Peace

Oh cool, awesome. Alekhine is always great to study, all the way up to 1800 or 2000 a great one; tactics, too, ( mates in 2 problems are fairly ideal ) World champ Petrosion, who was mostly known for his ridiculous positional skill, himself said that ' in chess, everything rests on tactics. ' Studying itself is much better for your game than playing - this is a little tidbit from GM and trainer Eduard Gufeld, and. . memorizing grandmaster games is also a very big secret. . . one of the most valuable. ;-) As one of my coaches said, it's - well, all he said was it's the best, heh, but it really is - it's like training jogging with weights on or something. . . just the very best practice to improve skill. . the thing is, you pick up the patterns that way - you absorb them into your conscious and subconscious. . . and you really sky-rocket fast if you fall in love with the game enough so that studying it becomes a lot of fun. . . otherwise you won't end up devoting yourself to it very fully - or much time, or be as interested / fascinated with the game. . . And as far as I can tell of course, the rest of my life has tended to confirm that this is a key principle in learning a game, or skill, or any ability or art or discipline. Have a great day Peace

I suppose you could say there's a relationship between taking selfies and one's personal life, the relationships - one's position in the world - and all the rest. . . however selfish that person is depends on other factors though - one could take more selfies than anyone else - yet still be the most generous, selflessly giving person there is. . . it's not simple to establish a relationship of causality here. In fact - establishing causality is, of course, one of the trickier things in science - yet people in general life, my personal feeling is, take this too far and do not understand the value of intuition - or the effect of self-faith on intuition - indeed, of course, on to health in general. . . that is, the placebo effect. I've always thought of it as - if it aids my health by 25% - well that is a great deal over long-term! And it's just one way of looking at it of course. Memelogy is another big part of it - because thoughts do affect our mind and body - and they pass from group to group, or from person to person - like memes. Exactly how all those mechanisms interact and act upon each other is not yet understood by science - yet I think we can say quite clearly, they do. I mean - more than clear - and yes, it is pretty wild - but very true! hehe. How does poetry connect up with and interact with physics? --- is a question too seldom asked. And other stuff. Nice questions, Clara - they are open and thought-provoking, so they allow and create space for some good discussions. Thanks!

Man - Most dangerous predator? That'd be tough. I wonder how a Sarcosuchus imperator would do against a large allosaurus or something similar. . They were quite huge.

Hi Clara, Thanks for the reply. Yes I had several good teachers. . . it was also at the best time of my life for such training, as I never lost the ability to focus and learn something. . . it helped for other - less specifically logical, but also helped me add logic to the rest of parts of my life - such as poetry, or what not. So I was thinking - a couple things, could have a random game going - anyone feel free to play for either side. . . heh, or talk about players - my favs have always been the world champions mostly. . for instance, Botvinnik said of Smyslov - 'From '53 to '58 he was the best in the world - no one could beat him.' So i studied short (ish) games of his from that time, and they were quite incredible, he was at peak form. Cheers, Jacob

Do we have any chess fans here? I have loved it and studied it a lot since a boy - at my best I beat a strong master - the rest of the time mostly just study for myself, because I love the game. Currently my strength is not above A-player, by my estimate. . . Mine has always been pretty variable - depending on how much I study, I've found that if you really love the game, studying it can be a lot of fun - over the years. If anyone wants to discuss games, or talk about their favorite world champion, or whatever. . And I bet, there's already a chess thread or two floating about, so please forgive me for adding to the ' clutter '

A few days ago i came across this website - very, very good - I agree with all of the main points on it so far, and I am pleased to have found it because a lot of the ideas are ones my father and I came up with independently - the message has to be one coupled with hope, for one, and the ideas that the primary humane way to solve the problem is to encourage the spread of good ideas about it; especially that we can solve it by having one or two children per family, at most. I was just very pleased to see these ideas developed independently; and it seems to be a very good chance at solving the problem. This particular site asserts that we have about three times what the earth would be able to sustain - at a European level of living. I like the FAQ page and the "Our Vision" page, and I am enjoying the other articles as well - gradually reading through them now. http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/articles/our-vision-solve-overpopulation

