World Chess Championship 2012: Anand vs. Gelfan-my comments

With a year and a half of chess playing experience I thought I ought to comment on the recent World Chess Championship between Anand and Gelfan. It might be a better idea to make a comedy chess video or possibly a comedy video about ancient philosophers and cosmologies that failed to become revered in the course of time-perhaps instead of the Parthenon there was a shack in which a philosopher named Pithynous conjectured that the Universe was made of lime jello, firewater and tonic?

Anand has the #4 technical world ranking and Gelfan the 20th,  yet Gelfan has a better record against Anand mono y mono playing white (20 to 15). The showdown in Moscow was a thriller-especially game 8.

For Anand one the chess championship and its something of a paradox since the Grunfeld defense was in play and Anand made the shortest work in making a victory (in game 8) that had ever occurred in a World Chess Championship Game- in just 17 moves.

I was somewhat fascinated by Anand's work. I have used a somewhat similar opening in creating something like an inverse 'v' with a two-sided chain of pawns and found that it works reasonably well against my chess computer program.

My use of the method breaks down there of course without the combination traps, broken field motions of teams of pieces and the clouds move around the mountain swirls that one finds in advanced tactics.

The obvious efforts by black are to attack with knights leaping over the defense line or to attack with a queen before its fully closed on one side or the other. This formation is very hard to get through for black and is useful for attack by white. Anand actually trapped Gelfan's queen back in H1 (all the squares have a unique number code for identification)-that is the extreme right home side for white.

Chess is a lot of fun to learn. Anand was able to see the situation that Gelfan's Queen was in and moved his own queen to a spot that along with three other pieces in places that could take Gelfan's Queen left the black queen nowhere to go so Gelfan resigned.

I have noticed that concentration on particular pieces, moves or one's own offense can create blind spots on the board-one doesn't 'see' obvious opposition force dangers before one moves. The good chess players not only see those potential pitfalls, they can note the relationships of several pieces simultaneously and move them in such a way that they have an advantage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_2012

Anand had a similar victory against Kasparov in 2010 I believe it was. They were playing a 'blitz' match where one has to work against a timer (something like a 24 second clock in basketball) and Kasparov had a brilliant overall lead playing black. Yet when attacking Anand he overlooked a pitfall and virtually gave the victory to Anand. That sort of thing could be just luck for Anand, yet when it recurs against different opponents one must suspect that Anand simply brings out the worst in his opposition now and then-can't imagine how.

The chess match should have been covered by E.S.P.N. radio-it's as good as the Tour de France when Lance Armstrong was winning seven titles. Anand just one his third (Kasparov one 13 World Chess Championship titles I seem to recall).

Monism and Pluralism-The Generation

 I have given some thought in recent time to the question of how monism can transform into pluralism logically, regarding cosmology. The question of The One (God) issuing a Universe of plural forms is ponderous regarding logical method for differentiation.

One knows that Leibniz inferred that the quantum world is constructed from one-dimensional section called monads-with some being two dimensional, and that these sections of Spirit comprise the 'matter' of which everything else arises, yet we might one where the monads came from-at least I did.

If one imagines a circle as 'The One' existing in the beginning, as an example of monism, it is easy to regard the 'nothingness' inside and outside the circle as important. The circle might have been a dot to start with-yet of course its only a visualizable paradigm for comprehending a little of the character of monism creating pluralism.

With the existence of the circle of any relative size it is possible to imagine the omniscient One emanating a sinusoidal wave around the circle of a select size, and from that a succession of smaller waves perhaps graduating toward the center of the circle with the important nothingness or spacing allowing the formation of structure.

Of course these structures might be compared with quantum structures of strings, membranes, quarks or larger particle-waves. Yet it is the geometry of the generation of the continuous yet distinct structures within the circle that is of most interest, for one can visualize that the monism continues concurrently with the creation of pluralism.

One can imagine that the order of appearance of the structures might be construed as time, with the spacing or intervals in order of appearance and distance, relative scale and form of the structures comprising space and the scale of space.

The structures instead of being in just two dimensions can occur in three, four or N dimensions as then purpose of The One finds it useful. In a four dimensional hyper spherical Universe with structures arising within and without it is easy to imagine that even more complex dimensional regions could travel in different directions of space and time toward the one circle of origin or 'outward' toward the center of the circle while the original line might itself not be absolutely stationary and may even transition into being part of the structure-for-itself.

The philosophical problem of how one substance or one Spirit might generate pluralism along with nothingness and the variety of different forms may be approached from another slightly different way. The initial Spirit might be able to thin out or decrease its substance somewhat and create a comparative being and nothingness even though nothingness does not actually exist. Then the variety of structures of pluralism created with quantum relationships of scale of energy or mass could proceed.

