alekhine defense in those days, and invariably had difficulty playing against the Mad Dog’s Alekhine defense.
Mad Dog was Jewish, but had been excommunicated from his family when he married a gentile, with whom he had a daughter. Like my father, the Mad Dog worked for the Atlanta Journal & Constitution. We would sometimes get together and play Chess in the Central City Park, located at Five Points in the heart of the city of Atlanta. Former Georgia Chess Champion Bob Joiner also worked downtown in the office of the Public Defender. John “Smitty” Smith worked for the state downtown, and we would play Chess during lunch hour. Years later Chess tables were put in the park, which had a different name. I had to travel to Grady hospital to participate in a memory study in my sixties and walked around our old stompin’ grounds, surprised to see one of those really large Chess sets, in addition to the usual size tables, which were full of players.
Mad Dog was my friend. We did things (he was then divorced) like get together after work at a bar called “The Beer Slug,” which was actually named The Beer Mug. The Slug provided free wings and held things like trivia night. One time a legendary Chess player was with us and we were leading with only one question left to answer. We were having trouble coming up with the answer because they were distracted by two pretty young women. I was racking my brain to no avail when I had to hit the head. “I’ll be back in a moment guys, so do not answer until I return.” They agreed, all smiles as they turned back to the pretty girls. I had a “eureka” moment while whizzing and returned with the correct answer, only to learn they had already turned in our answer, which had been provided by one of the girls. Unfortunately, it was WRONG! I will admit being a prick about it, but, what the hell, I thought later, these two guys, not exactly ladies men, were having the time of their lives…One time the three of us went to a tennis court to hit the ball around, or so I thought. The legendary one and I were attempting to warm up, but the Mad Dog would have none of it. “Let’s PLAY!” he yelled. “Don’t you want to warm up, Mad Dog?” asked the legendary one. “Hell no. Let’s PLAY!” Mad Dog served and I hit a wicked return that caused him to move quickly and…he went down like he had been SHOT! He was crumpled up on the court, writhing in pain. That ended our evening of tennis…Mad Dog was tuff, though, as he refused going to the emergency room. I spent the night on his couch in case he needed help later…
Mad Dog and I would discuss all kinds of different subjects, but the one I recall most vividly is the time he discussed his Jewishness. When he told me his grandparents had been in Nazi concentration camps and had the serial numbers on their bodies to prove it, I was SHOCKED! I mean, it’s one thing to read about such things, but to know someone descended from concentration camp survivors is another thing entirely. The words to a Dylan song came immediately to mind:
When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/god-our-side/
The Dog became interested in Bob Dylan
rather late, relatively speaking, but when he did, he almost became a Bob Cat. He may have liked to quit his job and travel with the Bob Cats, but the Dog limited his shows to a reasonable number. He knew I had been a fan since early teenage years and, after he became a fan, thought more of me. The Dog asked me to drive him to a Dylan concert in Bristol, Virginia. The venue turned out to be what looked like some medieval castle, which we thought was appropriate, but which was a local school of some sort. The Dog had gotten involved with other “Bob Cats” online, with whom he hooked up, having the time of his life. I, on the other hand, was under the weather, but nevertheless made the best of the situation, and have wonderful memories for proof.
The last time I saw Mad Dog we were at the 350 Pizza joint across from the House of Pain, which was the Atlanta Chess & Game Center, for those of you who are unaware. His father had passed away and the Mad Dog was attempting to inform me that since his father had died, he was now the man of the family. “It’s a Jewish thing,” I recall him saying. He was telling me this life was over and a new one beginning. I told him I understood, though the legendary one never got his mind wrapped around that fact. Mad Dog enriched my life, and I am a better person for having known him. People come and go throughout one’s life, but sometimes the memory lingers…
In an interview promoting his new book,
David Cay Johnston
was asked about support of the Trumpster by Joy Reid,
“Why aren’t those numbers getting worse. They seem to have stayed exactly the same.” She was talking about the mid-thirty percent where his support seems to hover.
“Well Joy, as we begin season two of Trump: The White House Reality Show, we are getting a very good measure that there is a segment of the populace who are going to support Donald Trump no matter what… I mean if the worst possible thing could happen, if Robert Mueller
proves Donald Trump is a traitor, you’re going to see a segment of the population supporting him for an entirely different reason. Unfortunately there are people in this country who hate the civil rights movement and those people are going to be with Donald till the end of his life.”
Adolph Hitler
had about the same kind of support when he became leader of Germany as the Trumpster has now. Hitler never had a majority of the people behind him, and neither does the TrumPet. His support emanates from a little above one third of the people of the United States of America. Do not forget THREE MILLION MORE Americans voted for Hillary Clinton
than voted for the Trumpster. If EVERY VOTE COUNTED in our country Donald Trump would NOT BE PRESIDENT! If every voted counted in our country, George Dubya Bushwhacker
would not have become POTUS! A war was fought in this country in the 1860’s to decide whether we would be ONE COUNTRY or FIFTY STATES. Why is it that some, if not most, of those states are “not in play.” If you happen to live in a “red” state, such as Georgia, it matters not for whom you vote. Why vote? This will change only when young people become mad as hell and decide to not take it anymore. Now is the time, but where is the outrage?