Absolutely. You make a good point - actually when I posted I sort of thought the thread was about population itself. . I was embarrassed to see that pollution was the topic at hand! Although later on I figured, well - my post wasn't too off-topic. As for pollution, the best thing I can think to do is to reduce our consumerism and materialism as much as possible. To this end, I've gradually shifted my whole life away from it - and for several years now I don't buy anything except food and occasionally books. . . It's a small contribution, but I'm pleased to do my part. Anything we buy never really changes how happy we are - we can be perfectly happy with nothing other than fresh air, good family, and a peaceful life. . . that's personal philosophy, but it's born out over the eras by a lot of philosophers. As for consumerism - there is the point that is usually made that it's necessary for the economy to grow and spend money constantly - however, to me, the far more important issue is the environmental balance of the ecosystem, because that is what supports all life - so therefore, sustaining it and preserving ecological balance seems to far supersede any other goal. I don't believe our economy has to be structured around consumerism in the way that it is now - yes, material goods will always be necessary to a certain extent, but I believe it, as well as our population, should be scaled back to a large extent. Again - in the aims of maximising our chances of surviving millennia (at least) into the future. It really does seem to be a question of maximising survival chances. So that's my main idea about pollution - as much as possible, buy locally, and learn to be happy without needing items of entertainment that have to be shipped across the globe.

The FBI confirmed a week and a day ago that it was North Korea behind the cyber-attack.

Have you all been following the controversy of "The Interview"? Well, I just found out they released it online, on Youtube, although I suspect it might be available from other places as well. Four days ago.

Alan Watts is a reputable source of information on the subject, MonDie - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alan+watts+psychadelics

Or a holographic universe, which would also be a fractal.

I'm fairly new here also, but welcome to the site, donsimon. It's an interesting thought, and it's certainly good to think creatively. Not speaking to the likelihood of the idea, all I would like to point out is the difference between theories and hypotheses. In non-scientific usage, the words have come to sort of mean the same thing, but in scientific usage, they are very different. A hypothesis is basically an idea. A theory is an hypothesis that has been very thoroughly tested, and not found to be false so far. Outside of scientific discussion, there may not be a distinction for many people, but within scientific discourse, there's a large difference.

Algae that eat plastic is interesting, but not a very useful or thorough solution to the problem, in my opinion. Any technological solution has several inherent and serious flaws - primarily, it does not address the cause, but only the symptoms. If we clean out the carbon di-oxide somewhat, and yet still double the human population again, in another 35 years, you can understand where i'm going with this. The best solution has always seemed to me to be a simple reduction in reproduction - each person should only have 1 or 2 children, or fewer. I also would say we have to convince people to do it - it's a battle of information, ideas, and so forth; and there's much we have to go up against. . .but it really is just that, a battle of ideas. The understanding of our situation has to replace an unawareness of it, and the thought that we can do whatever we want with no regard for consequences - in other words, increase the population exponentially until we die - has to be superseded by an understanding of our impact and place in the world, and the ability to work for change for the better.

Humans, dolphins, chimps, crows, African Grey parrots, whales, are all among the most intelligent animals. Basic - we already do communicate with other species. . You might be interested the African Grey parrot named Alex, it is rather fascinating. Besides Alex, there are many, many other times we do so . . A hawker can communicate fairly well with their hawks. Dogs can understand several hundred words in human language, pigs as well, I believe. Besides this, we don't only communicate with words, but also with body language, gestures, eye contact - and these are not at all unique to the human race; they are observed in many species, and if you meet a gorilla in the wild, or say, separated by a sturdy wall of glass, there is plenty of communication going on - they see eye contact as a challenge, and if you nod to them, they recognize that as well. Also there are humans in Papa New Guinea who can call to over a dozen different Birds of Paradise - yes, there's deception involved in this kind of communication, but so that's also common to communication in a lot of places.

I'm reminded of Dr. Feynman's experiences with editing textbooks, from his autobiography, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman"

Does this help? About the speed http://www.askamathematician.com/2011/08/q-if-light-slows-down-in-different-materials-then-how-can-it-be-a-universal-speed/ or, alternatively, [http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae509.cfm About the mass http://www.desy.de/user/projects/Physics/Relativity/SR/light_mass.html