On Jun 18, 5:52 pm, nobody wrote:

Btw, did I miss your discussion/refutation of how Germany could
of/should of won in 1917 with TK or was 'The Sazonov Book' posting
supposed to do the business?..

I haven't seen it either. These two were supposedly
going to discuss, not how Germany should or could
have won, but how different things might be today if
the war had gone differently. While I don't put much
faith in speculations such as these, I will say that as
Mr. Parr, like me, lived through the Great War, his
insights could perhaps be worth a read-- just to get
the bizarre perspective of a die-hard commie-bashing
Cold War propagandist.

Have you ever watched one of those "the making of"
features, appended to a DVD movie? In discussing
the making of a movie, the commentators always
seem to assume that since their movie was a
success, everything that was done in making it was
"therefore" done very well; they sit around talking
about how great they are, how perfect the casting,
acting, directing, etc., when in reality many movies
contain beginner-style blunders. I imagine that a lot
of folks think of wars in the very same manner: if "we"
won in the end, our generals were therefore brilliant,
their overall strategy was the best possible one, and
so forth. Yet when I see some of the battles from
these wars, I cannot help bot think of how rank
beginners often play chess.


-- help bot

"nobody" wrote in message
...
Chess One wrote:


what has knowledge of the intellectual kind to do with what people do at
the
test?

Intelligence coupled with a bit of heart & soul is a much better
combination than mere brute force thuggery - no?..

Is it? By what measure of circumstance? But non intellectualism is no
equivalent of thuggery. That is some Lockian prescription against what is of
Rousseau. True, it is a dominant idea in practice, but the dominance is
itself a forced act.

The question is not even of an intellectual kind, but about our observations
of ourselves. Did you get tested beyond your comfort zone so as to speak so
surely?

It is naive to think that only working class people were killed in the
Great
War [or in any war],

It's not only 'naive' it's also somewhat unrealistic, but look, Parr
did
this proportional 'thing' too? - So, if you take a random 100 from the
WW1 all killed, I'm figuring: 75% = working class 20% = middle class &
the remaining 5% = the upper-upper, so proportionally it's clear from
my
random 100

you create these numbers to your own satisfaction?

Yep, 'though I don't know that 'satisfaction' is quite the right word
here.

Yet you choose it for your own purpose.

You cavil @ my breakdown of a random 100 then?..

I ask you where you got them. You obfusticate with your answer. So... you
made them up to your own satisfaction, to suit suit your purpose.

as proportion of British
class casualties, I think there is very even distribution of such a gory
statistic

This is no doubt true but is an entirely different proportion..

Different than - proportion of what?

(we are talking human lives here) who did most of the dying.
This ties in with my observation that it's much more 'attractive' to
some, to talk of whole Oxbridge colleges being wiped out (Parr) rather
than, repeated over & over again, whole villages of cider-quaffing
farm-workers..

i think there is no macabre satisfaction at all. there are only the
brutal
facts of it, often too ugly to consider.

No! nothing morbid here just, since I was a young fella, a fascination
with the filmed record of such conflict.

You gained your knowledge from the movies?

WW1 sort of marked the
beginning of this & no, there really were'nt enough Victoria Crosses to
go round..

you must be careful you do not
create some antithesis to what you believe others to be, and react to
that,
rather than 'the position on the board.'

Not sure what 'board position' you have in mind here father Phil, but if
you're alluding to the perception that 'them that hates enough become
like the hated' - point taken..

You make yourself an opponent to rail against. Whether that person is truly
like that or a phantom of your imagination, is to the point. You need an
antagonist, real or imagined, to make contrarian argument. This is of course
reactionary, normal, and unhealthy to any sense of seeing for yourself how
anything is.

western civilisation was in a fight for its life, and barely squeaked
through, though i think all played their part

It's often talked about 'what a close run thing' these major
conflagrations were in the last century & there seem to be an infinity
of 'what ifs' bandied about but complacent hindsight might suggest
otherwise. Britain in 1914 for example still had it's Empire & weren't
exactly a pushover. Similarly, the Allies in '39 - '45 had resources &
short of Germany getting 'the' bomb they were busted yet again. Japan
taking on the mighty USA?? Well, if ever there was an example of the
folly of delusion that was it..

But America was really a sleeping giant, and without America all the
European democracies would have toppled to the fascists - then America too -
only extraordinary efforts brought the US into the war and such light as was
not extinguished. Japan's attack on the US changed all, but that is the
mistake of the enemy, not the wisdom of the allies!


that is the debt that is owned the dead

someone - my favorite philospher - dr jacob needleman, was walking by the
vietnam memorial in dc and he said that it occured to him as he went down
and down into the only horizontal and non-triumphal memorial in the
states,
that it was not as much he who regarded the dead, but the dead who asked
of
him what he was making of his life and liberty, for which they had given
theirs

there is no class in that, no internal warring of factions, there is
human
life relating to others

that is one lesson from all such striving, and if no one ever shot at
you,
brother, do not speculate in the face of those who have been there, or
whose
names are now on some wall

Speculate? who's ferkin speculating?.

