Is chess non-violent war?

Does the player who doesn’t make the last mistake usually win?

After the game

the king and pawn go into the same box

Italian proverb

The more captured opposing pieces the less risk

and vice versa

Do some football running backs fake left and go right

to mislead the defense to commit in the wrong direction?

All warfare is based on deception

…when able to attack we must seem unable

when using our forces we must seem inactive

when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far…

when far away, we must make him believe we are near

Sun Tzu

Monte Carlo

… a "Monte Carlo" simulation, commonly used in financial planning

estimates the odds of reaching retirement financial goals.

 

Though these tools typically run through hundreds or thousands of potential market scenarios,

they often assign minuscule odds to extreme market events.

 

Yet these extreme events seem to be happening more often.

 

If causes, actions or winners have effects, reactions or losers

and A is caused, allowed, accelerated, held back or prevented

is it better to pre-think what could happen to B, C and D

than not?

 

The questions about Monte Carlo tools

reflect broader concerns about mathematical models

for gauging portfolio risks

 

These models were supposed to help quantify and manage the risks

of...complex instruments

 

If achievement takes less time with a rational plan

can you get farther faster than those without

and vice versa?

 

But given the events of the past couple of years

it appears that the models often gave big institutions

as well as small investors, a false sense of security

 

Critics emphasize that the problem isn't Monte Carlo itself

but the assumptions that go into it

 

If some financial estimates and hypothetical illustrations

assume perpetual levels of varying data

can probability be manipulated?

 

Is the present you the only who

who’s going to care for the future you?

 

 

Since no standard approach exists

one user might plug in a range of assumptions on interest rates

inflation or volatility that is different from another user

 

Some industry participants and academics

are pushing for Monte Carlo tools to more clearly illustrate

the scarier scenarios

 

Eleanor Laise

The Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2009

 

If there are at least 15,000 professional American Economists

and less than 1% foresaw the financial crisis

and many mathematical based financial prognostications

were relatively useless

which if left in place

could negatively affecting the future

should some try to fix what’s probably broken?

Don’t make bets you can’t afford to lose when confronting an opponent with unlimited resources who can arbitrarily change the rules.

I don't care if I follow your rules, if you can cheat, so can I.

 

 I won't let you beat me unfairly, I'll beat you unfairly first.

 

Ender Wiggin

Fictional Military Strategist

Geo-Politics and business is Zugzwang

Zugzwang…describes a situation where one player is put at a disadvantage because he has to make a move – the player would prefer to pass and make no move. The fact that the player must make a move means that his position will be significantly weaker than the hypothetical one in which it is his opponent's turn to move.

A player whose turn it is to move who has no move that does not worsen their position is said to be in zugzwang.

In a chess endgame, being in zugzwang usually means going from a drawn position to a loss or a won position to a draw, but it can be from a win to a loss, or a substantial loss of material which probably affects the outcome of the game.

Zugzwang
Wikipedia

I have studied the enemy all my life
 
I have read the memoirs of his generals and his leaders

I have even read his philosophers…

I have studied in detail the account of every damned one of his battles

I know exactly how he will react under any given set of circumstances
and he hasn’t the slightest idea of what I’m going to do

So when the time comes, I’m going to whip the hell out of him

George S Patton

World Trade War 2010

"China to Halt Some Exports to U.S.

China, which has been blocking shipments of crucial minerals to Japan for the last month, has now quietly halted shipments of those materials to the United States and Europe, three industry officials said on Tuesday.

The Chinese action, involving rare earth minerals that are crucial to manufacturing many advanced products, seems certain to further intensify already rising trade and currency tensions with the West.

...“The embargo is expanding” beyond Japan, said one of the three rare earth industry officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity for fear of business retaliation by Chinese authorities.

They said Chinese customs officials imposed the broader restrictions on Monday morning, hours after a top Chinese official summoned international news media Sunday night to denounce United States trade actions.

China mines 95 percent of the world’s rare earth elements, which have broad commercial and military applications, and are vital to the manufacture of products as diverse as cellphones, large wind turbines and guided missiles. Any curtailment of Chinese supplies of rare earths is likely to be greeted with alarm in Western capitals, particularly because Western companies are believed to keep much smaller stockpiles of rare earths than Japanese companies.

