World Chess President Claims He Was Abducted By Space Aliens — And They Invented Chess
“They came in a flying saucer, picked me up, and I spent a whole day in outer space.”
The story‘s over at the Huffington Post, where current International Chess Foundation president – and former president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia – Kirsan Ilyumzhinov describes his supposed encounters:
It was not in our Russian space vehicles, but with aliens. They came in a flying saucer, picked me up, and I spent a whole day in outer space.
It was from my apartment. They flew in and picked me up. They were wearing yellow spacesuits. I remember this moment exactly. We went off to their interplanetary ship, and I started to feel a lack of air, a lack of oxygen. They gave me a spacesuit as well.
One of the aliens pointed to his chest and indicated that the oxygen supply could be regulated by turning a dial. So this is what I did.
Ilyumzhinov also contends that chess was likely an extraterrestrial invention:
“My theory is that chess comes from space. Because it’s the same rules — 64 squares, black and white, and the same rules in Japan, in China, in Qatar, in Mongolia, in Africa — the rules are the same. Why? I think maybe it is from space.”
Below, Ilyumzhinov describes his supposed encounter with beings not-of-this-world:
Friday will bring a high of seventy-six to Whitewater, and an even chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Sunrise is 6:38 and sunset 6:58, for 12h 20m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
George Washington lays the cornerstone to the United States Capitol building, the home of the legislative branch of American government. The building would take nearly a century to complete, as architects came and went, the British set fire to it and it was called into use during the Civil War. Today, the Capitol building, with its famous cast-iron dome and important collection of American art, is part of the Capitol Complex, which includes six Congressional office buildings and three Library of Congress buildings, all developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
As a young nation, the United States had no permanent capital, and Congress met in eight different cities, including Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia, before 1791. In 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which gave President Washington the power to select a permanent home for the federal government. The following year, he chose what would become the District of Columbia from land provided by Maryland. Washington picked three commissioners to oversee the capital city’s development and they in turn chose French engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant to come up with the design. However, L’Enfant clashed with the commissioners and was fired in 1792. A design competition was then held, with a Scotsman named William Thornton submitting the winning entry for the Capitol building. In September 1793, Washington laid the Capitol’s cornerstone and the lengthy construction process, which would involve a line of project managers and architects, got under way.
In 1800, Congress moved into the Capitol’s north wing. In 1807, the House of Representatives moved into the building’s south wing, which was finished in 1811. During the War of 1812, the British invaded Washington, D.C., and set fire to the Capitol on August 24, 1814. A rainstorm saved the building from total destruction. Congress met in nearby temporary quarters from 1815 to 1819. In the early 1850s, work began to expand the Capitol to accommodate the growing number of Congressmen. In 1861, construction was temporarily halted while the Capitol was used by Union troops as a hospital and barracks. Following the war, expansions and modern upgrades to the building continued into the next century.
1942 – Spring Valley Flood
On the evening of September 17, 1942, after a day of heavy rain, water began rolling through the streets of Spring Valley, in Pierce Co. The village, strung out along the Eau Galle River in a deep valley, had been inundated before, but this was no ordinary flood. By 11:30p.m., water in the streets was 12 to 20 feet deep, flowing at 12 to 15 miles an hour, and laden with logs, lumber, and dislodged buildings. Throughout the early morning hours of Sept. 18th, village residents became trapped in their homes or were carried downstream as buildings were swept off foundations and floated away. One couple spent the night chest-deep in water in their living room, holding their family dog above the water and fending off floating furniture. The raging torrent uprooted and twisted the tracks of the Northwestern Railroad like wire, and electricity and drinking water were unavailable for several days. Miraculously, there were no deaths or serious injuries.
Here’s the final game in Puzzability‘s Mouth Pieces series:
This Week’s Game — September 14-18
Mouth Pieces
We’re listening for art sounds this week. For each day, we started with the name of a famous painting. Then, for the day’s clue, we broke it down into a series of words that, when said in order, sounds like the original title. You’ll probably need to say the words out loud to get the answers.