I don't know. You do not use personal pronouns, do not claim experience, and
hypothesise with ideas. So... sounds like you are.

Next time I'm in Europe I'm going
to make a point of attending one of those graveyards to the war dead,
the poignancy, the tranquility, the contemplation - strangely
uplifting..

Will it be, or is that another idea? A romance?

Placidaque ibi demum morte quievit. (And there, at length, he reposed in
tranquil death) - Vergel.

Phil Innes



nobody.


it is not your question to ask - it is theirs

cordially, phil innes

On Jun 18, 7:10*pm, "Chess One" wrote:

Placidaque ibi demum morte quievit. (And there, at length, he reposed in
tranquil death) - Vergel.

Phil Innes

Ah yes, Vergel (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergel_Meneses),
author of that great Romanian epic, the Upanishad, starring Corydoras
Aeneas. He served as Al Dente's guide through Invierno in the epic
poem Comedia dell' Arte.

help bot wrote:

On Jun 18, 5:52 pm, nobody wrote:

Btw, did I miss your discussion/refutation of how Germany could
of/should of won in 1917 with TK or was 'The Sazonov Book' posting
supposed to do the business?..

I haven't seen it either. These two were supposedly
going to discuss, not how Germany should or could
have won, but how different things might be today if
the war had gone differently. While I don't put much
faith in speculations such as these, I will say that as
Mr. Parr, like me, lived through the Great War, his
insights could perhaps be worth a read-- just to get
the bizarre perspective of a die-hard commie-bashing
Cold War propagandist.

Well, I suppose when he tires of riding around the streets of Bangkok on
his moped, terrorizing the locals with his trusty horsewhip, & putting
the occasional gratuitous boot into the odd mendicant just for the fun
of it, he may see fit to reply..

Have you ever watched one of those "the making of"
features, appended to a DVD movie?

No. I do have some small experience on big budget movie sets from a
while back. Awful lot of standing around doing nothing while scenes are
set up. Quite pedestrian really, if you're a nobody..

In discussing
the making of a movie, the commentators always
seem to assume that since their movie was a
success, everything that was done in making it was
"therefore" done very well; they sit around talking
about how great they are, how perfect the casting,
acting, directing, etc., when in reality many movies
contain beginner-style blunders.

Yes, yes bot, but this is where a good editor is worth his weight in
shekels..

I imagine that a lot
of folks think of wars in the very same manner: if "we"
won in the end, our generals were therefore brilliant,
their overall strategy was the best possible one, and
so forth. Yet when I see some of the battles from
these wars, I cannot help bot think of how rank
beginners often play chess.

Yeah! well I'm just amazed @ how many 16yr. olds & under are rated 2300+
these days..

nobody.


-- help bot

On Jun 18, 6:10 pm, "Chess One" wrote:
"nobody" wrote in message

...

Chess One wrote:

what has knowledge of the intellectual kind to do with what people do at
the
test?

Intelligence coupled with a bit of heart & soul is a much better
combination than mere brute force thuggery - no?..

Is it? By what measure of circumstance? But non intellectualism is no
equivalent of thuggery. That is some Lockian prescription against what is of
Rousseau. True, it is a dominant idea in practice, but the dominance is
itself a forced act.

The question is not even of an intellectual kind, but about our observations
of ourselves. Did you get tested beyond your comfort zone so as to speak so
surely?



It is naive to think that only working class people were killed in the
Great
War [or in any war],

It's not only 'naive' it's also somewhat unrealistic, but look, Parr
did
this proportional 'thing' too? - So, if you take a random 100 from the
WW1 all killed, I'm figuring: 75% = working class 20% = middle class &
the remaining 5% = the upper-upper, so proportionally it's clear from
my
random 100

you create these numbers to your own satisfaction?

Yep, 'though I don't know that 'satisfaction' is quite the right word
here.

Yet you choose it for your own purpose.

You cavil @ my breakdown of a random 100 then?..

I ask you where you got them. You obfusticate with your answer. So... you
made them up to your own satisfaction, to suit suit your purpose.

as proportion of British
class casualties, I think there is very even distribution of such a gory
statistic

This is no doubt true but is an entirely different proportion..

Different than - proportion of what?

(we are talking human lives here) who did most of the dying.
This ties in with my observation that it's much more 'attractive' to
some, to talk of whole Oxbridge colleges being wiped out (Parr) rather
than, repeated over & over again, whole villages of cider-quaffing
farm-workers..

i think there is no macabre satisfaction at all. there are only the
brutal
facts of it, often too ugly to consider.

