After such a long pause it seems only natural that I come up with a good chess blog post and I think this one, about the Evans Gambit, fits the bill. Since it is a gambit employed in the Giuoco Piano/Italian Game opening, it has been widely used from the 1820s when it was first documented. There are numerous videos on it on YouTube, but the one I consider the best is the one below, from GM Gregory Kaidanov.



I have also explored the gambit with ChessBase, but there it is difficult to see the spectacular games, the ones that lead in traps or quick wins, as they are often studied and the mistakes there not repeated in high level games.

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. Bc4 {The Ruy-Lopez (Bb6) is twice as common, but this is the second most popular move for White.} Bc5 {The main Black response to Bc4, almost on par with Nf6.}
4. b4 {The Evans Gambit, giving material for speed. It is interesting to note that this gambit is the second most popular way to go from here, after the mainline c3.}
(4. O-O {When first invented by Evans, he castled first.} d6 {Here is a trap in the original Evans Gambit.}
5. b4 Bxb4
6. c3 Ba5
7. d4 Bg4
8. Qb3 Qd7
9. Ng5 Nd8
10. dxe5 dxe5
11. Ba3 Nh6
12. f3 Bb6+
13. Kh1 Bh5
14. Rd1 Qc8
15. Rxd8+ Qxd8
16. Nxf7 Bxf7
(16... Nxf7
17. Bb5+ c6
18. Qe6+ Qe7
19. Qxe7#)
(16... Qh4
17. Bb5+ c6
18. Qe6+ Qe7
19. Qxe7#)
17. Bxf7+ Nxf7
18. Qe6+ Qe7
19. Qxe7#)
4... Bxb4 {The overwhelmingly more used move to accept the gambit, rather than decline it.}
(4... Bb6 {A possible run for the lot less employed gambit declined variation.}
5. a4 a6 6. Nc3
(6. a5 Ba7
7. b5 axb5
8. Bxb5 {This transposes into a sort of Ruy-Lopez.})
6... Nf6
7. Nd5 Nxd5
8. exd5 Nd4
9. a5 Ba7
10. d6 cxd6
11. c3 Nc6
12. O-O O-O
13. d4 h6
14. Re1 Qf6
15. Nd2 exd4
16. Ne4 Qg6
17. cxd4 d5
18. Bxd5 Nxb4
19. Bb3 d5
20. Ng3 Bg4
21. Qd2 Nc6
22. Bc2 Qf6
23. Qd3 g6
24. Bxh6 Bxd4
25. Bxf8 Rxf8 {0-1 Santos,M (2245)-Martins,C (2278)/Americana 2000/EXT 2001})
5. c3 {Multipurpose move to defend d4, make way for the queen to go to b3 and doing it with tempo as it is attacking the Black bishop.} Ba5 {Bishop retreats, keeping an eye on the White king.}
(5... Bc5 {Bc5 transposes easily, but also has the disadvantage of giving White an extra tempo after d4.}
6. d4 exd4
7. O-O)
(5... Be7
6. d4 Na5
7. Nxe5 Nxc4
8. Nxc4 {Beautiful center and development options.} d5
9. exd5 Qxd5
10. Ne3 Qd8
(10... Qa5
11. O-O Nf6
12. c4 O-O
13. Bb2)
11. O-O Nf6
12. c4 O-O
13. Nc3)
(5... Bd6 {Not used a lot, as it cramps the d pawn.}
6. d4 Nf6
7. O-O O-O
8. Re1 h6
9. Nbd2 {Leads for a closed game for both sides, not really in the Evans spirit.})
6. d4 {Defended by queen, knight and a pawn that is, at the moment, pinned, White aggressively makes a claim on the center.} exd4 {The defending pawn can not move and taking with the knight invites a host of unpleasantness}
(6... d6
7. Qb3 Qd7
8. dxe5 Bb6
9. Nbd2 Na5
10. Qc2 Nxc4
11. Nxc4 d5
12. exd5 Qxd5
13. Qa4+ Bd7
14. Nxb6 cxb6
15. Qb4 Ne7 {Three games in the database for this, two White wins and a draw.})
(6... Qe7
7. O-O Bb6
8. Ba3 d6
9. Bb5 Bd7
10. Bxc6 Bxc6
11. Nxe5 Bb5
12. Re1 Qe6
13. Nf3 O-O-O
14. Bb2 a5
15. Nbd2 Qd7
16. c4 Ba4
17. Nb3 Ne7
18. Qd2 Nc6
19. Bc3 Rhe8
20. d5 Nb4
21. Bxb4 axb4
22. Qxb4 Bxb3
23. axb3 {1-0 Sveshnikov,E (2560)-Sofieva,A (2370)/ Cappelle la Grande 1995/EXT 1997})
(6... Qf6
7. O-O Nge7
8. Bg5 Qd6
9. d5 Nd8
10. Qa4 b6
(10... f6
11. Bc1 Bb6
12. Na3 c6
13. Rd1 {Tchigorin})
11. Na3 a6 {Two games between Chigorin and Steinitz in 1889 from here: one won by White, the other by Black.})
7. O-O {Main themes in the Evans: keep your king safe, develop as many pieces as possible and prevent the Black king from castling.} Nge7 {Nge7 is the move masters have found most effective against the Evans gambit, as well as d6, but at amateur or club level it is more likely you will see Black take the pawn on c3.}
