Living the Dream: A Coincidence Diary

(265) Crashing into a local

2011-11-28T02:17:00.000-08:00

On the morning of September 4th 2011 I drove into the side of a passing motorist on a small street of the Valencian town of Javea, about 100 miles north of my home. It turned out the other guy, Señor Puig, lived at 29 Calle Angel Bruna in Cartagena, about a mile from my house.

(264) At page 73 and talking about running or travelling on a no frills airline on Twitter

2010-11-26T16:18:00.000-08:00

At about 0:30 a.m. on November 27th 2010 I saw something go by on Twitter from Cliff Stanford - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Stanford
CliffStanford Cliff Stanford
http://bit.ly/ghXxz0 @akaSylvia @pewari For a browser to make this calculation, it must load all table contents, (cont) http://tl.gd/761l6j
At first I was confused but then followed the first link to find a site posted by fellow Twitterer, ratherdash, http://ratherdash.tumblr.com/post/1520795208/the-story-i-heard-was-that-the-dealer-grabbed-his, where people were being asked to turn to the nearest book when they would find that the third sentence of the second paragraph of the seventy-third page would define their life. Stanford had posted just that sentence with references to two other Twitterers one of whom, akaSylvia, I too was following.
The only book adjacent to my laptop was a biography of Richard Branson, Branson, by Tom Bower which I had recently started rereading. Turning to page 73 was not difficult because I had halted at page 72 and there was hence a bookmark between pages 72 and 73.
The appropriate sentence in it was -
"He eschewed expensive cars, preached that he flew economy class -´the extra comfort is not worth the extra cost´, scoffed the owner of an airline seeking business class passengers - and espoused a carefully refined casual style."
Not forgetting re accurate bookmarks, - http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com/2006/03/101-moons-balloon.html
I tweeted the coimcidence of the bookmark -
JamesPlaskett James Plaskett
@CLiffStanford @akaSylvia Guys:the book by me, which I am rereading, WAS with a bookmark at pages 72-73. BRANSON, by Tom Bower. HONESTLY!!
But the thing was that the previous afternoon Stanford had tweeted from an airport this - CliffStanford Cliff Stanford
So much for speedy boarding. SB sent to rear of plane while remainder of px allowed to fill the front. @EasyjetCare I want my money back. from Hertsmere, Hertfordshire 26 Nov
I had sent him one or two e mails over the previous weeks semi-seriously asking him to employ me, not least because he had financed a venture of mine 11 years previously - http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com/2006/03/158-past-and-future-glories.html
So I had promptly tweeted -
Plaskett James Plaskett
RT @CliffStanford sent to rear while remainder allowed to front. @EasyjetCare I want my money back. CLIFF: start an airline! + I´ll run it! 26 Nov
I seemed to recall some connection between akaSylvia and flying (I think she had made some remark about living in southern Spain) so I checked her details - http://www.intrigue.co.uk/ http://www.fearoflanding.com/about/
Sylvia Wrigley, it turned out, was not only a pilot but Stanford´s girlfriend and writes about sometimes flying him to the UK.
... ... ...
In late March 2011 I noted that a Facebook friend, Susan Grumer, had put something on her "wall" on March 22nd. It was a variation on this same game. Her specifications were -
: Grab the closest book to you. Go to page 56. Copy the 5th sentence as your status. Don't mention the book. Post these rules as part of your status.
And her example was - ‎
"This idea would also seem to have occupied the very sanctum of materialism, physics."
Others followed suit, e.g. ,
· Curt Carlson Don't know if that works for me. My status would be "Another man or two followed each binder and stacked sheaves of grain vertically into shocks, with the head grains up."
· Jennifer Sivan Ryland- Thomas Marcus looked completely calm, like nothing had happened. lol The actual closest book to me was Thomas the train but it didn't have 56 pages lol
I chipped in with -
· H. James Plaskett ‎"I´m going to tell you something only a father would tell you... After twenty, twenty-two, it´s never quite the same fror a man."
The book was the novel An Innocent Millionaire by Stephen Vizinczey. Then I realised that Susan had quoted from my book, and so added -
James Plaskett Nice to see that my book, COINCIDENCES, was the nearest one you had to hand, Susan.
Later Susan e mailed me to expand - Carl Fuglein is someone I used to work with. just wrote to him to ask where his "rules" came from... He seems to think it's just a silly game – no meaning to the sentence. Somebody sent it to him on Facebook.

(263) The dream of Nobby Stiles fallen on hard times.

2010-09-19T01:42:00.001-07:00

On the morning of October 23rd 2007 I dreamed and then recorded the saddest dream -

Sic Transit Gloria

It is a setting where a dying George Best has passed an envelope containing loose change and scraps of money to me and asked me to take it to an address in Alicante.

As I hand the money over to an old guy in a modest setting in Alicante, some of the lineaments of his face strike a chord.
"Are you Nobby Stiles?" I ask.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobby_Stiles
He says something back, with a laughing annoyance at having been recognised.

Later I also meet up with Jackie Charlton and a guy with a vaguely familiar face who is forever bursting into high pitched flamenca song. At the end I realise that this is Gordon Banks and remark so to someone passing who concurs.

I remark also to someone that Nobby Stiles must have fallen on hard times to be living in such reduced circumstances and he, naturally, agrees.

I twig that these are all members of the 1966 England Soccer World Cup winning team.
I see a slightly balding Sir Geoff Hurst towards the end, as we are chatting in an apartment not to high up. I am slightly nervous not only that I but also that someone else might fall from/through the window.

By the way, shortly after having just awoken from that dream I was intimating the outline of it to my curious wife when our 11 yr old son intervened to say that he will be unable to do the special extra-curricular football training as he has five red marks against him
in class.

On September 15th 2010 I was saddened to see this news item -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/news/8002155/Nobby-Stiles-weeps-over-1966-World-Cup-medal-sale.html

Then, two days later, I saw this thread at the Guardian Comment Is Free section -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/17/dreams-famous-people-margaret-thatcher

I was moved to contribute a selection of the dreams I had noted over the past three years including the above one.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/17/dreams-famous-people-margaret-thatcher?showallcomments=true#comment-7698442
I note at that thread that, although it was a conscious decision on my part to contribute the Stiles dream, I was only doing so in response to a request from The Guardian for people to send in such dreams about the famous.
And so it got published just a couple of days after the pieces on Stiles´ financial concerns.

(262) Something old, something new... at Facebook

2010-08-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

On the afternoon of August 17th 2010 I found myself thinking back to this hit of the 1970s -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgZb86W-Zj0 although I had not heard the song nor even heard of it for a decade at least.
I returned home and found that several e mail had arrived in my absence and that the first was from Kelly Dudley

It was headed Something Old, Something New.

Two below it was one from someone called ´Blue Humphries´
This turned out to be a message drom Facebook saying -

Blue Humphries also commented on Sarah-Jane van der Westhuizen's photo album.

Blue wrote:
"I like my view of the Kymin but that is gorgeous !! NEVER move,lol"

Shorly afterwards I was chatting on Facebook with Jeanna Tal, daughter of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tal.

I asked her if she might be getting married soon. She said not and asked why I had asked.
I explained the lead in coincidences.

Shortly after at Facebook I saw that Mercedes Diane Griffin Forbes - one of my 122 ´Friends´at Facebook - had announced her engagement.

That led me to post this at her wall -

H. James Plaskett
Ahhh. So that´s it
I found myself, about 2 and a half hrs ago, thinking of a song from the 1970s which had the chorus; "Something old, Something new, Something borrowed, Something blue"
I had not heard it for a decade or more. I even sang out that chorus line in front of my wife + kid.
Then, having just returned to the house, I opened up my e mail and saw that the 1st one was from a Kelly Dudley of a competition site.
It was headed Something Old, Something New.

And two below it was a notification that a guy whose first name was Blue had made a comment at the photos section of Sarah-Jane van der Westhuyzen, as had I previously.

Accordingly I started hearing wedding bells associated with Facebook, and even asked Jeanna Tal on here, when we were chatting 30 mins later, if she might be getting married.

She said no.

T´was you, Mercedes.

Congrats!

(261) The water bearer

2010-05-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

At 7.35 p.m. on May 10th 2010 I was approaching the summit of San Julian hill near my home.

http://www.castillosnet.org/programs/castillosnet.php?tip=alb&dat=murcia/MU-CAS-040

I found myself thinking of press announcements that an Indian holy man had been observed performing a paranormal feat -
http://www.physorg.com/news192690076.html

I thought, rather whimsically, that I might semi-seriously use this story to apply for James Randi´s $1 Million -

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

Som years earlier I had crossed swords with Randi about his refusal to test a guy making a similar claim -

http://web.archive.org/web/20041023083501/www.alternativescience.com/james-randi.htm

He had written back that if they took such kooks seriously then they did not have time to deal with the "serious claimants".
the serious claimants.
That from a man whose raison détre is the stance that all paranormal phenomena are nonsensical.
He had ended communications with " Thank you for your inane input."

My pleasure, Randi.

On April 25th 2007, he had written to me again, less sourly, noting that -

We since then opened the challenge to the Breatharians – and they all promptly vanished, after making acceptance noises. We agreed to set aside our rule that prohibits any dangerous practices in doing the challenge, just to put an end to the this eat-nothing farce, and they suddenly fell silent…

www.randi.org/jr/2006-12/122106wise.html#i12 and www.randi.org/jr/2006-08/082506yet.html#i2

James Randi.

I had already seen a documentary on this guy -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Bahadur_Bomjon
- and he had made no claim for the $1 Million.

And I also knew that there was already an authenticated case of a guy surviving a full 18 days without food or water -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Mihavecz
- and that, therefore, Randi might not regard this newly observed feat as truly paranormal.
(The challenge states that one need only draw attention to any paranormal event and not necessarily be the person performing it.)

I imagined myself being the person who discovered the hapless Andreas Mihavecz and who gave him his first, salvaging, drink of water.

I then rounded the penultimate curve and saw three men. One hailed me to ask for a drink of water from the bottle I was holding in my right hand.
I gave him the bottle.

They shortly after all piled into a black Volkswagen Polo with the number plate

3046 GWT - or one very similar - and drove down the hill.

(260) Murray Chandler and Zygmunt Frankel: unpublicised exceptional lives

2010-01-20T04:32:00.000-08:00

On January 19th 2010 I mentioned to my wife that the story of my contemporary, Murray Chandler, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Chandler sounded like it was worth making into a film.
The previous month a chap called Edwards had told me that on his 16th birthday Chandler´s parents had found a note pinned to his bedroom door informing them that he had taken a flight from his New Zealand home to London where he would be pursuing the life of a chess professional. Edwards added that he had wanted to go on his 15th birthday but jibbed when he realised that he would have to attend school in the UK.
At 21 Chandler bought his first house in London, at 23 he acquired the Grandmaster title and at 25 had purchased a large garden flat in Earls Court.
Then in 2006 he had returned to New Zealand.

Fiona disparaged his life and said that there were many such instances of people striking out on their own and making it. She cited her late friend and fan, Ziggy Frankel. http://www.zygmuntfrankel.com/ In his unpublished autobiography (she possessed a copy of the manuscript) he describes his escape from Nazi persecution and exile in Siberia. But he had gone on from that to have a very successful career and also, she assured me, had a genuine joie de vivre.
Two days later she mentioned him again, this time in the context of successfully moving on from the past. She said that she had gleaned some facts about him from their two meetings on her visits to Israel and thought that by then he was retired but had been in arms design. She was unsure.
So later that day she googled him. One of the hits thrown up was for another man of the same name - http://www.chessgames.com/player/zygmunt_frankel.html

This guy was, like Chandler, a noted chessplayer from Wellington, New Zealand. Chandler later told me that he had met him a couple of times.
It says he was born in Krakow in 1921 and then went on to Siberia. It seems highly probable then that he was exiled by the same Russians that drove Fiona´s friend and thousands of other Polish Jews there.
Also, although towards the end of his unpublished autobiography Ziggy mentions a similarly exiled cousin of the same name born in 1928 he also early on mentions his father as stemming not from the Lvov where he grew up but from Ustrzyki Dolne, a town only 100 miles or so from Krakow. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4SKPB_enES213ES213&q=ustrzyki+dolne&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Gmina+Ustrzyki+Dolne,+Poland&gl=uk&ei=fytaS8SdA4OQjAeBqNipAg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CAsQ8gEwAA
I would therefore have thought a direct family link with the Zygmunt Frankel of Wellington to be very plausible.

(259) Shoemakers impacts: craters on the Earth and the Moon and comets on Jupiter

2009-12-26T14:40:00.000-08:00

In the earliest hours of Boxing Day 2009 I was looking up details of St. Crispin and his patronage of shoemakers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispin

I was moved to do so because of a lingering interest generated by my £250,000 question on Who Wants to be A Millionaire? some four years earlier (see Entry 224).

I then thought about looking up more details of the astronomer Shoemaker, after whom, I understood, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 had been named.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Merle_Shoemaker
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news81.html

I discovered facts about him that surprised me by their significances, not least in the context of the next question I was to face on the show; the one which stopped me -
(Which of these astronauts has never set foot on the moon?) - and also relating to Entry http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com/2006/03/part-two-narrative-epilogues-and.html .

Eugene Merle Shoemaker (1928 – 1997) was best known as an astronomer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker-Levy_9
But he began, I learned, as a geologist and studied the impact dynamics of Barringer Meteor Crater, Arizona for his Ph.D (1960).

In 1993, he, together with his wife Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy, co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. This provided the unique opportunity to observe the planetary impact of a comet when it collided with Jupiter in 1994. It caused a massive "scar" on the face of Jupiter. Most scientists were dubious of whether there would even be any evident markings on the planet.

So -
a) Gene married Carolyn Spellman in 1951. A visit to Meteor Crater the following year set him toward the view that both it and lunar craters were due to asteroidal impacts. In 1956 he tried to interest the United States Geological Survey in the construction of a geological map of the moon. He then did seminal research on the mechanics of meteorite impacts, awarded a master's degree in 1954.
Shoemaker was the first to show that Barringer Crater was formed not by volcanic activity but by an extraterrestrial impact. Hence it is now Meteor Crater. http://www.meteorcrater.com/
b) He studied the impact dynamics of Barringer Meteor Crater for his Ph.D in the year of my birth (1960).
He did more than any other person to advance the idea that sudden geologic changes can arise from asteroid strikes and that these are common over geologic time periods.
Previously, astroblemes were thought to be remnants of extinct volcanoes – even on the Moon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobleme
c) He was a pioneer in astrogeology and prominently involved in the Lunar Ranger Moon missions,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_program
which showed that the Moon is covered with impact craters of many sizes.
From an early age he was passionate about going to the moon and became a candidate for an Apollo moon flight. Set to be the first geologist to walk on the Moon, diagnosis of Addison's disease in 1963 prevented him.
d) "Which of these astronauts has never set foot on the moon?"
Shoemaker, an astronaut intended to set foot there, didn´t.
Walking on the moon requires careful preparation and equipment.
You may not do it barefoot.
He was involved in training astronauts, e.g. during field trips to Meteor Crater itself and at Sunset Crater, Arizona.
e) Shoemaker began as a terrestrial geologist, suggesting that craters were formed by meteorite impacts - a very innovative idea.

He then suggested that lunar craters were too.

When the USGS Center of Astrogeology was founded in Flagstaff in 1965, he was appointed its chief scientist and organized the geological activities planned for the lunar landings.

In 1969 he became interested in extending his geological knowledge of the formation and distribution of terrestrial and lunar impact craters to the study of the objects that formed them. His search resulted in the discovery of several such families, including the Apollo asteroids.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_asteroids
In 1983 the first of the record 32 comets associated with the Shoemaker name was discovered. By the time the program ended it had produced 40 of the--now--417 known Amor, Apollo and Aten asteroids (the orbits of this last group being smaller than that of the earth).
The Shoemakers ensured that Palomar is likely to remain the leading site for the discovery of asteroids, having found more than 13% of those numbered.
A few months before the Shoemaker program ended came its "defining moment", with Gene receiving the thrill of his lifetime when 20 components of one of his comets crashed into Jupiter with astounding results.

So he ended his scientific career searching for the extraterrestrial objects that caused craters.

Above all, he was truly the "father" of the science of near-earth objects, to the discovery and study of which The Spaceguard Foundation is dedicated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spaceguard_Foundation
He also spent his later years searching for meteor craters. During one such expedition he died in a car crash in Australia.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/craters/slide_34.html
He was killed instantaneously by a violent impact when investigating the sites of violent impacts, a tragic irony that would not have been lost on his accompanying wife and co-explorer of the terrestrial and astronomical, Carolyn.
f) On July 31, 1999, some of his ashes were carried to the Moon by the Lunar Prospector space probe in a capsule.
Shoemaker's memorial capsule is inscribed with images of Comet Hale-Bopp, the Barringer Crater, and a quotation from Romeo and Juliet -
"And, when he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun."

My wife helped me by phone to answer the Shoemakers question.

Shoemaker is the only person buried on the moon.
g) Although these insights came to me in the early hours of Boxing Day 2009, in Shoemaker´s homeland it would still have been Christmas Day.
... ... ...
To walk on the moon the first prerequisite, more important than health, piloting ability, intelligence or any other quality or attribute, is simply the demonstration that one really WANTS to walk there.

(As I changed the last two words of that sentence from "do it" to "walk there" at 3:48 P.M. on Jan 29th 2010 my wife called out to me to ask if I had seen what Catherine Warwick had just added at a Facebook thread that Fiona had started -

It was a link to this -

Underwater chess Curacao
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8zSJuS31Y
Dutch chessmasters 'Hans Böhm' and 'Robin Swinkels' take up a chess match 4 meters below sealevel having stingrays and fish as their specta
Ayer a las 22:19

Fiona Pitt-kethley
Wonderful film. Made my day. My husband has met one of the guys
Ayer a las 22:26
Catherine Warwick
Great fun. Now all we need is chess on the Moon
Hace 37 minutos
).
... ... ...
And not just to ponder on it or gaze at it or dream about it or be hanger-on to a moonwalker.

(258) "origin of christmas for veni vidi vinci" and other ´incorrect´ Latin quotes

2009-12-26T11:42:00.000-08:00

On the early evening of December 16th 2009 I checked the Statcounter statistics for this blog and saw that someone in Beirut had very recently accessed it by putting
the origin of christmas for veni vidi vinci
into a search engine.

Here are the hits thrown up by that implausible Lebanese search -

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu_UjCSlLBmcBOctXNyoA?p=origin of christmas for veni vidi vinci&fr2=sb-bot&fr=ush-mailc

My blog is the first hit. I noted the fourth -

http://www.berkshirepublishing.com/blog/?p=654

and browsed it briefly. I was surprised by how frequent a misquotation this seems to be, although I had noticed at least one other occasion when my blog had been thrown up by a similar search.

In Entry 44 here the misquoting is deliberate.

I left a comment about the misquote and pointed Karen Christensen to my blog.
About five hours later I turned to the Chessbase report by John Saunders on that day´s final round of the London Chess Classic tournament.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5990

I noted in the second paragraph a different and new incorrect quoting of Caesar.
But then I saw that the coincidence is more specific still.

The opening paragraph is about the Norwegians´ annual gift of a Christmas tree to London as gratitude for British help during World War Two. (My father had served in "that fracas" as he put it in Norway in the early days of the war.)

This year the... tree was sent... but Norway also thoughtfully sent another present – not as tall but every bit as impressive to anyone who appreciates top-quality chess. 19-year-old Magnus Carlsen came, saw and conquered at the London Chess Classic and, in the process, launched himself to the top of the official world chess ratings. Nobody has ever achieved this at a younger age.

So, “Magnus venit, vidit, vicit” (I knew all that school Latin would come in handy one day)...

The Berkshire Blog´s misquote comes in an entry about the launch of the book
This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity
... our first book for teachers... This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity... by the brilliant and eloquent world historian, David Christian... covers not only the history of humanity but the origins of the universe and of life, the “big history” David is known for.

... I snagged the title... when David told me UCP had decided not to use the quotation...

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

[... from the final verse of the ‘Diamond Sutra’, c. fourth century CE, as translated by Kenneth Saunders, cited in Christmas Humphreys, ed., The Wisdom of Buddhism, London... "] I know I’m supposed to... in order to choose a book title, not simply fall in love with a line of poetry. But this one... sounds so much like Shakespeare... and... the author, suggested it... The book is a companion to the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History and... appears in it as an overview introduction...

... William H. McNeill, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago, says about the book:

Julius Caesar famously summed up the surprises and confusion of ten years of war in Gaul with three Latin words: veni, vidi, vinci —I came, I saw, I conquered... David Christian performs a similar feat by summing up the surprises and confusion of 250,000 years of human history in 56 pages... and improves on Caesar’s boast by showing how persistent collective learning expanded human skills, and enlarged our numbers, wealth, and power across the ages. What a quick, convenient, and persuasive way to begin to understand the confusing world in which we find ourselves! ...

: Posted under Publishing & media, World history.
Comments: 4

Pingback from Berkshire Blog by Karen Christensen » This Fleeting World is published
Time: 30 June 2007, 12:09

[...] I’m at the World History Association conference in Milwaukee and have the delightful experience of meeting some of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History authors and also being... with David Christian, author of our hot-off-the-press This Fleeting World: A Brief History of Humanity, and... Bob Bain and Lauren McArthur, who wrote the foreword. It’s... available... Monday... In the meantime, some background at a previous post. [...]

Comment from Marci Ziese
Time: 30 December 2007, 15:01

I noticed you did not cite a reference for the translation of the last four lines from the Diamond Sutra, quoted above. Do you know the source of this particular translation? I have seen other ones that are similar but not quite as poetic.

It would be a good idea in the future to give references.

Thanks,

Marci

Comment from Karen Christensen
: 2 January 2008, 7:36

It comes from the final verse of the ‘Diamond Sutra’, c. fourth century CE, as translated by Kenneth Saunders, cited in Christmas Humphreys, ed., The Wisdom of Buddhism, London: The Buddhist Society, 1987, p. 122.

Comment from James Plaskett
: 16 December 2009, 11:40

Veni, vidi, VICI, not vinci, Madame.
See my blog.

I note:-
a) My encountering the misquoting of Veni, vidi, vici twice within five hours.

b) That in each case it is associated with Christmas. In John Saunders´ Chessbase piece he chooses an intro about the Norwegian annual Christmas gift. Karen Christensen´s piece is
about a book by David Christian.
The book´s title is taken from a line from a c. fourth century CE work cited by Christmas Humphreys as editor of The Wisdom of Buddhism.

c) Both "misquotes" are in the context of a man conquering the world.

d) In the chess article, John Saunders firstly alters the Caesar quote in a way that I had not seen before and also, if you like, thereby ´mistranslates´ his own Latin quote.
The translation of the Diamond Sutra, as Marci Ziese adds, it is a different (and nicer) translation than any she has seen before. It was made by Kenneth Saunders.

