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I will be blogging about each move as it is made, along with a thumbnail of my board as it changes. Click on each picture to see a larger photo and a note on where the actual move was made, hosted at flickr.com.
Black 1. Q-4 Here Dan made a fairly standard opening. The 4-4 point in the corner (or the lower right star point) puts Dan in a fairly good position to both advance into the center and claim the corner when he chooses to do this. At this point, he controls nothing, but he is setting himself up to claim that corner when the times comes.
White 2. D-17 Here I make a more modern opening at D-17. The 3-4 point is has some benefits over the 4-4 point because it actually controls territory on the top rail, makes a serious claim to the corner (slightly stronger than the 4-4 point, because its a little closer to the corner), and can be easily converted into a similar claim on the top-left rail a little easier than the 4-4 point. But it is somewhat less versatile with regards to the center than the 4-4 point is, that is it will take me two moves both to secure the corner AND to advance toward the center, where it will only take Dan one move into the center (but two moves to secure larger territories on the sides and in the corner from the 4-4 than from the 3-4). It depends on where one’s focus is where one will open. Some people will do some crazy shit and open at the 5-3 point or even the 5-4 point and these moves, unless made by a master, can easily be converted into a disaster for those using them. I am nothing like a master, so I will stay away from the 5 line when making my openings. Read the rest of this entry »
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ON November 14, Dan and I began a PBEM game of Go, one of our favorite games. So you know, over the years, whenever we’ve had the chance, we have challenged each other to a game of go. We began playing back in 2003, and admittedly we haven’t had too many opportunities to play against one another. Hopefully our rivalry will continue well into the future.
So anyway, we’ve gone hi-tech with our playing. And because of the wonders of the interweb, we will be blogging about this game, and hopefully others in the future. The idea is this: We both set up a board, at our respective houses, mine in Carbondale IL and his in New York City. We then photograph the board after each move and post it on the internet, along with our comments. The difference between this game and the ones we have played in the past is that our moves will not be quickly made. We are allowed to study as much as we like before making a move, and take as long as we need to make the move. Hopefully, this will ensure that our moves are done with a lot of thought and understanding about the importance of each move. Consequently, our game should improve over previous contests. Read the rest of this entry »
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Real quickly, I covered the 2007 National Convention of the SP-USA for Creepy Sleepy. The final production however is the first new Supernova Earth broadcast in over a year. It will eventually be linked at the Creepy Sleepy Show as well.
All are welcomed to link to this program, under the terms of Fair Use
Click this link for the Coverage of the 2007 National Convention of the SP-USA in St. Louis Mo. Oct 19-21, 2007. The production is just a hair over 2 hours long.
If you are interested in the Socialist Party USA, please click this link.
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It never ceases to amaze me just what you can find if you spend a few minutes on Google. I was sort of restless the other night after midnight, but before 2am, listening to Radio Havana on the Short wave Radio (at either 6.180 mHz or 6.060 mHz, or for the American West, 6.000 mHz) and wanted to try to find a frequency guide. I googles RHC on the website and for some reason came up with a feed to Cuba Vision television. It is Cuban National Television, and it if live feed in Spanish using WinAmp. The link is now at the top of the sidebar, and you are all invited to check it out (assuming that you can understand spoken Spanish). It is free, and something you probably won;t have any sort of access to here in the United States, unless you google CubaVision or click the link on the Supernova Earth Site.
You can now watch CubaVision by clicking this link.
Most Serenely,
The Reverend, W. Doc Stodden
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Since there are still something like 75 views for each of the posts I write from time to time, I want to take this opportunity to let you all know that while I have stopped making podcasts on Supernova Earth, I have been continuing to collaborate with The Creepy Sleepy Show from time to time, and so I will go ahead and link the recent collaborations here so if there are people who get this blog over an aggregator and are REALLY interested in hearing the wonderful sound of my melodious voice, you can listen to the Creepy Sleepy Show shows I’ve been working on recently.
Creepy Sleepy #61- Creepy Supernova
Creepy Sleepy #62- Creepy Supernova Part 2
Creepy Sleepy #72- Choose or Snooze
Creepy Sleepy #73- More Choose or Snooze
Creepy Sleepy #80- Election Day Coverage
Creepy Sleepy #84- World Wide Propaganda
Creepy Sleepy #96- Political Gabfest
Creepy Sleepy Supplimental- Chuck D Interview (redux)
Creepy Sleepy #105- April Political Gabfest
Creepy Sleepy #112- 2nd Anniversary Show
Creepy Sleepy #119- The Horse Race
Download and have a great time.