(7... d6 {Meant to protect against the push of the White pawn to e5 and liberating the bishop.}
8. cxd4 Bb6
9. Nc3
(9. d5 Na5
10. Bb2 Ne7 {And again: Nge7.}
11. Bd3 O-O {At this point we can assume that the gambit has failed, as Black has achieved castling, but they are not out of the woods yet.})
9... Bg4 {Black is planning to castle queen side and their position is getting better.}
(9... Nge7 {At this point, Nge7 is a mistake.}
10. Ng5 O-O
11. Qh5)
(9... Nf6
10. e5 dxe5
11. Ba3 {Not taking the e pawn, but preventing Black from castling!} Bxd4 {let us see how it could go down from here.}
12. Qb3 Qd7
13. Rae1 Na5
14. Nxe5 Nxb3
15. Nxf7+ Qe6
16. Bxe6 Bxe6
17. Nxh8 {White wins a lot of material here.})
10. Bb5 Bxf3
11. gxf3 {Take with the pawn to continue to protect d4.} a6
12. Ba4 Ba5
13. Bxc6+ bxc6
14. Qa4 Bxc3
15. Qxc6+ Kf8
16. Qxc3 {Now material is even, but Black cannot castle and does not control the center.})
(7... dxc3 {Taking the pawn, accepting this second gambit, might seem a good idea, but it only allows White to develop a powerful attack.}
8. Qb3 {attacking e7, b7, c3 as well as getting close to the lightly defended Black bishop.} Qf6 {The only options for Black to defend the e7 pawn are Qf6 or Qe7.}
(8... Qe7
9. Nxc3 Bxc3
(9... Nf6 {The usual move in this situation is Bxc3. The Nf6 variation is what happened in the Fischer-Fine game from 1963, the one in the video above. The rest of the moves are from that game.}
10. Nd5 Nxd5
11. exd5 Ne5
12. Nxe5 Qxe5
13. Bb2 Qg5
14. h4 Qxh4
15. Bxg7 Rg8
16. Rfe1+ Kd8
17. Qg3 Qxg3
18. Bf6#)
10. Qxc3 f6 {At this point Black has not yet achieved safety, but it is pretty close. I continue with the main line, without annotations.}
11. Ba3 d6
12. Bd5 Bd7
(12... Qd7
13. Rac1 Nge7
14. Rfe1 Qd8
15. Nh4 Bg4
16. Qg3 Qd7
17. h3 Be6 {Rajaboz-Smeets 1995, ended in draw.})
13. Rfe1 O-O-O {Black castles (Steinitz Gray 1872), although White manages to win.})
9. e5 {The pawn cannot be taken due to the threat of Re1.} Qg6 {Only good square for the queen.}
(9... Nxe5
10. Re1 d6
11. Qb5+ {and if Black protects the knight with the pawn on d7, they open themselves to this fork.})
10. Nxc3 {Gaining back a pawn and bringing yet another piece into the game. White has brought almost all the pieces out, while Black is cramped.} Nge7 {And here it is again, Ne7. If playing correctly, it seems Black cannot move that knight anywhere else in any variation.}
11. Ne2 {Very sophisticated idea, as it attempts to lure Black into castling and losing their queen or some other piece in its attempted rescue.} O-O {Black falls into the trap. The next few moves demonstrate it.}
12. Nf4 Qe4 {The only acceptable move for the queen.}
(12... Qg4
13. h3 Qf5
14. Bd3 Nd4
15. Nxd4 Qxe5)
(12... Qh6
13. Ne6)
13. Bd3 Qb4 {Only safe square.}
14. Qd1 {The Black queen is still in trouble, as Rb1 follows.} Ng6 {This is the only move that is giving respite to the queen, but White still gains advantage.}
(14... d6
15. Rb1 Qc5
16. Rb5 Qc3
17. Bb2 {Queen is trapped.})
15. Rb1 Qe7
16. Nd5 Qe6
17. Rb5 {threatening to take on a5 and then fork queen and rook at c7.} Rb8
18. Ba3 d6
19. exd6 cxd6
20. Ng5 Qd7
21. Qh5 h6
22. Nf6+ gxf6
23. Qxh6 fxg5
24. Bb2 Nce5
25. Rxe5 dxe5
26. Bxe5 f6
27. Bc4+ Rf7
28. Qxg6+ Kf8
29. Bd6+ Ke8
30. Qg8+ Rf8
31. Qxf8#)

For more background you can scour the net for videos on the Evans Gambit, there are a lot. There are a multitude of traps in the Evans as well, for the unprepared. One video that I do recommend, though, is Ruy Lopez vs Italian Game where it is explained why the Giuoco Piano is less favoured than the Ruy Lopez, even if it seems to open up more avenues of attack, and also what are the goals of White in the opening, thus explaining a lot about the coices made during the Evans Gambit.