John Saunders´ version of the famous Caesar quote is also unique, but- as he made clear in his comment here - it was (as I suspected it might be) deliberate!

But illustrations of what Peter Vaughan called the Synchronicity of Synchronicity or what Roderick Main termed Synchronicity´s self-referring tendency, i.e the tendency of coincidences to spawn coincidences are provided by subsequent e mails -

Yes, I meant "The great one [Magnus] came, saw and conquered". It is correctly rendered Latin... To say that I am somehow "misquoting" or "mistranslating" Caesar is to impute a level of ignorance on my part of quite staggering proportions. An addendum has... been put... on the ChessBase site just in case other people think I'm a total ignoramus. For the record, I achieved S-Level distinction in Latin, studied it at Cambridge and... taught it at a posh London prep school for a... while (... you may conclude that my reference to "school Latin" was a tad disingenuous). .*
JS

P.S. * actually there IS a coincidence accruing from all this ... I was discussing your 'misquotation' allegation with my wife... Oddly enough, she does a Latin lesson herself every week... Just after our... chat, she needed to look at a website for the residential nursing home where her uncle is being cared for and found this... http://aveleylodge.co.uk/
... on the right hand side... you will find some testimonials... - in Latin! This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen on the web. What has happened is that the web programmer deputed to set up the page has used a standard template... which... often include Latin so that they can be assessed for suitability. Latin is used for random text. But the idiot... has simply forgotten to replace the Latin gibberish with meaningful text. As I said to the missus... "testimonials in Latin? Just how old are some of the patients?"

And the final (and minor) codicil stems from my reply to John -

2009/12/17
... Studied it at Cambridge?...
Pah!
I got an O Level with Grade B, I´ll have you know!
But the coincidence is still patent - strengthened in fact - and your Missus´ addendum does it no harm. Working on it (and what you commented on at the blog was hardly complete; a magnuS opus still very much under construction!).

When I published - d) In the chess article, John Saunders firstly misquotes Caesar in a way that I had not seen before and also, if you like, thereby mistranslates his own Latin quote. I was very much aware that it might have been deliberate on your part.
Hence the wording " ...if you like thereby mistranslates..."
At Entry 44 we encounter TWO deliberate alterations of Caesar´s famous quote.
The quoted Prof. at Christensen´s site would seem to have just got it wrong.You are now the third deliberate fiddler with the quote. Work still in progress...
J.

His reply -

James ... go and stand in the corner, 'Owl of the Remove' Plaskett Minor - it is 'magnuM opus' - a third declension neuter noun, not second declension masculine. Hmm, perhaps I would have grown into the Mr Chips role after all...
Incidentally I don't believe Caesar had copyright on those three Latin verbs and, even if he did, it would have lapsed a couple of millennia ago. What I choose to do with them isn't 'mis-anything' - it's a play on words, jeux d'esprit or something of that ilk...
Regards
John

My final salvo -

Even I know it´s MagnuM opus.
That was MY deliberate error and play on Latin words.
(Noteworthy that it should have escaped YOU...
Think about it, Teacher...)

Your missus has a codicil re caring and incorrect Latin.
Hmmmm....
That coincidences so often tend to generate coincidences is, in the categorisation of Dr R. Main, "Synchronicity´s self-referring tendency" i.e. synchronicity is emphasising its essentially spiritual nature.

See... elements of this in Entries 253, 240 point (g), 235, point (e), 224 (linking with Entry 40), 218, 211, 204, 192, 189, 188, 187, 186, 172, 167, 164, 154, and 49.

But the instance of this that might seem most striking to you involves Hartston.
It involves THIRD generation coincidences and is in the
Part Two: The Narrative, Epilogues and Appendices
section, scanning points (45) - (51).

Dr I. Grattan-Guinness.also mentioned the category of ‘Second Order Coincidences’, i.e. those that lead to coincidences, claiming that when a coincidence leads on to another coincidence then it has become an object in its own right.

J.

(257) Knight from g3 to h1

2009-12-26T11:41:00.001-08:00

On the afternoon of October 31st 2009 I found myself making a comparison between the reaction of Raymond Keene to a knight manouevre executed by Aaron Nimzowitsch and inserting the odd, perhaps rare expression learnt in a foreign language into one´s attempts to converse in it.
The move N(g3)-h1 was eulogised by Keene in his 1973 biography of Nimzowitsch. He wrote that when he first saw the game in which this retreat was executed (the knight quickly re-emerged via f2 to play a key part in his victory) he was so impressed that he kept trying in his own games to create situations in which he too could play N(g3)-h1.

That, to say the least, could not easily be effected. In the thousands of games that I had played I did not think that I had even once played N(g3)-h1 and, apart from the Nimzowitsch game, could not think of any other where I had seen it deployed.

I later determined that this was the game

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?/gid=1007481

Knights are hardly ever sent into corners except to make captures, although I could recall a Kaspàrov win over Piket where the final move was (from black) ...N(g3)-h1!.

A few years earlier I had been forced to play N(b3)-a1 against Veselin Topalov, but that was an abject retreat and I lost the game.

The game Korchnoi Vs Fischer from the World Blitz Championship in Herceg Novi 1970 came to me as one very rare example of a knight being pùrposively retreated from the third rank into the corner: Fischer playing ... N(g6)-h8, then ... N(h8)-f7, then ... N(f7)-g5 and going on to win.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?/gid=1044673

It struck me as almost a metaphor for my knowledge of Spanish. Seven years after moving to Spain my command of the language was rudimentary, but every now and again I might encounter a phrase and however improbable, think of how I might subsequently deploy it.

A couple of hours later I was playing a game for my club in Lorca. The position arose -

I played my attacked Knight from g3 to h1 to soon redeploy it at f2.
And I went on to win.

(256) James Marsh and the responsibility of doing your own thing

2009-12-26T11:39:00.000-08:00

On the morning of June 5th 1991 I was selling advertising space for Cornhill Publications. I began introducing myself for the first time to sales prospects as ´James Marsh´. Many salespeople used pseudonyms although in my few months in that job I had never before adopted one. The name was partly inspired by Plaskett´s meaning ´marsh dweller´.
That afternoon through the hubbub in the office I heard colleague Tim Preston ask to speak to "... your President, James Marsh."
It transpired that out of the hundreds of potential leads he had chosen to call one with which he had no previous dealings and their President was James Marsh.
... ... ...
Some months later I had a dream which was scripted around an episode of the 1970s BBC drama Colditz which I had seen in the early 1970s.

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Colditz_(TV_series)

The series was set in Colditz castle which was being used by the Germans during the Second World War to house hard case P.O.Ws. My dream was framed around an episode in which an Englishman hoped to exploit a clause in the Geneva Convention which permitted the repatriation of any P.O.W. determined insane. The officer planned a unique escape attempt by feigning insanity.
He was so convincing that many of his fellow inmates even were taken in and the Nazis sent him home.
Not long after the British Commanding Officer in Colditz reads out to some of his senior officers a letter he has received from the released prisoner´s wife. They are smiling as he begins the recital but then visibly shocked upon hearing that "... Doctors think a cure unlikely." i.e. his feigned insanity has slipped, unnoticed by his comrades, into the real thing.
The C.O. forbids any more escape attempts of that kind.
The ambience of the dream was somehow that my own attempts at yoga had led me to too isolated, unnatural and indeed dangerous a way of life, and damn near the brink. A more wholesome, social and integrated lifestyle such as that upon which I had embarked in 1991 was much better.
Shortly after the dream I was to see that episode of Colditz rebroadcast.
I noted that the "crazed" and crazed escapee was Wing Commander George Marsh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsNVQefNvJw
... ... ...
On October 27th 2009 I tried ringing at work someone with whom I had worked at Cornhill but with whom I had had no contact in 13 years. I was asked by the person who took the call for my name. For some reason I gave the one that I had never deployed since 1996: "James Marsh". I was then asked for my company name and improvised; "I work for my own company."
My erstwhile colleage proved unable to take the call.
The next day I (re)e mailed Byron Jacobs requesting he send me a diagram of a chess position.
He did, also asking if I had given up with the Internet Chess Club, presumably because he often frequented it and I, who had been apt to hang out there, now rarely did.
I replied, sullenly and very inaccurately, that I had given up on life. He responded that if a man had become fed up with the ICC then he had probably found something better to do. I sent back again (untruly!) that I had given up on life.
But at the end of his response Byron had asked if I had seen Man on Wire, saying that he had watched it the previous evening - the 27th - and that it was stunning; "Man´s got balls of steel."
I seemed to recall hearing something about this film, and so looked at its trailer on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIawNRm9NWM
I was amazed and went on to view the entire film that day, blown away by the fairy tale story of Philippe Petit´s illegal tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center of New York in 1974.
I noted that the director of this 2008 Best Documentary Oscar winner was 46 year old Cornishman, James Marsh. His name had never registered with me before.

The trailer for this breathtaking film spoke of striving for the impossible ("That is what we´re here for") and how life is for living and the film concludes with the 57 year old Petit speaking of the importance of not repeating yourself and of making "... every day, every year, every idea a true challenge, and then you live your life like you are on a tightrope."

Earlier that morning I had been adding some quotations to a file of such that I was making under the heading Responsibility. Most of the quotes I had already there were about punctuality and reliability, but this new batch was for the most part from respectable people I knew who were in agreement that 9 to 5 routine was nothing to be proud of and that one could be perfectly responsible and respectable without subjecting oneself to such straightjacketing.

James Marsh´s film proved a timely motivational fillip!

The BBC Colditz series ran from 1972 to 1974, so it was showing in the same year as Petit made his walk, although the epsode featuring Wing Commander Marsh´s escape aired on December 21st 1972.

(255) Predicting the National Lottery numbers

2009-12-26T11:37:00.000-08:00

A codicil to Entry (6)
http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com/2006/03/6-shambolic-wogans-winner-pennies.html
happened in September 2009.
Derren Brown performed a TV stunt in which he appeared to have predicted the 6 balls drawn in the National Lottery.

I contributed to various threads about it at the guardian.co.uk Comment Is Free site.
One, by Vicky Frost, invited readers to vote on how he could have pulled it off.
I chipped in with a post which became, at 16 Sep 09, 11:01pm, the penultimate -

Vote: How did Derren Brown do it?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/tvandradioblog/poll/2009/sep/10/derren-brown-television?commentid=a90557e8-53e7-42f9-857c-988eb9899cb1
Quite late on September 9th I posted at Vicky Frost´s CiF piece of September 7th re Derren Brown´s staking his career on predicting the lottery.

I pointed out that it had been done before and gave a link to Entry 6 at my Blog. The number of hits the Blog got that day was over 1400. It was averaging less than 100.

Also on September 9th James Meikle posted one of several other CiF articles about Brown´s attempt to predict the lottery later that day. He indeed mentions there that Paul Daniels advocated Brown deliberately getting one number wrong, perhaps to add verisimilitude.

Mine was one of the last comments, and on September 11th -

JamesPlaskett 11 Sep 09, 4:06pm
Camelot said in a statement. "It is impossible to affect the outcome of the draw and Derren Brown is not suggesting he is doing this."

But of course it is impossible!

Makes you wonder then why Camelot tried, unsuccessfully, to take legal action to prevent Paul McKenna from doing precisely that, doesn´t it?

http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com/2006/03/6-shambolic-wogans-winner-pennies.html

Also, after McKenna´s psychokinesis experiment made 3 of the 7 "willed" balls manifest - an event with odds of about 2.8% chance of happening - they immediately changed the lottery rules so that getting 3 of the 6 balls did not automatically guarantee a ten pounds prize.

I wonder why?

"It is impossible to affect the outcome of the draw..."

Still, just in case....

I have made some similar comments about the 1996 McKenna psychokinesis experiment at other CiF threads anent Brown´s stunt.
The number of hits on my blog on Sep 10th was almost 8,000.

Now see what else happened that day -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8259801.stm

Note that Brown´s "Prediction" happened on September 9th. The "revelation" happened on C4 on September 11th.
The Bulgarian real life 4.2 million to one replication of the six numbers occurred on September 10th, i.e. in between Derren´s "miracñe" and his "explanation".
Three of the numbers also appeared in the September 13 draw.
An unprecedented 18 people guessed all six numbers when they were drawn the second time on September 10. The winners each get 10,164 leva (5,197 euros).
In the first draw on September 6, nobody got all six numbers right.

Those were -
2 11 23 28 35 39

Now THAT´s MAGIC!

Would you Adam and Eve it!?

http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com/2006/03/147-who-still-wants-to-be-millionaire.html
... ... ...
In fact the odds on those same six numbers of the forty-two used in the Bulgarian draw reappearing were higher still: 5,245,786 to one.

And that is without even taking into account the chances of Mr Brown´s "magical prediction" coinciding with the recurrence.

McKenna´s psychokinetic experiment was designed to test whether a concentration of focused minds could will the lottery outcome, just like Wogan´s earlier attempt to marshall mental power.
On the day of Brown´s "prediction", September 9th 2009, this blog got over 1400 hits.
On the following day, September 10th 2009, when the same numbers were drawn again in the National Lottery of Bulgaria, it received 7851.
Almost all hits on both days were from the Guardian threads directly to Entry (6).

Also consider -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344539/How-26-000-fans-Lost-actually-WON-copying-lottery-numbers-used-TV-series-cash-Mega-Millions-draw.html

(254) Same car, same key

2009-12-16T14:31:00.000-08:00

On April 23rd 2008 I turned the key in the door of my parked, dark blue, Hyundai Accent, stepped inside ... and saw a mysterious magnetic religious icon on the dash.
Also, I then noticed, it was in a far more spruce condition internally.
This was not my car!
Although mine was parked just 10-15 metres further along this road in Cartagena city centre, this was a car of identical make and colouring and, somewhat disturbingly, my key opened it.

(253) ...so shall you receive

2009-07-05T07:14:00.000-07:00

I gave a fiver to a mendicant couple in Southend at Easter 2007, the first occasion that I gave more than a few coins to beggars.
A day or two later my (somewhat scruffily attired) wife and son dined at the El Descargador restaurant in La Union and, to their great surprise, when it came to paying the bill they discovered that it had been already paid for them by an anonymous couple at an adjacent table, who had since departed.

On March 21st 2009 I contributed five pounds to a minibus fare in Leicestershire, although, in view of the number of passengers, I needed only to contribute just over a pound.
The next day I hopped in a taxi for the return journey to the same railway station with someone whom I did not know and he offered to pay the entire fare of 5.80 Pounds.
I insisted on chipping in about half.

On March 23rd 2009 I returned to a girl at a Bureau de change at Luton airport an extra 10 pounds she had mistakenly given me, adding that I did not want to get her into trouble.

A couple of days later two Spanish cops let me off quite a serious misdemeanour, adding “Bye Bye”, when I had also failed to produce my license and insurance, although I actually did have both with me!

On May 5th 2009 I gave a wino woman 22p at Highbury and Islington corner in London.
The next day I picked up first a 2 centimo piece near check-in at Luton airport and shortly after a 20p piece from the floor.

I often gave gift copies of my book Coincidences away only shortly afterwards to sell the same number, e.g. Simon Williams and a Bulgarian guy who styled himself TheNewOne at the Internet Chess Club each bought a copy shortly after I had given two copies away.
This must have happened about a dozen times since publication in September 2000.

On June 28th 2009 I was at at Cala Cortina beach (see Entry 242) when a woman approached me asking for money for her petrol to enable her to drive the 50 kilometres or so back to Murcia city. Her story struck me as highly implausible, but I parted with 6 €. She was asking for 10 €.
As she walked away from my car I handed her a gift copy of Coincidences.

I had sold 244 copies with a further 8 that might have been termed "bartered", but sales had dried up and it had certainly been over a year since I had made the last one.

(Her phone number turned out to be, as I rather suspected it might, bogus.)

On July 4th 2009 I received this message at the English Chess Forum -

Coincidences
Sent: Sat Jul 04, 2009 6:54 pm
Dear James
A couple of really strange (chess related) coincidences have happened to me recently and so I have been trying in vain to find a copy of your book on the subject. Can you help?
Best regards, John Anderson

We had shared a flat at a tournament in Guernsey in 1978 and had bumped into each other a few times since.

I asked him if he would like to buy a signed copy or just to have his library get it for him. I also asked him to please detail his own coincidences.

The next day I got this e mail -
From: John Anderson Sent: Sunday, 5 July, 2009 11:57:03
Subject: Coincidence?

Hi James

A signed copy would be great... I tried the local libraries, Foyles, even Chess & Bridge(!) without success, but read somewhere that you may have self-published, hence the direct contact.

A couple of months ago I found myself thinking about Nigel McSheehy, wondering what he was up to, was he still playing, that sort of thing. I`ve no idea why this thought should come to me as although we were (chess)friends as teenagers, I haven`t seen or heard from him since 1983 when I moved back up to London. I looked on the ECF grading database to see if he was still listed but it seemed he was no longer active.

Then a friend sent me an email about the 1st Worcestershire Congress which takes place in a couple of weeks time in Bromsgrove, near to where Nigel lived and worked when I knew him. I didn`t think of this as being a coincidence at the time, just that it might be worth entering and would be a good excuse to revisit some old haunts, see some old friends and, of course, I resolved to try and look Nigel up.

The very next day, on the ECF forum, Nigel was mentioned! He had a peculiar habit of recording his moves using R U Y L O P E Z instead of a-h apparently and I was about to write in saying that he used Binary to record his moves when I knew him - together with "screwing" the pieces into the squares in order to demonstrate to his opponent that this was clearly the only correct move in the position!

But before I could do that, Keith Arkell had posted that Nigel had died a few years ago. I googled Nigel to see if there was a local obituary or something and I was simply amazed to see your blog
Living the Dream: A Coincidence Diary: (212) N.A.P. McSheehy
in pole position.

I was amazed because - and this is the really spooky thing - the previous evening I had watched you in a re-run of WWTBAM - the first time I had ever seen it. While I was aware of your success, of course, I was just randomly channel-hopping when your picture caught my attention. I never watch the program, let alone the "Classic" repeats!

The other weird thing was that I was about to start a new thread on the ECF forum along the lines of "Where are they now?". I was curious as to what had happened to some of the great friends and strong players (relative to me,not you!) I`d met over the years. I was going to start with Jonathan Kinlay who won the British Under-21 Championship but got married very young, just after he graduated from Bristol University. The rumour at the time was his new bride (Maggie?) didn`t like chessplayers very much and had made him stop playing!

I`m not sure there was any truth in that but other than writing a monograph on the Keres Attack and doing an Audiotape on the Kings Gambit he did, it would appear, hang up his chess boots.

So imagine my surprise when on a thread discussing who would make a good ECF president, Jonathan Kinlay`s name came up within a day or two. It seems he is/was a very successful businesman similar to David Norwood.

Anyway, I`m off to buy an extra Lottery ticket this week, just in case...

Best regards
John

In mid-1986 Angela Julian-Day (see Entry 14) had mentioned to me chatting with this John Anderson as she took a bus ride through London.

He verified it in a subsequent e mail -

Yes, I do recall chatting up a very pretty girl on the top deck of 159 bus in 1986! I think we were sat next to each other when I heard what I thought was an American accent - those were the days when we still had conductors of course - only to be corrected that it was Canadian. Could that be the same one?

However, when I asked her what she was doing in London she said she was an International Chess player! I remember having to suppress a smile but she was really charming. I`m sure she never mentioned you though...
... ... ...
In the early afternoon of November 7th 2010 I bought my wife a cake she had specifically requested from an ALDI store and jokingly donated the centimo change to the checkout girl.
"Chica rica", I observed. She smiled.
A few hours later I picked up a centimo from the forecourt of a nearby petrol station.

(252) Getting real

2009-06-24T03:24:00.001-07:00

Circa 2:30 a.m. on June 24th 2009 I was seriously thinking about putting something on Facebook about the cute and minor coincidences of my names being Harold James and Harry Potter´s names being Harry James with us sharing the same surname initial, too.
Also, due to a fall down the stairs on May 18th 2009 I had acquired a similar zigzag mark on the right forehead, the same place as his.

I had already posted a small reference to those on Twitter on June 15th -

Last dressing off... got a true Harry James Potter scar now.. and in the same place. Just as well my name´s Harold James Plaskett...!?¿10:06 AM Jun 15th

A few minutes later my wife, who had recently returned home from a concert, shouted out that she had just noticed that amongst those who had begun to follow her on Twitter during her three hour evening out was none other than the actor who plays the boy wizard: Daniel Radcliffe!
(...or someone masquerading as him!?)

And this without her having drawn his attention to herself via following him at the site first.

Also, just shortly before I had been looking at an article in which Harry´s future wife says she is thinking about quitting acting -
Acting? I think I've had enough, says Harry Potter star, Emma Watson Mail Online

´The 19-year-old said that she does not have a 'burning passion' for acting and that she may give up her film career once she finishes playing Harry's school chum Hermione.´

As Fiona had reciprocated and begun to follow ´Mr Radcliffe´ on Twitter, I did too.

I even sent him some direct messages about the coincidences -

@danielradcliffe Just as I am about to put something on Facebook/here re my name being Harold James P. and having acquired the Harry Potter2:41 AM Jun 24th

scar re falling downstairs 5 wks ago, my wife pittkethley , shouts that Daniel Radcliffe himself has become a follower of hers at Twitter!!2:44 AM Jun 24th

@danielradcliffe It´s all in the stars, I tell you http://bit.ly/tEBzH 2:47 AM Jun 24th

Then, at 3:20 a.m, as I copied the Daily Mail piece on Ms Watson ready to paste here -

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=530732690&ref=name

at Facebook, something I had never seen before quite unexpectedly popped up on my computer screen -

http://www.temperaturadelamor.com/

The Love Thermometer says "Discover your love"... "Test your love".

That prompted me to post further on Twitter -

Just after I´d finished this http://bit.ly/DuYWB 3:34 AM Jun 24th

...and as I went to post that link at Facebook re this coincidence nexus, this crops up on my screen - http://www.temperaturadelamor.com/?3:35 AM Jun 24th

All of it on the theme of GETTING REAL...3:35 AM Jun 24th

The next day I noticed that ´Daniel Radcliffe ´ was now following me on Twitter.

Later on I checked my Statcounter figures and saw that, at 3:33 a.m. on June 24th 2009, i.e. almost contemporaneously with my posting on Twitter about the pulsing Love Thermometer appearing on my screen, someone had entered -

love same part of brain religious experience cat scan

into a search engine and had thus been led to this blog.