Donald poppinJay Trump
is a Republican, or as I think of them, RepublicaNazi. The RepublicaNazi party spawned poppinJay, just as they have accepted “Nazi-avowing Holocaust-denier Arthur Jones
who is running unopposed in the March 20 Republican primary for the 3rd Congressional District.” (http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/opinion/ct-sta-slowik-gop-nazi-st-0207-20180206-story.html)
There is a reason this man is running as a Republican. Unfortunately, he is not alone.
All The White Supremacists Running For Office In 2018
Plus candidates who’ve said white supremacist things, hung out with white supremacists, or talked to anti-Semitic publications.
By Christopher Mathias
The leader of any country sets the tone. One does not need a weatherman to know which way the RepublicaNazi wind is blowing.
When young there were so-called, “liberal” Republicans. Now there are no longer even any “moderate” Republicans. The party has become the RepublicaNazi party. You are either, as we say in the South, “With ’em,” or “Against ’em.” I want the world to know I stand with the latter group. The RepublicaNazi’s need to be eradicated like the German Nazi’s were during the second world war.
‘Year One’: A visual reflection of the first year of the Trump presidency
Mark Peterson/Redux Pictures
A gathering of hundreds of white nationalists in Virginia took a deadly turn when a car plowed into a group of counter-protesters and killed one person on Aug. 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. The state’s governor blamed neo-Nazis for sparking the unrest in the college town of Charlottesville, where rival groups fought pitched battles using rocks and pepper spray after far-right protesters converged to demonstrate against a plan to remove a statue of a Confederate war hero. The violence was the latest clash between white supremacists – some of whom have claimed allegiance to Donald Trump – and the president’s opponents since his January inauguration. (Photograph by Mark Peterson/Redux Pictures)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-visual-reflection-first-trump-slideshow-wp-130638742.html
Games Have Been Terminated!
The thing about writing a blog is that one never knows what an email will bring. After spending an inordinate amount of time in front of Toby, the ‘puter, yesterday learning how to insert diagrams, and then putting together the post in order to have something in which to insert them, I determined that today I would spend time with the Daniel Gormally book, Insanity, passion and addiction: a year inside the chess world, while playing over Chess games on an actual board with pieces one can feel, and possibly “working” on the openings intended for the Senior Championship of the Great State of South Carolina, which is only ten days away, by going to the CBDB and 365Chess. Wrong, Ke-mo sah-bee! An email from my friend Mulfish arrived at 11:42 am, upsetting the Bacon cart…
“Looking forward to the AWs take on AlphaZeros stunning win over Stockfish,” was the message. “What’s this?” I thought, wondering if Mike was referring to the TCEC Computer Chess Championship that is in the final stretch. “But Stockfish is not participating in the Super Final,” I thought. I therefore fired off an immediate response: “To what, exactly, are you referring?” His reply was, “Look in the all things Chess forum.”
Although there are not as many incoming as there were before taking a long break from blogging, I have received several emails directing my attention here and there, and they are greatly appreciated. Checking the AW stats today showed many people in countries other than the USA reading the AW. In particular I noticed that today, as every day, there is one, and only one, reader in the Maldives. Thank you, whoever you are, and feel free to send an email, as I am curious by nature.
Keep ’em coming: xpertchesslessons@yahoo.com
This is the post found on the USCF forum that prompted Mulfish to fire a salvo at the AW:
Postby billbrock on Wed Dec 06, 2017 9:16 am #321974
“AlphaZero learned to play chess by playing against itself. After just FOUR HOURS of self-learning, it was able to decisely (sic) defeat Stockfish 8.0! (EDIT: this statement is slightly misleading. See downthread.) (100 games match: +28 =72 -0)
What’s really impressive: Stockfish was calculating far more deeply than AlphaZero (at least in terms of nodes per second). AlphaZero is just “smarter.”
After reading only this I thought, “Whoa! This will change not only my day, but possibly the future course of history!” The more I read the more convinced was I of the latter.
Bill Brock provided a link to a PDF paper, Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm
(https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01815.pdf) which I read immediately, blowing my mind…
Every morning I read while drinking my first cuppa coffee, and today was no exception. Toby is not fired-up until time to sit down and eat breakfast. I check my email, then the quotes of the day, followed by the poem of the day, which was The Writer’s Almanac, by Garrison Keillor, but it has been discontinued, so I’ve moved on to Poem-a-Day (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem-day) & The Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/). Next I click on the Drudge Report in order to understand what the enemy is thinking, and doing. Then it is the newspapers in digital form, the NYT, WaPo, and AJC. For you readers outside the USA, that would be the New York Times, the Washinton Post, and the Atlanta Journal & Constitution. Then I check out the word of the day (https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day), before heading to check what was on the nightly radio programs broadcast while I am sleeping, Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis (http://www.groundzeromedia.org/), and the Granddaddy of them all, Coast to Coast AM (https://www.coasttocoastam.com/). You may think that Chess comes next, but you would be mistaken. I check out The Hardball Times at Fangraphs (https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/). Then I check out what’s happening in the world of Go (http://www.usgo.org/).
