Partial Gov Shutdown Day 6; Why Not Annually Close 30% of the Time

The partial government shutdown may be a good thing in that it demonstrates that change is possible. The Texas legislature has a very brief annual session (140 days every other year). Why shouldn't the U.S. Government have annual partial closures and the Congress meet 30% less time. The challenge would be to become more efficient or get nothing down. Between the Congress and media noise the President has little enough time to actually execute.

Closing Congress and the government more often could save taxpayers and compel Congress persons to work more efficiently.

Magnus Carlsen vs Robert James Fischer

Robert James Fischer had natural genius inherited from his parents. He and Lasker were probably the smartest chess players since Morphy. Robert James was something of a juvenile delinquent in playing chess instead of being a physicist like his father, yet it couldn’t be helped. After winning the world championship, chess may have collapsed like a spent, inflated soufflé to him psychologically- a game of little value. The best player in the world, and not rich- chess didn’t pay much back in the day. Neither had it content besides being a game.

Was Robert James good or Magnus Carlsen as good? The apostle Paul;
Romans 3:10-12 King James Version (KJV)
“10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”

Neither Robert James Fischer nor Magnus Carlsen are good. No one is good except God.
Robert James had the virtue of having defeated the Soviet chess machine. That helped end the cold war. The victory was as psychologically as valuable as the U.S. hockey team victory over the Soviet team in the Olympics; it shattered Soviet ideas of their skill level as being in some fields, invincible. I met a guy once who said that those that cannot do math have no soul (not true). Robert James showed the Soviets that Americans have soul.
Magnus Carlsen plays chess in an era where he could purchase the book of the last great Soviet grand master-world chess champ Garry Kasparov. He is champion in an era of political bungling that is reigniting the Cold war and prospects for nuclear war. It is a hyper-vain materialistic era and the avarice for pawns and parsimony of sacrifice is representative of the zeitgeist. Russia has said it has a new hypersonic nuclear weapons delivery vehicle launched from missiles that skips along the top of the atmosphere at five times the speed of sound and is highly maneuverable. The U.S. replies with a billion dollar contract to Lockheed to build one for-themselves. In theory, the rekindling of the Cold War is caused over the pawns of historically Russian Crimea and Ukraine.

Magnus Carlsen can play interesting chess more like that of Garry Kasparov now and then. Super GMs (over 2700 rating) no longer need concern themselves with being caught up in Cold War intrigue. Robert James Fischer probably would have been an outstanding physicist with the right early education. I am not so sure about Magnus Carlsen. I envision his alternative career development as that of an outstanding engineer- rather like Einstein’s son?, who developed an electro-magnetic linear accelerator to launch vehicles into space from the Earth kinetically and further; developed an electromagnetic field launcher in deep space to accelerate vehicles to a significant portion of the speed of light.
Lasker was a great mathematician and some of his work is still relevant.

The OP was- Can Stupid People Learn to Play Expert Chess?

The contrapositive question might be something like; ‘ Can expert chess play prove a person isn’t stupid?’ What about chess engines? They have no intelligence- only lines of programming code, and play expertly. Can a human emulate a chess engine and play expertly though comparatively stupid?

One might require rigorous scientific method and experimental controls in order to investigate the OP. One must locate several FMs that are stupid, or prove that being an expert chess players is stupid (in comparison to inventing a faster than light travel method to get one to a new star system with lots of verdant planets).

I am not certain of what an expert chess player is either. Maybe it is blindfold chess? I wonder if Einstein played blindfold chess? He did beat Robert Oppenheimer in a game, and each were smart guys, yet perhaps neither actually did play blindfolded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=1XM9gHWAvX0

Stupidity is a fairly subjective term. Some smart people act stupid now and then, making wrong or less than optimal choices. Maybe chess should be used as a political test to determine if the U.S. Congress or Senate people are stupid and can’t balance the budget. Just give them a chessboard and see what kind of openings, middle and end games they play; is it expert? Chess is a fairly plain material game that is good for anyone’s brain. The earlier one starts and the more they study and play the better they get.

I don’t believe chimps could learn to play chess, yet except for the developmentally disabled or challenged with very low I.Q. most humans can learn to play chess at least at a club level- 1300 or 1400–1800 rating- given enough time.

Many adults don’t want to put that much time into it for good reasons involving opportunity cost (they could be doing something else). Chess is a good cheap way to exercise the brain. Lots of chess instruction videos at youtube.

