Do you remember in 2000 how virulent the battle was between Bush and McCain for the GOP nomination? Well, Bush STILL harbors bitterness over that fight.

You see, Bush has giving a ringing endorsement of McCain, calling him “a true conservative”. McCain probably spit out his Cheerios and snorted milk out of his nose when reading that headline. Who wants an endorsement from someone who has a 35% approval rating? And the true conservative label would really have helped during the primaries, not before they were practically decided. It’s not like being labeled a conservative is going to help capture the center in the general election.

(By the way, are you someone who generally approves of the current president? Please let me know why! I promise not to make fun of you, but I can’t say the same for Blunderprone.)

Oh, and by the way…we just got out of 8 years of a conservative regime that didn’t exactly make the top ten. And there are people telling me they want ANOTHER conservative in office? (Hi, Mr. Hannity.) Not to be crude, but when I want to be bent over again, I’ll let you know.

Fortunately, Bush is talking out of his behind when he says John McCain is a “true conservative”, and even if McCain is elected, it will be an improvement.

“Winning” is not the exact term…but he now has 861 pledged delegates to Clinton’s 855. I don’t know how the other states are expected to fare, so it may be one or the other has a bigger advantage in reality.

It may have been Robert Novak who noted this, but the Clinton campaign would have preferred to have things wrapped up by Super Tuesday–not only to have time to work on the GOP, but Obama will get stronger as time goes on. There’s more time for people to get to know his name and be infected by his charm.

Side note: There’s an interactive map on MSN of the primary results, which ironically worked for me in Firefox, but not IE7. This is unexpected because it’s Flash, but I’m curious if anyone has similar results.

On the GOP side, Huckabee did well, but it’s not going to matter.

Never mind that it’s kinda freaky that somehow this company was able to figure out who I am, then ascertain who my acquaintances are. Out of all my friends, these people have determined that ONE of them likes me.

This is not very comforting. (Incidentally, I wonder which one of you it is.)

Firstly, drunknknite and chessloser are both in (assuming they still want in). There are now 10 players. I’m not doing very good on “make sure to let me know by Wednesday”. As long as you let me know by Sunday night, I’ll probably say OK.

I forgot to address how to deal with tiebreakers! But now that gorckat has offered to donate a prize for first place–some random thing from Seirawan he can’t get rid of–there has to be some way to deal with this, right?

Maybe we could do something like the NFL…

1. Head-to-head (best won-lost-tied percentage in games between the players).
2. Best won-lost-tied percentage in common games.
3. Strength of schedule.
4. Least number of losses on time.
5. Least average number of moves in games won.
6. Least number of suspicious times player had to go to the bathroom.
7. Performance rating closest to a perfect square, Fibonacci number, or prime…oh, forget it.
8. Most amount of caffeine required to stay up to finish all the games.
9. Best net checkmates in all games.
10. Best net material balance in all games.
11. Best net pawn promotions in all games.
12. Coin flip.

(I just read that over and didn’t laugh…but putting it up anyway.)

In all seriousness, I’m thinking something like who won the head-to-head matchup, and maybe a 10-min blitz if the result was a draw (and if that’s a draw, keep on playing 10-min blitzes until someone wins).

Please don’t ask about if there’s a three (or more) way tie. I will throw games to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Isn’t there some formula they use in Swiss tournaments? Not sure how well it would apply to a round-robin.

OK, here’s the proposed format. If there are any objections or questions, please let me know!

1. This will be a round-robin tournament, one game a week. The games are on FICS.

2. Time control is 15/30.

3. The entire schedule will be released this coming Monday. Updates on the results will be posted on Tuesdays.

4. Each week, an additional game from the schedule is to be played, and the result relayed to me by the following Monday. You can e-mail me (egg at liquideggproduct.com) or leave a comment (if you want to keep the result secret until the Tuesday release, include the word “sister”; I’ve designated that word to hold the comment for moderation). Or even tell me online. Whatever works.

5. If a game is not able to be played within the week period, please at least let me know, and when it will be played. This is supposed to be fun, and I’m not going to start forfeiting people left and right for circumstances which may be out of their control. But a reasonable effort should be made to play the game as soon as possible.