Example:
Him, purr, Hessians, Hun, rice
Answer:
“Impression, Sunrise” (by Claude Monet)
What to Submit:
Submit the painting’s title (as “Impression, Sunrise” in the example) for your answer.
I’m not a major-party voter, but like millions I have watched the GOP presidential debates (and will watch the Democrats’ debates, too). There’s a lot to learn from watching the candidates, for all the showiness, the pre-debate theatrics, etc.
The key point about all these encounters is that they are intra-party affairs – it’s a debate among those of the same general view. If one GOP candidate does poorly, there’s another GOP candidate likely to gain. Success or failure of some in this setting is not a repudiation of a party teachings; it’s simply a reallocation of support among relatively like-minded candidates.
That brings us to Gov. Walker: conservatism is everywhere in the national GOP, but his candidacy as a conservative has been a disappointment.
Scott Walker: He had a good first 10 minutes with his “apprentice” line. But he faded after that. It was like the football team that immediately delivered on the trick play it had been practicing, but then showed little else for the rest of the game.
It seems that Scott Walker knows it was not a good night, from post-debate remarks quoted in the Journal Sentinel:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker needed a breakout performance in Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate, but he had a problem:
“Short of tackling someone, I don’t know what more I could have done,” Walker told reporters after the debate. “I aggressively interrupted (CNN moderator) Jake Tapper a bunch of times along the way and short of an absolute brawl, I don’t know what more one could do.”
One makes one’s own opportunities. That means, in this case, speaking more, and speaking in sharp exchanges with rivals within the same party.
That didn’t happen at the first debate; it didn’t happen in the second.
Candidates are responsible for their own campaigns, of course, but it’s worth repeating that Wisconsin’s press has not prepared her candidates for the kind of exchanges that other major-party candidates handle often and easily.
Thursday in town will be partly cloudy during the day, with a daytime high of eighty-four, and a probability of thunderstorms later tonight. Sunrise is 6:37 and sunset 7:00, for 12h 23m 20s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1501% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Fire & Rescue Task Force meets at 7 AM.
After nearly four months of debate, on September 8, 1787, the final text of the Constitution was set down and revised. Then, an official copy of the document was engrossed by Jacob Shallus. The effort consisted of copying the text (prelude, articles and endorsement) on four sheets of vellumparchment, made from treated animal skin and measuring approximately 28 inches (71 cm) by 23 inches (58 cm), probably with a goosequill. Shallus engrossed the entire document except for the list of states at the end of the document, which are in Alexander Hamilton‘s handwriting.[103] On September 17, 1787, following a speech given by Benjamin Franklin, 39 delegates endorsed and submitted the Constitution to the Congress of the Confederation.[104]
September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest day in U.S. military history. More than 125,000 troops faced off and over 24,000 were killed, wounded or missing as Union forces stopped the first Confederate invasion of the North. The 2nd, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments were in the thickest of the fighting. The 6th Infantry led a charge that killed or wounded 150 of its 280 men. Of the 800 officers and men in the Iron Brigade who marched out that morning, 343 were wounded or killed.
Here’s Puzzability‘s Thursday game in its week-long Mouth Pieces series:
This Week’s Game — September 14-18
Mouth Pieces
We’re listening for art sounds this week. For each day, we started with the name of a famous painting. Then, for the day’s clue, we broke it down into a series of words that, when said in order, sounds like the original title. You’ll probably need to say the words out loud to get the answers.
Example:
Him, purr, Hessians, Hun, rice
Answer:
“Impression, Sunrise” (by Claude Monet)
What to Submit:
Submit the painting’s title (as “Impression, Sunrise” in the example) for your answer.
Over at National Review, conservative Peter Spiliakos writes in reply to conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin on Scott Walker’s campaign. (Rubin thinks Walker has gone too far to the right, but Spiliakos thinks that Walker – and many Republicans leaders – have lost touch with huge parts of their own electorate.)
For Rubin the matter is one of ideology; for Spiliakos it’s one of unfamiliarity with one’s own party.
Spiliakos’s observations, however, are applicable apart from the Walker campaign, and apart from GOP politics. They’re more broadly interesting than as an intra-party discussion. (I’m a libertarian, and find his remarks useful beyond major-party politics to which I have, and owe, no allegiance.)