No! nothing morbid here just, since I was a young fella, a fascination
with the filmed record of such conflict.

You gained your knowledge from the movies?

WW1 sort of marked the
beginning of this & no, there really were'nt enough Victoria Crosses to
go round..

you must be careful you do not
create some antithesis to what you believe others to be, and react to
that,
rather than 'the position on the board.'

Not sure what 'board position' you have in mind here father Phil, but if
you're alluding to the perception that 'them that hates enough become
like the hated' - point taken..

You make yourself an opponent to rail against. Whether that person is truly
like that or a phantom of your imagination, is to the point. You need an
antagonist, real or imagined, to make contrarian argument. This is of course
reactionary, normal, and unhealthy to any sense of seeing for yourself how
anything is.

western civilisation was in a fight for its life, and barely squeaked
through, though i think all played their part

It's often talked about 'what a close run thing' these major
conflagrations were in the last century & there seem to be an infinity
of 'what ifs' bandied about but complacent hindsight might suggest
otherwise. Britain in 1914 for example still had it's Empire & weren't
exactly a pushover. Similarly, the Allies in '39 - '45 had resources &
short of Germany getting 'the' bomb they were busted yet again. Japan
taking on the mighty USA?? Well, if ever there was an example of the
folly of delusion that was it..

But America was really a sleeping giant, and without America all the
European democracies would have toppled to the fascists - then America too -
only extraordinary efforts brought the US into the war and such light as was
not extinguished. Japan's attack on the US changed all, but that is the
mistake of the enemy, not the wisdom of the allies!





that is the debt that is owned the dead

someone - my favorite philospher - dr jacob needleman, was walking by the
vietnam memorial in dc and he said that it occured to him as he went down
and down into the only horizontal and non-triumphal memorial in the
states,
that it was not as much he who regarded the dead, but the dead who asked
of
him what he was making of his life and liberty, for which they had given
theirs

there is no class in that, no internal warring of factions, there is
human
life relating to others

that is one lesson from all such striving, and if no one ever shot at
you,
brother, do not speculate in the face of those who have been there, or
whose
names are now on some wall

Speculate? who's ferkin speculating?.

I don't know. You do not use personal pronouns, do not claim experience, and
hypothesise with ideas. So... sounds like you are.

Next time I'm in Europe I'm going
to make a point of attending one of those graveyards to the war dead,
the poignancy, the tranquility, the contemplation - strangely
uplifting..

Will it be, or is that another idea? A romance?

Placidaque ibi demum morte quievit. (And there, at length, he reposed in
tranquil death) - Vergel.

Is that the Andean spelling of "Virgil?"

Phil Innes

nobody.

it is not your question to ask - it is theirs

cordially, phil innes

wrote in message
...
On Jun 18, 7:10 pm, "Chess One" wrote:

Placidaque ibi demum morte quievit. (And there, at length, he reposed in
tranquil death) - Vergel.

Phil Innes

Ah yes, Vergel (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergel_Meneses),
author of that great Romanian epic, the Upanishad,

**you are mistaken, he wrote Warts and Peas, Part Deux, The TD Strikes Back.

starring Corydoras
Aeneas.

**looks like Ben Foster is going to play at Chessville in the movie 'The
Messenger' taking on Convekta's engine, first I thought it was to be Woody
H.

He served as Al Dente's guide through Invierno

**yes, Invierno is now a successfully franchised Italian noodle joint

in the epic
poem Comedia dell' Arte.

**Anyway... the response above was Verging on topic, a sullen death-wish
topic; mentioning a context often found in old men, they won't give up, and
look forward to lying down forever - and resent anyone disturbing their
process. This is the sad story of USCF's decline in recent years, but at
least its a classical epitaph.

The thing of it is, its not the whole story! - and new young vigorous people
attempt to wrest the matter from being buried with the former proprietors so
that a Terence could say, 'Salva res est, bene est tantare.' [its as well to
try to save the matter].

And since regretable customs have now changed for the worst, this is
necessary - heretofore people who were still making plans, nonsense plans
and schemes, could be forcefully retired to monasterys.

Nowadays we see the results of abandoning this practice, as last
dramatically demonstrated by an English King who lost an entire continent -
so that our current equivalent is The Madness of King Bill, who is losing
same continent! and on whose tomb will surely be wrote, ruefully

quod non opus est, asse carum est

Quod sciam! [lol] Phil Innes

"The Historian" wrote in message
...

Placidaque ibi demum morte quievit. (And there, at length, he reposed in
tranquil death) - Vergel.

Is that the Andean spelling of "Virgil?"

Children will write in!

Who will explain it?

PI