To the retired (!) first female speaker of the house of representatives, Abuja; Madam, this is how it’s done in the ‘civilized’ world. Why rush and approve multimillion house renovation contract when e de possible to ‘take small small’ chop betta tin? ehn? Ah, if only you don learn some of dis oyibo magic before you enter office. Kai!’

£700,000 spent on Speaker’s home 

Why can’t these Senators, Ministers and Governors learn how to do things the civilized way?

How very underrated the power of information usually is. You know that popular anecdote about ‘Rome’ and the point that “for want of a horseshoe, Rome was lost”. If only they had the yellow pages in those days to list all the nearest available blacksmiths . I joke as usual.

But this is a very serious topic. Maybe this point more than anything else highlights the difference between the developing and developed world. The availability of information. What to do, how to do it, when to do it, etc. Without adequate sources, and distribution of information, how can a society progress, thrive, stabilize and improve?

Information on location, availability and modes d’emploi (pardon, mes ami) of essential public services must be readily and FREELY available to all those who need. I feel this is an essential role governments in developing nations must undertake wholeheartedly. The late great Fela Kuti spoke satirically of the ‘BBC’ (Big Blind Country) in which the ‘one eyed man’ is King, and loving it! Even if a country is a ‘BBC’, a leader with vision can take away the blinds, promote mass knowledge by supervising proper and appropriate distribution of information.  

People only know for certain what they are properly informed about. All else is speculation and guesswork, which leads to assumptions. And assumption we know, is the “mother of all f**k ups”. Nuff said. 

“the hearts of men; who knows what evil lurks within them?”

I think it goes something like: “to grow one row of corn, you must first lay one ton of sh*t”.

Where I come from, we literally don’t have such situations, mother nature was extremely kind to my country when she was allocating natural resources, as such; we simply drop the seeds on the ground and they spring forth from the earth, grow and flourish. Maybe they have this condition in other countries.

So as usual, I’ll flip the saying and interpret it in another way, I’ll take the ‘ton of sh*t’ here to mean ‘advertising’, ‘branding’ and all that associated bullsh*t. The saying now becomes; “to sell your products, you must assault people with waves of advertising and brand-name affiliating b.s”. And consequently, we have a case (I speak of modern day London/UK as my relevant sphere of existence in this matter…) whereby ‘brands’ and ‘visuals’ are more important than the actual products which are sold in the market.

Consider: a person who will only drink coffee from ‘Costa’, people who will not buy everyday items from anywhere other than ‘Tesco’, will only wear clothes bought from ‘M&S’, will only use vegetable produce bought from ‘Sainsbury’, can only eat fast food from ‘Mc Donald’s’, etc etc.

Of course, the argument as always will be; “this is an attempt to give people a choice, this is what the free market economy is about!”. More B.S I say. What I see is a situation whereby the firm/corporation with the most money to advertise reaches out to the masses via an amoral media, promoting the ‘virtues’ of their goods above all the others in the market. Brainwashing a generation of TV/Video Game addicts into accepting that it is the ‘brand’ you buy and not the ‘product’. Always claiming to have ’scientifically tested’ their products with ‘convincing’ results showing ’superiority’ in quality to other same products in the market. A closer examination of the ‘fine print’ (extremely small printed disclaimers mostly…) shows most of these ’surveys’ as being conducted in environments with subjects that have absolutely NO (or little) relevance to those who would eventually put these products to personal use.

What a twisted warped game.

The late great Tupac Amaru Shakur put it this way; “what of fame? Everyone knows your face, the world screams your name, and never again are you alone.”

Or otherwise, as in his song ‘Fame’; “the one thing we all adore/something worth dying for/’nothing but pain/stuck in this game/searching for fortune and fame.”

It’s been said that “at the moment a man dies, so then do all his dreams and aspirations perish with him”, the one thing that seems to live on is the ‘memory’. Fame. Reclame. Infamy. Notoriety. So we see people locked in this struggle throughout their existence, searching for ‘fortune’ and ‘fame’.

And this once again presents the dilemma; is it possible to live out one’s existence without affecting the lives of others around us, positively or negatively? Apparently not according to these two popular sayings; “if a man performs a better service than his neighbors, though he makes his home in seclusion, the world will tread a beaten path to his door” (sounds like the beginning of the ‘Chronicles of Riddick doesn’t it?…) and “no man is an island unto himself, everyone is a part of the whole; as such, the death of any one man diminishes me”.

Interesting thoughts.

This is a theme that has been buzzing around in my head for a few days now. The idea of a set of ‘categorizations’ we give to people who seem to find themselves in various positions to either take advantage of circumstances around them or to become a ‘victim’ of those self-same circumstances. As such we have; “the fortunate bystander (the lucky one?)”, “the opportunist (the go-getter?)”, “the victim of fate (the star of the tragedy?)”, “the pawn of the ‘gods’ (the reluctant hero?)” and so on and so forth.

So, we have on one side; the fellow who is termed ‘lucky’ whenever he achieves some feat or excels at some task or the other whilst on the other we have the person who is not termed lucky but rather an ‘opportunist’ because he has placed himself in an optimum position to benefit from any manna-like ‘luck’ that might fall out of the sky.

