Kriegspiel

 

Reflecting on something I heard about Hillsborough County (Tampa, FL, mostly) diverting kids from after-school mischief via a chess club, I remembered a chess variation from my own youth called 'Kriegspiel'.  Kriegspiel is a German word meaning "war game", and it's unlike any other form of chess you've ever seen.

Whereas ordinary chess (and even Wizard's chess) is played by two players, one board, and one set of pieces, Kriegspiel needs three boards, two sets of pieces, and a referee.

The players sit with their backs to the center board (which has a full set of pieces), each with a board containing only the pieces of their own color.  As each player makes a move, the referee replicates that move on the center board.  Usually the referee merely announces "white/black has moved".  Occasionally, this is followed by "capturing" or "giving check".  Sometimes the referee announces "illegal move" because that move cannot be made on the center board, as when an attempted move passes through an occupied square or moving the piece exposes a check.

When a player captures an opposing piece, that piece is removed from the opponent's board.  "White has moved, capturing."  White knows that a capture has taken place but not which piece.  Black knows which piece was captured, but not which piece did the deed or where it came from.  Should I recapture?  Is it worth risking that Knight since it might also be immediately recaptured?

As with standard chess, the game ends when checkmate or stalemate occurs, but with Kriegspiel the game also ends when any player leaves their board or sees the center board.  Of course, the audience, if there is one, must be silent for fairness.  No groans or laughs may be allowed to give away bad moves or good.

Some referees will be more specific with their comments, e.g.: "Black has moved giving check on the long diagonal".  Such announcements may be made for a lower-ranked player but not her higher-ranked opponent.  That's local custom and agreed before the match.

While it sounds terribly odd, most games of Kriegspiel are hilarious to watch, and it's a real chore for the audience not to give away valuable information.  The games are also fairly educational because we often do not understand how much value information has until we don't have it.  Because of this, it's a good idea to have someone transcribing the game so that it can be re-played for the essentially-in-the-dark participants after the game concludes.

Try it; you'll like it.

 

Israel

 

I'm not expounding; I'm just 'noodling'...

There's a lot of talk about how Jewish Democrats are going to deal with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who just won the Dem primary in NY's 14th CD.  The problem with AO-C is that she's anti-Israel and Jewish Dems are now faced with a dilemma: support the Dem nominee or support Israel.  It got me to thinking.

Before the 20th century, the part of the world we now call 'Israel' was dominated by the Ottoman Empire.  In WW-I, the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, lost, and had all their territory seized by the victors.  Had the Ottomans sided with Britain and France, there probably wouldn't be an 'Israel' and I wouldn't be noodling about it, but that's not how it played out.  For a long time, 'Palestine' was Britain's to govern if not own, and after WW-II, displaced Jewish populations demanded and got a 'homeland' carved out of the British Mandate.

Lest there be any confusion, 'Palestine' is derived from 'Philistine', but it has never been a nation with a distinct government, a distinct culture, or a distinct language, at least since the Philistines got overrun.  It has been, at most, an administrative district, a convenient shorthand to designate a particular geographic region.

The first Jewish settlers arrived while the Ottomans were still in charge.  When they got there, the area was barely fit for raising goats, and had been in that condition for millennia.  Today, Israel is a productive greenspace that is in stark contrast to the millions of square miles of wasteland that surround it.  Having seen what the Jews did with their patch of desert, the envious 'Palestinians' want it back.  They didn't do anything but raise goats on it for 2,000 years, but now it's their homeland.

Don't get me wrong: I don't support the U.S. giving Israel millions of dollars per day, but I think the Israelis have established ownership via sweat-equity.  What the Israelis did the Palestinians could have done... but didn't.  There are vast uninhabited tracts of land indistinguishable from pre-Israeli Palestine within a day's journey from Israel.  Any nearby country could acquire a huge population of formerly-Palestinian homesteaders for free and have them improve that country's economy.  That is not an acceptable solution, because Israel would still exist.  The only acceptable solution is one that eliminates Israel.  Besides, those formerly-Palestinian homesteaders would likely be as useless on their new land as they were on the old.

The fact that other nearby nations could (for almost no cost) solve 'the Palestinian problem' — and don't — invites speculation that they don't actually want that problem solved.

Yes, there should be a two-state solution for Palestine.  The other 'state' should be east of Jordan.  Any nation in the local group that isn't interested in having Palestinian settlers on their desert needs to STFU — permanently.

Jewish Dems still have a problem in AO-C, and they're going to have a come-to-Jesus (sorry...) moment in the very near future.

Okay, I was expounding.

 

Justice Anthony Kennedy

 

Once upon a time, the New York Daily News was a reliably conservative outlet, the NY Daily Mirror was considered 'liberal', and the NY Post was a daily version of The Enquirer.  Somewhere along the way, the Mirror folded, the Daily News went hard left, and the Post became conservative.  I wasn't living there at the time so I didn't pay attention and can't tell you 'when' or 'why'.

The Post yesterday printed a story, "The real meaning of Democrats’ Supreme Court panic", about the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy noting:

This is why Democrats celebrate obviously superlegal decisions like Roe v. Wade: There is no right to abortion in the Constitution, but they would prefer not to battle that issue out at the electoral level.  The Supreme Court allows them to hand down their policy from the mountaintop without having to subject those policies to public scrutiny...  And that means that any reversal of such policy by a Supreme Court that actually reads the Constitution as it was written is a threat to Democratic hegemony.

(They're correct, but for the wrong reason.)

Also once upon a time, Justice Antonin Scalia remarked (possibly in commentary on Roe v Wade) that he couldn't find a right to privacy in the Constitution.  It appears that Scalia hadn't read the Constitution as far as the Ninth Amendment.  It's possible Scalia wouldn't have said that had he a better appreciation for the 9th.  If he also appreciated the 10th, he might have voted to kick Roe back to the state where it originated.

For the benefit of those who aren't able to recite the Constitution verbatim, I quote it here for you (commatosis in the original):

AMENDMENT IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

In modern American English, this means "just because we only listed a few rights here doesn't mean that's an exhaustive list. We just didn't want to waste the ink and parchment on something any idiot could figure out."  That is: there is a right to privacy in the Constitution, right there in the 9th; there is a right to travel freely, a right to smoke marijuana, a right to marry whomsoever you please, right there in the 9th; there are all sorts of rights in the Constitution, right there in the 9th.

And the 10th:

AMENDMENT X:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In modern English:  "if we didn't give some particular power to Congress, Congress doesn't have that power; it's a 'state thing' or a 'person thing', but it's not a 'Congress thing'".

An originalist Justice who "actually reads the Constitution as it was written" is exactly what we need.  In fact, we need eight of them since only Clarence Thomas currently fits the description.  More originalists?  Yes, please, and hurry!  A mere half-dozen originalists would already have struck down the National Firearms Act, NAFTA, NDAA, the War Powers Act, and hundreds of similar Congressional and Executive usurpations.

As to Roe v Wade, this clearly is a topic within the purview of the 10th amendment.  It should never have been heard at the Supreme Court.  Alas, Robert Bork said exactly that in his confirmation hearings and paid a dear price for having too much knowledge of the Constitution, too much honesty, and too much naïveté.

As to Kennedy being a 'swing vote', Democrat angst over his imminent departure is misplaced.  Kennedy voted with the majority in Janus, NIFLA v Becerra, Trump v Hawaii, Ohio v AMEX, and dozens of other cases that cause Democratic wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Why are they so upset at him retiring?  Do they think his replacement will be worse?  No, they fear his replacement will be an originalist.