I looked at the details and saw -

VISITOR ANALYSIS
Referring Link
http://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_it=wscreen-searchboxhtml&query=love
Host Name
cpe-68-174-30-124.nj.res.rr.com
IP Address
68.174.30.124 [Label IP Address]
Country
United States
Region
New York
City
Flushing
... ... ...

It was somebody in Flushing.

Lastly, in the early hours of June 26th 2009 I found myself looking at/for stuff about Joan Collins on the net, having just been moved to consult her Wikipedia entry.
One was this American TV interview, posted November 2008,

http://cnettv.cnet.com/joan-collins-does-early/9742-1_53-50061564.html

with a reference from the interviewer to his looking like what Harry Potter would be in the future.
My wife and I had shared some jokes about my now being suited to play a mature Harry Potter.

And then the interviewer, Harry Smith, mentions that Daniel Radcliffe will be on the show next week!

Here´s that Daniel Radcliffe interview -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82vUAX_qs38

On August 14th 2009 fellow Harry Potter actor Tom Felton posted on Twitter that, although he was urging Dan Radcliffe to "tweet" he had not yet begun to do so.
i.e. the tweeting Daniel Radcliffe was not real.

(251) Drs use CiF to read minds and suss identity

2009-04-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2008 I suffered a severe, public low blood sugar fit or hypoglaecemia attack.
Following some days of observation in hospital I was released and advised to have my head checked out (they had already ascertained that there was no alcohol nor trace of drugs in my blood system) to see if epilepsy or some other disorder might be involved, and so in December 2008 I went to the same nearby hospital for my first ever electoencephelogram.
It was conducted by a woman.
The results showed nothing unusual.
But when I saw a doctor afterwards about them at the Neurological department of the Naval Hospital in Cartagena, she advocated a CAT Scan, just to make absolutely sure all was okay.

This I had at the Hospital Virgen de la Caridad in the last week of January 2009.
The results I was told would be sent to my GP... or at least that was what I, with my imperfect Spanish, understood the hospital personnel who conducted the scan to be saying.
I noted that all of them were women.
But the GP said he never got the results, so about the last week in February I went back to the Neurological dept and made an appointment with a lady official there to see a Dr about my results a few days later, after they had been dug out.
It was around the first week in March, then, that I saw two lady doctors about the CatScan.
They held up shots of the inside of my head - the first time that I had seen such photos - and poured over them, concluding that I had no evidence of any brain disorder and that the fit had been caused by severe low blood sugar; nothing more.

On March 13th 2009 I saw this piece in The Independent -
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-able-to-read-peoples-minds-1643968.html

It prompted me to seek out Hassabis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis - whom I knew slightly through chess although I had spoken to him little and certainly not in the previous seven years or so. I did not know that he had moved into the field of neuroscience, and I sent him this first communication on Facebook in which I directed him to coincidences concerning the work of Prof. J. Lorber -

H. James Plaskett
13 March at 17:14
Hi. Saw the bit about your work in The Independent. Check out Entry 169 at www.jamesplaskett.com before you´re so sure we understand how brains work.
Best,
James

Entry 169 is about Prof. Lorber´s work with hydrocephalic people, some of whom were revealed by scans to have almost no brain but unimpaired intelligences.

In January 2009 I realised that some unnecessary and inaccurate comments of mine at The Guardian´s Comment Is Free site were insulting to women in general, more so to women doctors and in particular to onesuch.

There were also wholly uncharacteristic and, for the most part, quite untrue. The profession of medical doctor is one I have always held in high regard.
And my words would also have read as appearing to let something slip, yet even that version of events was also false.
I got the comments removed.

On March 21st 2009 the particular lady made it clear that she was very offended by something. I assumed it to be probably those comments, although I was not 100% sure.
On the morning of March 22nd I was composing an explanatory and apologetic e mail to her when I paused and glanced at my In box.

It contained this reply from Demis -

No Brainer
Between Demis Hassabis and You

Demis Hassabis
22 March at 04:49
Hi James
Another funny (although minor) coincidence for your collection! A few weeks ago whilst browsing some controversial article on the guardian online I noticed some comments by you. I figured you must have been THE Plaskett and then found your blog. Quite interesting (one of my favourite Police songs is synchronicity and i didnt realise what it was about till now), although I think a lot of 'coincidences' are actually just quirks of the way our attentional system works.

Anyway, so a few weeks later, here you are contacting me. Dont worry, I'm fully aware that we are a long way off understanding how the mind works in any detail. However, for the first time ever I think we may have a truly useful tool now in the shape of neuroimaging to probe these types of questions (that's why i only recently got into neuroscience) and for example would trivially be able to confirm cases of hydroencephalitis.
Best wishes
Demis

I noted the unusual time at which the message had been sent.

"No Brainer" was indeed the heading given by Richard Milton (whom I met for the first time and with whom I dined in London on March 19th 2009) to his piece on Prof. Lorber´s discoveries at his, sadly, suspended website, http://www.alternativescience.com/ .
It was also how I had headed my e mail.

I noted the image Demis put alongside his Facebook identity: a photograph of a scan of a head with the brain clearly visible inside.

That I should open just this e mail, in which he refers to having been drawn to my web diary of coincidences via comments of mine at the Guardian´s Comment is Free website, as I was composing my conciliatory e mail to the Dr confirmed to me that it was indeed such comments that had got up her nose.

In the Independent piece of March 13th 2009 he is styled "Dr Hassabis".

On March 23rd I noticed this Guardian Blog -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2009/mar/20/computer-games-artificial-intelligence-jim-hansen
Here was Demis himself fetching up, for the first time, at The Guardian site, the next day.
I left the first comment.
The podcast mentions that Demis had had his viva the day before.
Checking this with him it transpired that the Podcast was recorded on March 20th, so he was not a Dr when The Independent piece appeared but had actually qualified on March 19th - the day I dined with Milton.

(250) Another such cough

2009-02-27T08:10:00.000-08:00

On the morning of February 27th 2009 I at last got around to making amendments to my essay Playing The Game at my other Blog -
www.themillionairethree.com/ .

The alteration I made was to include the text of an e mail that I had sent to Bob Woffinden and the Ingrams on May 10th 2008, and which I later forwarded to Jon Ronson, as a codicil to the essay´s first point.
On each occasion I had headed the e mail
Another Such Cough.
It read -

As a further illustration of what I am getting at, at a car boot fair this morning a stall holder brought up with me the subject of Ingram´s win and mentioned the signals "... whenever the guy coughed".

At the adjacent stall was a lady, a smoker, who had earlier that morning, with myself, helped herself to one of the first guy´s chips.

At the word "coughed" she coughed. She never coughed again the whole morning.
I pointed this out to them.

A few minutes after I did so my wife drew my attention to something which she had just spotted in The Sun on line. It was an article hinting that Tarrant might be abandoning his job as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? host -
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article2276935.ece

Tarrant says that doctors have diagnosed that his long hours in the studio have led him to develop asthma.

6 days earlier The Sun also quoted Tarrant as saying that he now really wants to play the role of a gangster in a soap opera an idea he had mentioned some years before - http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article2259800.ece
See also the foot of Entry 229.

Later I went to Wikipedia with the intent of copying the list of my books from the entry on myself and saw that a Dutchman unknown to me had added a photo of me holding a copy of Coincidences.
The previous day I had noted a thread at the quizzing.co.uk site headed COINCIDENCES -
http://www.iqagb.co.uk/trivia/viewtopic.php?t=7517

(249) Beginning to learn to think

2009-02-26T00:53:00.000-08:00

In the early hours of February 22nd 2009 I made a contribution to a Blog of Prof. Colin Blakemore´s at Comment Is Free entitled Science is just one gene away from defeating religion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/22/genetics-religion
Prof. B. argued hard for a materialist view of everything and suggested that we may soon nail the genes that force so many to take religious ideas seriously.

... at Cambridge... I walked to lectures past the Cavendish Lab... One day, scrawled on the wall, was... "CRICK FOR GOD".
No surprise that pivotal advances in science provoke religious metaphors. Crick and Watson's discovery transformed our view of life itself - from a manifestation of spiritual magic to a chemical process. One more territorial gain in the metaphysical chess match between science and religion.

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was certainly a vital move in that chess game - if not checkmate. In an interview for God and the Scientists, to be broadcast tonight... Richard Dawkins declares: "Darwin removed the main argument for God's existence."

...Throughout the love-hate relationship between science and Christianity, the idea that human rationality is a gift from God has frequently been used as a justification, or an excuse, for scientific inquiry...
Science has rampaged over the landscape of divine explanation, provoking denial or surrender from the church...

Science is brilliant at questions that start "how", but religion is the only approach to questions that start "why". Throughout history, human beings have asked those difficult "why" questions.
It's true that spiritual beliefs of one form or another are universal, almost as defining of humanity as language is. But the universality of language and the fact that bits of the human brain are clearly specialised to do language suggest that our genes give us language-learning brains. Is the same true of religion?
Brain scanning has indeed shown particular bits of the brain lighting up with activity when people pray... or recollect intense religious experiences. Richard Harries said: "It would not be surprising if God had created us with a physical facility for belief."
But there is another interpretation, which might eventually lead to the completion of the scientific harvest.
..increasingly, those who study the human brain see our experiences, even of our own intentions, as being an illusory commentary on what our brains have already decided to do... could the pervasive human belief in supernatural forces and spiritual agents, controlling the physical world, and influencing our moral judgments, be an extension of that false logic, a misconception no more significant than a visual illusion?
I'm dubious about those "why" questions: why are we here? Why do we have a sense of right and wrong? Either they make no sense or they can be recast as the kind of "how" questions that science answers so well.
When we understand how our brains generate religious ideas, and what the Darwinian adaptive value of such brain processes is, what will be left for religion?

The spawned thread had 712 comments. Mine was the first -
JamesPlaskett
22 Feb 09, 12:23am
He didn´t checkmate me, pal.
And I´m a Grandmaster.
I think Darwinian theory is codswallop.
But harmless codswallop.

Later that morning I competed in a one day chess event at Pilar de la Horadada.
I took with me into the tournament hall a copy of a book which I had purchased some years earlier but which I had only recently began to read through: Philosophy for Beginners by Dave Robinson and Judy Groves http://www.stillwaterbooks.co.uk/si/brr1063.html
I had been prompted by the realisation that my knowledge of even basic philosophy was inadequate.
I had read some books on the subject, including Russell´s History of Western Philosophy, in the 1980s, but not nearly enough on so important a topic.
It was a rarity to see anyone with a book at such an event, but to my surprise I spotted a friend of some six years, and ex-team-mate, Ivan Hernandez, carrying a copy of Principios elementales de filosofia by Georges Politzer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Politzer
This was a Fontana book in their Clasicos Universales series.

I had cetainly never seen the Chilean Hernandez carrying a book anywhere before and pointed out to him the coincidence of us reading books of similar titles.
Politzer, of whom I think I had never previously heard, was very much a materialist, as this quote from his 1926 work L´ Esprit makes clear -

... for the new philosophy, there can not be dualism between certainty and security... The new philosophers will have nothing more than mere certainty. Truly, philosopher will become anew a dangerous occupation, as it was in heroic times. The philosophers will anew be the friends of the truth, but by the same turn, enemies of the gods, enemies of the state, and corrupters of youth. Philosophy will, anew, involve a risk. A selection will then take place. They will not arrive at the truth but who love it to the point of daring to transform spiritual ventures into material ones.

In the 4th round I played Daniel Zuniga and again was surprised to see that he too had a book with him. It was subtitled Las Claves Para La Educacion (The Keys for Education) although its full title was a rendition into Spanish of The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w-4UAn9A5IQC&dq=the+learning+brain+sarah-Jayne+Blakemore&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=9muhvCRrGf&sig=p69ozBhhUeWtMN-tilsy9pKDbbU&hl=en&ei=dWOmSb6MN4S2jAf__pX0Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
It was co-authored by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Uta Frith.
The Blakemore name jumped out at me. I was to discover that this was the Professor´s daughter.
It was about what we really know about how the brain learns, and the implications of this knowledge for educational policy and practice, covering studies on learning during the whole of development, including adulthood.

Daniel explained that the book was not his but belonged to fellow contestant Grandmaster Mihai Suba. I had known Mihai for 20 years but could not recall ever before seeing him with a book.

(248) Big time blogging at The Times

2009-02-16T12:59:00.001-08:00

My Statcounter showed that at 7.20 a.m. on Feb 15th 2009 someone in Tokyo had put
Chess Dream-A
into a search engine.

The 2nd and 3rd hits were of this blog, but the 8th was -

Thought Experiments : The Blog: Living the Dream

- [ 翻译此页 ]It's as if she has awoken from a dream, a rather pleasant dream, ... (Why couldn

't it have been chess, where I might have turned my obsession to account, ...
www.bryanappleyard.com/blog/2008/07/living-dream.php - 27k -

I was intrigued and followed the link to discover Bryan Appleyard´s blog.
I had no previous idea that he blogged.

Amusedly I sent him this e mail of pretend annoyance at 13:23, Spanish time, Feb 15th 2009 -

Sir!
I note a Blog entry of yours of July 18th 2008 headed
Living The Dream.

You have stolen the title of my Blog!

I shall write to The Times...

Disgusted,
Cartagena

The next day I looked at The Times on line and saw an article headed The guide to the 100 best blogs: Part One
but with no clue from that to the author.

I clicked on it and saw it was from the previous day´s Sunday Times under the heading

Most Read.

It was by Appleyard -

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/
article5725644.ece

Appleyard says at his blog that he began it in March 2006.

I also began mine then.

(247) The only thing that truly matters

2009-02-10T09:06:00.001-08:00

At 9.20 a.m. on February 9th 2009 (the 25th anniversary of my commencing a diary) I was reading an interview with Jeremy Paxman in the online edition of The Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/09/bbc-television

At the same time I was musing on how gnosis was the only really important thing.

I was thinking of saying to an interviewer - maybe even him - that above all political comment, all art, all efforts to find justice, all criticism of neo-Darwinism and of the philosophical arguments for God´s existence this was really the only thing that mattered: direct experience of the divine.
Spiritual consciousness.
Gnosis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosis

When I had my first experience of higher consciousness in June 1986, I found, as I reviewed it immediately afterwards, the Elkie Brooks song No More The Fool was playing in my head.

The gnosis I sought I now had.
I knew and for the rest of my life would be a knower.

I thought of an image that had come to me before re our efforts to bring Douglas Baker to justice, i.e.
cops rushing into a house as they are notified that a dangerous criminal is upstairs.
On the ground floor they note, out of the corners of their eyes as they dash past, some magical happenings.
But they are Police officers and have not been summoned to the premises for any reason other than to investigate or even apprehend a criminal, and hurry upstairs... but so they miss the point.

The real point.

I then read further on in the Paxman interview until I read something which had been invisible before:

"I suppose as one gets older - I would have described it at the age of 21 as the process of selling out, but another way of looking at it is to say, actually, the world is not a very simple place, and that as you get older simple-minded solutions seem less attractive."

Paxman will turn 60 next year. It is hard to say what he deeply believes in, and I doubt this is due entirely to a public obligation of neutrality. The opinions he offers tend towards the banally mainstream: Tony Blair was an "amazing phenomenon"; the "end of ideology" makes this political generation less exciting; "professional politicians" have seen off Westminster's great characters, and so on. His books hint at a vaguely middlebrow sentimentality. He began going to church 20 years ago, but stopped a decade ago, when he lost his faith in faith.

"Is that something I don't want to talk about?" he ponders, when I ask where he stands on God today. "Yeah, it probably is." For a moment it is as if he is talking to himself. Then, suddenly earnest, "I mean, it is the only important question really. Is there a purpose? And I've not got an answer to that. And to suggest that I have a hard and fast position on this matter implies a degree of certainty that I don't have, and I wish I did. Life would be much easier if you knew."

(246) Pascal´s Wager: tossing a coin on the ultimate bet

2009-02-10T09:05:00.001-08:00

On the evening of February 8th 2009 I was reading from and contributing to a blog at the Guardian´s Comment Is Free section.
It was by Sean Clarke - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/06/atheist-bus-religion?

Take a punt on Pascal's bus

Join my campaign for a middle way in the atheist/theist bus debate. You have nothing much to lose, and plenty to gain

You wait ages for a bus-based theological advertising campaign, and then two come along at once. But I think it's time for a third. If Blaise Pascal were in charge, the ad would read something like:

There might be a God after all. Maybe you should factor that in.

The original atheist bus campaign irritated detractors in its own camp for the word probably: "There's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life." It was, said the hardliners with open contempt, an agnostic bus campaign.

Then came the Christian counterstrike. The Christians want to put together an ad saying: "There definitely is a God. So join the Christian party and enjoy your life."...

It strikes me that my man Blaise "Sums" Pascal has been overlooked in all this. "Sums" memorably commented that, as a gambler, if you didn't know whether or not there is a God, you might as well behave as if there were. Winnings: eternal life, infinite bliss etc. Stakes: forgoing a bit of bad behaviour. Odds: immaterial. It's like a twopenny lottery ticket to win the world – you can spare those two pennies.

Pascal's advice on the bus front, I think, would be the following. Given what we know about the stakes, it's worth putting a punt on the existence of God... Better to state openly that you believe at least in the possibility of him/her and to perform some act of charity, as an earnest of good faith...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal

I posted something re the primacy of direct personal experience of the divine -

JamesPlaskett
07 Feb 09, 1:09pm
What might be a more accurate representation on the side of a bus of the attitudes of Blaise Pascal is not the wager which he PUBLICLY spoke of during his short life, but the wording his servant found on a scrap of paper hidden in the lining of his coat... a testimony of something that had happened 8 years earlier.
Pascal had written it down and kept the paper close to his heart.
Here is what it said:
‘In the year of Grace, 1654, on Monday 23rd of November… From about half past ten in the evening Until about half past twelve:
FIRE! God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob Not of the philosophers and scholars Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace God of Jesus Christ. Fire!
Now he said nothing about it during his life, whilst going through the motions of church attendance and obeisance in all the accepted modes of his time and place.
But the reality of what made him embrace the supernatural only became apparent after he died.
Indeed it may well be that this is far more common than is popularly supposed.
When researching her 1984 book, The Making of A Moonie, Eileen Barker presented a questionnaire to members of the Unification Church and also to a control group.
It contained one question that had also been asked of a hundred postgraduate students by David Hay:
"Have you ever had any religious or mystical experiences."
So high was the percentage that said they had, often with accompanying comments like, "
No Ive not told anyone. For the simple reason, theres such a lot of disbelievers about, and theyd ridicule you, like
", that she felt that the emphasis in psychology was put on the wrong factors.
I do not therefore, want to suggest that Moonies are unique or freakish because they will (very probably) have had some kind of religious experience; I do, however, want to point out that they find themselves in an environment in which they (and, indeed, others) BELIEVE that such experiences are uncommon and that those who have them can be considered slightly (or very nutty).
Reading through the responses of both Moonies and the control group, I began to feel that had Freud been studying present-day students in Britain rather than 19th century matrons in Vienna, he might have concluded that it was spiritual rather than sexual repression which lay at the root of many current frustrations. It is, after all, often quite acceptable for a student to tell his friends whom he slept with the previous night. He is far less likely to tell them that Our Lady appeared while he was saying his prayers.
As the 21st century dawns science and religion are in opposition.
It has no always been so.
But these days reductionism, neo-Darwinism and atheism rule, so such spiritual experience gets hushed up.
It is such experience more than anything else which refutes atheism.
Without it you´re left weighing up the classical arguments for God or choosing which of the religious creeds is the right one.
Having been touched just once by divine consciousness you from then on are a gnostic, and simply know that materialism is wrong.
The catch is that it is a Cassandrine gift. She could prophecy the future accurately, with the snag that nobody would ever believe her.
The inability to provide the slightest evidence for any gnostic experience is what cowed the students in the above cited survey not to speak of them.
And what caused Blaise Pascal to carry the treasure close to his heart for the rest of his days.
But never to speak of it.
And certainly not to paste it on the side of any bus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosis

It prompted a cogent question, to which I later responded -

JamesPlaskett
07 Feb 09, 9:32pm
robbo100 posts -
@ JamesPlaskett
Why doesn't God make himself known in no uncertain terms to everyone rather than just a rare few then? He could do, couldn't he, if he's all powerful? He could do it so even the likes of Richard Dawkins could be in no doubt.
Bloody good question...
Gnosis has made me a Theist... yet His seeming caprice makes me not humble and pious, but rather frustrated and pissed off.
We ARE indeed, robbo100, entitled to a clearer insight into what the deal is.
At Dr Thacker´s
God On Trial CiF Blog
mikeeverest posted
at Sep 07 08, 11:23am -
There is no argument for the existence of God, there is only experience.
I wish those who claim to have Faith would stop trying to provide explanations for Him. How arrogant is that?
If you want to know God, meditate. You will, eventually, experience direct, incontrovertible proof of His love and your connectedness with everything in the Universe. Then you will have Faith and no fear.
Religion is a distraction, an obstacle, a man-made vehicle for power mongers and oppressors and for those trying to make sense intellectually of something that is beyond all human understanding BUT NOT HUMAN EXPERIENCE.
Be scientific, conduct the experiment. And yes, it is replicable, millions have carried out the same experiment and report the same results.
And -
at Martin Kettle´s May 27th 2007 The Dawkins Delusion CiF Blog, please do note this from
Chewtoy -
28 May 07, 5:41pm
A modern day myth just as persistent as religious ones is that scientists and rational atheists can't be bigots.
Recently I saw the BBC Horizon episode 'God On The Brain' in which spontaneous religious experiences were linked to certain temporal lobe activity, caused by for instance epileptic seizures. A neurotheological scientist called Dr Persinger has developed a helmet creating an electromagnetic field that triggers the same effect and Richard Dawkins was invited to test it. Dawkins repeatedly said: "I really want to have a mystical experience". The conviction with which he said this and the look on his face reminded me of a kid who feels left out after not receiving an invitation to a party. This suggests to me that his zealous rants are somewhat based on jealousy. I strongly suggest he try psilocybin.
Whereas I personally would not advocate halucinogens as a means of cleansing the doors of perception ( I have never taken drugs )
JamesPlaskett
07 Feb 09, 9:41pm
(SORRY: last post went up before completion!)
I find Chewtoy´s pointing out Richard´s repeated expressed desire for Gnosis very noteworthy.
Traditionally the religious impulse in man has found two types of expression:
the first sees religion as the acceptance of a received doctrine.
The second sees it as essentially a search.
Gnosis is the goal of such a search.
To address your inquiry, robbo; perhaps it is the lack of spiritual inquiry by people, including the man you nominate, which underlies their lack of gnosis?
mikeeverest suggests, to my mind, a far more wholesome way of searching than that advocated by Chewtoy.
But each, like Dawkins, looks down on mere believers in God.