Enjoy!

Close friends and family of mine live in the world of alternative medicine. They believe and practice homeopathy, all kinds of massages that use bio energy, they take drugs made from plants and use all sorts of essences and stuff like that. I, on the other hand, live in the world of provable science, double blind studies and technology. And yet, after resisting the influence of my peers for so long, there are three stories which, ironically, are from the world of scientific (OK, let's call it commercial) medicine, which make me doubt the validity of my faith in it.

First of all there is a TED talk which I embed here.

This guy, Ben Goldacre, tells the story of experiments that form the basis of our medical beliefs and of the drugs and methods doctors prescribe to patients. As an example, from 53 published experiments on cancer, 47 were NOT replicable. That means only 6% of them were. Why is that? Because scientific papers are being published with overwhelming bias if they present positive results. Therefore if I make 2 experiments and one of them shows success, it is more likely to be the only published. So for everyone reading scientific papers it would appear I was successful 100% of the time.

The second story is slightly related to the first, since the wonderdrug Tamiflu was also mentioned in the above talk. Here is Peter Gotzsche, leader of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, wondering why Roche, the firm that created Tamiflu and made billions on the bird and porcine flu scares, did not release any of the relevant data on the workings of the drug for over three years now. One might argue that the tonnes of Tamiflu stockpiled by different governments could be completely useless.

But the third story is truly baffling. NewScientist published this article that says two recent studies have shown that beta-blockers, a type of drug used for over 40 years for treating heart problems, has NO effect. It works by blocking the effects of adrenalin and noradrenalin and, it was believed, it helped minimize the risk of heart attack. Apparently, they don't.

So, when I read these stories in no more than a month, how can I trust anything in the world of medicine? It is a highly lucrative business and it was to be expected to be filled with corruption and misdirection, but never have I thought that its basic functionality could be affected. Entering a drug store, I see that the shelves are filled with useless dietary supplements in colorful boxes and bottles, but I always assume that the drugs I get for specific ailments or by name are the real deal, that what is written on the label and prospect is correct. I also feel that people that die or suffer because they chose the wrong kind of medicine do so in a sort of natural selection; I just didn't believe that one of those people could be me.

I used the original name for the book, but I didn't read it in Swedish, I read it in English for obvious reasons. John Ajvide Lindqvist wrote this 2004 book and the screenplay for the 2008 Swedish movie with the same name, but not for the American version Let Me In, made in 2010.

Let the Right One In, as the title of the book translates into English, is the story of a bullied 12 year old that forms a relationship with a child vampire. And not the sparkly or stylish vampires, but the ones that kill for a living. The title comes from verses of Morrissey's song Let the Right One Slip In. Of course the Americans could not help but remake the film using beautiful people and more romance. Actually, I didn't see that version and maybe I should before I start saying bad things about it, but I did watch the Swedish version and it was a beautiful film and it was the reason for me reading the book. If you haven't seen any of the versions I highly recommend you read the book first. The film is more mellowed down, but also preserves some hints of the story in the book and has that same eerie alienated feel to it.

The movie transforms the story in a sort of romantic late childhood thing, but the book is only slightly like that as it covers uncomfortable subjects like the poor and artificial Socialist suburbs in Sweden, child gangs, bullying, paedophilia, homosexuality, murder. The story is both spooky and disturbing, but also weirdly comforting. I really don't want to spoil it, so I will end with the link to my review of the Swedish film and a short conclusion: the book is not brilliant, but it is decently written and has a good story. It would be a shame not to read it.

I've added functionality to remember the settings of a user in cookies, so that when you return, the choices you made are persisted. These choices include the use of important quotes, the presence of flies and cats on the blog as well as the use of dyslexic fonts! If you are dyslexic you should definitely check that option. The tools are available from both the left side of the blog as well as from the new toolbar (which doesn't seem to appear on tablets).

The toolbar I've added has more options than these tools, including a one button RSS subscription feature, a nice button for sharing the content with your friends, a list of people online on the blog, miscellaneous notifications, as well as a chat! I will try to be present in the chat so that I can answer your questions, but I am not promising anything.

Please tell me what you think of the new features. (especially if you are dyslexic :) )

Bear with me here, this is one of those posts that come from an idea and result in a completely different thing.

This one started with the idea that religions have an expiration date. There were a lot of religions before Christianity took hold of the world, some of them really really old. The innovation of both Christianity and Islam is that they introduced prophets, new versions of their Gods and proof that they are not dead, uncaring or otherwise absentee. So, I asked myself, is it possible that a religion has an expiration date, after which it can't support the hold on its followers and they drift away to other things, like Scientology?

Then, the second idea. In order to create a new religion, one that can be called something more than a sect, we need a prophet. Someone with a history so outrageous that people can associate it with divinity. He or she must also sacrifice themselves for their strict ideals and/or people. We also need someone who came about sooner than 2000 years.