China experts said on Tuesday that Beijing’s assertive stance on rare earths might also signal the ascendance of economic nationalists, noting that the Central Committee of the Communist Party convened over the weekend.

...Industry executives said there had been no signal from Beijing of how long rare earth shipments intended for the West would be held by Chinese customs officials.

...Word of the blocked shipments emerged from industry executives on Tuesday after an official China newspaper reported earlier in the day that Beijing planned next year to further reduce its annual export quota for rare earths.

The signals of a tougher Chinese trade stance come after American trade officials announced on Friday that they would investigate whether China was violating World Trade Organization rules by subsidizing its clean energy exports and limiting clean energy imports. The inquiry includes whether China’s steady reductions in rare earth export quotas since 2005, along with steep export taxes on rare earths, are illegal attempts to force multinational companies to produce more of their high-technology goods in China.

Despite a widely confirmed suspension of rare earth shipments from China to Japan, now nearly a month old, Beijing has continued to deny that any embargo exists.

Industry executives and analysts have interpreted that official denial as a way to wield an undeclared trade weapon without creating a policy trail that could make it easier for other countries to bring a case against China at the World Trade Organization.

So far, China seems to be taking a similar approach in expanding the embargo to the West.

Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said on Tuesday that the Chinese government was putting new restrictions on the mining, processing and export of rare earths to protect the environment. But he said that China was not violating any W.T.O. rules in doing so and that it was not imposing an embargo or trying to use rare earths as a bargaining chip.

“With stricter export mechanism gradually in place, outbound shipments to other countries might understandably begin to feel the effect,” Mr. Wang said in an e-mail. “But I don’t see any link between China’s reasonable rare earth export control policy and the irrational U.S. decision of protectionist nature to investigate China’s clean energy industries.”

...The Chinese government office that oversees rare earth policy...has emerged as a bastion of economic nationalism.

...China reduced in July its export quota for rare earths for the second half of the year by 72 percent. Exporters had only six weeks’ of quotas left when China imposed its unannounced embargo on shipments to Japan.

China is preparing further reductions of up to 30 percent in its 2011 quotas compared with quotas issued in 2010..."

Keith Bradsher
New York Times

Russian Wheat Export Ban = Riots in Mozambique?

The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change…
…so, in a month's time,
a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen,
or maybe one that wasn't going to happen does.

Ian Stewart
The Mathematics of Chaos

"U.N. Raises Concerns as Global Food Prices Jump
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

With memories still fresh of food riots set off by spiking prices just two years ago, agricultural experts on Friday cast a wary eye on the steep rise in the cost of wheat prompted by a Russian export ban and the questions looming over harvests in other parts of the world because of drought or flooding.

Food prices rose 5 percent globally during August, according to the United Nations, spurred mostly by the higher cost of wheat, and the first signs of unrest erupted as 10 people died in Mozambique during clashes ignited partly by a 30 percent leap in the cost of bread.

If too many Gazelles relative to water and grass lead to fewer Gazelles,
do fewer Gazelles  =  fewer Cheetahs?

...It is an issue not limited to Russia alone. Harvest forecasts in Germany and Canada are clouded by wet weather and flooding, while crops in Argentina will suffer from drought, as could Australia’s, according to agricultural experts. The bump in prices because of the uncertainty about future supplies means the poor in some areas of the world will face higher bread prices in the coming months.

If water was money and grass was credit
and Cheetahs and Gazelles were people,
who would be who?

Food prices are still some 30 percent below the 2008 levels, Mr. Abbassian said, when a tripling in the price of rice among other staples led to food riots in about a dozen countries and helped topple at least one government.

Did shortages of arable land and food
coincide with many Rwandan Hutus eliminating many Tutsis?

...In June, Russia was predicting a loss of just a few million metric tons due to hot weather, but by August it announced it would lose about one-fifth of its crop. Wheat prices more than doubled in that period.