Then later -

JamesPlaskett
08 Feb 09, 2:29pm
I´ve just bet on Slumdog Millionaire to win Best Picture both at tonight´s Baftas and also the Oscars later this month.
Good bet; but no bet is a safe one...

And lastly -

JamesPlaskett
08 Feb 09, 6:17pm
robbo100; to continue my response to your query as to why a higher power does not confer spiritual experiences on all, even Richard Dawkins, and after having posted above Chewboy´s post in which he refers to Dawkins´"jealousy" of and desire for such knowing of the divine - check out this from a recent blog of thread contributor Jonathan West where he writes of a friend´s mystical experience -
He is aware that experiences similar to his do pop up in the writings of various religions. He knows that while the details of his experience are unique to him, he is far from alone in having something like this happen to him.
He is able to summon echoes of the experience from time to time.
... ... ...
I have to admit to a twinge of envy. I've never had an experience like that. Perhaps my brain chemistry is such that it can't possibly happen to me. Perhaps my life has taken a sufficiently smooth path that my unconscious hasn't needed to scream so loudly at me. Perhaps God is content for me not to believe in him and has decided that I need no evidence of him. I have no means of knowing. In the absence of any comparable experience of my own, I am leaving him to interpret his experience in a way that he finds meaningful. The effects on him are clear enough and exist even though the causes are unknown, so I see no need to attempt to impose my interpretation of the events on him.
Hmmm.... Seems the recounting of gnosis does indeed evoke jealousy in the breast of even the professed atheist.
After all arguments, ontological, teleological, design-based or revelatory have been refuted, there remains for atheists the problem of testimony of direct perception of the supernatural experience.
West admits it, and I think Chewtoy got under Dawkins´ skin with his comments on why the Prof. seemed so desirous of it.
Investigation.....
Investigation is the opposite of the blind acceptance of dogma.
Is it really to much to hope that at some future point we will have a spiritual science, and thus "
be far closer to understanding Man´s true nature
" as Sue Blackmore speculated in The Sceptical Inquirer of Fall 1986?
In the post above empathyfreak writes
If you do not know whether something is true or false, then it is 50% likely to be true.
... ... ...
Translated back to pascal's example, if I don't know whether the moon is made of green cheese or not......
But remember he had those extra couple of words....."if you can never know whether the moon is made of green cheese........"
But we CAN investigate the composition of the moon, and have done so.
In the 1700s the French Academy of Science pronounced on the urban myth that stones fall from the sky:
There are no stones in the sky therefore stones cannot fall from the sky.
Rational enough.
But on April 26th 1803, only some 30 yrs later, thousands of meteorites pelted the town of L´Aigle 140 kms from Paris.
Jean-Baptiste Biot collected 38 kilos of the rock and exhibited it to the Academie.
He also noted that along with the vast number of clearly non-indigenous stones there was another kind of evidence: moral evidence.
The testimony of so many people that the rock was extraterrestrial.
A thing dismissed as supernatural had to become incorporated into mainstream, accepted science.
The only other way to acquire such rock was one which never occurred to anyone of that time: go up and get it..
That happened 163 yrs later when Aldrin and Armstrong brought back the first samples of moon rock.
Note just where the confirming meteorite shower chose to land.
Not in the water with which 75% of our planet is covered. Not in the fields.
On a specific named spot, a small town only a few hours by horse from where the Academie itself was based.
During daylight, so everyone could attest to the reality of rocks falling from the sky.
Thousands of them.
The first words spoken on the moon were
"The Eagle has landed."
L´Aigle means The Eagle.

Having posted that I moved out of the room to where my wife and son were watching the beginning of No Country For Old Men, although here had been no prior announcement of their intent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Country_for_Old_Men_(film)
Fiona had seen it before and recommended it.
I decided to watch it through with them.

I noted that on two occasions a psychopathic killer allows an intended victim to call on a coin toss. The first time the man, unaware of the significance of the toss, called it correctly. His life was thus spared.
The second time was almost at the end where he permits a woman to choose.

The outcome is not entirely clarified, but it seems that she dies.

I then moved back to the Guardian thread and later posted -

JamesPlaskett
08 Feb 09, 11:22pm
Dunno about Pascal´s wager but Jimmy´s just worked.
I posted earlier -
08 Feb 09, 2:29pm
I´ve just bet on Slumdog Millionaire to win Best Picture both at tonight´s Baftas and also the Oscars later this month.
Good bet; but no bet is a safe one...
Now 43 quid richer.
Yeaaa!!

I am not 100% certain about it but I think that the Bafta Award was given whilst I watched No Country For Old Men.
I did not appreciate until later that that flm was the winner of the Best Picture Oscar, as well as three others, at the 2008 Oscars.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/147623/why_does_god_reveal_himself_to_some_people_and_not_to_others

(245) Looking for Rita

2009-01-29T09:10:00.000-08:00

Late on January 27th 2009 I was exchanging e mails with Candice Temple (see Entry 88).
In one she sent me a link to a video of a performer on a recent British TV programme about Dancing On Ice.

I replied that I was unenthusiastic about trying to dance on ice but that in 2008 I had for my first time skated, at a nearby rink, and added that I might well do so again this very week "... with a girlfriend".

I then referred her to Entry 119 here where she could see a photo of myself with my erstwhile ice skating girlfriend: Rita Koen.

I then decided to check out that entry again for myself, and so, for the first time in some days, logged in to this blog.

As I did so I saw that a note said that one new comment had been left and that I had the option of deleting it or making it publicly visible. It was at Entry 119, from someone styling themselves DiDi and only the first ten words or so were visible to me at that point.

But when I clicked on the option to view the comment I saw that it was one that had been left at 12:47 P.M. on Jan 24th.
It was from Rita.
That was the first communiqué I had received from her in twenty-nine years, and I noted it as I myself went to look at the picture of us to which I had just directed Candice.

(244) Coincidences Two

2008-11-20T11:19:00.000-08:00

On May 1st 2004 Jonathan Rowson, who had purchased from me a copy of Coincidences shortly after its publication in 2000, asked me when Coincidences Two would be coming out.
Later that same evening, Daniel Gormally, whom I knew to have leafed through somebody else´s copy but who had not himself bought one, asked me the same question, although he subsequently claimed not to have known that Rowson had asked it previously.

On August 4th 2008 I spoke by phone with my brother Neil and happened to mention the coincidence with Paula Yates buying the house next door to us in Hastings as detailed in Entry 166.
"Put it in your book," said Neil, to whom I had given a copy of Coincidences five years previously but to whom I had never suggested the possibility of a sequel.

Later that evening I logged on to the Internet Chess Club for the first time in several weeks and saw that Geoff D., who played under the handle of Sandinista, had left me some frivolous, anagrammatic messages, although there was no reason for him to do so and he had never left me any message before.
I also noted that those had been there for 2 weeks.

I contacted him on line at the club and in an interchange re those messages a coincidental thing cropped up and he said "Put it in volume two."

(243) Apologia and Index of Diary entries

2008-07-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Apologia and Index of Diary entries

Our science is founded upon causality.

This is a blog of correspondences, which follows in the tradition of Carl Jung, Paul Kammerer, Colin Wilson and others who have kept coincidence records.

On February 9th 1984 I began a diary and whenever I encountered a coincidence I too noted it.

Part One of this Blog is a diary of coincidences, all but three of which were culled from my diaries.

Part Two is mainly a coincidence narrative of 1988. In an attempt to make the following of it easier I have begun with a synopsis and conclude with epilogues and appendices.

In Part Three the diary continues.
Dr Roderick Main has elsewhere commented on the coincidences of the narrative, e.g. in his 2007 book Revelations Of Chance.http://www.essex.ac.uk/centres/psychonew/staff/main.htm

James Plaskett, Cartagena, Spain, 2008

Part One: Coincidence Diary

(1) "Norwich crash three nil" + "Two twenty-six ...a unicorn...666"
(2) The ski lift
(3) Timepieces stopping, mobiles misbehaving, springtime and Nazi lies
(4) Anna of Terndrup: "We´ll meet again".
(5) Queen and Bishop Vs Queen
(6) Shambolic Wogan’s Winner Pennies
(7) Anna of Moscow
(8) The reappearance of Richard Parker
(9) Three butterflies; three wanton killings
(10) Alekhine’s best games book, and a stairway to Heaven
(11) Splash and TV names
(12) The dog is king
(13) The Morecambe and Wise finale
(14) Robin Hood
(15) Anticipating the quiz questions
(16) Two youths lie down
(17) Husband and wife trouble in Belgium due to astrology and the Committee P.A.R.A.
(18) Grandmasters
(19) Alligator
(20) "I´m not a barber: I´m a hairdresser!"
(21) Questioning Newton´s third law
(22) A short horror story with unclarity whether a man has murdered his wife in their bed before breakfast

Part Two : The Narrative, Epilogues and Appendices

Part Three : Diary continued

(23) Richard III
(24) Did they see?
(25) A girl incorrectly says "Thirty-six"
(26) Solon misspelled; Face to Face… with an adequate symbol?
(27) In the country of the blind the one-eyed are kings
(28) Tony Blott’s head bust a Beethoven bust
(29) All you need is love
(30) The Geller Effect
(31) W A Corden qua magistrate
(32) Our free will to be cautious in crossing the road
(33) Julian Barnes
(34) Getting it right with diabetic comas and Treasure Hunts
(35) ...d6-d5 surprises
(36) Laws concerning Killjoys and Killers
(37) Bank birthdays
(38) Tamburlaine: Part One Part Two Part Three Five Fingers and Russia Vs Middle East warfare: Tamburlaine Part Four
(39) The precise measurement of the British coastline
(40) Stephen Fry, the former editor of The Times Sir William (now Lord) Rees-Mogg and I all judge what is fit to be viewed as rational
(40a)Inventing the truth
(41) Was Myra Robinson happy?
(42) Two Knights versus a Pawn for the first time
(43) The Flight from Reason
(44) Veni, vidi,… da Vinci?
(45) Teaching that not to act is to act
(46) Countdown orgasms
(47) The public burning of Nicholas Ridley
(48) Our free will to be cautious when a dog crosses the road
(49) On the rocks: Man’s abandonment of the feminine at Christmas
(50) Addressing Ne(i)ros
(51) Famous mistaken identities
(52) Chess in the new South Africa
(53) The goalkeeper’s effort which led to loss: a complex metaphor
(54) Bill Linton’s letter commenting on the earlier article
(55) Pancho Sanza (plus Spanish and the selection of a horse)
(56) The headline explaining everything
(57) Orbis
(58) A middle aged man’s wife leaves him for another man. He then becomes involved with the girl, Martine
(59) Knowing right from left... foot from foot... front from back... black from white... right from wrong... freedom from oppression, so slapping the sides and turning around
(60) Secret triad partnerships in Durban
(61) "Boeee... Bowie"
(62) H.G.Wells and Tommy Steele
(63) The elderly qualify for a driver’s (and maybe a pilot’s) licence!?
(64) Apologising for the offence given twenty years ago in childhood
(65) AI
(66) St Andrews people
(67) Keith Arkell, and the small world of chessplayers
(68) The sister comments on an eagle letting fall a wolf cub into her brother’s arms which he then goes on to protect
(69) Lambolle Road: from Buzan - via the lady - to Patrick Hughes
(70) Fighting for and against the existence of soul: The DU (AL) or (ELL) ists
(71) Laughter at the phallic potter’s clay
(72) Paul Kurtz and The Transcendental Temptation
(73) Two Scandinavian Women Tourists
(74) Kate Fitzgibbon
(75) The parallel processing of the ending of two Knights and Bishop Vs a Rook
(76) Rob Starbuck and Simon Kennedy
(77) Terry Waite’s speech, Amnesty International and composing books in Bedford
(78) Canning... caning
(79) "I am the gatekeeper."
(80) Passing people in the street
(81) Silly prominences... Dr Charles Hunter... the world’s fastest talker
(82) Tests for suitability as parents
(83) Linda and the University College Hospital, London
(84) Babar misspelt as Baba
(85) New prima materia
(86) Robert Robinsons´ thoughts on chess and a BBC voice
(87) A weekend of ´publishers´ and ‘actresses’ walking into gin joints
(88) Malcolm Pein
(89) The evidence for the NDE
(90) The opposite meaning of enervated
(91) Concerning real experiences: Stepping (up and out!?) into another dimension and breaking the fourth wall
(92) Jury service
(93) Richard Wildman
(94) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
(95) Hartston broadcasting on unread manuscripts
(96) Dolmatov vs Plaskett: European Junior Championship 1978-1979
(97) Crossed Cebit wires
(98) With Rachelle
(99) Starting off the complete works of Shakespeare with Julius Caesar
(100) Shower scene dreams
(101) Bookmarks
(102) Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds
(103) "I could do this! I could do this!"
(104) Grandmasters meeting Fiona Pitt-Kethley
(105) The dream of the speck on the tooth
(106) Graham Hillyard
(107) Spider in the Bath
(108) The Parousia novel
(109) One real wedding and one real funeral
(110) The unique aspects of Christianity and Christmas: The Big Issue
(111) Three experiments that could change the world: Nice D(h)arshans, The only constant and Pets’ powers
(112) The Moon´s a Balloon
(113) Sean Nicklin
(114) "Are you musicians?" asks the black man when I am with an American
(115) Time to marry
(116) The Nag Hammadi Library
(117) Bald hairdresser
(118) Meeting up at GA
(119) The Dutch ladies’ skills
(120) Penny Blacks
(121) A clue for an answer
(122) Further halved clues
(123) The rules for assessing the (spiritual) significance of coincidences, and when to break them

(124) Synchronicity and prophecy
(125) Synchronicity and prophecy (2): the moons of Mars
(126) Richard Neagle
(127) Questioning neo-Darwinism: our idemtity crisis
(128) An identity crisis: Publicly or privately, what’s in the changing of a name (of father or son)?
(129) From the third to the fourth; "a more individual evolution of the feminine…" and a less lonely Christmas
(130) Lord Longford, the other sinners and myself
(131) Owner/Occupier
(132) Professor Lipton
(133) Thought Police
(134) The dream of the teacher’s assault
(135) Bad Fathers
(136) Computer chess, long distance whale song and communication with Mars
(137) Never say never again
(138) The TV programme called The Ghost in the Machine followed the next week by one leading to a loss of face for the Oxford academic
(139) Testing the authenticity of James´ CVs
(140) As the Soviet Academy of Science rebels and asserts its right to uphold truth, we witness “The rise and fall ...” but of whom?
(141) Eyeing Diana´s death
(142) The investigation into the strange case of hylozoism is assisted by Dr Watson’s arrival from Baker Street
(143) The parachuting dog
(144) The cat from Tackleway called Mogadon
(145) The trio focal point at the Royal Festival Hall
(146) Writing Sting in and out of it
(147) The superiority of intuition over intellect illustrated by the Pawn ending stalemate
(148) Changing into a mosaic
(149) Paradise lost
(150) Wolfram/Wolfman. Further name confusion
(151) Telling people why the title of Maharishi was changed to Sexy Sadie
(152) Blowfish
(153) Messrs Borcherds, the Monster and other Moonshine beings
(154) Into the Arena
(155) The Dark Side of the Moons and correspondence with Eileen Barker
(156) Another statistical method of detecting a monster
(157) National Geographic cover stories, husband and wife reporting collaborations (Double Acts) and English explorers
(158) Love and Charity examinations
(159) Spotting the Easter continuations and comebacks
(160) Yorkshire chess displays
(161) Peter Fairbrass
(162) Giant octopus odds
(163) Hope fades: Real Hope and octopus manifest
(164) Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
(165) Queries on the train about the origins of the name Leighton Buzzard
(166) Paula Yates and family and friends
(167) Who´s ahead in the queue?
(168) Maurice Grosse
(169) Lourber/Lorbor/Lobor/Lobo
(170) Who (still) Wants To Be A Millionaire?
(171) Mick Brown
(172) Trust Me, magical books, hidden identities, and vision
(173) Peter Brent
(174) Rain men
(175) Geldof’s milk
(176) The Gurus
(177) Fish(eye)on
(178) Jerry Hall
(179) Prisoners... Numbers Six... newly-weds
(180) The man’s view on entrapment
(181) Past and future glories
(182) Haywood spiritual fire sermons
(183) Lisa and the angel
(184) Ebenezer Roads
(185) Lisa and the iguanas
(186) Concerning real experiences
(187) The dream of the quiz show host undone through two friends helping a player with the answers
(188) Unlucky for some
(189) Finding a chess café, in Spain or London
(190) Sheila’s house
(191) Villa Spain
(192) Revelations of Chance
(193) Looking for a bishop and a Spanish chess tee shirt for the education authorities
(194) Critical reviews
(195) Teaching Darwinists
(196) More on the giant octopus
(197) James Plaskett in the news
(198) Completing the Irish set
(199) Andrew´s ´H´
(200) Living the Dream
(201) Sir Ludovic Kennedy
(202) Not Guilty of misspelling tomorrow
(203) The Juror
(204) George’s Last Ride
(205) Peter Rhodes
(206) Terence Goldberg
(207) Justice and misspelling and incorrect Portias
(208) The Three Imposters
(209) Escape from Hell to Be Linda
(210) Keeping it in the family
(211) The question of the liger or the Siberian tiger
(212) N.A.P. McSheehy
(213) Portia and Shylock shift
(214) Third time lucky?
(215) A surprise hit
(216) Undersea earthquakes: Just Christmas?
(217) Timely appearances
(218) Creed
(219) Gabriela Gruber, the rude woman of Knights Insurance
(220) Genealogical research about separate great-grandfather generations turns up the great uncle Arthurs who jumped ship in the early 20th century
(221) The mobile lost at the pump
(222) Linking with the enemies
(223) Feed the Birds; the song from Mary Poppins
(224) Le siége perileux
(225) Easterton and new housing
(226) Here I am
(227) Sacha in Diver Tienda
(228) Burning Bright
(229) Twin Peaks: The way of the head and the way of the heart. Worlds in Harmony
(230) Bebo´s number
(231) To speak freely about one´s beliefs, or to black more?
(232) The secret identity of Mr.CC
(233) The Runaway Bride
(234) Don´t sweat the small stuff with your family
(235) Answering the question of when the earliest (Dragon) Sicilian ...Rxc3 sacrifice occured: 100 years ago
(236) Housetraining the Siamese
(237) Young gangs´ assaults of spitting in the face
(238) What´s IN a name? (and The Parallels between the Explorations of Space and the Spiritual)...Earthrise...
(239) The Science of Belief, and £10 the price and prize of a quiz on meaning
(240) Q+A
(241) The Internet Chess Club handles
(242) The Lady in the Water
(243) Apologia, and Index of Entries
(244) Coincidences Two
(245) Looking for Rita
(246) Pascal´s Wager: tossing a coin on the ultimate bet
(247) The only thing that truly matters
(248) Big time blogging at The Times
(249) Beginning to learn to think
(250) Another such cough
(251) Drs read minds on CiF to suss identity
(252) Getting real
(253) ...so shall ye receive
(254) Same car, same key
(255) Predicting the National Lottery numbers
(256) James Marsh and the responsibility of doing your own thing
(257) Knight from g3 to h1
(258)"origin of christmas for veni vidi vinci" and other ´incorrect´ Latin quotes
(259) Shoemakers impacts: craters on the Earth and the Moon and comets on Jupiter
(260) Murray Chandler and Zygmunt Frankel: unpublicised exceptional lives
(261) The Water Bearer
(262) Something old, something new... at Facebook
(263) The dream of Nobby Stiles fallen on hard times.
(264) At page 73 and talking about running or travelling on a no frills airline on Twitter
(265) Crashing into a local

If any of the photographs and insertions seem on a small scale and difficult to make out, CLICKING on them with the mouse will often amplify.

(242) The Lady in the Water

2007-12-21T08:46:00.000-08:00

On July 20th 2008 I visited Cala Cortina beach, a couple of kilometres from my home.

I chatted with a Spanish lady called Florentina who had once before helped me there with my attempts to acquire Spanish.
After a while she was joined by a friend whom she introduced as "Encarnita".

I remarked that there were many religious names in Spanish culture, and that this sounded like a soul in a body - "Una alma en un cuerpo".

She laughed and agreed.

Presently I fetched an English/Spanish dictionary from the car and our informal lesson stumbled along until I bid the ladies farewell.

At home that evening I sifted through our desultory collection of DVDs until my eye alighted on one which I had noticed several times but never yet watched: La Joven del Agua.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_in_the_Water

Plot summary

After falling beside the swimming pool of an apartment building, the caretaker, Cleveland Heep, is rescued by a mysterious girl named Story. Cleveland tells her that she must return home, and takes her outside for fresh night air. Something in the bushes growls, waking Story up, and chases them. She screams all the way to his door.
In Heep´s apartment, Story discovers his journal, and in it his secret; that he was once a medical doctor but gave it up – along with his sense of purpose – after his wife and child were murdered.

While talking to a young Korean tenant, Young-Soon Choi, Cleveland asks her the meaning of "narf", a term Story uses to name herself. Young-Soon replies, that in an old Korean fairy tale such a creature occurs, but she has forgotten it. With the help of her mother and Young-Soon herself as translator, Heep finds out that narf is a rare type of sea nymph or water-faerie. A narf is occasionally sent from the "Blue World" to "awaken" a human (called a "vessel") who will help change the world for the better. He also learns there are creatures that try to kill any narf that leaves its world, called "Scrunts". In order to control these and other spirits, there are laws in our world upheld by three bloodthirsty creatures called "Tartutic", which are the only things scrunt fear.

Heep then asks Story for the description of her human "vessel". She says it is a writer and that once she finds her vessel, she can be returned home by a large eagle called "The Great Eatlon".

Heep asks tenants if they are writers. A man called Dury is completing a crossword and asks out loud for the answer to the clue "In human form; 9 letters". A few moments later he hits upon it; "Incarnate!"
Heep wonders if this could be the writer he seeks, and says that Dury is very good with words.
He replies that it is only with crosswords.

His son then says that he is at Grandmaster level, and that one day he too will be.

Heep eventually finds out that Vick (played by writer and director M. Night Shyamalan) is presently writing, but suffers from writer's block. Believing that he has found Story's vessel, he arranges a meeting between the two. When he meets Story, Vick feels an "awakening" that clears his mind and allows him to complete his book, which is a compendium of his apparently clear-sighted political paradigm. Story's task now accomplished, she is free to return to the Blue World.
As she attempts to go home, a Scrunt attacks, breaking the law, and badly injures her.

