For what?

The worst part is that nominations have to be submitted by February 1, meaning Obama was in office about 12 days. He didn’t have time to do anything yet. What was the nominator thinking?

So here was the “Hard” difficulty level of today’s shredderchess.com puzzle:

Great, so Black has exactly one legal move.

The “hard” part must have been the follow-up (White plays Bf6+) where you have the choice between two legal moves, one of them leading to being immediately checkmated.

So there’s this guy on chess.com, ChessTrainor, who’s “defending” the Sodium Attack (1. Na3) and perhaps even trying to name the opening named after himself (?). His support consists mostly of G/10 games against weaker competition.

Anyway, ChessTrainor responded to one of his detractors with the following:

your young and have no sense,Fischer is nothing compared to the Lord Jesus Christ.And yet in a passage of scriptures The Lord said,Greater things will he do,this is refering to someone else.And the reason for that is Jesus only live 33 years old so short a life so if some will live after him whose age is triple than him he is greater 3 x 33is 99years old in terms of life span many has surpass Jesus earthly life,So those are greater than him.Fischer only have 4 but mastered it so thats great and yet a have more than four openings if there such a word more greater or greater greater,i suppose.only in terms of numbers.I hope you understand simp,e english.CT

This is completely awesome. It’s a shame this is too long to put in the quotation rotation. In honor of ChessTrainor, I’ll go around the chess blogosphere, create an artificial argument if necessary, and randomly compare Bobby Fischer to Jesus Christ.

Source: Na3>> A00 Tapel-TomasOpening Launch!

Brag: Last night, obtained my highest FICS rating (standard time controls) at 1857. This is in the top 10%.

Unbrag: Some games have been seriously “lucky”. And if I’m in the top 10%, the overall level of play on the server must not be very strong.

Games often go like this:

1. I screw up the opening.
2. My opponent can’t take advantage.
3. I outplay my opponent in the middlegame and/or endgame and win. (”Outplay” usually means “I play bad, he plays worse”)

Two “gems” from last night that exemplify this perfectly:

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Irony is people who complain about how useless science is while typing their opinion on the Internet.

Then when someone points out the Internet required science to be created, they will counter “that’s not science, that’s technology”.

It’s 6 minutes into the first game of the season, and they are already down 14-0.

Found in this discussion: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/losing-to-garbage-players

Up to now, everyone I’ve played on FICS has been polite–or at least not rude.

Please meet Thryge. We played a fairly nutty game. He made the proverbial “last mistake” which enabled me to go up 2 Rooks and a Knight for a Queen. After he resigned a few moves later, we had this short exchange:

His observation that I’m a “crap player” was accurate, but everything else was out of line.

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Um. Three fighting scenes with progressively more eyeball loss (0, 1, and 2 respectively). The last two are bloody and not for the faint-hearted.

Even though you’ve seen pictures of me, Mr. E, and Egg Fu Yung, admit it. Most of you don’t really think eggs are sentient. But most people seem to believe that chickens are sentient (I don’t understand the difference, but whatever.)

So maybe this SHOCKING report from the AP will SHOCK you into avoiding eating eggs: the egg industry kills 200 million male chicks a year. (”Male chicks” as in male baby chickens, not hot babes that are really guys.)

They use a process called “instantaneous euthanasia”: male chicks are dropped alive into grinding machines. I suppose this does kill them right quick. But when you go out on a Friday night, do you say to your friends “Hey, let’s find a conveyor belt that will throw us into a grinding machine?” At least, when you’re not drunk. No, right? It doesn’t sound like fun.

Why do they do this? Because the males are not “profitable”–they can’t manufacture eggs, and they aren’t good enough for meat. It’s kinda a reverse sexism.

So the lesson? DON’T EAT EGGS, unless you are a sadist or sexist or sexist sadist.

Source: AP Exclusive: Video shows chicks ground up alive