...In early August, Russia announced an export ban that it would review at the end of the year, but Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin announced Thursday that the ban on grain exports would extend into 2011. The price of wheat jumped again, and that has had a spillover effect into other grains like corn and soybeans. The forecast for the global rice harvest has also dropped, although it is still expected to be higher than in 2009 and should be a record...

Only seven meals separate civilization from potential anarchy.

Josette Sheeran
UN World Food Program

 

...After two days of rioting set off by price increases for bread and utilities like electricity and water, the streets in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, were largely calm on Friday.

...Price increases have been much sharper in Mozambique than in most of the world because the government kept prices artificially low before elections last year...

What could happen if there’s enough food but some can’t afford it,
or governments can’t provide it?

As with any commodity, questions of wheat shortages spur speculation and hoarding, and experts suggest both are at play...

 

But the world also has to come to grips with changing weather patterns due to climate change, argued Prof. Per Pinstrup-Anderson, an expert in international agriculture at Cornell University.

You're captives of a civilizational system
that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world
 in order to live.

Daniel Quinn
Postulated correlations between  population growth
and natural resource consumption

“We are going to have much bigger fluctuations in weather and therefore the food supply than we had in the past, so we are going to have to learn how to cope with fluctuating food prices,” Professor Pinstrup-Anderson said."

New York Times

How many need and/or want how much of what,
where is half way, who’s got what’s left, who gets cut off when,
who will compete with who for what’s left,
and how is who most likely to win?

If an offensive move doesn’t look advantageous,should defenses be reinforced instead?

 

You can’t start over

If nothing doesn’t change

is not making a move moving?

 

Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed,

whatever follies I have witnessed…

have been the consequence of action without thought.

 

Bernard Baruch

American financier, and presidential advisor

 

If big print can give what fine print takes,

can winning the wrong game lose the right one?

 

Does complexity increase the likelihood of complication?

Geo-Politics and business is Zugzwang

Zugzwang…describes a situation where one player is put at a disadvantage because he has to make a move – the player would prefer to pass and make no move. The fact that the player must make a move means that his position will be significantly weaker than the hypothetical one in which it is his opponent's turn to move.

 

A player whose turn it is to move who has no move that does not worsen their position is said to be in zugzwang.

 

In a chess endgame, being in zugzwang usually means going from a drawn position to a loss or a won position to a draw, but it can be from a win to a loss, or a substantial loss of material which probably affects the outcome of the game.

 

Zugzwang

Wikipedia

I have studied the enemy all my life

 

I have read the memoirs of his generals and his leaders

 

I have even read his philosophers…

 

I have studied in detail the account of every damned one of his battles

 

I know exactly how he will react under any given set of circumstances

and he hasn’t the slightest idea of what I’m going to do

 

So when the time comes

I’m going to whip the hell out of him

 

George S Patton

Politics = Chess II

Is chess non-violent war?

 

All warfare is based on deception

…when able to attack we must seem unable

when using our forces we must seem inactive

when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far…

when far away, we must make him believe we are near

 

Sun Tzu

 

If an opponent’s position can be used against them

and the pinnacle of vulnerability is the moment of assault

should attack commence from defended positions?

Politics = Chess III

In chess, a fork is a tactic

that uses one piece to attack two or more of the opponent's pieces

at the same time,

hoping to achieve material gain

 (by capturing one of the opponent's pieces)

 because the opponent can only counter one of the two (or more) threats.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(chess)

 

If big print can give what fine print takes

can winning the wrong game lose the right one?

How can a relatively unknown and underfunded candidate, who refuses to accept donations larger than $100 per person, or donations from Lobbyists or PACs, win a local election against a well known, financially entrenched incumbent?

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change

and a greater evil than this

 

The conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder

 

Frederic Bastiat

 

If a few contribute the majority of large campaign donations that many can’t afford, who works for whom, and what do the few expect in return that most probably won’t receive?

Water Rates and Greensboro City’s 2009-10 Budget

The WR [Water Resources] Department has a capital plan,

 that includes pay as you go capital, bond capital, and operating expense.

 

We also have a rate plan to pay for it all,

which included a ~6% increase January 1, 2010.