With the help of some humans who, according to the story, have special powers which may aid a distressed narf, Story is healed, and The Great Eatlon carries her back to the Blue World.

I watched the DVD through but was not very taken with it.
Yet my attention was caught by some coincidences.

The first to grab my attention were, naturally, to do with the crossword -

(1) Nine letter word for "In human form".
´Incarnate´ and the Spanish ´Encarnita´ both fit, but Encarnita is a familar form of the lady´s true name; Encarnacion,

and
(2) He is at Grandmaster level.
I am one at chess. There is no such thing as a crossword Grandmaster.

But then I go on to note -

(3) The lady in the water.

and
(4) A sea nymph.

Encarnita was on the beach.

(5) Cove

The name of the apartment block in and around which the whole film is set is The Cove.

Cala Cortina means Curtain Bay. But the type of bay it is could also quite accurately be described as a cove.

Then
(6) Writer´s block.
As this Blog (and particularly the last few years) show, I was apt to encounter about nine record-worthy coincidences per annum. (Many of the examples are verifiable.)

But I had noted to my wife a few weeks before the events of this example that I had gone some nine months now without an outstanding coincidence (although it was true that I had perhaps met with three or four in that period which could yet come to fruition).

I wondered what might lie behind the drought.

In the film the role of vessel is played by writer and director M. Night Shyamalan, and his meeting with the sea nymph cures his writer´s block, just as my coincidence drought came to an end that day, enabling me to add more to my Blog.

On July 24th 2008 another (smallish) one arrived thus: -

I noted through the Statcounter at this Blog who had been viewing it and saw that on July 24th 2008 one viewer had arrived via entering ´Tim Vaughan-Hughes´ into a search engine. (See Entries 233 and 93.)

Following, through curiosity, the same entry, I discovered that it throws up references to a writer of whom I had not previously heard; Pip Vaughan-Hughes.

One of these read -

Amazon.co.uk: Relics: Pip Vaughan-Hughes: Books -
Relics by Pip Vaughan-Hughes is a decent a debut novel and an entertaining start to .... Similar in standard and genre to the Tim Severin 'Viking' trilogy. ...

Tim Severin was a name I only knew through having worked with Brian Watkins at Cornhill Publications in 1992, the same time as I worked with Tim Vaughan-Hughes.

Brian said that Severin was his brother and an adventurer and sea voyager, á la Thor Heyerdahl, whom Brian told me Tim had met.

Through this Google hit I discovered that he had now recently turned his hand to writing fiction.

(7) The date

The Lady In the Water was also reportedly responsible for the director´s break-up with Disney, whose Buena Vista Pictures produced and distributed his previous films.

The tumultouous behind-the-scenes drama was detailed in Michael Bamberger's 2006 book The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale.

The publication date of that book was also, like the date of my coincidences, July 20th: July 20th 2006. That was a deliberate date, the opening weekend of the film itself being 21-23 July (2006) in the United States.

Shyamalan, who credits the development of the movie to a bedtime story he told his children about what happens in their pool at night, wrote the 72-page children's book Lady in the Water: A Bedtime Story (Little, Brown, New York, ISBN 0-316-01734-5) to coincide with the movie.

It was released on the same day as the film, July 21, 2006.

(241) The Internet Chess Club handles

2007-12-21T08:34:00.000-08:00

In September 9 2007 I was chatting with Andy Kitchlew on the Internet Chess Cub http://www.chessclub.com/
whilst I used the handle Parsifal and he his real name.
I mentioned something very peculiar which had happened to me on the ICC years earlier - at least five.
There were over 20,000 registered handles at the club.
One evening, in a distracted manner, I began typing in random small letter sequences just to see if any happened to be real registered handles of any ICC members.
To find out any information which members might have chosen to reveal about themselves you typed in "Finger so-and-so", e.g.
http://www.chessclub.com/finger/Parsifal
Almost all drew blanks. But then to my astonishment I found that typing in the computer command
"Finger dmmg" not only hit upon a real handle but the accompanying note said that it was that of Andy Kitchlew!

On September 9th 2007 I at last got around to asking Kitchlew the explanation of this mystery.
He explained that he had bought the PC from a mutual acquaintance, David Gunter, and that the handle was his old one.
It was the initials of his name.
Thus my dabbling had hit upon the unlikely handle of not just one but two friends.

(240) Q+A

2007-12-21T08:32:00.000-08:00

(Clicking on the above book cover will expand it.)
At 10:46 a.m. on September 25th 2007 I contributed, as Parsifal, to this thread

CHANGE & ADAPT OR BECOME EXTINCT???

at the General Chat section of the torrevieja.co.uk forum.

imyaman Posted: Sep 25, 2007 7:34 am
Recently, I saw a discussion prog on TV, relating so called global warming to consumption. Thats the fart of a cow contained more CO2 than your cars emission for one day not to mention all nuclear explosions & wat effect they've had etc. That these new criteria were being put down to consumption by an ever increasing population world wide demanding more from a finite resourse, there was something that came to mind viz our animal kingdom. That is survival. Races, species, plants etc all become extinct if they dont adapt & have new species or survival of those that can adapt to new environmental conditions. If this were the case, why get involved in other countries problems who have failed to adapt? Should we be sending missionaries etc or leavce to their own way????

Parsifal Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:47 am
Adapting as part of survival is not an observed fact; it is a supposition prioduced by Darwinists to support their creation myth.
But then there are NO other observed facts to support the Darwinian theory.
The simplest of all organisms is, of course, one cell.
Monocellular bacteria survive ANYWHERE on Earth; in the Sahara, the arctic, the Himalayas, the ocean depths.
The idea that the blue whale, the aardvark or the human being are each adapted to suit their niche and have evolved to fit those is just nonsense.
But then, all of the rest of Darwinism is nonsense too. Harmless nonsense...

kevin tyler Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:23 am
you keep going on that darwin was wrong james, what is your theory? i like the theory that all human life began in africa, and that if it wasnt for differing doses of sunshine and migration to warmer and colder climes, we would all be the same size shape and colour.

Parsifal Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:46 am
Fair enough, Kevin: i think Darwinism is a specious but ultimately baseless creation myth.
What is advanced to support it looks like evidence, but collapses when subjected to critique.
The only alternative explanation ever advanced - and one to which I personally subscribe - is that God went ZAP!
But, since there are an enormous number of problems with that idea, too, and since I don´t greatly care, and since Richard Dawkins is absolutely right in claiming that it ought to be possible for an omnipotent God to do His own proving of His existence, I do not get my knickers in a twist about people believing in silly Darwinist ideas.
It´s the other extreme who suppress people because of their gender or sexuality or who fly aircraft deliberately into buildings, and they are the ones who ought to concern us.
Not the harmless Darwinists.
I do get worked up about misczrriages of legal justice, such as the conviction of the Millionaire Three. MIsassessments of scientific evidence trouble me far less, Kev

I then went into an adjacent room and saw that a book I had ordered had just arrived in the mail.
It was Q+A by Vikas Swarup,

http://www.google.es/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-38,GGLJ:es&q=Q%2bA+book+Vikas+Swarup

and I had been moved to buy it by a reference to its being the source of the screenplay for Slumdog Millionaire (see Entry 238).

On reading the book I was struck by certain coincidences it contained.

For instance:

a) It begins with a man relating how he has been incorrectly arrested for winning the top prize on a TV quiz show.

I, almost single-handedly, had championed the defence of Charles Ingram, who was also incorrectly arrested (and indeed convicted) for winning the top prize on such a show.
The format of this quiz is almost identical to that of the modern Who Wants To Be A Millionare?, in that Millionaire? had recently altered so that now only 12 correct answers to questions, as opposed to the previous 15, were needed to win the top prize.
The show in the book was also one of 12 questions to the Billion Rupees top prize.

b) The contestant was able to answer those questions not through book learning but rather via events and coincidences he has undergone. It is success founded upon such empiricism which arouses the suspicions of the programme makers.

I myself was only able to answer my 8th question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? -

In what county are the standing stones of Avebury? -

through having them pointed out to me by Bob Woffinden when misdirecting him back to the M4 after our visit to Charles and Diana Ingram in September 2005.
(See Entry 224).

c) The central character of Q+A, Ram Mohammed Thomas, is helped out with the answer to his second question by the host, who explains that it would not look great if a competitor were to go home empty handed.

In the same week as I read that I also read, at http://www.torrevieja.co.uk/ , that Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi of pop group Status Quo, had just been given a second bite of the cherry after having given an incorrect answer to a chess question, when playing for charity on WWTBAM?.

Their 500 Pounds question was -
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article262762.ece http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2203257,00.html

d) The Apollo 13 theme
My own appearance on Millionaire? is detailed in Entry 224, where I also write of how my inability to get a video of Apollo 13 to play a couple of months before the show was what prevented me from being able to answer my £500,000 question.

Incidentally, the very fact that I was trying to watch the video was something of a misdemeanour on my part, as my wife and son had gone out for the day to an area 30 miles or so to the south to which we had aspirations to move in the event of my winning a good sum, and where indeed we were to move the following year.

I was supposed to be left to do general knowledge study for the show.

But instead, with characteristic laziness, I decided to just watch a video.

In Q+A there is a reference to Apollo 13, e.g. on page 87 -

´Just then the central spotlight goes out, plunging me and Prem Kumar into darkness.
"Oops! Houston we have a problem," says Prem Kumar. The audience laughs. I don´t get the joke.
"What did you just say?" I ask Prem Kumar.
"Oh, that is a famous line from the film Apollo Thirteen. I am sure you don´t see English films.
You use this line when you suddenly have a major problem, and we do have a major problem here. The show cannot proceed till we fix the spotlight." ´

But the line was not initially one from the film: it was a real statement, actually spoken from the stricken spacecraft, on April THIRTEENTH 1970.

It was later included in the screenplay.

It emerges that the show´s makers now want Ram out, and the host whispers to him that this next question will be unanswerable for a mere "waiter" like himself.
But, via an earlier event in his life, he is able to answer that ´Pluto´ is the smallest planet in the solar system.

I was stopped by an astronomical question (see Entry 224).

I note also that, re lights going out in the novel, they did go out, both in the home of the Phone-A-Friend and in the studio, when I appeared as a contestant in 2000 (see Entry 170).

And then right at the book´s end, in the chapter headed The Thirteenth Question, as Ram susses that there are going to be snags apropos his getting the billion rupees he just won, he observes

Houston, I think we have a problem.

The reason that there is a thirteenth question is that the makers of the show have attempted to con the player by first telling him the answer to the twelth and last question, and then making out that it was a dummy question.

I also answered thirteen questions.

In the quizzing community of the UK, those who won 250,000 Pounds on Millionaire are sometimes termed members of the ´Thirteen Club´.

And, as seven people had won 500,000 Pounds on the show prior to my win, and four had legitimately won the million, that made me supposedly the twelth highest prizewinner up to that point.

But, as many entries in this Blog make clear, I believed that Major Charles Ingram had won the million Pounds prize fairly.

So, if Ingram were innocent, then I was actually the Thirteenth highest prize winner ever.

Later in 2006 , of course, I would become formally acknowledged as the Thirteenth highest prize winner when someone else won the Million: INGRAM Wilcox.

And there is also this Apollo link, which brought Jon Ronson to write his piece for The Guardian of April 19th 2003 -

... when Major Charles Ingram, his wife Diana and... Tecwen Whittock, were charged with attempting to cheat... Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?... , my mother called me to say, "You know them! You were at school with... Diana Ingram's brothers, Adrian and Marcus Pollock," she said. "You must remember Diana Pollock..."
...
The next day it dawned on me that this was an in money couldn't buy...
Still, it was odd. Diana, Adrian and Marcus Pollock attended the same synagogue I did. They were well-to-do in an ordinary way. What happened to them? I did, in fact, have some vague memory, some Pollock-related to-do that rocked the local Jewish community when I was about 10. It was something to do with a car with the number plate APOLLO G and the manufacture of watch straps. But I couldn' remember anything more than that, and neither could my mother. I decided to attend the trial at Southwark crown court.

There are the tie-in links noted here in Entry 213 -

Lawrence Garman... e mail...

-James, I learn that, by way of an extraordinary coincidence that the trial Judge of the millionaire three, Jeffery Rivlin ,is first cousin and close personal friend of none other than Charlie Gale. In fact I recall getting some feedback on this from Charlie the day prior to the verdict, Rgds, L.

Charles Gale was a Londoner we had both known for years....

... On December 3rd 2004, Bob Woffinden visited the Ingrams again in their Wiltshire home. This time Diana´s brother, Adrian Pollock, was also present.Another link to the judge came out, and on December 7th Bob e mailed me, mentioning -It was confirmed (don’t know if you know this) that the Pollock family & the Rivlin family (i.e. the trial judge) used to attend the same synagogue in Cardiff.

e) Q+A is related in the first person.
Despite considerable pressure from myself and Woffinden to be co-authors with him on a book examining his false arrest and conviction, Charles Ingram had rejected the triumvirate and insisted that he alone write the exposition.
This was now to appear circa September 2008 entitled Major Injustice.
And that would be approximately the release date for the film of Q+A: Slumdog Millionaire.

f) The Goldilocks value
I had chosen the same access code for both my Bank accounts, e.g. my Deutsche Bank and National Westminster cards: 0007.
It was a jokey and easy to recall variant on James Bond´s ID.

When reading the book in late September 2007 I noted that in Chapter Five this same 4 numeral security sequence, 0007, is cited. Here it is the one to be entered in a home to silence an alarm should it accidentally go off.

On March 26th 2007 I commenced internet Banking with Deutsche Bank, and as my password took the usual: 0007.
(Would-be thieves despair: I have since altered all!)

A day or two later, as I was carrying on ploughing through my wife´s Christmas gift copy of Richard Dawkins´ The God Delusion, I came across references to the significance of 0007.

On page 113 begins Chapter Four which Dawkins heads Why There Almost Certainly Is No God.
He gives the sub-heading The Cosmological Anthropic Principle.

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/barrow.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

On page 141 there is the sub-heading The Anthropic Principle: Cosmological Version.

Here he writes of the "fine tuning" of the universe, i.e. how suited it is for life, but then invokes the celebrated Anthropic Principle as a way of dismissing the argument that these so precise conditions indicate a Divine hand.

"Physicists have calculated that, if the laws and constants of physics had been even slightly different, the universe would have developed in such a way that life would have been impossible...
Martin Rees, in Just Six Numbers, lists six fundamental constants, which are believed to hold all around the universe. Each of these six numbers is finely tuned in the sense that, if it were slightly different, the universe would be comprehensively different and presumably unfriendly to life.

An example of Rees´s six numbers is the magnitude of the so-called ´strong´force, the force that binds the components of an atomic nucleus: the nuclear force that has to be overcome when one ´splits´ the atom. It is measued as E, the proportion of the mass of a hydrogen nucleus that is converted to energy when hydrogen fuses to form helium. The value of this number in our universe is 0.007, and it looks as though it had to be very close to this value in order for any chemistry (which is a prerequisite for life) to exist."
... ... ...
"If the strong force were too small, say 0.006 instead of 0.007, the universe would contain nothing but hydrogen, and no interesting chemistry could result. If it were too large, say 0.008, all the hydrogen would have fused to make heavier elements. A chemistry without hydrogen would not generate life as we know it. For one thing, there would be no water."The Goldilocks value - 0.007 - is just right for yielding the richness of elements that we need for an interesting and life-supporting chemistry. ....

I may have heard of Rees´ book, but I certainly had not read any of it.

g) There was also a coincidence that links with my screenplay involving the use of something akin to the Phone A Friend lifeline of Millionaire?.

In the penultimate chapter, Ram Mohammed Thomas seeks the answer to this question: -

The character Costard appears in which of Shakespeare´s plays?

The four options are -

a) King Lear b) The Merchant of Venice c) Love´s Labours Lost d) Othello

He is stumped, but then, whilst nervously fumbling in a pocket, chances upon the card of a teacher of English to whom he had given money to pay for a life saving operation for his child.

He calls him and is told the answer must be either King Lear or Love´s Labours Lost, and the latter is advocated.

Ram goes for it and is right.

My screenplay Games of Skill, written in 2003, also contains a similar crucial plot twist in Scene Fifty.

(It may be viewed at the beginning of this Blog.)

There too it is a big money question involving a correct Shakespearian identification and The Merchant Of Venice, although there a quote.

The player, Stan Bassany, finds himself talking to the mafioso whom he must pay off that evening through his wife´s mixing up the cards with the names of the friends he may call.

I sent copies of Games of Skill to various people before Q+A was published.

Charles Ingram, Bob Woffinden and Colin Watkeys were all unable to trace my e mail of it on their computer records.

But Watkeys http://doollee.com/PlaywrightsW/WatkeysColin.htm%20%20is is prepared to go on record that he definitely remembers the device of the hoodlum´s card being produced by accident in my script when he received it in 2003.

I contacted Watkeys in his role as literay agent, hoping he might want to punt the script.

The theme of The Merchant of Venice deliberately permeates my script in e.g. the names of the characters.

The central figure, Stan Bassany, has a name inspired by Bassanio, the character in Shakespeare´s play who is lent money for the winning of the hand of the fair Portia by the unfortunate merchant, Antonio.

It will be the inability to repay a loan on time that - nearly - costs Antonio his life.

Just as in my script.

I gave the show´s host the surname Court, because of the theme of the reversal of a miscarriage of justice.

And the theme of The Merchant of Venice had already appeared, and will persist, in the name of the Ingrams´ daughter; Portia.

And the very genesis of Games of Skill stemmed from my wife recommending that I write something about my first two (unsuccessful) Millionaire? appearances.

Hence my screenplay.

h) There are also parallels between the escape from threatening criminals in my screenplay, Games of Skill, - which I wrote in 2003 in the unpleasant Spanish urbanisation of Amapolas 3 - and how we would come to escape the real life criminals of Amapolas 3.

We had been subjected to various threats and acts of vandalism, including slashings of the car´s tyres, and were desperate to get away from so vile an environment and neighbours.

Just as in my screenplay, it was a big win on WWTBAM? that did the trick.

i) My first version of my essay defending Charles Ingram, Playing The Game, was posted at http://www.quizzing.co.uk/ , see -

http://www.iqagb.co.uk/trivia/viewtopic.php?t=103&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=ingram&start=45

where I pop in with what were my first ever contributions to any quizzing.co.uk thread towards the end of p.4.
Right from this first sally, I was concluding with the codicil that Celador ought to be preparing a different ending for their projected film.

Indeed that final line has persisted through all amendments to the essay.
So you may, if you wish, track the evolution of my arguments and of my essay.

And that this has now, in a very real sense, come to pass in the form of the film Slumdog Millionaire, which commenced shooting in November 2007 funded by Channel 4 and Celador.

This although Celador had by then sold the rights of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

In that film, based on Q+A, the winner of the top prize is accused of cheating but is ultimately exonerated.
The film with the cheat having a happy ending, "a Love Story", as director Danny Boyle describes it,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/entertainment/6972243.stm
has, of all parties, Celador partly funding it.

So, ultimately, Celador Films DID make a film about someone accused of cheating his way to the top prize on WWTBAM?, but this time with a happy ending.

Just as I advised them to do in my essay in defence of The Millionaire Three, right from its earliest drafts of October 2003.

And the author of Q+A, Vikas Swarup, said he was inspred by the story of Charles Ingram.

j) The signature which imyaman attached to his forum posts appends the one which begins this Entry.

It seems remarkably apposite.

It reads -

imyaman

I want to know the number of QA tests done b4 writing the Kharma Sutra

... ... ...

In conclusion, I might note a rounding out of the theme of anti-Darwinism in that I had earlier been in comunication with Colin Watkeys in 1997 in his role as agent for Ken Campbell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Campbell_%28actor) when trying to get something anti-Darwinian on TV.
Campbell had already presented several offbeat TV science shows, and expressed interest in my idea, but our pitches to TV Channels met with little enthusiasm.

(239) The Science of Belief, and £10 the price and prize of a quiz on meaning.

2007-12-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

On May 31st 2007, this Guardian blog went up -
The science of belief by
Inayat Bunglawala
Believers and scientists have moved on: now the debate has turned to an exploration of how faith and science can be compatible with each other.
It continues
... Bill Clinton spoke
... concerning... decoding of the human genome: "... more than just an epoch-making triumph of science and reason... when Galileo discovered he could use... mathematics and mechanics to understand the motion of celestial bodies, he felt... that he had learned the language in which God created the universe. Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift."
But was Clinton wrong... to refer to God?... Francis S Collins - who headed the Human Genome Project... , believes... Clinton was right.
In The Language of God, Collins seeks to reconcile the findings of science with faith in God. "Science's domain is to explore nature. God's domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science. It must be examined with the heart, the mind, and the soul - and the mind must find a way to embrace both realms."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwA2nVYTR2A
... Collins... rejects the bleak worldview that Dawkins espoused in his River Out of Eden:
"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is... no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference."
... Stephen Jay Gould ... remarked, just as it was important for religious scholars not to overstep their boundaries by making unsupported assertions about issues... within the domain of science, it was also unhelpful when scientists made similarly unsupported atheistic claims about what science had to say regarding questions of meaning and purpose. So, the same data that Dawkins used to advocate his atheistic worldview can also be interpreted in a quite different way. "
... And Collins makes... this case... ie God caused the universe... and set its laws and physical parameters precisely right to allow the creation of stars, planets, heavy elements and life itself. Such a belief ... is consistent with both science and faith. ... the scientific method has been astoundingly successful at investigating the natural world.
Still... the tools of science are powerless to answer some of our profoundest questions such as "Why did the universe come into being?", "What is the meaning of human existence?" and "What will happen to us after we die?" and yet there is clearly a deep-rooted human desire to seek answers to these questions.

It spawned a substantial thread, which had reached this comment

- cynicalsteve Comment No. 614821 June 2 13:57GBR ...
I'm not too proud to learn, but I do like my info to come from the real, verifiable world....I don't think anyone here has yet made a case that we should treat religious teachings as on a par with rationality....

- when I chipped in with my jokey post -
JamesPlaskett Comment No. 614862 June 2 14:32ESP
If you want scientific proof of the spiritual reality, just read my book, Coincidences. And, if you are unenlightened afterwards... well, at least I´ll have your money.

I then discovered, when I looked at my post, that almost simultaneously this had gone up (the only posting by the handle BusinessPages on the entire thread) -

BusinessPages Comment No. 614864 June 2 14:33SAU
ooo - I love quizzes. "Why did the universe come into being?" Because it did - remember lots of stuff hasn't come into "being" too. "What is the meaning of human existence?" -there isn't one "What will happen to us after we die?" It will all get very dark and quiet. Do I win ten pounds?