Idea number three: Hitler! He affected the entire world, he had pretty strict ideals and has sacrificed himself for them and (presumably) for his people, whoever they might have been. Outrageous life: check. New to the scene: check. Fanatic following: check. He is the perfect prophet! Add to this his deep hatred of Jews, who can only be reasonably differentiated from other people only by their religion. Add to this the mysticism that consumed Hitler before he died and his fascination with the occult. You get a prophet that burned the world for religious reasons.

Idea number four: That idea number three must piss both sides equally much. Neonazis would probably consider it blasphemy (thus unwittingly giving strength to it). Jews... well, they are pretty pissed at Nazis. Any cult based on them would probably disagree with them, too. The other people, they would bring into the argument the horror of war and the Holocaust and other things like that. Admittedly, the God that Hitler would have been a prophet for has to be pretty twisted, but we've seen worse, as gods go. The present ones are Gandhi compared with the old bunch.

Idea number five: we've discussed a ridiculous idea and the arguments against it are pretty much liked to the horror that Hitler brought onto the world. While over 70 million people have died as a consequence of World War II, we fixate on the religious connotations of the Holocaust and the directed persecution of one people. I hope I am wrong, but when I imagine the angry masses, terrified by this idea of mine, I imagine people bringing the Jew massacre in the forefront, with pancards and signs with "Never again". And that leads me to this fifth idea: that if 6 million people being massacred for their religion and nationality is horror, then the rest of 64 million being ignored or considered casualties of "regular" war, the idea that people can be killed in the millions and it is OK, if there are political and economic reasons for it... that is true horror.

William Golding writes difficult books. They are not only complex in prose and detail, but dissecting difficult subjects as well. Best known for Lord of the Flies, which is a pretty dark and twisted tail of children getting trapped in what is basically a social experiment, he manages to write something even darker in Darkness Visible.

The book follows the story of several characters. There is Matty, a child that emerges from the burning wreck of a bombed building during WWII with half of the body burned. He grows up in the state social system, interacts with Mr. Pedigree, a teacher who is also a raving paedophile, and then spends the rest of his life seeking redemption. He is a simple, almost stupid person, easily influenced, but taciturn and withdrawn most of the time. There there are the two beautiful and very smart daughters of a rich man. With every opportunity given to them, they prefer to dwell on the remoteness of their father and screw their lives completely. And finally Sim and Edwin, two old men passionate about books and good friends, who despite their best intentions and education are not capable of understanding the world and people around them.

Golding uses themes I've seen before: the way people can perceive so differently a shared event, like in Rites of Passage and the almost clinical dissection of the motivations characters have in doing what they do, as in both Lord of the Flies and Rites of Passage. The way he explores the inner, most private triggers of his characters is almost creepy.

The book is not exactly a success. I had a hard time reading it, mostly because of its overly verbose prose, and the presentation of people's lives sometimes goes to incredible extremes, escaping the main story completely. That doesn't mean it is not a brilliant book. One just has to be in the right mood to be able to finish and understand it.

Any person that is remotely interested in the history of chess knows the name of José Raúl Capablanca. He was a great chess player and the world champion for 7 years in a row. I've just finished reading one of his books, entitled Chess Fundamentals, and I thought it was great. It featured clear chess principles, backed by real master games and, what I believe it is most important in the book, all the matches featured in Chess Fundamentals are annotated by Capablanca, who focuses on what moves he saw best, the ones he didn't like and, most fortuitous, what he thought when he played those moves, as many of the games are his.

Unfortunately, as with any chess book, one must spend time to focus on the details and to revisit it as many times as it takes to understand and learn what Capablanca wanted to express. I've read the book as part of an iPad application called "e+books". You get the free application, this Capablanca free book, then you have to pay for any other there. What I found really nice is that the positions and moves in the book are mirrored by a chess board that allows navigation between moves, variations, going back and forth, etc. It really helps reading the book and I recommend it, especially for beginners. Using a real chessboard to mirror the moves might be best, but it adds a layer of discomfort and complexity that might deter someone from finishing the book.

The book is structured into 6 chapters, the last being a series of 14 games in which Capablanca either lost or won. He begins with some principles of the endgame, the part of a game that he considers the most important. If you recall, Josh Waitzkin also highly recommended focusing chess training on the endgame, where there are few pieces and the principles become clearer. Also, since some chess games end with mates somewhere in the middle game, there is less opportunity to learn that part of chess. For openings Capablanca has only a few words, focusing on the healthy development of pieces, which he considers the most important. As stated previously, the games are the most important and their complexity is pretty high. Some say that the book is not fit for beginners for that reason alone, but I disagree. Even the most complex strategies are explained in the annotations and I believe they are a rare opportunity for anyone to glimpse in the mind of a chess master and realize where their aim as chess players lies.

All in all a rather easy to read book, with the help of the iPad application, but very hard to completely understand and remember. I intend to return to it, several times perhaps, in order to internalize some of the cool patterns of thought I saw in there. I warmly recommend it.