Signs of Canadian Collapse?

The OP is ‘Is Canada going to collapse?’. IMO definitely yes. It is like a souffle that was over inflated, or a puff ball that has served its purpose. Actually though, nation’s don’t often just collapse. Though Canada has lost much ice in recent winters. Consider some of the problems nations have had, such as Argentina that once (thrice?) defaulted on it’s debts, and didn’t collapse*. Canada will probably struggle through lean years with global warming on the left and right at least until the great American mid-western desert expands into Alberta and Saskatchewan. That may occur within two-hundred years, possibly.

Canada is a name that is mysterious to a few; from whence did the name arise? There is an island in the Mediterranean Sea named ‘Tenados’ near Turkey, and that is also one of the names of Mt. McKinley/Denali. The Mediterranean island is within a thousand miles of the volcanic island that erupted destroying the Minoan civilization about 1500 b.c., so there is a good chance that when Canada collapses like that ancient volcano after erupting, some will have learned where the name came from in the first place.

When maple syrup is rationed, then you will know the time is near.

*https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/argentinas-default-case-offers-clarity-on-sovereign-debt/2014/07/31/84840d90-18ec-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bf0d3ad6db39

On the Question- Could All U.S. Gangs Together Beat the Military

People ask the strangest questions. I answered this one on the topic of could all U.S. gangs if unified beat the U.S. military.

Gangs are criminal social organizations. How one defines gang makes a difference in calculating their ability to war upon the United States. Covert gangs, ad hoc gangs- perhaps utilizing computer and Internet communications and methods to shut down U.S. and military infrastructure dependent upon on-line works, might make a dent in the U.S. military fighting capability.

The army and marines have just a couple million people or less. I am not sure if one should count the air force if their planes are down from some bug (they can’t shoot a rifle accurately, generally). Asymmeric war with the element of surprise can be effective. It isn’t numbers so much as knowledge and an effective cadre- perhaps armed with biological weapons, that would make a difference.

It may be that mass production with computer aided implementation could enable criminal gangs or even individuals able to suddenly wreak harm or havoc. That is something of an historical change. It would be the most secure powerful and financially enabled people with the best ability to scalar field upgrade some material attack. They could form a criminal gang for-themselves.

The communication thing is a problem in organizing large numbers of gangs. It isn’t like organizing a large football team; as soon as the government learned of such efforts for sedition or treason they would interdict with arrests and whatever was required to maintain the security of the state and low taxes on the most rich. Gangs might develop radiation guided drone weapons to hunt naval vessels with nuclear reactor power. They could cut off the gas supply for the military and maybe find a way to set the national oil reserve on fire in the salt domes while demolishing pipelines and salt water terminals.

Most of the military is trained in conventional war and with conventional weapons. Whereas some kind of a Stephen King trickery could happen and reduce them to zombies or whatever if the opposition force lacks human ethics or moral concerns. Gang members could be force package delivery vectors and be used as disposable carriers of some dire synthetic viral plague. They might have access to the military and around the world bring the terminal bug to the fighting forces.

I believe that criminal gangs are best at victimizing civilians. They aren’t in the conventional land or naval war business generally these days although there used to be pirates with power in various parts of the world. Corporations might have criminal gangs of programmers and technicians to manipulate search engine listings. Criminal gangs might manipulate elections or Wall Street with special algorithms and advertising campaigns to assure that their wealth is concentrated and that democracy does not work. Though Ike warned of the military industrial complex, one sees the vast right-wing budget of today’s military. It concerns some that a criminal gang within the Democrat party might cut the military budget and defeat them through economic privation.

Why the U.S.A. Has a Vast Public Debt

There is an interesting historical comparison; England. To finance the war against the rebel American colonies the British Government piled up a vast debt. It wasn’t repaid for more than a century. The British Government had to pay interest on the debt and had little left over for social sector spending. Vast public debt enslaves the public to tithe the rich. The annual interest on the U.S. national debt is close to a trillion dollars (approximations in this answer).

The military industrial complex gets about a trillion a year. U.S. politics are arranged so they are sufficiently incompetent to require vast military spending. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others felt the private sector should soak the public sector for all they can. Halliburton got a lot of no-bid contracts during the Iraq War. Government is structured these days to benefit the rich and is corporatist rather than a democracy. It isn’t really going to get better.