6. If you need to play a game early, there is not a problem with it per se. But please don’t release the result until the week it would normally be disclosed.

7. Don’t cheat, and play nice. (You all seem like reasonable people, so I’m not really expecting any problems.)

8. There are no prizes, except for a modicum of glory in the chess blogging world. Maybe I’ll make some sort of computer rendered trophy for the winner.

[EDIT: The chess content of this blog has now broken double-digits, now at 10.4%. Feeling less guilty about being put in blogrolls full of other chess bloggers.]

(The post name was 100% inspired by the Reassembler post on this, Cross-blog pollination.)

We did a programmer’s pre-nup, an idea of Reassembler spawn to be something like his brillant* chessplayer’s pre-nup.

So how did this come about?

1. Derek had to bug me to check my e-mail.
2. Agreed a programmer’s pre-nup would be a keen idea.
3. Two or three weeks later, I finally sent some decent ideas.
4. Derek had to bug me to check my e-mail.
5. Looked at his BASIC code; looked fine. Sent my assembly code.
6. Derek had to bug me to check my e-mail.
7. Told Derek whatever he put for my bio should be fine.
8. Still have to check my e-mail.

It’s time to get this thing started soon: various of the chess bloggers will have a tournament on FICS (getting an account is free; I’d also recommend downloading BabasChess to make your life easier). So far, the following people have expressed interest:

LiquidEggProduct – Donnie
Rhuiden – Tom
ppwchess – Polly
RLP – Robert (Wahrheit)
TheDarkKnightTwo – l3rucewayne
gorckat – gorckat
NoTB – Tacticus Maximus
RockyRook – Rocky Rook

If you want to join, comment on this post (with your FICS handle) by end of day Wednesday. If I’ve mistakenly added your name, let me know, too.

The tournament will be one non-blitz game a week, round robin format. The time control is not settled; I did like the G/15 with 30 second increment per move, but add your suggestions here.

Much thanks to Wahrheit for getting the ball rolling on this.

Tacticus Maximus brought this story to my attention earlier today, about some dude who used a plastic egg as part of a WMD.

While I will not give my personal opinion on the situation, the good people of EETE posted an official release on their website today in the “News” section of eetecares.org.

Patriots fans on suicide watch notwithstanding, this was the BEST S**** B*** game I’ve seen in my lifetime. I do not care that my prediction on the game was wrong; most people in this country seemed tired of Patriots dominance and are glad of the result.

Tonight I went to a S**** B*** party, where everyone was rooting for the Giants. For the longest time, I was worried that the worst possible result would occur: the Patriots would win by 11 or fewer points, meaning the Mascot was right about the game’s spread AND his original pick of the Patriots winning it all. But the Giants’ stifling defense (no way Eli was the game’s MVP) pressured Brady all night, limiting the Pats’ record-breaking offense to 14 points.

So mucho congrats to the New York Football Giants; after winning 3 road playoff games and knocking off the 18-0 juggernaut, they’ve more than proved themselves to be worthy champions. After some discussion, we believe that Giants management is satisfied with coach Tom Coughlin’s job performance and will allow him to keep his job.

Most of the commercials were insipid or mediocre. Bud Light’s first commercial with the firebreathing was a complete ripoff of the Sonic commercials, and not even as well done.

My favorite was the one with Shaq as a horse hockey jockey, which was senselessly hilarious. He won because of Vitamin Water, or something like that.

I fully expect the Mascot’s favorite was the Life Water one, with the dancing lizards and, most importantly, a hot dancing chick (he’s busy right now on GoDaddy looking for the “viewer discretion advised” ad they couldn’t show on TV).

Tonight, I smoked for the first time. It was with something called a hookah (see picture), and the stuff I smoked was apparently some concoction consisting mostly of molasses, with some flavoring and other random stuff including a bit of tobacco. When I smoked too fast, I got dizzy, but mostly it didn’t seem to have much effect. It’s the kind of thing I’ll do to show willingness to be social, but not go out of the way to look for.

Have you seen eHarmony.com’s TV spots? They show a bunch of couples, but

1. No interracial couples.
2. Only whites and blacks, and the blacks all pass the paper bag test.

Feel free to contradict if you’ve seen otherwise.