 

Being told that this was unacceptable

by some members of Council,

we submitted two alternates,

reduce rehab work or take the cash from retained earnings.

 

The latter was selected

 

…Council will have to make a decision soon,

to award a contract and funding,

of replacement of the ~$23 million Fluid Bed Incinerator [FBI]

at TZ Osborne Water Reclamation Facility

 

The bond funding of it is in the plan, and if it is awarded

it is likely that Council will need to commit to a rate increase

in early FY 10-11,

of about 10%.

 

While the specific project (FBI)

was not discussed in detail at the meetings,

the requirement to have a larger increase later,

if the 6% was not accepted now,

was communicated in both briefings.

 

Allan Williams

Director of Water Resources

City of Greensboro

 

If Greensboro’s City Council

agreed a couple of weeks before the 2009-10 budget vote,

in an election year,

to back a proposed water rate increase,

how many were aware of the longer term

post-election consequences, of prioritizing want before need?

Politics = Chess

A metaphor

 

Life is a kind of chess in which we have often points to gain

competitors or adversaries to contend with

and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events…

 

By playing at chess…we may learn foresight, circumspection and caution

 

Benjamin Franklin

 

If there are 9,183,421,888 ways to play the first nine moves

9,417,681 the first six, 72,078 the first four, 5,362 the first three

and 20 to play the first

are early moves more important than later?

Could some of the few who don’t lose muchduring widespread financial turmoilbe relatively less risk averse than many who lost a lotas potentially profitable opportunities arise?

A closed mouth doesn’t get fed

 

Brandi Justice

If you have to lose

should the most valuable pieces be protected

by sacrificing the less valuable first

 

like a pawn before a rook

 

or a stranger before family?

Is it better to know the answer to some questionsbefore asking?

Aim towards the enemy

 

 Rocket Launcher Instructions

Are chances betterfor players who more accurately calculate probabilitiesthe farthest into the future?

The chess board is the world

the pieces are the phenomena of the universe

the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature

the player on the other side is hidden from us

 

Thomas Huxley

 

Known and unknown

you were, are and will be pieces of varying value

in an infinite number of games

 

You may or may not be playing the games you think

 

If opponents don’t begin with pieces of the same number and value

and players can think they’re winning when losing

can influencing others’ thoughts enhance results

and vice versa?

Oakland California

…the Oakland City Council

has discussed filing for bankruptcy protection

 in the midst of a $100 million budget deficit

 

Consider the city's cash position

 

Out of next year's general fund of approximately $415 million

police costs are estimated at $212 million

fire protection service $103 million

and $41 million in debt service payments

 

 That leaves about $60 million to pay for everything else

 from library services to recreation centers to public works

 

It is faced with three choices

 

drastic pay reductions across the board

including police and fire services

massive layoffs

or bankruptcy

 

Chip Johnson

Budget woes have Oakland mulling bankruptcy

 San Francisco Gate, June 9, 2009

Iran Election

Mousavi - We will not expend any more energy

talking to the Gov in the streets

 

We must change course

 

Can a nonviolent movement

survive against an information censoring violent opponent?

 

From Today every morning at 9am

WE ALL travel to Tehran Bazaar

whatever reaction from Gov

Bazaar will close

 

Stop all work and travel with friends & family

toward Tehran Bazaar every day at 9am

 

Do NOT wear green

dress normally

bring your children

if stopped u are ONLY going shopping

 

The objective is to bring Tehran to standstill

millions of people go shopping but NOBODY SHOPPING

Have the powerless

created symbols for the powerful to destroy

to create dissent

by turning apathy into perceived oppression?

 

There is nothing to fear

if asked - YOU ARE ONLY GOING SHOPPING

 

no matter what the reaction of the Gov

the Bazaar will close or be at standstill

 

Twitter Messages [allegedly] from Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh

Election platform included social justice, equality and fairness

freedom of expression

and to accelerate Iran's privatization

Via Andrew Sullivan

Don’t let small mistakes become big onesby eliminating what’s not workingand doing more of what issooner than later

Why don’t rabbitsrun for backyard fence holesafter seeing stalking carnivoreswho can’t get out?