Spiliakos contends that
If it was just a Scott Walker problem, it wouldn’t matter. Walker is just one politician. The big problem is the social gulf between establishment Republican politicians and large sections of the right-leaning electorate is so big that the politicians can’t even imagine what many of their voters are thinking.
A competent and honest political class would try to find the common ground, and reach a compromise between the party’s factions, but the current Republican leadership seems to take little interest in the opinions of anyone outside the employer interests and consultant/lobbyist/campaign aide/congressional staffer apparatchiks.
Here’s Spiliakos on why this happens:
I think the problem is more social. With the decline of civic institutions among people in the lower half of the income distribution, the social power of groups that are well organized tends to increase. The influence of the donor class doesn’t just come from the checks. It comes from the social interactions at local Chamber of Commerce events where an aspiring politician gives a speech and then listens to local business owners talk about how they have trouble finding willing workers at a good price (to the employer.) The unorganized majority of Americans who disagree with this view don’t get to invite Walker to meetings, because they don’t have meetings.
I’ve no doubt – none at all – that there is a wide gap between self-described elites and ordinary people. Locally, however, I don’t think the biggest problems are ones of personal unfamiliarity. (After all, it’s not as though I am describing myself as a tribune of the people. There are already too many people in town who claim to speak on behalf of all the town; this is a site of individual, independent commentary.)
Our local problem isn’t that elites don’t speak to ordinary people – it’s that local elites, by an over-reliance on an echo chamber of their own kind – lack the clear reasoning of both ordinary people locally and competitive Americans elsewhere. They’re not unfamiliar with ordinary people; they’re too familiar (and too satisfied with) their own thinking.
They see ordinary people each day, but these local elites falsely assume that they have better ideas, and better powers of reasoning, than ordinary people.
Prospective town squires may arrive on our scene educated and reasonable, but needlessly living too much within a small fraction of all society, and scampering to its neurotic demands, leaves reasonable people addled, leaves educated people forgetful and ignorant.
Even the finest, most capable people will wither and atrophy in that desiccator.
Most people are sharp and capable; even the sharpest and most capable degrade their abilities when confined to a small, closed chamber.
After a while, the commonplace reasoning of people from across this continent starts to look to a cosseted few like magic, or an alien teaching unfairly imposed.
On that contrary, that commonplace reasoning – shared equally by all races & ethnic groups – is the language of vast millions from ocean to ocean, who yet remain energetic, creative, capable residents of the most advanced civilization in human history.
Midweek in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 6:36 and sunset 7:02, for 12h 26m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 9% of its visible disk illuminated.
The company was founded on September 16, 1908, in Flint, Michigan, as a holding company for McLaughlin Car Company of Canada Limited and Buick, then controlled by William C. Durant.[11] At the beginning of the 20th century there were fewer than 8,000 automobiles in America and Durant had become a leading manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in Flint before making his foray into the automotive industry.[12] GM’s co-founder was Charles Stewart Mott, whose carriage company was merged into Buick prior to GM’s creation. Over the years Mott became the largest single stockholder in GM and spent his life with his Mott Foundation which has benefited the city of Flint, his adopted home. GM acquired Oldsmobile later that year. In 1909, Durant brought in Cadillac, Elmore, Oakland and several others. Also in 1909, GM acquired the Reliance Motor Truck Company of Owosso, Michigan, and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of Pontiac, Michigan, the predecessors of GMC Truck. Durant lost control of GM in 1910 along with R. S. McLaughlin to a bankers’ trust, because of the large amount of debt taken on in its acquisitions coupled with a collapse in new vehicle sales.[13]
The next year, Durant started the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in 1911 in the U.S. in Canada in 1915 and through this he secretly purchased a controlling interest in GM. Durant took back control of the company after one of the most dramatic proxy wars in American business history. Durant then reorganized General Motors Company into General Motors Corporation in 1916 Merging General Motors of Canada Limited as an ally in 1918. Shortly after, he again lost control, this time for good, after the new vehicle market collapsed. Alfred P. Sloan was picked to take charge of the corporation and led it to its post-war global dominance when the seven manufacturing facilities operated by Chevrolet before GM acquired the company began to contribute to GM operations. These facilities were added to the individual factories that were exclusive to Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Oakland, and other companies acquired by GM. This unprecedented growth of GM would last into the early 1980s when it employed 349,000 workers and operated 150 assembly plants.