I had an idea one of the previous days, an idea that seemed so great and inevitable that I thought about patenting it. You know, when you have a spark of inspiration and you tell no one about it or maybe a few friends and a few years later you see someone making loads of money with it? I thought I could at least "subscribe" to the idea somehow, make it partly my own. And so I asked a patent specialist about it.

He basically said two things. First of all, even if it is a novel idea, if it made of previously existing parts that can obviously be put together, then it doesn't qualify as a patent. If the concept is obvious enough in any way, it doesn't qualify. Say if someone wrote a scientific paper about a part of it and you find the rest in some nutjob blog about alien conspiracies, then you can't patent it. The other thing that he told me is that a true patent application costs about 44000$, in filing and attorney fees. I don't imagine that's a small sum for someone in the US or in another rich country, but it is almost insane for anyone living anywhere else.

But there is a caveat here. What if the nutjob alien conspiracy blog would be this one? What if, by publishing my idea here, no one could ever patent it and the best implementation would be the one that would gather the most support? It's a bit of "no, fuck you!", but still, why the hell not? So here it is:

I imagine, with the new climate of "do not track"ing and privacy concerns that search engines will have a tougher and tougher time gathering information about your personal preferences. Google will not know what you searched for before and therefore will not be able to show you the things it thinks you are most interested in. And that is a problem, since it probably would have been right and you would have been interested in those things. The user, seeing how the search engine does not find what they are looking for, will not be happy.

My solution, and something that is way simpler than storing cookies and analysing behaviour, is to give the responsibility (back) to the user. They would choose a "search profile" and, based on that, the search engine would filter and prioritize the results in a way specific to that profile. You can customize your profile and maybe save it in a list or you can use a standard one, but the results you get are the ones you intended to get.

A few examples, if you will: the "I want to download free stuff" profile would prioritize blogs and free sites and filter out commercial sites that contain words like "purchase", "buy", "trial", "shareware", etc; it would remove Amazon and other online shops from the result list and prioritize ThePirateBay, for example. Some of the smarter and tech savy Googlers are using the "-" filter to remove such words, but they are still getting the most commercially available sites there are. A search profile like this would try to analyse the site, see if it fits the "commercial" category and then filter it out. Now, you might think that sites will adapt and try to trick the engine into thinking they are not commercial in nature. No, they won't, because then the "I want to buy something" profile would not find them. Of course, they will adapt somehow and create two versions of the site, one that would seem commercial and one that would not. But the extra effort would remove from their profit margin. Or try a search profile like "long tail", where the stories that get most coverage and are reproduced in a lot of sites would get filtered out, allowing one to access new information as it comes in.

Bottom line is, I need such a service, but at the moment I am unwilling to invest in making one. First of all it would be a waste of time if it didn't work. Second of all it would get stolen and copied immediately by people with more money than me if it did work. Guess what? It's in my free blog. If anyone does it, they can't patent it, they can only use it because it is a good idea and they should make it really nice and usable before other people make it better.

For a few hours, as I stood in the line at the Bucharest prefecture for getting new licence plates after one of them fell down, I had a single word throbbing in my head like a bad headache: decay.

You see, I went there,in Pipera, near the Oracle offices, only half a year ago and I was amazed of the apparent efficiency of the place. You would go and ask at the Information desk on the proper procedure to solve your particular problem, you would take an order number and you would wait until an electronic display would show your number. You could see that the current number is 1 and that it changes every ten minutes or so, so if you have number 20 you have to return in approximately three hours. The building was new, large, with a lot of parking spaces, lit up inside, with clean toilets; in short everything you would want of a governmental building. I then thought: "Belonging to this European Union thing has its perks". The only problem were these peddlers waiting outside the offices, trying to sell you stuff like covers for documents or supports for licence plates. It reminded one you were in Romania.

This time, the electronic displays were dead. The chairs that were in the hallways for people to sit on where mostly broken, and not because of some sort of vandalism, they were just so badly designed that after sitting on them a few times, their backs would bend. Trying to right them back would strain the metal so in the end they would just fall. Half of the neon lights were defective. The male bathroom was just closed and if you wanted to wash your hands or whatever a written sign would direct you to the first floor. The functionaries, never an example of enthusiasm, managed to look even more despondent and despaired at their job. People would stand in long queues, the old Romanian system, waiting for hours to get to one of the few desks that were occupied in order to sign a few papers. The sound system, that was previously used to announce important messages, was now spewing music from a local radio station. At one time, one of the usual announcements also came out of the speakers, but at a lower volume than the music, so you wouldn't understand anything. A woman in the line got sick and went to sit down. Or she just swindled us in order to keep her spot while not standing in the line.

And thus I have wasted three hours and a half there for a signature and two new licence plates. When I got out of the building a female peddler asked me if I wanted covers for my documents. I said no, and she wished me a nice day. I bought a licence plate support from a guy, happy that I didn't have to go somewhere else for one. He even offered to install it for me, but I did it with my wife, like a couple thing.

In the end, the peddlers were the consistent and efficient ones, being even polite while they serviced you, waiting for people to buy their stuff in order to earn a few euros per day.

Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships is a sort of summarization of previous works by Eric Berne, the "father" of Transactional Analysis. It was written in 1964, but it is very actual (barring some author views that could be construed as not politically correct in this age of sensitivity). In fact it felt to me so to the point, that I am asking myself how come I've never heard of this book before.

The idea of the book is that all people are torn between their three major components:

• the Parent - exponent of the social environment, things that "are done" in the "proper" way
• the Adult - who reacts to the circumstances as they change
• the Child - the emotional being who craves satisfaction and enjoys life the most

As I see it, is a separation in things one learns from others, things one thinks for themselves and things one likes or dislikes. At the end of the book the author resorts to a similar division: the Jerk, the one that does everything based on what others would think of them, and the Sulk, the one that does everything in order to demonstrate to themselves and others that they are being mistreated by the world and they are justified in their feelings, similar to the Parent and the Child.

Then there is a presentation of Transactional Analysis, an area of psychology that feels more like economics applied to human beings, where people do things in order to settle debts or gain profit. A nice example is two people that work together and say "hi" to each other in passing whenever they meet first in the day. This is equivalent to settling a debt that each have for their level of relationship. If one of them fails to say "hi", the other will feel attacked, just as if one of the two would stop and say "well, hello! How are you?" which would also feel like an attack, one that indebts the other. These transactions are being categorized into simple transactions, pasttimes, etc.

But then the interesting part comes up. It is funny, I felt for the entire length of the read that the chapters are in the reverse order. Each chapter was more to the point and more interesting than the first. I would have organized the book starting from the introduction, then reversing the remaining chapters. The interesting part is about games, which seem like normal transactions, only they have an alternate "tricky" purpose, one that is not obvious to both people in the transaction.

Quite annoyingly, many of the games described in the book apply to the reader. One feels exposed while reading it. With a structured list of these games, one can use the book as a reference to be used for further study. Each game is presented with their purpose, their "thesis" or pretext and expectations, their actors and their "antithesis". A clear warning is sent by Berne, though: the antithesis of a game is just a way to shortcircuit it and refuse to play, not a "solution" for the problems raised by the playing of said game. Indeed, when faced with a person that refuses to play or, worse, blocks their own playing of the game, they become anxious, depressed, maybe violent, depending on how "hard" they play the game.

An interesting ending is the listing of the reasons why games exist from different standpoints: social, personal, emotional, etc. The games are learned and, in that sense, inherited from parents, then from the environment. People that play the same games stick together and people that play different games are growing apart. That pretty much explains why people that come from the same settings get to have the same social standings and work and live in the same world. Sadly, it also explains why social cases need to make enormous efforts to be accepted, to "make it".

Also, the author presents his view of the best psychological mindset, the one he calls Autonomy. It requires three ingredients: Awareness, to be able to see your surroundings as they are, not as you were taught to; Spontaneity, to be able to have access to your own thoughts, unfiltered by other mechanisms; Intimacy, to be able to share what you are, as you are. A kind of a Zen philosophy. He reckons anything less is not quite living, but only going through the motions. I am not sure how I feel about this, right now.

For me, the book was very interesting. In truth, I should reread it, or at least summarize it into a logical schema that I would add to this post. I am not sure I will do that, but I intend to. Afterwards, I would use it as a tool for introspection and for analyzing my interactions with others. Yes, but...

Another post in my series of series I've been watching. Seriesly.


Again, since it is obvious that I am also watching shows I don't particularly like, I will employ this colour coding scheme: red for shows I do not recommend, green for those I like.