The thread continued with a variety of opinions on what it´s all about and whether or not science can determine anything about that. Some were humourous, even allowing for the antagonism -

Biskieboo Comment No. 614875 June 2 14:43GBR
BusinessPages Sorry, all your answers were incorrect. You win the booby prize - a night out with Richard Dawkins - and you have to pay. The correct answers are - 1) don't know 2) don't know 3) don't know

spk76 Comment No. 614912 June 2 15:21GBR
1) There is no why. It happened. Of more interest is 'how did the universe come into being', something we may never know but about which science is nevertheless providing increasing knowledge.
2) Other than providing a means to pass on genes to the next generation, there is no meaning to human existence.
3) When we die, that's it. Best make the most of it while you can.

doesnotexist Comment No. 614917 June 2 15:28AUS
Biskieboo, well yes, "don't know" is as good an answer as any to a pointless question. (But why should a question have a point?) Booby prize? ... hmm, depends on how you envisage "booby" - Richard Dawkins does not necessarily spring to mind.

I came back in to point out the coincidence which is the reason for this Blog Entry, (238)

JamesPlaskett
In his book Revelations Of Chance, Dr Roderick Main speculates that the essentially spiritual origin of synchronicity is revealed by the tendency of coincidences to themselves generate coincidences, something he termed "synchronicity?s self-referring tendency".
Q.E.D. My light-hearted post about my book proving spiritual reality goes up at 14:32 ... and a minute later we get this from BusinessPages -
BusinessPages ooo - I love quizzes. "Why did the universe come into being?" Because it did - remember lots of stuff hasn't come into "being" too. "What is the meaning of human existence?" -there isn't one "What will happen to us after we die?" It will all get very dark and quiet. Do I win ten pounds?

A tenner is exactly the cost of a copy of Coincidences. BusinessPages... how apposite a handle. Money for meaning... ? ...
See also ://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com/

And it carried on in similar vein -

spk76 Comment No. 614964 June 2 16:11 GBR
1) Sorry to be the one to break it to you but in truth, there really is no meaning to the universe, no underlying intention - it just exists. How that came about, however, that's certainly up for debate.
2) Again, I'm just the messenger here, but human existence is at its root no different to the existence of any other life form on earth. The only purpose of life is to propagate genetic information. That's it. It may be your opinion that you'd like for there to be more to life than this but in truth there is not.
3) Likewise, when you're time's up, you die, that's it. Make the most of it now. Of course there are certain rules we must abide by, mainly the natural laws of the universe... You seem to be searching for a moral framework to live your life. The following essential tenets should provide you with the basics to live a happy, worthwhile life in the short time you have here. "The greatest happiness for the greatest numbers," and, "People should be free to engage in whatever behaviour they wish as long as it does not harm others." None of this requires subservience to or intervention by supernatural forces...

PassingStarship Comment No. 615182 June 2 19:15 GBR
Biskieboo wrote: 'This is your OPINION. You are entitled to it. Nobody else has to agree with you because it is not "truth".' Nobody *has to* agree with anything... The question to ask is: what makes some people agree with spk76's opinions, while other people agree with yours?
Another question for the science of belief to examine.

- until the author summed things up with a nice quote -

Inayat
... from ... Rock of Ages by... Stephen Jay Gould...: "Darwin did not use evolution to promote atheism, or to maintain that no concept of God could ever be squared with the structure of nature. Rather he argued that nature's factuality, as read within the magisterium of science, cannot resolve, or even specify, the existence or character of God, the ultimate meaning of life, the proper foundations of morality, or any other question within the different magisterium of religion."

(238) What´s IN a name? (and The Parallels between the Explorations of Space and the Spiritual)...Earthrise...

2007-12-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

On May 18th 2007 I, at long last, received in the mail from Dr Roderick Main a copy of his new book, Revelations of Chance, which is subtitled Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience. (See Entry 192).
An accompanying card was dated May 1st
- Here it is at last! The discussions of your coincidences occupy a large part of the whole - so thanks again for making them available to me...

On May 23rd 2007 I e mailed Roderick that his book had arrived "... with attendant coincidences", and, in response to his inquiry, outlined them -
"... there were two involving people reading my book Coincidences and my name. The first, outlined here by GM Simon Williams was sent to me at the Internet Chess Club where my handle is Parsifal - Psycho-Cowboy ( 06.17 16 May -07 EDT ) was reaing your book on the train looked up and was passing "J Plaskett roofing and scaffolding in London" ... I read that on May 18th (possibly the 17th).
Later Williams said that it was either precisely my surname, or something which differed from it by ony one letter.
The other was in this e mail from top quizzer Trevor Montague, which arrived whilst I was reading Chapter Five of Main´s book

- 18 May 2007 20:05:55 +0100
... thought you might like this coincidence this evening. ... at about 5.45... i was... reading your book and was up to page 174 (ref: 55 about The Wolfman) and beyond in fact... up to p 179. My phone rang and it was a... friend... from my local church. ... Ruth... rang to tell me there was a... programme on C5 at 8pm called The Wolfman that i might be interested in... bizarre not just because i had just read your Wolfman coincidence but because Ruth had never phoned... before to tell me of... programmes she thought i might be interested in! In case you think i am pulling your leg... ring Ruth... on 01883 - - - - - - and she will confirm... I have a few more pages to read but am going to watch The wolfman now : )

The Wolfman coincidence is Entry 149 here.
I had shortly before sold Simon a copy of Coincidences and sent one as a gift to Trevor.

Chapters Five and Six of Main´s new book are about me and my Narrative material.
Chapter Five is entitled Multiple Synchronicities of a Chess Grandmaster and includes the incidents involving William Hartston.

At page 113 Chapter Six begins -
The self-revelation of synchronicity as spirit
A Modern Grail Story

It is a continuation of his analysis of my Narrative material, much of which, of course, is in Coincidences. Indeed Appendices Three and Four of my book are here within Part Two: The Narrative, Epilogues and Appendices.
Those two Appendices are comprised largely of the material upon which Main now comments in Chapter Six of Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience.
I had read Chapter Five and then started Chapter Six on the evening of May 22nd 2007.

By about 12:30 a.m. on May 23rd I had reached p. 123 in Main´s book.
On p. 119 he writes of how he will now be making a kind of "experiment in interpretation of the self-revelation of synchronicity".

By p. 123 he is quoting Jung and drawing comparison with his methods as outlined in Psychology and Alchemy where he speaks of how he analysed, not isolated dreams of an individual, but rather a whole series of them.

But here we are not dealing with isolated dreams; they form a coherent series in the course of which the meaning gradually unfolds more or of its own accord... Of course the interpretation of each individual passage is bound to be largely conjecture, but the series as a whole gives us all the clues we need to correct any possible errors in the preceeding passages.
"Though with somewhat less confidence than is implied in Jung´s concluding statement, this is essentially the method I endeavoured to employ in regard to Plaskett´s synchronistic experiences, which likewise seem to form a "coherent series" whose "meaning gradually unfolds more or less of its own accord."

He then lists the four conceptual themes which he detects in my Narrative, as also listed in Appendix Three within my Part Two: The Narrative, Epilogues and Appendices Entry, which is after Entry 22 here.

Identity
Transformation
Spirituality
and
Synchronicity.

At the bottom of p. 123 he starts with -
Identity
The concept of identity is emphasised repeatedly throughout Plaskett´s material. It emerges first through the highlighting of his surname in the two coincidences involving Plaskett´s Crater and Plaskett´s Star.

I paused and, prompted by what I had been reading, entered - "Synchronicity Plaskett" into Google. Although I had several times Googled my own name in some or other context, I had never before entered that precise wording.

These are some of the hits thrown up - http://www.universetoday.com/2007/03/01/the-perfect-crater-for-a-moon-settlement/?1402
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMEYGN0LYE_index_0.html
http://www.colonyworlds.com/2007/03/could-plaskett-crater-be-our-first.html
http://digg.com/space/Image_Moon_s_Plaskett_Crater

In the first hit the Universe Today site (Then) had two ads on it stating that "Your Name Is Not An Accident".
They were for a numerology service.
... ... ...
I note some of the coincidental material and also

The Parallels between Space Exploration and Spiritual Exploration

a) My book begins with my discovery, on December 22nd 1984, of the existence of a Plaskett Crater on the dark side of the moon.
Its cover, showing the photo of same crater, may be seen towards the bottom of this page -
http://hem.passagen.se/tjmisha/1066/hostings.html
Also here - http://www.chessclub.com/finger/Parsifal

The date of my discovery I was to deem significant, as December 22nd is, as I had written in Coincidences, "the beginning of Spring and of sunnier times".

And there were also quite a few other happenings on December 22nd, as listed in Appendix One of the book and here in Appendix One of Part Two: The Narrative, Epilogues and Appendices -Appendix One: December 22nd changes for the better

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaskett_%28crater%29#cite_note-0
The crater´s also to be seen here in the ESA Press Release which my Google search of Plaskett Synchronicity threw up -
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMEYGN0LYE_index_0.html
It is the same photo as appears on my book´s cover.

Only this time it is is in colour:

"Earthrise over Plaskett Crater".
The European Space Agency release is dated March 1st 2007.

As mentioned in point d) of Entry 235 , that was also the publication date of Main´s book Revelations of Chance, with its analysis of my material contained in Coincidences.
The publisher chose to use the motif of the mantis for the cover of Revelations of Chance, although without consulting Main.
They used the same mantis motif for the cover of the catalogue in which that book first appears.
"The beginning of Spring and of sunnier times".

Their SPRING catalogue.

The publisher is State University of New York.

SUNY.

I learn of the synchrony of the publication of the ESA Release about the future of Mankind in Plaskett´s Crater, and of Main´s book as I read the chapters in Main concerned with the material in my book, Coincidences.

What clearer verification could I receive of Main´s observation of Synchronicity´s self-referring tendency, i.e. that coincidences tend to spawn coincidences?

And does it not also support - and indeed continue - his insight that
Plaskett´s synchronistic experiences, which likewise seem to form a "coherent series" whose "meaning gradually unfolds more or less of its own accord."
?
It transpires that parts of the dark side of the moon are, when reached, not dark at all.

In fact they are the precise opposite. Unlike any location neither on earth nor on the moon´s visible face, these places are permanently illumined.
Plaskett´s Crater is onesuch.
The ESA release speaks of "Eternal Sunlight" in Plaskett.

I viewed for the first time a broadcast of the Academy-Award winning film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_sunshine_of_the_spotless_mind
at Easter 2007.
See the comments of Steiner in Appendix Four of Part Two: The Narrative, Epilogues and Appendices (see after Blog Entry 22) about the appearance of the sunlight-bearing Grail and how it must make its appearance in the heavens at Easter.

b) The Williams and Montague coincidences each stem from my book. In one I am addressed via a message sent to "Parsifal", and the other concerns a poem of my wife´s in which she dubs me "Wolfman" and each coincidence revolves around Parsifal or Parzifal.

c) The European Space Agency release of March 1st (2007) speaks of Plaskett´s Crater as our new home.
On that very date, one year earlier, I had bought my first house, and that same evening, March 1st 2006, I watched on TV some of the Richard and Judy show where they mentioned comic Dave Spikey and his new CD, Living The Dream.
That, of course, the title which I had already decided to give this Blog, based around my WWTBAM? win of Nov 23rd 2005 (the money that bought the house) and the TV documentary about the family of a friend of my son´s broadcast on that date in 2003. See Entry 200.

Later they went on to discuss a book about the men who have walked on the moon, called MoonDust, by Andrew Smith. http://www.lovereading.co.uk/book/1002

d) ALSO there was a spectacular lunar eclipse, which a 4NCL crowd of us
http://www.4ncl.co.uk/photos04-guildford.htm
viewed late on the evening of March 3rd 2007 -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_March_2007_lunar_eclipse
This was the first lunar eclipse I had ever watched, and as I did so my wife and child watched it with a telescope from our roof in Spain.
Just after the ESA release and publication of Main´s book.
When I viewed it the effect was that the Northern part of the moon was illumined, i.e. where Plaskett´s Crater lies.

e) On May 23rd or 24th 2007 I spotted this article in The Times, which had gone up on the day I read Chapter Five and started Chapter Six, -
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1824283.ece
The success of these two Mars explorers, Spirit and Opportunity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rovers
, albeit serendipitously in the first case, as the Times piece concedes, is to be contrasted with the complete failure of the ESA probe that had been intended to land on Mars shortly before them,
Beagle2

on Christmas Day 2003 , but which failed -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2

Note the names.

The ESA probe is of course a reference to the ship that took Darwin to the Galápagos.
But here´s how the American craft got named -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Naming_of_Spirit_and_Opportunity
The exploration of Spirit succeeds.
But the second Darwin craft fails.
And then to note which craft confirmed the precious water on Mars...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasas-phoenix-lander-tastes-and-touches-water-on-mars-882609.html

Also, re man on Mars, the ESA March 1st 2007 Release says -
"SMART-1 views the edge of Luna Incognita: Mars on the Moon? SMART-1... investigated... areas at the edge of Luna Incognita... near the lunar poles... to prepare for... bases on the Moon and... Mars. Mankind did not see... Luna Incognita, until the first probes sent images of the lunar farside.
(The first proto-map of the dark side of the moon, made using those probe images, appeared on the day I was born.)
Plaskett crater sits close to the Moon's north pole... Plaskett crater could play a key role in preparing... for... journeys to Mars. On such a mission, Earth would dwindle to a point and the astronauts would lose the familiar view of home ...
From Plaskett, on the far side of the Moon... Earth can only be seen... for just a few days during a few months every year. "A human outpost there, on the edge of Luna Incognita, would allow us to study the effects of Earth-deprivation on a crew in a controlled way," says Bernard Foing, SMART-1's Project Scientist.
"It will allow us to simulate Mars operations and isolation, on the Moon, at a safe distance from a... base at the north pole." "

f) On May 26th 2007 we watched my son take the lead role of the clown in his school´s performance of El Planeta de la Sonrisa (The Smiling Planet) by Isabel González Muños. http://csbs.csusm.edu/csbs/www.book.book_detail?p_name_0=11288&lang=SP
He had gained the part when the boy who had been to play it dropped out.
Sacha had earlier laughed when someone had slipped during a rehearsal which had led to something of a domino effect as many cast members tumbled over.
This laughter was what had led to the gang spitting at my son, as reported in Entry 237, and the boy who had both instigated the attack and been one of the spitters had played the clown and taken my son´s laughter as a personal slight.

But, as I wrote, it was all just a storm in a teacup.

In the play the clown arrives at an unhappy planet but succeeds, despite the malefic influence of a nasty witch, in uniting it and cheering everybody up. http://www.educa.madrid.org/web/cp.bartolomecossio.madrid/teatro/planeta_sonrisa/planeta_sonrisa.htm _sonrisa.htm Quite early on, when seeing my son playing a clown trying to cheer up a planet, I thought about the REM song Shiny Happy People, although I knew nothing about this children´s play. Neither was I a great fan of that band nor well acquainted with their material.

And then at the finale that very song was played.

Incidentally, when I looked up this song at YOUTUBE, I found that, although it is quite an old video, it had only been uploaded to YOUTUBE on March 2nd 2007, i.e. the day after the ESA announcement that Plaskett Crater could be our new home.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YbGSDkvh8B0
... ... ...
Main writes of the symbolic significance of heavenly phenomena -
"... the celestial journey of Dante, and analogously that of Plaskett, consists of a series of progressive transformations into ever higher and subtler states of consciousness and insight.
The idea of transformation from normal psychophysical levels of experience to a spiritual level of experience, and vice versa, seems to be evoked quite often. Plaskett´s Crater, being on the far side of earth´s satellite, the moon, lies at the extreme outer limit of connectedness to the terrestrial and faces into the heavenly, or, symbolically understood, spiritual spaces beyond. Plaskett´s Star, in turn, actually is situated out in these heavenly or spiritual spaces."
Revelations of Chance, p.125.

On Sep 3 2006, following its many useful photographs, SMART-1 was deliberately smashed into the southern part of Luna Incognita so that scientists might study the material thrown up by this deliberate making by Man of a CRATER on the moon.

The site chosen for the crash was the Lake Of Excellence.
... ... ...
Sir Laurens van der Post begins his 1976 work Yet Being Someone Other with his conviction that there could be no thrust of inquiry into the physical universe without it being accompanied, if not preceded, by an equal and opposite thrust into the universe of the spirit. I first read this book in 1985.
He refers to the Renaissance accompanying the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco de Gama. He also cites C.G. Jung´s observation that, if one wished to pinpoint a date at which the Renaissance began, one could choose the day when the poet Petrarch decided to climb a mountain in the Alps purely to shatter a taboo. The long held belief of the locals was that the the cloud-capped peaks were inhabited by demons.
Here van der Post is implying something beyond mere symbolic matching: he asserts a direct and even causal correspondence between physical and spiritual explorations.
The Cape, had initially been an ambivalent symbol, indeed it was first dubbed the Cape of Storms. With its rounding came the breakthrough to the world of the East.
He concludes with his thoughts as he watched the Cape slip into the distance whilst he stared from the stern of the last of a line of passenger ships leaving for England.
He noted that the image of Earthrise, which he had seen on a master TV screen at N.A.S.A moments before man first set foot on the moon, would be the replacement symbol.

The oceans had been investigated and mapped. In the future man´s search would be beyond the planet, and he would look back and see something only possible from that height; a world at unity.

"The Cape may have been ambivalent, but the meaning of which it had so long been a dominant image did not change. The thing itself stood fast. Only the images changed in order to inform us of new and deeper levels of discovery and re-discovery. However great its power of evocation of life, and its enlargement of our awareness of the paradox of the truth which alone can transform and set free the explorer in the spirit from the explored, this beautiful and beloved Cape had served its purpose, and the time was upon it to vanish in the sea of time behind us as other loyal images had done.
But as it vanished, there moved into the vacant space entire this jewel of earth that contained it, glowing in the dark night of soul and time and space, no longer ambivalent but single at last, a star of universal and unfailing good hope."
... ... ...
In late 2008 news articles such as this -http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/nov/30/apollo-8-mission
led to my realising for the first time that Jim Lovell had also been part of the crew of Apollo 8 and thus had been one of the first three men to see the dark side of the moon. I had lived through the mission, but at eight had failed to take in its especial significance.

In the early hours of the morning of April 16th 2009 I checked to see if there might be any available affirmation that he had actually been the very first.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/forty-years-since-the-first-picture-of-earth-from-space-1297569.html

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2008/12/40th-anniversary-of-seeing-the-dark-side-of-the-moon.ars

http://www.patriotledger.com/archive/x16585911/CHRISTMAS-TO-REMEMBER-The-gift-that-saved-1968

Thus I became aware of more detail of this voyage that brought us our first image of ´Earthrise´, e.g. that the astronauts had read to the world the first ten verses of Genesis as their craft passed over the very site where, seven months later, the first men would walk on the moon; the Sea of Tranquility.

Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit on December 25th 1968.

Several hours later that morning I looked at The Independent on line and saw a trailer for a film called simply Moon that had been directed by David Bowie´s son, Duncan Jones. The trailer had been up at an article by Tim Walker since April 13th, but this was the first I had heard of either the film or his being a director.

It is visible here -

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/04/09/movie-trailer-duncan-jones-moon/

It ends with a view of ´Earthrise´ seen from the moon.

re Apollo 8
At 18:04 on April 17th 2009, my wife was about to send me a thing ´Tweeted´ by Astronautics on Twitter just as I asked her what things the Greek God Apollo "governed".

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-350/ch-13-5.html

I had asked her something earlier that day about the Greek God Apollo, thinking as I was of her book Journeys to the Underworld and it´s mention of the entire Greek pantheon.
The significance of the ´tweet´by Astronautics became clearer; April 17th was the anniversary of the successful re-entry of Apollo 13. Fiona then mentioned that just a few days earlier she had begun following a poster on Twitter with the handle ZARG. He had chosen to represent himself by a photo of an astronaut, and, she informed me, had the surname LOVELL.

In view of all of my Apollo 8 inquiries earlier that day I was intrigued and noted his profile -

Name Tim Lovell Location Bristol, UK Bio Science, astronomy, and technology fan

- and later that day I joined Twitter and I too began to follow him. Not long before this I had found myself switching on to the fact that the Jodrell Bank telescope was named the Lovell telescope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodrell_Bank
Two men of such uncommon name prominent figures in the field of space exploration... Researching it I discovered that the telescope had only been (re)named in honour of Sir Bernard Lovell in 1987.
Now here was a third man of that name in the same field. I ´tweeted´ asking if he were perhaps related (?) He replied -
* @JamesPlaskett I'm not related to Sir Bernard Lovell AFAIK. It's not impossible as he's from Bristol but I haven't traced my tree yet.12:05 PM Apr 18th

I'm not related to Apollo astro Jim Lovell either. I have met him though. Top chap.12:07 PM Apr 18th

And not that long after he ´tweeted´ this -
@TAMLondon Astronaut Jim Lovell is in the UK on Oct 2nd. Any chance of getting him to speak at TAM London? http://www.wyas.org.uk/4:39 PM Apr 19th from TwitterFon
... ... ...

Space exploration has its dangers and pitfalls. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_accidents_and_incidents

So does spiritual exploration.

See Entry 176.

Re the Identity theme, also note the name of the mission which on January 19th 2012 recorded the first continuous video of the dark side of the moon -http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=65931&media_id=130956191

Lastly, I mention a few incidents germane to the common themes of space exploration, spirituality and my win on the show which has become the very seat of modern materialism : Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.

