"Vince Hart" wrote in message
om...

(3) I think Sam Sloan is a real threat to get on the board now that
he has seen the benefit of keeping his mouth shut once in a while.

Sam can put pen to paper when he wants. As such I think the USCF has to make
equal time for folks to dispute Sam's "facts".

StanB

Sam Sloan wrote:

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 01:43:31 GMT, Geoff McAuliffe
wrote:

Sam Sloan wrote:

Will anybody who voted for Tim Hanke please speak up?

I voted for Tim Hanke (also Doyle and Marinello).
The USCF needs a severe shake-up and even then I am not sure if it can
survive.
Given the exceptionally poor manangement and waste of members money, I am
not sure it should survive. Really.
If it does move to Crossville, TN (a nice place with a good scholastic
program) how could things possibly get any worse?
I do play chess, very occasionally well.
I have no training in business or government but have no doubt that I
could run the USCF better than those in power now.
I may still be able to disassemble and reassemble an M-16, blindfolded, in
less than 60 seconds altough I might need to practice a bit.
I may still be able to disassemble and reassemble a Colt 1911A1, but not
blindfolded and not in less than 60 seconds.
I am not sure how the last two items pertain to governance (or lack
therof) of the USCF but it seems to bear on the current discussion,
perhaps due to Iraq?

Geoff McAuliffe
Piscataway, NJ

I notice that you are from New Jersey. Leroy Dubeck sent out a letter
urging the voters in New Jersey to vote for Doyle, Marinello and
Hanke.

Did you receive that letter? Did that influence you to vote for those
three, as you did?

Sam Sloan

It seems to me, the GAP (great american public) hunger after amusements.
It's entirely possible 'they' confabulated 'our' Hank - (yank!) with Tom
Hankes, the Great Canadian comedian. Ce tu..

Try again next year, pet..

Mick..

(RSHaas) wrote in message ...
"Does anybody else find it remarkable that just about the only person who ownes
up to having voted for Hanke is an anonymous poster? (Sam Sloan)
============
Had I been a member, I would have voted for Marinello, Petersen, and Hanke.
I think the fed needs some youth.

Yes...and Sam is getting a little long of tooth...I mean, it would
suck to vote for someone who might die in the middle of a meeting.
WHat a bummer.

O.K.

Marinello was the only candidate who indicated she'd take a look at the
Metro District thing although I think she had no clue at that time what Metro
District thing really is or what its function is intended to be. Once she gets
a look at it, most likely she'll throw up her hands and flee from it. Hanke
doesn't like it, either. I don't know what Petersen thinks about it...
probably nothing. Petersen is a good guy but probably hardwired to state
association culture... and possibly a Don Schultz hand puppet. I'm not sure
but I think Don got him to run. If both Don and Mike got elected, Don would
double his power on the EB. If Don lost and Mike won, Don would still have
influence via Mike, etc. (RSHaas)

Oreo Knight wrote:

(RSHaas) wrote in message ...
"Does anybody else find it remarkable that just about the only person who ownes
up to having voted for Hanke is an anonymous poster? (Sam Sloan)
============
Had I been a member, I would have voted for Marinello, Petersen, and Hanke.
I think the fed needs some youth.

Yes...and Sam is getting a little long of tooth...I mean, it would
suck to vote for someone who might die in the middle of a meeting.
WHat a bummer.

O.K.


The fates have an ironic sense of humor. Most likely Sam will live
into his 90's. Of course recent photos suggest that Sam completely
sheds his skin every time he goes swimming, and then leaves sections of
it lying around the hotel for the unfortunate custodial people to vacuum
up.

Best Regards,

Bruce

In article , Oreo Knight wrote:
(RSHaas) wrote in message ...
"Does anybody else find it remarkable that just about the only person who ownes
up to having voted for Hanke is an anonymous poster? (Sam Sloan)
============
Had I been a member, I would have voted for Marinello, Petersen, and Hanke.
I think the fed needs some youth.

Yes...and Sam is getting a little long of tooth...I mean, it would
suck to vote for someone who might die in the middle of a meeting.
WHat a bummer.


Perhaps the most cogent reason yet for a Sloan vote.

Tim Hanke writes:

TH There are several reasons I won and I know what they are, even if
Sam is
mystified. Some of the reasons have to do with the game theory factors
applicable to an election of this type, and other reasons are related
to
specific things I did. I am not going to discuss any of the reasons I
won.
It would be like telling everybody my favorite chess opening
variations. :-)

TH By the way, did anyone notice I majored in political science at
Harvard? ;-)
This may be my first national chess election, but I didn't just fall
off the
turnip truck in front of USCF HQ. :-)

and later:

TH I'm tempted to discuss the game theory aspects of this election,
because to
me it is quite interesting and has clear implications for campaign
tactics,
but I'm going to resist the temptation. :-)

TH To me, the real shock in this election is not that Hanke finished
ahead of
four other candidates, but that Sloan finished ahead of *any* other
candidate. Game theory suggests to me why he finished ahead of
Petersen, but
I still don't like it.

I'm surprised to see that no gamesters out there have attempted to
follow up on these tantalizing intimations. Or maybe they have and I
haven't noticed.

Before the election, Tim made some gung-ho pro-war posts on rgcp,
which raised a few eyebrows including mine. So Jerome Bibuld, for
example, thinks that Hanke's election goes to show that Americans are
bigoted imperialists, which he had known all along anyway, etc. etc. I
think he is wrong on several levels. For one thing, I really don't
think that many USCF members pay much attention to rgcp --- there are
just the usual politicos and a few odd cranks like me. However, I
think there is a very small grain of truth in Mr. Bibuld's analysis,
which I will explain.