Then it is time for Chess! My routine is to check in at Chess24 (https://chess24.com/en) first in order to learn if there is a new article I will want to return to after checking out Chessbase (https://en.chessbase.com/), where there is usually something interesting to peruse. (Today is no exception because the lead article is, How XiangQi can improve your chess, which will be read. https://en.chessbase.com/). During the TCEC Championships it is then on to Chessdom (http://www.chessdom.com/), where I click onto TCEC (http://tcec.chessdom.com/). And then it is on to the Chess Granddaddy of them all website, TWIC, aka The Week In Chess (http://theweekinchess.com/), which is Mark Crowther’s wonderful website which contains a Daily Chess Puzzle, which I attempt to solve, in hopes it will keep my mind sharp. Why was I writing all this?…Just kidding!
The point is that I read so long this morning (Why Bob Dylan Matters, by Richard F. Thomas; Cover Me: The stories behind the GREATEST COVER SONGS of all time, by Ray Padgett, who has a wonderful website (http://www.covermesongs.com/); and Murder on the Death Star: The assassination of Kennedy and its relevance to the Trump era, by Pelle Neroth) in order to finish the latter. The point being that by the time I got to the email by Mulfish I would ordinarily have already seen the momentous news.
DeepMind’s AlphaZero crushes chess
https://chess24.com/en/read/news/deepmind-s-alphazero-crushes-chess
The excellent article by Colin McGourty begins: “20 years after DeepBlue defeated Garry Kasparov in a match, chess players have awoken to a new revolution. The AlphaZero algorithm developed by Google and DeepMind took just four hours of playing against itself to synthesise the chess knowledge of one and a half millennium and reach a level where it not only surpassed humans but crushed the reigning World Computer Champion Stockfish 28 wins to 0 in a 100-game match. All the brilliant stratagems and refinements that human programmers used to build chess engines have been outdone, and like Go players we can only marvel at a wholly new approach to the game.”
Colin ends with: “And where do traditional chess programmers go from here? Will they have to give up the refinements of human-tuned evaluation functions and all the existing techniques, or will the neural networks still require processing power and equipment not easily available? Will they be able to follow in DeepMind’s footsteps, or are there proprietary techniques involved that can’t easily be mastered?
There’s a lot to ponder, but for now the chess world has been shaken!”
“Shaken?” More like ROCKED TO ITS FOUNDATION!
If games people play are to survive they will be something like that described in the novel I consider the best I have read, Das Glasperlenspiel, or Magister Ludi, aka, The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse. (http://www.glassbeadgame.com/)
Or maybe a book, The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks, which is not only one of my favorite Sci-Fi books, but also one of my favorite book about games.
The stunning news also caused me to reflect on a Canadian Sci-Fi television program I watched, Continuum, in which mega-corporations dominate the world in the future as time-travelers fight one of the largest corporatocratic entities, SadTech, which sounds an awful lot like Google. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954347/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_6)
The Brave New World is here. The Science Fiction books I read as a youngster are no longer fiction.
The Terminator has arrived.
We are all doomed. DOOMED!
R.E.M. – It’s The End Of The World
The End of the World
Smart Moves Chess Club
This article appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper Tuesday, August 26, 2014:
Doing Good: Foundation gives monthly grants to local projects
By Devika Rao
For the AJC
Dionne Mahaffey calls it a “discovery engine of inspiration.” She talks about The Awesome Foundation, the organization that started in 2009 and with trustees and provides monthly grants to various projects that are attempting to make local cities a better place to live.
It was right up the alley of the self-proclaimed serial volunteer. “I have been volunteering since I can remember, and to get the opportunity to launch this chapter allowed me to continue the spirit of giving back and get more Atlantans involved,” said Mahaffey, who is a business psychologist.
Mahaffey launched the Atlanta chapter in April, and once a month, she and fellow trustees pool together $100 and contribute a $1,000 grant to deserving nonprofits or volunteerism projects around Atlanta. There are no strings attached to the recipients of the grant.
“The whole idea is to fill a specific niche to fund great ideas that are just trying to do something good in Atlanta,” she said. “It doesn’t just include social change, but also simple projects such as park cleanups or painting murals.”
The Awesome Foundation Atlanta chapter has given $1,000 to various projects such as the Little Free Library, SMART Moves Chess Club and the Goodie Hack – $4,000 in total since its founding. Its August $1,000 grant was awarded to The Learning Garden, a new project started by the Ryan Cameron Foundation.
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/doing-good-foundation-gives-monthly-grants-to-loca/ng78H/
There is a picture in the newspaper, but not contained in the online article. The picture shows four gentlemen playing chess on various and differing boards with this caption, “Members of the SMART Moves Chess Club were the first recipients of The Awesome Foundation Atlanta’s monthly grant, which helped buy chess boards and business attire for the young men to participate in competitions.”
Yes ~ I’ve Seen All Good People: Your Move (1971)
Armchair Warrior 