The day before the first part of my appearance was to air, I saw this article -

Guardian Fri 13 Jan 2006 -
Final answer? Not quite as star gets second chance to play for a million · Quiz show question that floored designer 'unfair' · Changing Rooms host tries again for big charity prize

It was about Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and his wife.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Llewelyn-Bowen

... Having breezed... to... £500K... during... WWTBAM? All that stood between the couple and a £1m donation to charity was the question: "Translated from the Latin, what is the motto of the United States?" ... - In God We Trust; One Out Of Many; All As One; or Striving Together - Llewelyn-Bowen ... gave his answer. Sadly, it was the wrong one.
Or was it? Llewelyn-Bowen opted for In God We Trust, only to be told that the correct answer was One Out Of Many.
But fortunately for the Shooting Star Children's Hospice, yesterday, only hours after the show was recorded on Wednesday, Celador announced it would give the Llewelyn-Bowens a second chance as the question did not meet its "usual high standards". In God We Trust is the official motto of the United States, adopted on July 30, 1956. It appears on US currency. But it is not a translation from the Latin. One Out Of Many is another US motto and is a direct translation of the Latin, E Pluribus Unum. It has appeared on the Great Seal since 1782. A Celador spokeswoman said: "We are not satisfied that the question meets our usual high standards of fair game play, so we have invited them back to resume the game with a new question at the same level. The question they answered was ambiguous."
This ruling was supported by the US embassy. "In God We Trust is the motto of the United States, so that part of the answer is right, but it wasn't translated from Latin. So he's right and he's wrong," said a spokeswoman.
The Llewelyn-Bowens, who were appearing in a St Valentine's Day couples special to be aired on Feb 11, welcomed the news. "We feel as if we've been reprieved from the firing squad. How unusual is it to get a second chance in life?" said Mr Llewelyn-Bowen. "But as far as we're concerned, this charity really deserves this and we're grateful to Celador for the opportunity."
The couple's performance was the best so far by any celebrity pair.

So they were invited back to face another £1m question.
It was - "Who was the first man to go into space twice?"
They were uncertain and so took the £500K.
... ... ...
Shooting Star Children's Hospice
... A St Valentine's Day couples special
How unusual is it to get a second chance in life?"

A couple given a Valentine´s Day second chance...

See the plot of the film mentioned in point a) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

And here was I campaigning for Ingram and wife to be given his fairly-earned million.
... first man to go into space TWICE.
I was also in legitimate consultation with my wife; she was Phone A Friend.
At my £500,000 question, "Which of these astronauts has never set foot on the moon?"
(Answer: Jim Lovell)
and also my £32,000 one, "The 2004 biopic "De-lovely" was based on the life of which composer?" (see Entry 223) "lovel" appeared on screen.

On Aug 31st 2007 I learned of the existence of the film Sunshine -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6516499.stm
That was through a news announcement of what would be the next project embarked upon by its director, Danny Boyle -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6972243.stm
Also -http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/movie-news/danny-boyle-reveals-his-next-picture.php

... ... ...
And, re parallels between space exploration and spiritual exploration, note that in the Part Two: The Narrative, Epilogues and Appendices entry here (see after Entry 22) we see many coincidences clustered around my reading of Dante´s Paradiso.

That book, as well as being the climax of a journey to enlightenment is also a (fictionalised!) tour of the 14th century model of the solar system.

Earthrise over Plaskett Crater -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy2L9Jti9Z4&feature=player_embedded

And here are both the original earthrise seen from Apollo 8 and that one over Plaskett´s Crater - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmaOcPYCGMA

(237) Young gangs´ assaults of spitting in the face

2007-12-21T08:02:00.000-08:00

Circa 6:15 p.m. on April 12th 2007, I was composing an e mail to Bob Woffinden further to an e mail interchange.
This e mail of mine, containing a link to a new verdict of assault against Charles Ingram for grabbing a 13 year old who had coughed spittle into his face -
Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:32:04 +0100 (BST) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=CR1OBYN2RKO2TQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/11/ncough111.xml -

had generated the reply from Woffinden of -
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:54:17 +0000
James, You could try writing a letter to, say, the Daily Telegraph - on the grounds that this is exactly the sort of thing that the right-wing press usually rails against. So this nasty young kid gobs at/spreads his germs over Charles, makes up half of his evidence and the wonderful CPS says - you shall have the full protection of the English law! And we will prosecute this gobbed-on person who dares to tell the truth in court! Preposterous

Woffinden was best known as a campaigner for miscarriages of justice. (See Entry 213). I was writing that I had my doubts whether that might be the best policy, and how the climate had altered with e.g. articles in the Sunday Mirror about gangs of cheats hitting Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and now this new verdict against Ingram... ... when our door bell was rung, and then there was a knock.
When my son opened a window in the door to see who it was in the street, a boy of nearly 13, part of a gang of four or so, spat in his face. One of the others, my son´s classmate, then spat in his face, too.

My first reaction was to go to the police. But it all turned out to be a storm in a teacup, which we swiftly sorted out the next day by reporting it to the headmaster.

Looking back on this thread from the torrevieja.co.uk forum http://www.torrevieja.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20024 - -
which I had initiated, we may see that this was exactly the moment when the climate of sympathy for Ingram in post´s such as those of Jez and reagan emerged (allowing for the one hour time difference with the UK.)

Portia and Shylock shifting, again?
(See Entry 213)
Then, after I had written this Entry as it stands, on May 13th 2007, a news story broke. I spotted it in the Daily Mail on line, and was about to e mail it to Woffinden when I saw that an e mail from him had just arrived, containing the very item -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6654111.stm

(236) Housetraining the Siamese

2007-12-21T07:54:00.001-08:00

On March 13th 2007, having tried to teach our newly-acquired, Siamese cat, Shen, to use a litter tray, unsuccessfully, and me telling the wife
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Pitt-Kethley
that either it got housetrained or it went out of my house, she became tearful about it.

Not long after my son and she watched a DVD of a film called DateMovie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_Movie ,
which none of us had seen before.

In one scene a guy goes to a lavatory and there is a Siamese cat sitting on it, who even ends by applying lav paper, flushing and lighting a match.

Shen was to improve his habits and become a welcome member of the household.

(235) Answering the question of when the earliest (Dragon) Sicilian ...Rxc3 sacrifice occured: 100 years ago.

2007-12-21T07:16:00.000-08:00

On the afternoon of March 4th 2007 I was in conversation with Grandmaster Dr Jonathan Mestel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mestel at a chess meet
http://www.4ncl.co.uk/photos04-guildford.htm
near Reading and mentioned a story I had heard about the 2nd game of the Short Vs Kasparov Times World Championship match in London in 1993.

At move 25, Kasparov, playing black, had sacrificed rook for knight on the square c3. This is a well known and highly thematic sacrifice. It had ruptured Short´s pawn structure and generated sufficient counterchances for Kasparov to enable him to hold the balance of the position. The game ended in a draw. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1070674

But the story had circulated (I stated to Mestel that I had heard it from more than one source) that a British Grandmaster who was commenting live on the game at the Savoy, and whom I have never known to have played either side of any game featuring the Sicilian Defence in his life, was taken aback by Kasparov´s ...Rxc3 sacrifice; it was said that he had never seen the idea before!

Jonathan said that he could not believe that.

In the mid 1990s I had mentioned the commenting British GM´s reported nonacquaintance with a ...Rxc3 sacrifice in the Sicilian to an expert player; Mark Adkins.

He was incredulous.

In 1984, Nigel Short http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Short
and I had flown to Sofia in Bulgaria and were met at the airport by Grandmaster Nikola Padevsky who would drive us to Plovdiv where we were to compete in an international tournament.

En route he told a story which astonished me.

He said that in 1956 he had played white against the then World Champion, Mikhail Botvinnik. The opening was the Sozin variation of the Sicilian Defence. At one point Botvinnik had sacrificed his rook for the white knight at c3, and, along with thus doubling and isolating white´s c pawns, had also got the pawn at e4 by way of compensation. In the above cited game with Short, Kasparov had not gained that pawn; his was a pure sacrifice of rook for knight. (It is taught that a rook is worth 5 points, a knight just 3.)

Padevsky said "Now, is normal, but then was new."

At his peak, Padevsky had been quite a strong Grandmaster (indeed, the game was played at the chess Olympiad in Moscow, where each man was playing top board for their respective nations.)

On March 8th 2007 I at long last got around to discovering the exact moves of the opening of this game, one apparently so important in the development of midlegame ideas -

White: Nikola Padevsky (Bulgaria) Black: Mikhail Botvinnik (USSR) Moscow Olympiad 1956
1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 Nc6 6 Bc4 e6 7 0-0 Be7 8 Be3 0-0 9 Bb3 Na5 10 f4 b6 11 Qf3 Bb7 12 g4 Rc8 13 g5...
and, here it comes
... 13...Rxc3!

14 bxc3 Nxe4 15 Qg4 Qc8 16 Rf3 Nxb3 17 axb3 f5 and black stood excellently and went on to win.

Padevsky´s anecdote made me wonder just when Sicilian Defence players had started sacrificing rooks for knights on c3.

Was that really, as he told it, the eye-opener?

I knew that International Master David Levy had written a book in the 1970s called Sacrifices in the Sicilian, and wondered whether it might include not only types of such sacrifices but also their history. But I had never checked this out.
As I mentioned to Mestel, apropos the Padevsky-Botvinnik game, to the modern mind the idea that anyone - a club player even, let alone a strong GM - would be surprised by the concept of ...Rxc3 was just unthinkable, and, naturally, he agreed.

How much more amazing, then, that a GM would be unacquainted with the theme when meeting with it in a game from a World Championship match 37 years later.

Although an amateur player, Jonathan was regarded as one of the world´s leading experts in one particular variation of the Sicilian Defence: the Dragon. Indeed, earlier on the very afternoon of our conversation he had played black in a Yugoslav Attack variation of the Dragon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Defence,_Dragon_Variation

About a decade earlier I had glanced at a book devoted to just one line of the Dragon Sicilian, the so-called Soltis Variation of the Yugoslav Attack.
I noted he had been asked to supply the introduction. http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews_js/js_soltis_var_yugo_attack.html
As he was so expert in this matter, and had been playing Dragon Sicilians for 35 years or so, I asked him whether he knew when the first ...Rxc3 sacrifice in one had occured.
"In the 1930s, perhaps?", I suggested.

He replied that he did not know.

On March 8th 2007 I looked at Tim Krabbé`s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Krabbé
Open Chess Diary and saw that he had just posted a new item; No. 339 - http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/diary.htm
" 8 March 2007:
Premiere of a sac
Eduardo Bauzá Mercére wonders whether the following game, which he found in the New York Post of June 1st, 1907, is the oldest example of the classic exchange sacrifice in the (Dragon) Sicilian. "

Ever since Padevsky´s story I had wanted to investigate the history of the ...Rxc3 sacrifice in the Sicilian.
But I only got around to it 23 years later, choosing precisely the right moment to ask the right man.

Mestel is a lecturer in applied mathematics.

In 1988, when I first mentioned to him my interest in coincidence, he publicly exclaimed,

"Nothing could make me believe any coincidence could not be explained by the laws of probability!"

His reaction to my pointing out this entry at Krabbé`s Open Diary was,

"That´s totally amazing."

As I was just about to send my first write up of these events to Krabbé, whom I had contacted on March 8th with an e mail saying that I had met nice coincidences apropos his latest entry and would be sending them to him in the next day or so, this e mail from Krabbé himself arrived saying -

Sent: Friday, 9 March, 2007 2:29:21 PM
Looking forward...
- Tim Krabbé
So, the latest entry at Tim´s Open Diary linked to the latest at mine.

The only times in his life when Gary Kasparov deployed the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defence were four games from his next World Championship Match.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1009173
That was in 1995 against Viswanathan Anand. He won with it in games 11 and 13 and drew 15 and 17.
All four were in the Yugoslav Attack, and 11, 13 and 17 were in the Soltis Variation. Kasparov won game 11 by sacrificing a rook in the c line, but this time it was for a pawn on c2, and not a knight on c3.

NB. Having written what I thought would be my final version of this nebula of coincidence, I remembered that when dining with Soltis (whom I played just once, in 1979, in New York, and whom I beat as black in a Sicilian Defence, although one where he had to cede me the advantage of rook for minor piece, and for insufficient compensation
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1385744)
in Bermuda in 1998, he had mentioned that he worked mostly writing or rewriting stories for a New York newspaper.

As the 1907 game was published in the New York Post, I thought it would round things off sweetly if that paper were the New York Post.

And when I checked it out, I saw that it was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Soltis
Then I asked Krabbé to tell me more about this Mr Eduardo Bauzá Mercére who had provided the 1907 example to him.
He replied that he was an Argentine, now living in New York, and a known collector of chess curios and often featured in supplying them to sites such as Krabbé`s Open Diary.
He cited Entry 256.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/diary_13.htm
When I turned to it I realised that I had been in communication with the gentleman before.
I had e mailed him in August 2004 asking how he came to know of this coincidence of Castelli´s. He had replied -

The source is no other than Dr. Raúl Castelli himself, who wrote about it in an obscure chess club publication in 1969. If I am not mistaken, the subject was later taken by Infantozzi in the magazine “Mundo del ajedrez”... A translation follows:

From: Círculo de Ajedrez Villa Crespo, Boletín Oficial, N° 2, June 1969. pp. 6-8 A Unique Case Raúl Castelli
In Shakhmatnaya Moskva #268 (29 January 1969)... master Romanov wrote an interesting note about several cases of “parallelism” in chess games. For example, in Yanofsky-Unzicker and Kuijpers-Portisch, 1964 Tel-Aviv Olympiad, until move 30 exactly the same moves were made in both games! The article then gave several other similar instances.
In other occasions, the parallelism is not born out of an identical game development, but from remarkable tactical and strategic coincidences. L. Prins... attributed those coincidences to an alleged “accumulation law”.

Were this to be true or not, what I can guarantee you is that hardly there is in the whole history of chess a more incredible case than the one I lived 10 years ago, ONLY 38 DAYS APART: two of my games reached, after totally different openings and 71 moves, exactly the same position!!.

This “believe it or not” happened as follows:

Martínez, J.E. - Castelli, Raúl Buenos Aires, torneo interclubes “Confraternidad”, 27 November 1959.

The moves of this game, as visible in Entry 256 at Krabbés Open Diary, now followed.

There is a note after 18.Bc4: (another coincidence: in Benkö,F-Castelli,R., Argentine-ch preliminary, 1958, the game continued 18 f3 Qe7, with a small White advantage, which was not enough to win. And this is not a theoretical line!) And one other after 71... Ke6 (Keep this position well in mind!)

In the other game, played IN THE SAME LOCALE (in front to the club’s middle door leading to the balcony) I had the White pieces, with the better play in the “mysterious position”. Besides, unlike Martínez, I found the winning procedure: Castelli, Raúl - Fedorovsky, R.Buenos Aires, II torneo invitación Villa Crespo, 1959/60, 12th round, 5 January 1960
From move 70, the article concludes - 71.Kb4 Bc2 (same position at move 71 as in the other game! White to play and win:) 72.Kb5 Kd7 73.Bf2!! Kd6 74.Bh4!! Ke6 75.Kb4! (Zugzwang!) 75… Kf7 76.h7! Bxh7 77.Kxa4 Bg8 78.Kb5 Ke6 79.Kb6 Kd7 80.a4 Bd5 81.a5 Kd6 82.a6 1–0
When I mentioned my rival what had just happened, sarcastically, and not without reason, he answered:
“The most remarkable coincidence is that you played so well!”.

I note -

a) 4 days after I asked the acknowledged world authority on the Soltis Variation of the Dragon Sicilian, Dr. J. Mestel, when the first ...Rxc3 sacrifice in the Dragon Sicilian was played, the answer pops up at Krabbé`s Open Chess Diary. Krabbé, to whom I had related, over a year earlier, that I intended to have my own Open Coincidence Diary.

b) At the moment I was about to send my first write up of these events to Krabbé, whom I had contacted on March 8th with an e mail saying that I had met nice coincidences apropos his latest entry and would be sending them to him in the next day or so, an e mail from Krabbé himself arrived saying - "Looking forward".

c) The ...Rxc3 sacrifice which sparked off the discusion on March 4th 2007 was in the 2nd game of the 1993 Times World Championship Match between Short and Kasparov.
In the claimed first ever instance of a ...Rxc3 sacrifice in a Dragon Sicilian, the player executing it was Mr Curt.
"Curt" means short.
"Kurt" means short in Lasker´s native German.
June 1st, on which the piece was published in the paper, is Nigel Short`s birthday.
Short was in the car with me when GM Padevsky related the story of the surprise that ...Rxc3 was when played against him in 1956 - also by the reigning World Champion; Mikhail Botvinnik.

d) The featured 1907 game was played in New York. The annotator was the then World Champion, Emanuel Lasker.
Curiously, in the very next traceable incident of a ...Rxc3 sacrifice from a Dragon Sicilian game, Lasker was also involved. It was the following year in an exhibition game in London.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/diary.htm
A German, in 1941 he was to die in New York.
The 1907 game was in what came to be known as the Soltis Variation of the Yugoslav Attack in the Dragon Sicilian.

The only games where World Champion Gary Kasparov deployed the Dragon Sicilian were four from his next title defence after the match with Short. Games 11, 13 and 17 were all in the Soltis Variation.

That was in 1995 against Anand.
In New York.
I played the eponymous GM Andrew Soltis, of New York, just once, in 1979. It was a Sicilian Defence where I played black and I won.
In New York.
The 1907 game cutting is from the New York Post.
Soltis is a journalist for the New York Post.
Mr Eduardo Bauzá Mercére who had provided the 1907 example, is an Argentine, now living in New York.
The first version of some of these coincidences which I sent to Krabbé - prompting him to link to this Open Diary from the entry at his Open Diary - was on March 9th 2007.

That was ex-World Champion Bobby Fischer´s 64th birthday. When he won the title in 1972, at 29, he was residing where he had been living since the age of 6.
In New York.

On March 10th 2007 I wondered whether Dr Roderick Main had my new address, and e mailed him with it. I also wondered whether his long-awaited book Revelations of Chance had yet appeared (see Entry 192).
A google search revealed -
https://www.sunypress.edu/PDF/Spring_2007/Spring2007NBA.pdf (see page 12 of the catalogue).
Suny was not a publisher he had mentioned before nor one I recognised.
It stands for State University of New York.
Publication date was March 1st, but Roderick said there would be a slight delay in my receiving a copy.
The catalogue cover shows a praying mantis. The design, it states, is taken from the cover of Revelations of Chance.

The motif of the mantis, as the Kalihari Bushman´s most potent symbol of God, is explored in Laurens van der Post´s book A Mantis Carol.
http://www.amazon.com/Mantis-Carol-Laurens-van-Post/dp/0933280211
He relates a series of coincidences he claims to have met with in the late 1950s which led him to an encounter with a deceased Bushman in, of all places, New York.
SUNY designed the cover without consulting Main and doubtless chose the image of the praying mantis because one is involved in the synchronicity that opens his book.
There is no explicit mention of A Mantis Carol in the book.

Note also point a) of Blog Entry 238.

I drew Main´s attention to the burgeoning coincidences about ...Rxc3 in the Dragon, and he replied that, when he had played chess (see Entry 81) the Sicilian Dragon had been his favourite defence. But he could not recall ever having sacrificed a rook on c3.
Neither did he believe, during his finest hour in chess - his draw against Short in a simultaneous display - he had played the Dragon.

e) I had been in communication with Eduardo Bauzá Mercére once before. It was in 2004 and about a coincidence of a Dr. Castelli´s, one which the experiencer justly described as the greatest in all chess literature, when Bauzá Mercére had supplied it to Tim Krabbé who had then posted it as Entry. 256 at his Open Chess Diary, thus drawing it to my attention.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/diary_13.htm
But I had forgotten the name of the person whom I had then e mailed.

Although his next contribution to Krabbé`s Open Diary had nothing to do with coincidence, it drew me to him again via a correspondence on coincidences that it generated.

f) Krabbé went on to give at his Diary what Bauzá Mercére cites as the second instance of this ... Rxc3 sacrifice, and again it was in the Dragon variation and again it involved annotations by the then World Champion, Lasker, who indeed this time was on the receiving end of the sacrifice.
He was the second official World Champion.
The game was played in London, where the World Championship Match of 1993 was played and which featured, in its second game, this, by now classic, ... Rxc3 sacrifice. the instance which had sparked off my discussion with Mestel.
In several languages, e.g. Spanish ("torre") the chess piece we call a rook is termed a tower or castle. Castelli means "castles" in Italian.
All of Kasparov´s Dragon Sicilian games were played on the observation deck of the World Trade Centre.

g) On July 24th 2007 I received an e mail from Main -

By the way, I received a letter from someone in New York, Tatiana Zeltser, who seems to have been very moved by Revelations of Chance, especially the interpretation of the connection between synchronicity and the Grail, which she relates to the theology of St Maximus the Confessor.
Anyway, she writes towards the end of her letter:
‘Please send my gratitude and best regards also to James Plaskett who generously lets us enjoy his precious experience!’

And this earlier article by Mark Dvoretsky also indicates some confusion about when the ...Rxc3 acrifice made its appearance -

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/dvoretsky73.pdf

NB. On January 18th 2010 I noted at Statcounter that someone had accessed the Blog via this Entry through entering a Google enquiry about the earliest game in the Soltis variation.

I therefore looked once again at this Entry and noted something re my reference to Castelli´s coincidence as reported in Entry 256 at Krabbé´s Open Chess Diary.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/diary_13.htm

I had written here -
There is a note after 18.Bc4: (another coincidence: in Benkö,F-Castelli,R., Argentine-ch preliminary, 1958, the game continued 18 f3 Qe7, with a small White advantage, which was not enough to win. And this is not a theoretical line!)

And that made me think who that Mr Benkö could have been (?). There was a famous American Grandmaster, Pal Benkö, who had defected from Hungary in the 1950s (and whom I had seen in New York in 1979) but how could he be playing in a subsidiary event of the Argentine championship? I had never encountered anyone else of that name.

Later that same evening I looked again at Statcounter and saw that someone in Madrid had accessed this Blog at Entries (82) and (189) via the search "Graham Hillyard chess grandmaster".

When checking out all hits thrown up by that search I noted that the sixth one was -
http://www.arves.org/Biografie.htm
The Argentine Benkö, the very chap of whom I had thought earlier that evening is pictured there. Seems that in addition to having been a player of some standard he was also an endgame study composer.

As is Pal Benkö.

(234) Don´t Sweat The Small Stuff With Your Family

2007-12-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

On the morning of December 30th 2006 I was glancing at stalls at a car boot fair near San Javier when I saw a book entitled Don't Sweat the Small Stuff with Your Family. The blurb on the cover described it as a bestseller.
I had never heard of it before.
About 20 minutes into the last day of the year I was reading from The Independent & The Independent on Sunday on line when I saw this obituary - http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2112586.ece

http://www.dontsweat.com/

(233) The Runaway Bride

2007-12-20T15:25:00.000-08:00

This Guardian Blog thread caught my eye on December 18th 2006.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/theo_hobson/2006/12/an_open_letter_not_from_richar.html
I chipped in with -

JamesPlaskett
Comment No. 342986
December 18 19:13ESP

and, more significantly for coincidental material,
-
JamesPlaskett
Comment No. 343137
December 18 21:12ESP

Better if my readers were to read my posts directly from the thread.

But, to summarise; I noted some coincidences, i.e. that

a) fellow contributor, Jeremy James had presented BBC TV chess programmes together in the 1980s.