In a 2-way election with 50% turnout (like US Presidential elections)
does it pay to be bland and inoffensive, or to be vivid and highly
opinionated? It's hard to say. If you say something striking and
controversial, you will gain A votes and lose B votes (among the
already likely voters); and among the unlikely voters, you may
energize C to vote for you and D to vote against you. So if A+C B+D,
you come out ahead. Under these circumstances, it probably doesn't pay
to say something striking and controversial unless you're also pretty
sure that your opinion is actually held by the majority of potential
voters.

However, a 6-way election with a very low turnout is a different ball
of wax entirely. When you make your bold move, you attract, as above,
A+C voters and you repel B+D voters. But in this case, the voters you
repel are dispersed among the remaining 5 candidates. So, even if you
repel 3 times as many voters as you attract, you'll probably still
come out ahead.

Therefore, in an election of this type, name recognition and vividness
are the things to go for, even if that entails more notoriety than
fame (within reason, that is, because you don't want to repel 10 times
as many voters as you attract).

This shows, I think, that from a game-theoretic point of view, it's
generally counter-productive for a Board candidate in a 6-way election
to be mousy and diplomatic. In this context, reasonable and
businesslike doesn't cut it, unless you are already world-famous for
being reasonable and businesslike. So Tim knew that he was unlikely to
hurt his chances making relatively strong statements on Kirsan,
scholastic dues, etc.; or, for that matter, behaving somewhat
outrageously, from time to time, in our own little world of rgcp.

I think this may explain why Hanke feels that game-theoretic
considerations account for Sloan finishing ahead of Petersen. Sam is
nothing if not vivid.

Larry T.

"Matt Nemmers" wrote in message news:EPmSa.101470$N7.13113@sccrnsc03...
"Sam Sloan" wrote in message
...
Will anybody who voted for Tim Hanke please speak up?

Mr. Nemmers,

I have no interest in USCF politics. Of course, you have the right
to vote for whomever you choose. The United States is a highly
diverse society. I write this only to encourage you and others
eventually to take perhaps a changing view of American diversity.

I voted for Hanke because he's not the bleeding-heart PC commando so many
politicians try to be. Hanke pulls no punches....I like that.

Such as Tim Hanke's comment, "Bugger the Chinese"?

"The Chinese must go!"
--Denis Kearney (1847-1907)

I voted for Hanke because he's a stand-up guy with good ol' fashioned
American values.

The United States is a highly diverse civilisation with a complex
history. "American values" are not inscribed in stone; they have
greatly changed and they have been always passionately contested.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."
--United States of America's Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)

"Self-evident"? When did the truth of "all men are created
equal" really become "self-evident" to most Americans? Most
"native Americans" (Indians) were not even legally accepted as
United States citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
And, for the record, the United States refused to ratify the
proposed Equal Rights Amendment for women.

"Some critics of the concept of American exceptionalism ascribe to its
exponents the belief that America had a consensual history, that its past
is less marked by conflict than other countries. Nothing could be further
from the truth....I would only note that as Savan Bercovitch, Richard
Hofstadter, Samuel Huntington, and Gunnar Myrdal, among many, have stressed
the United States is distinguished by an emphasis on adversarial relations
among groups, and by intense, morally based conflicts about public policy,
precisely because its people quarrel sharply about how to apply the basic
principles of Americanism they purport to agree about. Conflicts which are
defined in moral terms are more intense, as in America, than those which are
seen primarily as reflecting interests, as in Europe."
--Seymour Martin Lipset (American Exceptionalism, pp. 25-6)

What are "good ol' fashioned American values"? Would all Americans agree?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2075151/

"I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in
the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the
Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and
into our churches."
--Strom Thurmond (1948, then governor of South Carolina, during his campaign
to become the president of the United States)

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president
we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had
followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these
years, either."
--Trent Lott (December 2002, senator from Mississippi and then majority
leader of the United States Senate. Under strong political
pressure, Senator Lott later apologized for his statement.)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2075453/

"The Legend of Strom's Remorse: a Washington lie is laid to rest.

For many years, there's been a cherished Washington lie about Strom Thurmond.
The lie is that Thurmond, though once a leading segregationist, later renounced
that view as morally wrong. Trent Lott repeated that lie at his December 13
press conference....It isn't just conservatives who believe this fairy tale
about sin, remorse, and redemption. The 'New York Times' buys into it, too....

But there never was any such expression of remorse or plea for forgiveness.
Thurmond has never publicly repudiated his segregationist past, and with his
100th birthday and a Senate career behind him, it's doubtful he ever will.
The legend of Strom's Remorse was invented, by common unspoken consent within
the Beltway culture, to provide a plausible explanation why Thurmond should
continue to hold power and to command at least marginal respectability well
past the time when history had condemned Thurmond's most significant political
contribution. Now that Thurmond is finally leaving Washington, the lie serves
no further purpose and will fade away...."

--Timothy Noah (16 December 2002)

And here's another American voice:

"O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's
ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!..."
--Langston Hughes (Let America be America Again)

"A People's History of the United States" was written by
Howard Zinn to compensate for some of the traditional biases
of the "authorized patriotic textbook" editions of United
States history. As such, "A People's History of the United
States" is a useful supplement, and it's being used as a
textbook in some American universities.

Matt Nemmers
At-Large Director, Iowa State Chess Association
(and a REAL chessplayer)

Given that Sam Sloan has recently proclaimed that he would
confidently play Damiano's Defence against GM Teimour Radjabov,
I have wondered whether his declaration should be enough to
qualify Sam Sloan as a surreal chess player.

On the other hand, Sam Sloan is not a computer (a "virtual
chess player"). And I find it distasteful to consider arguments
of the form, for instance: "A is rated higher than B.
Therefore, B cannot be a real chess player."

"Charity never fears infection, in attending upon the sick."
--Charles Johnstone (The Pilgrim)

--Nick