Serenely,
The Reverend W. Doc Stodden
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(from Granma International, reprinted in Political Affairs Magazine: Posted without Comment)
I hope that no one will say that I am gratuitously attacking Bush. Surely they will understand my reasons for strongly criticizing his policies.
Robert Woodward is an American journalist and writer who became famous for the series of articles published by The Washington Post, written by him and Carl Bernstein, and which eventually led to the investigation and resignation of Nixon. He is author and co-author of ten best-sellers. With his fearsome style he manages to wrench confessions from his interviewees. Read the rest of this entry »
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I’m not making this up: Here is the link. Jerry Falwell has gone on to see if he was right about the existence of God. Let’s hope, if God does exist, that he is a forgiving one, for the sake of Mr. Falwell’s immortal soul. If he truly is vengeful, as Mr. Falwell seems to claim, Falwell will not be in Heaven for too long, long enough I suspect for God to remember that Jerry Falwell is a hypocrite, or that Falwell claimed that September 11th 2001 was God’s answer to homosexuality. I would imagine that God looks more harshly on hypocrisy than he does homosexuality. Good Luck, Mr. Falwell, and I sincerely mean that.
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I know I promised some time ago to post my paper on Plan Colombia And US intervention. Well, I had to polish it a bit, and re-organize it. This is probably not the final draft, but it is good enough for government work, so here youn’s go. This paper is on US involvement in the Colombian Civil War, and how US involvement in foreign internal conflicts only makes things worse. Ref; Iraq. “Enjoy” if that is what you all do with these papers.
The Colombian Civil War: US Intervention as a Negative Force
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For all of those of you who tie your hopes to the possibility of a minor party winning an election in the United States, I have something for you to read: This paper Entitled American Exceptionalism and the Minor Party will definitely open your eyes.
Over my time in the MA program, I have been forced to abandon the idealism of my youth and take a more pragmatic approach. I think this paper is the apex of that approach.
I would like to make one disclaimer here. The conclusions of the paper are that in the United States so many things are arrayed as to make the minor party an unworkable alternative, if one’s objective is to play by the rules and try to get elected. Does that mean we shouldn’t form minor parties? No, it sure don’t. We need to form political organizations specifically to demonstrate, concretely for people that there really is no “political frontier” where they can go to if they get fed up with the major parties. In other words, we need to concretely demonstrate for people that they will not achieve political reform the way things are through minor parties. Principle will always be trumped by rationality, except in the case of those who were not too rational to begin with (that is, those who actively support a minor party fervently, and think it will actually make a difference.)
No, it is not that we need to alter our means to accomplish the goal. It is that we need to alter our immediate goals: why we participate in minor parties. We need to use minor parties first to generally agitate for political reform. We need to use political parties to show what is screwed up with liberal democracy. And we need to use political parties to identify and associate with other radicals. The “revolution” won’t come from a radical democratic socialist Party. However, while it is still on the horizon, we can use the organization to hasten its approach: that is to help create the objective conditions whereby revolution CAN develop in this country of ours. This role for the minor Party is not laid out by the Paper, but you can read this as a prologue.
Enjoy.
Doc
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Ever wish you had like a hundred thousand dollars to open a stock portfolio, but realize, “Well, not this month, I gotta figure out how to both pay the rent AND buy drugs!”?
Well, guess what: Now you can buy drugs AND play the Market. Always in the search of new online time wasters, I have stumbled across Investopedia’s free stockmarket game. The game gives you 100,000 dollars of fake money, and then sets you to investing in their stock market (which is, of course tied to the real stock market). You can compete against others for the top ranking, and demonstrate your Warren Buffet-like skills in picking when to buy and when to sell to make yourself very rich. Or you can ignore all of that and just mess around, trying different investment strategies: Suppose you want to build a green portfolio to see if it would really work in a capitalist country (it probably won’t). You can do it here without actually investing a dime. Suppose you wanted to invest heavily in the military industrial complex, because you know you’ll make money but can’t stand the idea of actually helping them wipe out Iraq. You can do it on this sim.
The one reason I recommend this game to you all is not because I have turned capitalist, but for no other reason than you aren’t really investing, but it does teach you a lot about the system. Since it updates with the real market, you can see that you have to understand the system a LOT better than simply saying “capitalism is bad, socialism is good.” There are a number of reasons why capitalism is bad, and you can tease these reasons out by looking at this game. If you are a total idiot when it comes to market capitalism (as most socialists are, because they rely too heavily on normative Marxism and do not even participate in the real world), this will help you learn what you are critiquing.
And did I say best of all, it is totally FREE?! Well, there is it.
Click on this link to begin building your fake portfolio today