Here’s the Wednesday game from Puzzability in its Mouth Pieces series:
This Week’s Game — September 14-18
Mouth Pieces
We’re listening for art sounds this week. For each day, we started with the name of a famous painting. Then, for the day’s clue, we broke it down into a series of words that, when said in order, sounds like the original title. You’ll probably need to say the words out loud to get the answers.
Example:
Him, purr, Hessians, Hun, rice
Answer:
“Impression, Sunrise” (by Claude Monet)
What to Submit:
Submit the painting’s title (as “Impression, Sunrise” in the example) for your answer.
Tuesday in town will be sunny with a high of eighty-three. Sunrise is 6:35 and sunset 7:04, for 12h 29m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
1832 – Ho-Chunk Treaty Signed
On this date a a treaty was signed between the Ho-Chunk and the United States that stipulated that the Ho-Chunk cede lands lying to the south and east of the Wisconsin river as well as lands around the Fox river of Green Bay. [Source:Oklahoma State University Library]
We’re listening for art sounds this week. For each day, we started with the name of a famous painting. Then, for the day’s clue, we broke it down into a series of words that, when said in order, sounds like the original title. You’ll probably need to say the words out loud to get the answers.
Example:
Him, purr, Hessians, Hun, rice
Answer:
“Impression, Sunrise” (by Claude Monet)
What to Submit:
Submit the painting’s title (as “Impression, Sunrise” in the example) for your answer.
Post 31 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.
A review of this digester-energy project, one that involves waste-importation and an emphasis on supposed revenue-generation, is more than an examination of a vendor’s work, or city officials’ presentations. If it were only that narrow examination, then Messrs. Clapper & Reel (and the business lobbyists behind this project) would be able to constrict the truth of a project to a few PowerPoint presentations. The actual nature of something is not so easily, so narrowly, constrained.
Still, the centerpiece of proponents’ digester-energy project is – by officials’ own account – Technical Memo 4, from the Donohue firm. It’s fair to post that memo, initially on its own, with no additional questions.
In the weeks ahead, I’ll consider this written keystone and the presentations meant to support it. That will still be only a preliminary consideration of the project (as the project involves fiscal, economic, environmental, health, and business culture considerations that Whitewater officials have not addressed). This series will be lengthy because I will address those aspects of the project, and produce a written and video work thereafter.
Still, it’s fair and useful to begin with the memo. An assessment of it will follow in the weeks ahead.
See, below, Technical Memorandum 4 Digestion Complex and Energy Production —
WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.
Post 30 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.
In the course of presentations or public discussion about a wastewater upgrade, one has heard more than a few odd notions about phosphorous: that the more of it one produced the better, and that perhaps, just perhaps, spreading it on vacant land in the industrial park would be a possibility. (I’ll come back to this subject when I consider more about the environmental and health consequences of a protect like this.)
For today, though, a review of vendor Donohue’s own work should dispense with the odd notion (absurdly, from a council candidate and a member of the CDA, respectively) that one can’t get enough of it, or that one could just spread it around:
As discussed in TM 2 Flows, Loadings, and Existing Conditions, one of the primary concerns facing the wastewater treatment facility is a forthcoming low level phosphorous limit expected to be formally issued in the fall of 2014 when the facility’s discharge permit is renewed. This permit is expected to contain a monthly average phosphorous limit of 0.225 mg/L and a six month seasonal phosphorous limit of 0.075 mg/L. The purpose of this Technical Memorandum (TM 3) is to evaluate nutrient management technologies for the City of Whitewater’s wastewater treatment facility that will meet the new effluent requirements.
The full memorandum is embedded below. Quite simply, if phosphorous weren’t a concern, then neither our state, nor other states, nor this vendor would (presumably) be considering it at all.
As for why anyone would take seriously those who don’t think this community should take phosphorous seriously (including grasping what that means), I cannot say.
WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.