There is obviously no definite limit to the number of structural 'universes' that the pluralism could issue as the scalar field characteristics are contingent upon the will of The Spirit. 

I was reading Eco’s ‘Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language’ and he gave one illustration of the classification of words and meanings with a hierarchical branch structure with hyponyms and greater hyponyms arising unto the top wherein one might find general, universal concepts.  That obviously suggested to me the idea that the universal One might in a comparable way issue a variety of forms through structures of pluralism.

Within the pluralistic structure not only might forms arise with definite complex structures generated by the one that yet remain within monism, it might be possible for the One to design the emergence of forms or intelligence from the context of the structures-perhaps intelligence of sentient beings arising from matter might be an example. Photons too are I believe emergent quanta of an electro-magnetic field.

It is at least interesting to think about, or even visualize. The animated torus into a circle example below is a small example of the phenomenon of transitioning forms from one substance into others from mathematics.

image credit public domain Kieff-via wikipedia

Obama Policy to Stimulate Government Job Increase?

When President Obama misspoke last week saying that the economy is just fine, and needing to have his press secretary clarify the point that the President meant that the private sector is just fine the issue arose about the Presidential paradigm regarding economics.

The first Obama stimulus in retrospect turned out to have mostly been a stimulus for the public sector-a policy that is generally phenomenal like morning dew. The President would again like to stimulate the public sector with new public debt to create new public jobs without reforming the private sector significantly.

The idea that the President cannot be an economic reform leader is simply wrong. Halting illegal labor immigration in order to naturally create demand for U.S. labor and technological innovation, providing economic advantage to new ecologically reforming companies in the U.S.A., new zoning laws to advantage smaller, better designed homes with a low ecosphere footprint that are very affordable-a number of leadership measures were possible in the first Obama term that never saw the light of day.

The administration's leadership in space development was also moribund with significant cuts to N.A.S.A. planetary missions. It is probable that for the U.S.A. to continue space leadership it would need to construct a mass driver launcher on Earth for heavy lift of tech modules to orbit and delivery to the moon whereat another mass driver can be built to hurl things onward toward Mars where another mass driver would be built to llift things into orbit for return to Earth or the moon.

Reliance upon chemical rockets for heavy lift retards the potential for space colonization in the next 100 years quite a lot. Keeping the mass of the Earth, moon and Mars the same in order to not affect local gravity will require mass drivers as high tech is done on Earth and even rocks are exchanged until tech is built on the moon and Mars. The planetary security of the Earth requires a long term human presence on the moon and Mars-its just common sense.

About Two-Dimensional Semantics

An entry today into the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is that of two-dimensional semantics. It's an interesting entry since I have recently been reading Eco's book 'Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language'. I also have an interest in Quine's works such as 'Ontological Relativity'. So it is easy enough to regard language meaning and the signs to represent it as one dimensional, two-dimensional or multi-dimensional in regard to addresses or locations for the word unit or meaning unit components.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/two-dimensional-semantics/

Apparently two-dimensional semantics is a way of charting words or phrases-perhaps signs-with multiple meanings, contingent meanings and etc. One obviously can use a bi-conditional context for an example of a word having one meaning or another. If A then B equals C...

Words are themselves signs, and signs seem to have an even more basic existence. Words can be reduced to simple codes-one letter or one number as an example of their nature as signs in many-lettered words with phonemes and morphemes.

One of the reasons for semiotics and semantic researches is that in areas such as Europe where many languages are spoken making a chart of the inter-language values and structures in regard to past and present use and origins such as in ancient Ukrainian, Sandskrit or German is that the levels of meaning for words within their context of use inevitably needs becomes formalized in translations. If there were just one global language perhaps the work on formal logic, semitotics and semantics might not be so plentiful.

My belief presently is that words as units can be reduced to any sign such as in computer logic of o's and 1's-binary code, or in Samuel Morris' code, and that the language signs exists within an architecture mapped by linguists and philosophers of language. It can have a multi-dimensional structure perhaps in order to create an inter-language context more simple to structure, yet any construction of word-unit meanings becomes meaningful only to those using it with their own meaning-content interpretation structure that may be standardized or not.

Words seem to be addresses for meanings that exist within a given ontology. Meanings like words are phenomenal and of value for live users. The philosophical questions about the reality of reference objects such as 'green leaves' is another field for itself. Green is a color created in the human mind by the neurological atomic structure that prefers wavelengths making green, blue and yellow psychological phenomena when given wavelengths of photons impacting things regarded as 'green leaves' bounce off and hit the eye and optic nerve of an observer of 'green leaves'. 

