No, the noise you hear is me yelling Yes, Yes!
Let us praise the gallantry of Joel Northrup, Iowa high school sophomore and state wrestling tournament favorite, who forfeited the first round rather than use all his strength and skill to dominate a girl. Let us jeer the lunacy of tournament organizers who set up such matches. Let us castigate our own impotence that such harmful foolishness goes on and on. (link)
He’s right, of course. It’s tough to find good minions nowadays.
If Americans have to become a myth, this is the way to do it. A pretty darn good SF story.
There is an interesting retrospective interview with Mark Taimanov in ChessBase on the occasion of the former top grandmaster and concert pianist’s 85th birthday.
He is best remembered for having been steamrolled by Fischer in the 1971 World Championship Candidates match in Vancouver. Fischer’s result against Taimanov, 6-0 (six wins, no losses, no ties), was virtually unheard of in that level of chess. Daniel Johnson recounts in his wonderful book that Taimanov was reduced to a babbling psychological mess who could only repeat, “Fischer knows everything, Fischer knows everything…”
The Soviets were unwilling to accept that there was not some sort of political explanation for that kind of result, and stripped Taimanov of the considerable privileges the state afforded its top chess players. The pretext was a samizdat copy of Solzhenitsyn found in Taimanov’s baggage as he returned to Russia. But the fact that they even looked in his bags meant that they had decided that he no longer merited the kind of special treatment they ordinarily gave their grandmasters. He was later rehabilitated when it became clear that Fischer really was sui generis.
He’s also notable for having been a creditable concert pianist. Again, unlike in the West, in Soviet Russia, a top grandmaster didn’t really need a second career unless he wanted one.
Even if he were to succeed in making his most audacious utopias a reality, man would continue to yearn for otherworldly destinies. (more…)
The Bite the Wax Tadpole Manifesto! The Junior Ganymede may have reservations about one or two specific points, but we approve, as we must, on the grounds that manifestos, like burning books, should be on everyone’s bucket list. (more…)
Soapy Sid has released his new budget today, which for those who like that sort of thing is apparently just the sort of thing they do not like. The outlook is bleak, grim, and not at all farm-fresh straight from our family to yours. Bally rotten, dash it. (more…)
One test of good political or historical writing is whether it makes my hair stand on end. This Walter Mead essay had me at the title . (more…)
Us literary types seem blithe and merry on the surface, but we’re just wearing the mask. Underneath we are a cauldron of serious thought and what Jeeves calls moral reflection. You betcher. So when ink-stained Bertram sees a fellow literateur unburden himself in one, long passionate cri de couer, his own soul is not untouched. “That’s telling ‘em, my good man,’ he calls encouragingly. Though how on earth the honest scribbler left out the absolutely-bally required discursus on the evils of plus-fours, one cannot say. Negligence somewhere, I suppose, what?
Dan Petersen has an excellent implied rebuttal of the argument that Mormons follow a different Jesus. (more…)
Inequality and equality are theses that should be defended alternatively, in opposition to the dominant social climate.
Everything in history begins before where we think it begins, and ends after where we think it ends.
Not all defeated men are decent, but all decent men end up being defeated.
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Handwringing over handwringing over the stupidity propagated by the Internet.
I think I’m with the meta-handwringing here.
Though His Majesty snarks that the Internet is, first and foremost, a way of rapidly propagating thought.
Including incredibly stupid thought.
And, yes, I am conscious of the numerous levels of real and potential irony here.
I have a long acquaintance with the standard sorts of Mormon silliness (Howdy, Glen Beck! Hey, guy in the mirror!). But I keep finding new niche varieties. LDS nudism, for example. Yes, there are Mormons out there dedicating time and energy to naked codswallop, using the internet to enforce a self-important group identity, and generally convinced that they aren’t just part of a doleful and meaningless niche. (more…)