Let’s try and put some flesh on this frame. From a sporting perspective, I’ll use football as an example and throw two very well known international strikers into the mix. Ruud Van Nistelrooy has always had the knack of scoring goals, with the natural instincts of a predator, I’ll put him in the ‘opportunist’ category because it seems to be the most natural fit for him. Michael Owen on the other hand, I’m afraid, will have to be listed as a ‘fortunate bystander’ by me. Coming into the game at a time when England needed a new ‘hero’ to promote in football, he fitted the bill, young, dynamic and a natural(?) goalscorer. Several years on, the great man doesn’t seem to have withstood the test of time, injuries aside. (Ronaldo of Brazil has had a much more injury blighted career than Owen and HIS achievements speak for themselves).

What about other areas? I compare the popular scientific myths of Newton and the ‘falling apple’ with that of Archimedes and the discovery of the principle of ‘flotation’ whilst immersed in a bath and say that in the context of these myths, Newton and Archimedes must be seen as ‘fortunate bystanders’ (Archimedes; a naked grown man running down the street screaming: Eureka!!, that must have been something to behold ). From Shakespearean literature I take Othello and Hamlet to be “victims of fate” whilst Bottom from ‘a midsummer night’s dream’ is surely a “pawn of the ‘gods’ (no hero here…, sadly ). I guess Hercules fits the bill perfectly as the “pawn of the ‘gods’ (definitely, a reluctant hero)”.

Ah well. At the end of the day, no matter how you cut it, people will always have a label with which to categorize. That’s life.

Having continuously explored themes like ‘my life in Chess’, ‘Chess vs Poker et al’, ‘the applications of Chess’ etc, I’d like to now look at an all encompassing view of Chess. This is the way I put it; Chess is an essential tool for development and effective implementation of plans and strategies in everyday life.

As such, with this new definition, I think Chess should be listed as a platform on which all rational/logical thought should grow from. This would mean that rather than being just a game, Chess should evolve and become a school of thought for this new age of super-technology and globalization. The academic field of ‘decision making’ is effectively custom built for the absorption of Chess into the learning environment, after all, what is a game of Chess if not a complicated series of contradictory pragmatic and adventurous choices rolled into one!

Computers are getting ’smarter’ by the day. Technology is automating most of the tasks we as humans would have had to deliberate over and perform just a few short decades ago. In this new world, we need a tool that will serve to continuously exercise the one asset we have in the face-off with ‘thinking machines’ - our brains. The power of creative and independent thought is what differentiates a Human from a Machine, if we let the brain go the route of the appendix; well, no explanations required.

The ‘Chess Room’ has now been declared officially open. It will be dedicated to my tournament winning performances (I actually have a very big head, literally… ) and also some critical analysis (watch out for this…) of my two all time favourite openings for Black; the Alekhines defence and the Benko/Volga gambit. (Kamchatka, actually…).

So what exactly is ‘the conspiracy theory’? Well, according to something I picked up on some time ago (as usual, don’t remember where; ah, old age… ), the ‘Conspiracy Theory’ goes like this: “just ’cause you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you“.

Well. How to dissect this?

Looking at this I’d say, take those extra few seconds out to check and recheck before you make that critical move. The assumption that things are ‘not always what they seem’ is not necessarily, in my opinion, an issue of over-elaboration or excessive attention to detail. I look at it as just ‘precautionary measures’.

This is very true in Chess because as the statistics show (hey, don’t ask for my source ) a high percentage of ‘winning/advantageous positions’ do not lead to conversions to points for those with the better positions. You only need to look at some of the traumatic games from the just concluded Morelia/Linares tournament to see what I’m talking about. Or the little point that in Queen endings, the side with the advantage gets Checkmated more often than not in trying to realize the full point

In all I guess the broad view remains; “a little dose of paranoia never hurt anyone, there’s nothing wrong in watching your back”. The beat goes on.

This is just another one of those ‘rambling’ forays into the ever murky world of human society at large. I’m actually looking at this from the ‘generation gap’ perspective, or a ‘family’ view sort of.

So what is the difference between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’? Let me throw in a couple of my usual unclear definitions here and say; a ‘need’ is an essential whilst a ‘want’ is a desirable. Yes, I know these terms span an almost infinite array of possibilities in everyday life, but hey, this is ‘my way’!.

On a more serious note, society of today seems to have completely merged these two terms into one, such that, what a person ‘wants’ is qualified as a ‘need’ and vice-versa. Look at prospective/established parents, they always go; “I want to have kids”, “I want to have the best for my kids”, “I want my children to follow in my footsteps”, “I want to have perfect kids”, etc. From wants; which are desirable but not essential, these thoughts/wishes/aspirations are suddenly transformed into ‘needs’ which are essential/achieve at all costs.

Ok, you say, what’s wrong with these strong desires? Isn’t having children and caring for them a natural part of our existence?

The negative I see is, upon closer examination, are we willing to do all it takes to see a ‘want’ through? Even if we initially convince ourselves that the ‘need’ is strong, when the fog clears (it always does…) and the need suddenly becomes ‘downgraded’ to a ‘want’, how far are we willing to go to make sure the consequences of our actions are seen through?

So in society today we have a multitude of children born out of ‘wants’ disguised as ‘needs’ who are left holding the stick, fending for themselves from tender ages because somebody realized they were not ‘ready’ after all. Who says these kids ‘need’ or even ‘want’ all these irresponsible parents anyway? What gives us the right to start things we don’t intend to finish? I think the rule remains: “if you can’t stand the heat, don’t go into the kitchen.”