If human brains were changed so that 'green' stimulus was changed to red and the ability to make the phenomenon of 'green' appear in the human mind no longer existed then the meaning of green would not exist in the same way within the ontology of human users.

The Sweet Spot of Earth in Solar System, Galaxy and Universe

The Earth and the solar system rest in a special location of a remote spiral arm of the galaxy far away from the giant black hole at the center of the galaxy where thousands of stars are drawn to their destruction. The special locations that can let biological life form on planetary surfaces must be far from the lethal x-rays and chaos of turbulent gravitational force in regions with densely packed clumps of stars and interstellar gas. The Earth’s location is a special place called a galactic habitation zone, and the Earth’s size and distance from the sun and its intense heat let’s life have time to be and become.

The visible Universe may be about 46 billion light years in size, yet the size of the Universe itself is unknown. It is believed that the Universe inflated faster than light for a split second like a balloon in the first moments of its existence or that it grew quickly in some other way letting all of its locations have equal claim to be the center of the Universe since they were all locations equally distant from the space-time origin. When one looks out into the night sky through the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope and other deep field observational devices capturing light images going back to more than 13 billion light years of time the special, equally important locations of everyplace though a kind of nowhere-Utopia- were all essential for the subsequent history of the Universe that is our human heritage.

The philosopher Leibniz inferred that the foundational structure for atoms and matter is the monad; one and two-dimensional spiritual segments that allow formation of larger structures that seem to be matter and energy in larger phases. That concept is not much different from the philosophical paradigm for membrane and string theory. At the heart of matter and of its equivalent energy the unknown and uncertain reposes within a monistic mystery of One that gives rise to the appearance of a pluralism of quantum components and forms.

That mysterious philosophical paradigm of The One and the many is not inconsistent with belief in God and the Son Jesus Christ as creator of space-time and life on Earth through a phenomenal process. Consistent with evolution or a progressive history of the cosmos are transcending ideas for time and interpolation by the Lord of intelligent beings within any location in space-time of the Universe. God transcends the matter-energy emergent evolution with its General Relativity and Special Relativity characteristics that make time for-oneself the center of experience. Time may be dated from the inflation or membrane expansion of the Universe at time=0 in which the beginning of the Universe is regarded as its center, yet the center of that time equally developed to every place in the Universe existing today, for space and time are united and indivisible phenomena.

God as progenitor of energy-matter and/or space-time is not subject to his project and its space-time that floats downstream like a boat on a river that is part of the river itself. God is the intelligent designer of the Universe with every place in space-time meaningful at adapted to its physical circumstance. 

Human Transformation of the Planet's Ecosphere & Social-Ecospheric Environmental Interface

Scientific American posted an entry on a Nature article on human transformation of the planet's environment. At least 43% of the ecosphere has been remade (into less ecospheriecally productive) for human purposes.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=are-we-pushing-the-planet-to-the-br-12-06-10

This reminds me of Diamond's book on how societies can bring about their own end through environmental collapse... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed

This sort of thing is a variation of the Dodo bird syndrome/aka fossil fueled vehicles going around in circles as a kind of economic-intellectual autism; the economic methods degrade or consume environmental resources until social economics aren't sustainable. Perhaps one of these economic collapses will emerge like a newly isolated tropical island with a cut off population imbalanced environmentally and consuming everything existing in panic like locusts.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-dodo.htm

The paradox is that in that future planet of the apes with the statue of liberty cut down to size on the beach the apes will turn out to have been humanity itself- especially the political leaders and broadcasters. Free at last with no survivors it might be a peaceful empty world and the federal debt will disappear too.

http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/31968/InTech-Human_altered_mesoherbivore_densities_and_cascading_effects_on_plant_and_animal_communities_in_fragmented_tropical_forests.pdf

California Army Reserve Spills 8,000 to 15,000 gallons of Diesel Fuel on Puffin Island Alaska

An Army Reserve landing craft from California ran aground on Puffin Island (near Kodiak) rupturing a diesel tank in the event.

The Monterrey was taking supplies for Marines to Bethel Alaska.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/09/12145335-174-foot-army-landing-craft-runs-aground-spills-fuel-into-alaskan-bay?lite

Estimates are that 8,00 to 15,000 gallons leaked near Chiniak Bay. Too bad they haven't got electric boats. One comprehends the harm to clams, seaweed and a plethora of good sea foods and hope the government learns from the disaster.

http://juneauempire.com/state/2012-06-10/ship-aground-puffin-island-near-kodiak

ttp://www.adn.com/2012/06/09/2498169/army-vessel-runs-agrond-off-kodiak.html

image credit U.S. Coast Guard

Sense or Sensibility in Foreign Intervention in Syria?