• Doctor Who - the first episode of season 7 was released. An interesting concept, but a rather unpleasant implementation. The writers chose to throw us directly in the midst of action and I felt there was no background and everything was disconnected. I do hope for the better.
• Torchwood - the next season of the other Doctor Who spin-off has not started yet. I don't even know if will ever start. I would watch it then.
• Eureka - Eureka has ended. A pretty weird finale, trying to save everything, give the show a chance for the future and also tie it to its very beginning.
• Criminal Minds - a lot of episodes remain to be watched, two seasons worth, but I couldn't make myself watch them. I think I've had my fill of police procedurals for a while.
• Dexter - I can't wait for the seventh season. Dexter's sister knows! It will be exciting, although I don't want another of those "Dexter is a daddy and he has a conscience" seasons.
• Fringe - there was one episode where the Observers had conquered Earth and were behaving like good old fashioned Nazis (oh, come on! Where is your creativity?!) but it ended just as it started, out of context. The latest season of Fringe ended with hints that this is the direction the next season will take. I certainly don't want yet another WWII movie clone.
• True Blood - season 5 just ended and it was pretty fun. There were a lot of boring episodes concerning the vampire authority that just didn't make sense and some other filler episodes, but all in all it was consistent with previous quality. Bill has become a super vamp, only he's nuts! Cool!
• Weeds - the series has not ended yet and I am still watching it. I get tired of the American affectations of the show; I think that bothers me most about it. And the story has become unsaveable. And the lead character is seven years older than the hot MILF she started as. But I am still watching... hmm
• The Good Wife - season 3 ended well. Unfortunately, Tony Scott died, too. I hope that doesn't affect the quality of the show. Season 4 is due to start at the end of the month.
• Haven - season 3 of Haven is also to start at the end of the month. I will probably watch it, since I can do it with my wife, but the show has gotten stale.
• Lost Girl - haven't watched this show for a while, even if I have a lot of episodes to see. I know it is a teenager show, but some of them work for me, too. This was too... Twittery?
• Falling Skies - second season was OK. It's sci-fi, so I watch it, but the script doesn't make sense most of the time. A new alien species has arrived for season 3. Are they allies or foes? Or has Pamela dreamed again?
• Southpark - the second half of the 16th season is due in October. It is one of the few comedy shows I watch and I really like it. The humour quality is not consistent, but it is great on average.
• The Killing - still on my watch list, being a police show and all.
• Suits - second season just ended and it was pretty far fetched.I enjoy watching it, though.
• Breaking Bad - I have decided I will watch BB when this fifth and final season ends. I don't know why I couldn't bring myself to watch the last two seasons. Maybe because the main character is so desperate when he actually doesn't need to be.
• Californication - the fifth season was pretty cool and it ended with Hank being poisoned. Will he survive? Doh!
• Beavis&Butt-head - I am waiting to see if they make any more episodes. I was disappointed with the new episodes.
• Homeland - still on my to watch list, mainly because my wife was watching it with me and she doesn't want to watch it now, but I bet she would mind if I watch it alone. And also I didn't feel like it much.
• The Fades - BBC Three fucked up badly. They cancelled the show in favour of Being Human's fifth season. You see, it has vampires and werewolves in it. Wankers!
• Hidden - Four episode miniseries from the BBC about the dirtyworks of the British political system. Still haven't watched it.
• The Walking Dead - I am still watching it, and the new season seems to introduce a real threat: other live humans. Makes sense, but how nice can it be, after the emotional drama crap they pulled last season?
• A Game of Thrones - The show is moving so fast, they had to change the story a little. At every episode I get to hear "Oy! that wasn't in the book!" from the wife. Of course it wasn't, dear, it had no pictures! Mean jokes aside, the show is solid, but better for those not having read the books.
• Awake - I didn't start watching it an meanwhile it was cancelled. I have no idea if I will ever watch that lone season.
• Black Mirror - it was brilliant. Three separate sci-fi stories in three stand alone episodes, but high quality stuff. I hope the Brits make more.
• Boss - season 2 has started and I haven't seen one episode.
• Great Expectations - three episodes in all, another take on the Great Expectations story. I thought the wife would want to watch it, but she did not. I don't think I will watch it alone and, anyway, it's not really a TV series, more like a three part movie.
• L5 - the second episode of this VODO show still hasn't been released. I wonder if they will ever do release it. I liked the first one.
• Mad Men - still great, I've watched the fifth season and can't wait to see the sixth. Jared Harris has left the show, and I really liked him and his character.
• Misfits - next season is expected to start in late October. I wonder why so many of its stars left the show, but the show still goes on.
• Pioneer One - I have no idea if there will ever be a second season. It seems they have gone dark, while on the site there is a request for funding for a new show, called Control.
• Sherlock - I liked the first series and I will watch the second. The American's thought it was good, too, since they are making their own version, with Lucy Liu as Watson :)
• Spartacus - Vengeance - I like the show. Seeing that the story of Spartacus is so vast, I had expected a few seasons of this. However, it was announced that the next season (called War of the Damned) will wrap up everything and end the show. Why?!
• The River - horror TV show that I didn't watch, mainly because it was cancelled after the first season. I still might.
• Todd and the Book of Pure Evil - I liked the first season, but then it got a little old. The show was cancelled after the first two seasons.
• Touch - I have watched a few episodes of this. I can say that I did not like it. Keifer Sutherland is always out of breath in order to "act" emotion, but all he manages to do is make one wonder if he has a lung condition. The child is annoying. The story is, basically, that the child is magic and the people around him "help" him ... err... be magic? Only it's not magic, it's math, patterns and cell phones. Really.

Now for new shows:

• My Babysitter's a Vampire - Another Canadian fantasy comedy show. And it's better than Todd and the Book of Pure Evil! Well, it's basically True Blood in a high school and made for children and young teens. But I like it! Guilty pleasure. The blonde vampire chick is hot, too.
• Bullet in the Face - what a strange show. It's grotesquely bad acted, but in a way that makes you think they intended it like this and you are missing some kind of point. The plot revolves around a psychotic killer that gets to wear the face of the cop he killed in order to get revenge on his girlfriend who shot him in the face. It would be unconscionable to recommend it, but I watched two episodes. anyway.
• Continuum - A sci-fi show! Yay! With cops! Boo! Actually, the premise is pretty interesting and the lead actress hot. But it feels like a police procedural either way, which sucks. The plot is that a bunch of future terrorists and a cop are teleported back to our times. The terrorists terrorize, while the cop tries to catch them. Only some of the twists and some of the scripts are painfully bad. I watch it, since it's sci-fi, but it hurts a little.
• Copper - a BBC America drama about Irish immigrants during the American civil war. And set in New York (where else?). Have not started watching it, yet, but it's fresh.
• Longmire - another show about a cop. Only it doesn't feel that way. I actually look forward to the episodes of Longmire. The show is about a small town sheriff and it is based on actual books (you know, paper things with letters on it). The actors play well, the stories are good and the first season had only 10 episodes, so they each were good quality.
• Perception - another House/LieToMe clone, with this intelligent and charismatic, yet weird and rude, professor that specialises in human perception. And he helps the police solve cases. Bleah!
• Political Animals - this is a pretty neat show, even if it is about American politics seen from within a family that is filled with political people. It is not always exciting, but I like watching it, for now.
• Scandal - political thriller made by the people behind Grey's Anatomy. I haven't started watching it.
• The Newsroom - this is one of those shows that decries some aspect of American life by showing us there are exceptions to the rule, which invalidates the rule and makes us all feel good. In Romania we have this saying that the exception confirms the rule, so... Anyway, it is about unconventional people working to make "real news" and fighting corporate interests that push them to do crappy popular bullshit in order to gain ratings. People are very smart, quick, socially inept, endearing, quoting statistics and old English poetry and totally fake.

That ends this post. How much time am I wasting in order to watch all these shows? Well, it took me an hour and a half just to write about it, so you do the math.

Ship of Fools is a sci-fi book written by Richard Paul Russo. It reads a lot like a journal, written in the first person, with little (or badly evoked) emotional involvement or dynamic action. Add to this that the main character is called Bartolomeo and he is on board of a ship with no history and going nowhere in particular, where there is always a struggle between the captain and the bishop and the people of the lower class, and you kind of get the impression you are reading a Spanish crewman ship log adapted to science fiction. The low focus on technology and the way people are thinking and acting increases the feeling that this is something futuristic only by accident, and the reality of it is some feudal world, only milder than one would expect those dark times to have been. Somewhere in the second half of the book the plot veers slightly towards Event Horizon, an opportunity to make some biblical references. Even then, the book is written in the same linear and descriptive way, despite being in the first person.

The title comes from a long existing concept in Western literature, usually depicting a bunch of ridiculous people travelling together, but without an aim, and also characterizing the society from which they came as a whole. However, the book doesn't really feel like a satire and the fact that it won the Philip K. Dick award in 2001 makes me think that maybe I missed something.

Bottom line: An interesting subject, but approached in a manner that I did not enjoy very much. I could empathize with the main character, but only to a point. When actual technical decisions were made, I thought everybody was kind of stupid. Luckily enough, it is not part of any series, it is a standalone book.

I've heard about Dilbert as this corporate satire comic that is very funny. I've avoided it as much as possible, probably because I was afraid it would make fun of my way of life and find it makes valid points. Today, I succumbed to my curiosity and clicked a YouTube Dilbert video.



Conclusion: I am Dilbert...

Apparently it is the week of eulogies on my blog. Neil Armstrong died on August the 25^th. You may remember him: he was the guy that first stepped on the Moon. I didn't know the guy, other people say he was inspiring, a great person and other things like that. A good emotional blog post you can read at the Bad Astronomy site.

But I think that his death, at 82 years of age, is less relevant than the fact we stopped going to the Moon. From the dirty dozen that walked on a space body other than Earth, only 8 remain alive and they are, without exception, born in the early 1930s, so all around 80 years old. Depending on many factors that usually cancel out, these people have around a decade of life left in them, so expect that in 10 years or less we will have no man on Earth that went anywhere else. The death of the last man to have walked on the Moon would be even sadder than Neil's.

That's not only romantically ugly, emotionally wrong, it is plain stupid. It's like we close our senses, humanity as a whole, to the options we have, to the alternatives laid out right in front of us. We act like those retarded tourists that go to an exotic location only once in their life and they return with "Meh! No one spoke English, I didn't have the guts to try the food and the service was crap". Forget the accounting bottom lines and the terribilistic "We gotta stop putting our eggs in a single basket", just think that in a few years we, as the human race, we'll have forgotten what it is like to step on the Moon, the experience gone from our collective memory. We will just sit there, on the bloody couch, counting our money and looking at the picture of the imprint of Neil Amstrong's foot, a simple postcard to replace memories lost.

Yes! Another good sci-fi book. Blindsight is a hard science fiction standalone novel in which, using the idea of contact with an impossibly alien species as a pretext, Peter Watts discusses hard subjects like the future of humanity and its very definition, the nature of conciousness and the difference between intelligence and self awareness. It also features vampires (ugh!), but with a good scientific background and true relation to the plot.

There is no romance in this bleak and autopsic book, where the essence of all the characters gets dissected to complete the tableau of the human race under cold fluorescent lighting. Good stuff! But one gets to expect this from Canadian writers, eh? :)

The other cool reason why you should read the book is that it is free at Watts' site: Blindsight. Enjoy!