Monte Carlo Algorithm and Energetic Modeling (A comment on why chess engines are better)

Computer hardware and software continues to improve. Better programming. The Monte Carlo algorithm works for chess and Wall Street as well as casinos. Algorithms permit all kinds of searches enabling the corporate world to marginalize internet use not of advantage to narrow corporate self-interest.

AlphaGo Zero - How and Why it Works

https://www.cornerstone.com/Publ...

A Monte Carlo Simulation Of The S&P 500 For 2018

What is Monte Carlo Simulation?

I learned about bubble sorts in 1980. Luckily I didn’t continue as a career programmer. So from COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC I missed out on C C+, Natural and all the rest that has taken over the business world. Programming iterations and algorithms supported by hardware such as INTEL Sunny Lake etc are remarkable.

Comparing Intel Gen 10 to Commodore 64’s or Osborne’s- or even the venerable IBM 360 Mainframe, could make some snicker. Intel Cannon Lake release date, news, and rumors

Top-down structured programming, modules and subroutines- I guess they long ago got rid of goto’s. They are able to find the right move and model various theoretical move constructs to great depth.

Democrats Invented 'White Supremacy'

The term is pejorative of course. Historically there has been racism and tribalism since the beginning. Of hundreds of hominids and proto-human species, human beings as they are now is the sole survivor.

European history had an age of colonization that followed about a thousand years of Mongols, Arabs and Turks invading Europe. Human slavery was ubiquitous across all races in one form or another until the past thousand years more or less.
In the United States the Democrat Party was the party of slavery. Republicans with their first President elected; Abraham Lincoln, ended it. Confederate survivors in the aftermath formed the KKK and reinvented slavery as convict labor that continued until the 1920s in the south. The Democrat Party of the post-war south was the Jim Crow party. Following the civil war, southern Democrats were not trusted in the White House before Jimmy Carter. They were regarded as the white supremacist party. The late Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts strongly disliked Jimmy Carter and ran against him in 1980. John F. Kennedy was a northern Democrat who brought non-WASPs and other minorities into the Democrat Party in 1960.

The term white supremacy is pejorative as I said, for all races have tried and still try to dominate or assert themselves too much. It depends on who the press favors for political correctness at any given time. The majority of the people are probably more or less racially tolerant if their economic interests aren’t threatened. Social stability and less use of adverse social methods within an enlightened ecological, economically sustainable world for all people, is the goal now I suppose. Rational environmental use while keeping civil rights and freedom for individuals intact will be challenging in the next century.

OT Salvation and Eternal Life

Before the worldly birth of the Lord, what did people do for salvation and eternal life? I wonder if one can make an inference from Adam and Eve- who seemed not to have experienced time in the garden- that souls were meant to be eternal, yet of course bungled it from the start. The proto-evangelium indicates a plan for correction and reconciliation eventually. Obeying the laws of God were required, yet no one could satisfy the condition, so a new covenant was made. I believe that if Jews could have lived by the law they would have been fine with God. So I believe that people like Isaiah and Hosea were saved though the majority wasn't.

Philo of Alexandria was an interesting philosopher who was influenced by the Kabbalah about the time the 70 were translating the Septuagint in Alexandria Egypt. He has all sort of mentions of various heavens- rather comparable in some ways to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I try not to get caught up much in metaphysics for cosmology regarding heaven and where it is- after all Einsteinian general relativity illustrates the problems with that. I would say something like- it is with God rather than it is 1000 miles east and 2000 up. People have pointed out several examples of people that went unto God (i.e. Noah, Enoch) and I believe that sort of thing indicates that God has given them eternal life. Back in the day those people weren't very much into abstract spatio-temporal concepts. I believe that since God is eternal souls are too. The fall of mankind resulted in them being downloaded into the temporal world in order to contain them because they were full of sin- missing the mark of obedience to the will of God. The temporal world has thermodynamics and entropy...God makes those things and Universe as a subset of a meta-set I suppose. Temporality is not forever.

https://www.gotquestions.org/Old-Testament-salvation.html?fbclid=IwAR3RAtlkl2Kkh1_km21znrY_S-MwK0p2arbXq5ZodPPgwxFPcu81SMiU4_Y

Genesis 15:6 King James Version (KJV)

6 "And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness."

Blitz- Marshall Defense (3M)

                                     I played black in this Queen's gambit declined Marshall defense.