I am rather skeptical that a philosophical mandate exists for war. War seems to be a practical human activity such as rival colonies of ants do rather than an intelligent, philosophical practice.

Arguably U.S. intervention in the First World War led to global destabilization and a century of needless U.S. conflicts abroad. The Second World war and the Stalinist phenomenon would not have occurred except the German Imperial Government was deposed at the end of the war to enable an Armistice. Syrian intervention is another dubious issue perhaps flamed into being by the U.S. administration and the U.N. in order to accomplish a regime change.

The Obama Doctrine of regime changes in the Arab Spring... seems to be a function of British use of the U.S. military as their stooges for free military adventurism in furtherance of global imperialism for Britain economically speaking through a variety of financial means. The horror of terrorism upon civilian populations is repugnant to right reason of course, yet the perfidy of intervention by foreign powers can arise through a number of means.

The Alawi people of Syria are a tough, fighting tribe historically. The balances of power developed in the Middle East since 25,000 B.C. are sometimes a little beyond the depth of competence in the U.S. State Department and administration I think. I am fairly sure that I don't regard an indirect treacherous policy for 'diplomacy in the Middle East as forthright. If we must get rid of some government because people in Des Moines hate them, then we might attack them directly and put out of work Chicagoans to work in Damascus with an Obama stimulus package for government workers (Joking of course).

Like the Bush administration in Iraq there seems to be no post-regime change planning for Syria. Another conflict with lots of bodies splattered about en route to some glorious news coverage of the Condor Legion II blasting the fugitives into the stone age with precision weapons may be a way to help create another Sunni state in an ad hoc New Caliphate. Why?

Hamas was originally the Muslim Brotherhood too, and the new Egyptian President will probably be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, as would a post Alawite Syrian leaders. Is that kind of situation supposed to intimidate Iran into giving up any loose nukes it may have panhandled from the Pakistanis' North Koreans or Russian, Chinese or whomever? On the contrary Iran might feel more in need of nukes to defend against a Sunni Middle East including Pakistan and an Afghanistan also possibly to be dominated by a restored new age Taliban.

I wonder about the competence of the administration on Syria since they have declared the wish for a regime change without providing plans for a post Assad government--will it have McDonald's or whatever so tourists can afford it?

It would be good if the United States could develop a record of intelligent, peaceful world leadership rather than a history of just bombing someplace for convenience and humanitarianism every five years or so. Old weapons inventories may need to be used, yet the Defense Department budget is funded with borrowing as much as taxes-and that too is a direct threat to the standard of living of the poor in the U.S.A. Is it the middle class that consistently desires foreign military interventionism?

Fish Traps in S.E. Alaska-The Way to Conserve Fish Stocks?

In Alaska history the local Tlingit Indians in effect fish farmed the Alexander Archipelago with a pervasive infrastructure of fish traps into which salmon would swim. It would be possible to eliminate commercial fishing in S.E. Alaska readily with a new infrastructure of fish traps thereby eliminating bi-catch, over-fishing through false counts and so forth. The use of fuel and global warming might also be substantially reduce.

An article in the 'Alaska Journal of Anthropology' Volume 9, Number 1-2011 by Jane L. Smith surveys the history of Tlingit fish traps in S.E. of which 369 have been researched.

Because salmon just swim into fish traps the state might contract out fish traps to bidders on the fish taken with quotas each year determined by state fishery biologists. 

The fisheries in Alaska are in predictable long-term decline with puny king salmon taking salmon derby's a fraction of the size of winners from years of yore. A maximum  sustainable fishing yield requires that 3/4s of fish escape each year with the carcasses allowed to feed bear, eagles, crab and other wildlife in a self-reinforcing ecosystem.; Obviously shoreline waterfront development needs to halt in order to protect the water and shoreline habitat.

Halibut and other deeper water fisheries should also be brought into scientific management with more modern high-tech methods of taking fish at far lower rates. It is important for all species that only sports and subsistence fishing be permitted from boats.

Most Warm Spring in U.S. History; Will the Arctic Ice-pack Set a Record for Melt This Year?

U.S.A. Today reported that the spring weather for the United States ran a little more than five degrees above normal. Interesting.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/story/2012-06-07/record-warm-spring-usa/55442584/1?csp=34news

That brings the anticipation that this may be a record year for Arctic Sea ice melt, yet it is not necessarily so. While the 48 states were warm, Alaska is cooler than usual-thats just the way the cookie crumbles.

It is possible to see3 open water near Parry Strait I think (the eastern entrance to the high Northwest Passage and also near the Canada-Alaska border region in the photo below from 'The Crysophere Today of the Icepack June 6, 2012

image credit; N.O.A.A., National Snow and Ice Data Center et al.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/