Living the Dream: A Coincidence Diary

At 14:10 or so on June 2nd 2012 I was watching this Youtube clip which I had definitely NEVER seen nor heard before and which indeed had only been uploaded in March 2012 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2qYvDlKm4U The BBC Radio show had become something of an institution in the 45 years since it was first broadcast. In 2012 there had been some special commemorative episodes made for television. This was one of those. Just a few minutes earlier I had imagined being a panelist on the show and extemporising for sixty seconds, without hesitation, deviation nor repetition on Leonardo da Vinci and finding myself commenting - possibly to Fry himself - about the stigma that Leonardo would then have had to have suffered because of his illegitimacy and how it would have prevented his becoming a Florentine student of Law or Medicine,  "Autre temps, autre moeurs." At 20:53 of the clip, a challenging Fry corrects Paul Merton over a previous reference of Fry´s to Oscar...

On May 1st 2012 Nigel Short remarked at a Facebook thread that he had just "spanked" his son at Burmese chess. He then mentioned his intent to try out various other forms of the game, listing Chinese Chess (which he had already played with GM Robert Hubner) Shogi, etcetera. I give an extract from the thread - spanked his son, Nicholas, at Burmese chess today. It is a lot easier than shogi. Steve Giddins There is a nice article by Tim Krabbe about Cambodian chess, which is probably similar to Burmese. See http:// timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess/ makruk.htm Chess in Cambodia   timkr.home.xs4all.nl Chess in Cambodia, the rules of Makruk and a makruk-playing program May 1 at 8:56pm · Steve Giddins I spent some time studying Chinese chess when living in Hong Kong. I also taught it to Matthew Sadler, who got quite interested. But he dropped it, after analysing a chess opening whilst seconding Piket, and failing to spot that PxP was legal, be...