And that (in early 2001, I think)
b) I and my wife and son journeyed to the Natural History Museum in London, and saw ex-Dr Who, Tom Baker (who spent six years as a monk) get off the train with us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Baker
I was later that afternoon to hear his voice on a voiceover of an exhibit at the part of the museum devoted to the defence of Darwin´s theory of Natural Selection.

c) Baker was married to the woman who was his Dr Who assistant and now the third wife of R. Dawkins: Lalla Ward.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalla_Ward

Mick Brown told me that he interviewed Dawkins once, heard his spiel, and asked of him in a bewildered tone - " Well; what do you think love is, then?"
"Just some electricity firing across neurons", came the response.
Mick found himself saying, "Well no wonder you are twice divorced."

LordSummerisle posted at the above thread - "... as an interesting aside, it was Douglas Adams another great atheist, when he was Script Editor for Doctor Who that introduced Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward."

My wife had once been quite friendly with Douglas Adams...

Then I noticed this –

d) "Doctor Who returns to TV screens on Christmas Day with its most terrifying monster yet. Younger viewers may find the half-human, half-spider Empress of Rachnos too scary to watch.
Cutting It star Sarah Parish is unrecognisable in the role.
She admitted that even her own family might run for cover at the sight of her character when they sit down to watch the festive episode, called The Runaway Bride."

Also note -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/somerset/content/articles/2006/12/07/doctor_who_poll_feature.shtml
e) Re the theme of Runaway Brides, it could be noted that Lalla Ward and Sarah Parish, are essentially the same names!

Ms Ward uses the name Lalla, although she was christened Sarah.
Her Wikipedia entry reveals that she mispronounced Sarah as a child, and the moniker stuck.

And "Parish" and "ward" are nouns in English to describe small areas -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parish
and definitions 6 and 7 here
http://www.yourdictionary.com/ward

Baker´s bride left him... and married Dawkins.

f) Lastly, after leaving the Natural History Museum we all boarded a London bus.
At another stop we passed en route I spotted ex-colleague Tim Vaughan-Hughes (see Entry 93).
And lastly, this extraordinary codicil -

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/russell-t-davies-return-of-the-tea-time-lord-805255.html

introduces the Dr (Dawkins) himself into the series!

See much more detail here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Runaway_Bride_%28Doctor_Who%29

(232) The secret identity of Mr .CC

2007-12-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

During a phone call of Dec 10th 2006, James Sorrie suggested that if I wished to appear at the quizzing.co.uk website
http://www.iqagb.co.uk/trivia/portal.php
incognito, then I might use a handle which he himself had sometimes deployed there, even months earlier.
It was Mr.CC, and he also gave me the password.

Both James and I had fallen out of favour, for separate reasons, with the administrators of the site, and they had banned each of us.

At 11:30 the following morning I recorded the forwarded handle of MrCC and password on my drafts page of passwords and handles.

A few mins later I read this in The Times on line -
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-2497598,00.html
They had already referred to these aliases in a story from Dec 5th.
But this was the first I had heard of it and, as I say, Sorrie, who "loaned" me the handle and password had been using it months earlier, as may be verified by checking posts at quizzing.co.uk .

Incidentally, the password was kenneth.
Sorrie and I agreed upon how marvellous it would have been had that also turned out to be the name of the mystery man!

(231) To speak freely about one´s beliefs, or to black more?

2007-12-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

In the last days of October 2006 I altered the Wikipedia entry on Susan Blackmore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Blackmore

My codicil suggested that what she said and what she believed were not the same thing.
A few days later I saw that it had been removed.
So I added it again. An hour or so later it had gone.
So I added it again.
This cat and mouse continued for a while until her page achieved "protected" status.
I asked why and was informed by administrator, Andrew Norman, that what I had posted was potentially libellous.
I challenged that. Blackmore has laid out her stall with unequivocal clarity.

On the cited Channel 4 AFTER DARK programme of 1989 she said
"There´s no god. There´s no meaning. There´s no purpose. There´s just one moment of perception, and then another moment, and then another."
Couldn´t be clearer, could she? So we have here your classical reductionist, mechanist mainstream scientist.
Then I added that when a guy challenged her on TV that she was actually a believer, she did not deny it.
And also I added the anecdote re lights going out at her lecture recounted here in Entry 91.
NOTHING could more clearly have betrayed her sympathies towards a supernatural reality than that incident. Susan Blackmore is not what she says.

">Your last line says it all - you really don't see how accusing someone of being a fake could be potentially libellous? Especially an academic (albeit a freelance one)? --ajn (talk) 08:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The risk seems to me no greater than that faced by the guy who so challenged her on... TV. Does it to you? My exposure to litigation seems no greater than it would have been after I so wrote of her in my cited book, a copy of which she possesses...Do you really think she´s going to do anything? Of course she isn´t!

Around this time I also was trying to add comments to Blogs at The Guardian, starting with the one written by Jon Ronson after he had read my essay defending The Millionaire Three http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jon_ronson/2006/07/could_the_who_wants_to_be_a_mi.html
Incidentally, I had sent Ronson an e mail drawing attention to the essay over a year before that, but he did not seem to receive it.

My technophobia, combined with an apparent restriction on adding comments to Blogs three days after they appeared, meant I could post nothing, neither to his blog nor to ones I noted from Susan Blackmore.

Finally I got a new e mail address and handle, and noted a blog she posted on visiting China which ended with her saying that in her next contribution she would be looking at religious freedoms in that land.
On November 3rd 2006 this appeared http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sue_blackmore/2006/11/religion_in_china.html
It begins -
"I'm still in China, and it's so refreshing to be in an atheist country. Or is it really? That's certainly the official line and I've been wondering just how true it is."

Indeed. Rupert Sheldrake commented on the official line in contemporary biology that it was "Rather like working in Stalinist Russia".
He meant that biologists were forced to peddle the official line in their labs, but when they went home they did not treat their families as if they were mere machines.

Comments began beneath her Blog. I added mine -

... Ms Blackmore´s last blog was Freedom Filtering Through..? .... Hmmm... She then tells us that she is going to investigate what official restrictions there are to religious expression in China. There is a body of opinion that her own public stance of "Rentasceptic" may also exhibit some censorship.
She began her career as an enthusiastic investigator of the paranormal and ESP, but... she switched and claimed that "there´s nothing there." ...
When detailing her failures in a 1988 BBC science programme she concluded by sneering into the camera " But PSI will NEVER be proved." Not, note, "PSI does not exist."
The following year she related on TV ... how she had been part of a coven of witches but had abandoned magic it as "It didn?t work!"
Then she added "Oh, except once! Once it worked. We cast a spell asking for a light to go out, and it did! And I spent ages crawling around trying to find a fault in the electrical system." (I then added the story mentioned here in Entry 91 of the lights going out at her lecture.) ... ...
And during a TV appearance of the 1990s... she was directly challenged. "You ARE a believer!"....
She just smiled...
One sees therefore why some people believe that her true philosophy might be summarised as: "If you can´t beat them, pretend to join them." ... ... Susan... ought perhaps to write more about some people´s self-imposed censorship concerning spiritual matters.

On November 2nd 2006 I saw a truck in our road accidentally bring down some overhead cables causing our neighbour to temporarily lose his electricity supply. Engineers arrived to fix it. That night we experienced torrential rain and next morning suffered two short power cuts, the first we had experienced in eight months ownership.

That afternoon I posted my above comment. Just after that I found myself thinking again on her persona and wondered again if the debate on the paranormal might be like an ongoing gag in the famous 1960s American TV sit-com Bewitched in which a witch was a housewife in a suburban street. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bewitched
See also the end of Entry 211.
Her neighbour was always seeing fantastical happenings, but every time she summoned her sceptical and increasingly lugubrious husband to the window to view them, all of the marvels had vanished.
Shortly after I heard my wife saying something to our son that Bewitched would soon be on TV. But she made an error; it was actually a not dissimilar programme called Charmed which was about to show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charmed

Charmed, my son informed me, was an American programme about three benign girl witches who are sometimes allied with other powers termed White Lights, and who combat demons and other forces of darkness.

As I was writing up a draft of the details of this example, at 10:10 p.m. on Nov 4th 2006, we experienced another brief power cut.

This http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article1959048.ece speaks of the biggest pan-European blackout in thirty years that very weekend, which may indeed have been responsible for what happened to us.

A few days later I noted that on April 7th 2006, Birkbeck Professor of Philosophy, A.J. Grayling, had begun a Guardian blog On truth and betrayal which savaged religion, with an excised quote at its heading -
A simple test of the relative merits of science and religion is to compare lighting your house at night by prayer or electricity

On June 8th 2007 another Blog of Blackmore´s went up entitled We of little faith. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sue_blackmore/2007/06/we_of_little_faith.html
In it she said that the Prime Minister was wrong to have stated that religious faith was incompatible with reason.
Her Blog spawned almost 500 responses.
Towards the end came mine -

JamesPlaskett Comment No. 629600 June 10 18:13ESP

Please keep these facts in mind:-

1) She began as an enthusiastic investigator of the paranormal, but after obtaining negative results, switched and claimed, "there´s nothing there."
When detailing her failures in a 1988 BBC science programme she concluded by sneering into the camera "But PSI will NEVER be proved."
Not, note, "PSI does not exist."

2) In 1989 she related on TV (whilst seated next to James Randi) how she had been part of a witches coven but had abandoned magic it as "It didn´t work!"
Then she added "Oh, except once! Once it worked. We cast a spell asking for a light to go out, and it did! And I spent ages crawling around trying to find a fault in the electrical system."

3) Prof. A.C.Grayling´s Truth or Betrayals? blog here began with the challenge - " A simple test of the relative merits of science and religion is to compare lighting your house at night by prayer or electricity. "
You will observe that the CSICOP fellow and acceptor of their 1991 Distinguished Sceptic Award testified on live TV, whilst seated next to CSICOP Sceptic of the Century, that she did indeed affect lighting IN PRECISELY THAT MANNER.

4) In 1991 she was Rentaskeptic on a Randi show where he challenged a map dowser to use his powers to locate in which of 24 squares on a map an important landmark was located.
He did.
Sue commented that the guy had indeed passed the test and she would be interested to see follow up studies. Of course, none were made.

5) In 1992 when I heard her lecture in London on The Near Death Experience: Visions of The Dying Brain.
Her theory is that people who think they are going down a tunnel towards another reality are in fact experiencing an effect produced by oxygen starvation of the brain.
At the start the lights flickered, went out and came back on.
I am a Theist, dualist, and vitalist. I thought nothing of it.
SHE cast uneasy glances upwards and remarked on odd things happening when one addresses a Society for Psychical Research gathering.
No true sceptic, e.g. Randi, Paul Kurtz, Stephen Fry or Wendy Grossman would ever have behaved so.

6) During a TV appearance of the 1990s she was directly challenged: "You ARE a believer!". She just smiled back.

7) Freedom is precious. But science is a consensus activity. If you want recognition you must tow the line. Freedom of belief works BOTH ways. People speak of Dawkins as the defender of rationality and of freedom and scientific evidence. If you want an insight into how Richard and his Thought Police truly operate, check this out -
http://web.archive.org/web/20020601165954/www.alternativescience.com/thes.htm

On her blog about stopping flying, she speaks of the prestige, the cosy hotels, the status...
You just don´t get these if you say certain things.

8) The 20th Century was called that of half-belief.
I find Sue a marvellous exemplar!
But, I am honestly not having a go. I have met the lady and found her very pleasant.
She posts that she is not going to waste any more of her time looking for things which almost certainly do not exist.
Fair enough.
But there are two other good reasons for abandoning attempts to prove the supernatural:

a) That it may be real but, for some unearthly reason, unprovable. She herself titled a piece logging her inability to confirm PSI "Confessions of a PSI-Inhibitory Experimenter."
I also have written that it seems to me that any person professing belief in the paranormal would have also to add " ... and I accept that, for some reason, it is impossible to prove it."
(See Part Two: The Narrative, Epilogues and Appendices , which is to be found following Entry 22 here.)

b) IF it exists; would we want it PROVEN? I doubt it. Better the ambivalent data, the glimpses, the anecdotes, the coincidences, and all the unproveable testimony..?
Maybe...
Those throughout history who sought anything usually harboured the genuine desire to find it.
Sue posts on her Seduced By Science blog -
I wanted to find out the truth and did twenty five years of research in parapsychology ...
But in 1986 (the same year in which she wrote in PSICOP?s journal The Sceptical Enquirer that we may one day have a spiritual science)
( See my Explanation Entry at this Blog´s beginning )
Dr B. admitted that any unchallengeable manifestation of the paranormal would terrify her.
Probably not only you, Sue... (and why then, one is moved to ask, were you looking for it?)
Re Grayling´s disparaging of faith in his Truth or Betrayals blog, nothing could betray truth more clearly than the reactions to those separate sets of lights going out.

Perhaps there is a niche and NEED in a nominally PostModernist society for onesuch!?

A part desperately seeking a player, and finding the answering call in the guise of the one woman whose history and very name perfectly fit.

She has found her veiled vocation.

Let her play it out.

That posted at about my sixth attempt, and only after substantial amendments en route that got it into this final form, which I now regard as one of my best ever posts.
Then it posted.

By the way, that very week there were articles in the papers about newly devleoped technology which would allow plugless electrical supply in, e.g. the home.

Note that the Channel 4 programme of 1989 during which she told of her successful turn-out-the-light spell was called AFTER DARK.

Also, on March 5th 2006 I was in my room of the Paragon Hotel in Birmingham and was thinking of a scientist condemning the idea of magical causality, re those who attack Darwinism.
In the background my TV was playing and something was then said about Science and Magic not being allowed to mix.
It may have been a cartoon.

For more on a dissonance between a person´s public pronouncements on what they really believe about lfe, see Entry 128.

N.B.
At 8:35 p.m. on March 23rd 2003 I had been thinking about presenting a TV programme pointing out the lack of evidence for Darwinism (see e.g. Entries 127, 128, 138, 139, 142, 146, 240) and giving an exposition of my own philosophical development.
I actually found myself saying out loud that I had “... looked at the oddest things and had then been pointed to Darwinism as the simple rational truth of the matter.
Admittedly, it is not a very romantic truth, for there is no God, no meaning, no purpose...”
This last listing was taken from Dr Blackmore’s performance as a guest on a Channel Four After Dark discussion programme in 1989. But I did not believe she meant it.

As I said these words she appeared on the TV. I had just turned it on and gone to BBC2. I intended to record a programme on that station at 10:p.m.
Dr Blackmore was speaking on a programme about Zen Buddhism and she said that it was superior to, e.g. all kinds of New Age stuff where people stuck crystals under pillows.

(230) Bebo´s number

2007-12-20T15:11:00.000-08:00

On September 15th 2006 I bumped into John Lucas in Shaftesbury Avenue whilst passing through London.
I had mislaid the telephone number of a chess pupil, Bebo Kobo, and John, who worked for him in Camden Market, was one of perhaps only half a dozen people I knew who could have supplied me with it, as he did.

(229) Twin Peaks: The way of the head and the way of the heart. Worlds in Harmony

2007-12-20T15:09:00.000-08:00

In September 2006 I recalled Charles Ingram´s plan to journey on behalf of the Charity SENSE to visit His Holiness, The Dalai Lama at his base in Northern India.
I reaffirmed it on September 14th by checking at his site, and in reply to an e mail, even mentioned it to him.
I knew that he had raised funds for Charities through various endeavours, including journeying to Maccu Picchu. I myself had sponsored him running the 2006 London Flora Marathon to raise funds for SENSE.

On September 13th 2006 I had been thinking about the war between science and spirituality, and had affirmed to myself that, perhaps, Love lay at the apex of each!?

Alternate ways to the same truth!?

I may be wrong. I claim to be neither sage nor guru.

In an e mail to Ingram on the morning of September 15th (my son´s birthday)

I mentioned this idea.

He cynically responded that, after his treatment at the hands of Celador, he thought that it was more likely to be love of money which lay at the peak. Then he set off for the Himalayan foothills of India.

On the afternoon of September 14th a bookshop in town rang to say that a school textbook for my son had just arrived. So we decided to tie in picking it up with a vist to a nearby Morroccan restaurant.

In the bookshop window

I noticed there were a few books on display under the heading Spirituality and Growth.
Five were by The Dalai Lama. I was unaware that he was an author, although not wholly surprised.

One was entitled Mundos en Armonia (Worlds in Harmony) It was subtitled Dialogues on Compassionate Action .

I bought a copy. Then, immediately above I noticed a section headed Ensayo (Trial or Experiment in Spanish).

I noted there a book in Spanish by Charles van Doren. The name jumped out at me as he was the guy played by Ralph Fiennes in Robert Redford´s 1994 film, Quiz Show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiz_Show_%28movie%29

The film is the depiction of a true story from 1959 where the makers of a TV quiz show gave contestant van Doren the answers to some of the questions he was to face. I had never come before across his name in any other context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Van_Doren

The title read Brevia historia de Saber. I opened it to see that it was a Spanish translation of van Doren´s History of Knowledge, a book that I had never heard of and certainly did not know he had authored. http://www.amazon.com/History-Knowledge-Past-Present-Future/dp/0345373162

His book was published in 1991, but this translation, by Claudia Casanova for Planeta, was only published in January 2006.

For Charles van Doren, the scandal was that the cheating was ORGANISED by the TV Show´s makers themselves.

Charles Ingram had been (falsely) done by the makers of his show for cheating for his own benefit. They thereby made a fortune for themselves.

After the scandal, van Doren had continued to work as a distinguished academic, even editing the Encyclopedia Brittanica, but for many years he used a nom-de-plume.

The bookshop´s window altered every week;

(as this photo of a chap altering it makes clearer)

this was only a very temporary alignment of works in the window.

Also, earlier that week I had begun to publicise my (still very far from complete) Coincidence Diary Blog, even posting on September 13th (under a nom-de-plume) a reference to it at the Quizzing.co.uk website when somebody had mentioned that they had just spotted that the latest Millionaire? winner had the first name of Ingram!

He posted that this was like one of Plaskett´s bloody coincidences! (I had already teased them all by posting a few there.)
http://www.iqagb.co.uk/trivia/portal.php
I had also around then informed various people, e.g. Jonathan Rowson, James Sorrie, Dr Roderick Main, that I had commenced this blog.

We emerged from the restaurant to find that I had been given a parking fine for placing the car outside a clinic for mental health. The fine I received stated that I was not allowed to park there as my vehicle displayed no notice that I was so authorised.

I heard around this time that Chris Tarrant and wife, Ingrid, were appearing in TV ads in the UK as a promotion for Nintendo. In them he forgets her wedding anniversary and is banished to the couch. The ads were part of Tarrant´s support of National Brain Fitness Week.

"It's time to get your brains in gear for National Brain Fitness Week, taking place from 11th – 17th September 2006. Fronted by the grand quizmaster himself, Chris Tarrant and supported by Heyday, Nintendo and The Science Museum, National Brain Fitness Week aims to help people understand how the brain affects everything they do – then take action to improve the fitness of their own brains."

On the day Brain Fitness Week began, reports appeared in the press that Tarrant´s wife was unhappy with him for canoodling with a blonde in a local bar.

On the day the Week ended, Tarrant announced that his 15 year marriage was over due to his 7 year relationship with a trustee of a Charity for victims of brain injury of which he was Patron: Headway.

On Sep 19th I chanced upon this from a SUN webchat with Tarrant which had occurred on the 15th -

Which of all the WWTBAM contestants you've had in front of you has been the most memorable? James Sorrie, Northampton

That’s really hard because there’s so many. Probably my favourite of all time is Colin Halley, the window cleaner. He was this wonderful human being. You never expected him to even win a quid... He was just extraordinary and he went home with £125,000... everyone loved him. And also probably Judith Keppel – the show’s first millionaire. That was just the most amazing night. And this guy this week won a million, he’s called Ingram.
That’s the funniest thing. I’ve now written out two separate cheques for £1million to two people called Ingram in the last five years on that show.
Sadly only one of the cheques will be cashed. What a weird coincidence though!

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=frQacbJ3RIo
In response to a question about Ingram at the same webchat Tarrant referred to him as a bloody cheat.

Also on the 19th James (who is a club chessplayer and with whom I had exchanged comments at quizzing.co.uk, but whom I met for the first time at the studios in Nov 2004 when I was a player and he 2nd reserve - see Entries 224, 189 and 186) e mailed me to say that he had just had a call from Celador to say he was through to the last 50 candidates for a show to be recorded on Sep 27th.
He e mailed me on the 25th to say that he was on.

I had left a copy of Coincidences for Tarrant when appearing on his show in 2000.
... ... ...
I note -

a) Ensayo means trial, attempt, or essay. Of these three direct translations, essay is the broadest and most profound definition.

Essay is closely related to assay, which in turn, also describes the word ensayo well. Assay is the process of checking or appraising the state of affairs or a certain entity.

Trial is the general world for the act of trying anything. It is also used in criminal law, but Trial in the ensayo context means the testing of a particular tool, principle, or application so as to properly evaluate its results.

Ensayo is also closely related to practice, or the process of learning something to be better at it.

Given that same definition, ensayo directly translates to rehearsal as well.

The Millionaire Three were tried for the offence of attempting to defraud Tarrant himself into signing away £1,000,000.

b) The name of the translator of van Doren´s History of Knowledge is Casanova.
The translation was for a company called ´Planet´.

c) " The grand quizmaster himself... "
I am a grandmaster.

d) The day after I conclude that Science and Religion each have at their summit the same thing, Love, I am fined for parking outside a clinic for the Mentally Ill as I lack the proper authorisation to be there.

e) Tarrant was Patron of a Charity for people with brain injuries called HEADWAY. The story breaks of his having an affair with a woman trustee of the Charity prompting HEADWAY to ask for and receive his resignation.

f) Tarrant and his wife appear in a TV commercial to promote a Nintendo product as part of National Brain Fitness Week.
In it she banishes him from their bed to a couch because he has forgotten their wedding anniversary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkzd9slv2g
In reality, during just this week, he is banished and his marriage publicly falls apart.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=558261&in_page_id=1773

At the month´s end I mentioned these events in an e mail to Ingram, who reacted with surprise: he had been unaware of them.
I responded that was proof enough that he had spent the previous two weeks in the Himalayan foothills, for he would have to be almost the only person in the country who needed to be informed!

On December 16th 2006 my wife http://fionapitt-kethley.blogspot.com/ and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary.
Ironically, I was to discover the next day at a chess tournament 50 miles away in Cieza that although Fiona had told me to check the Murcian chess calendar in the hope that I might spot the occasional less well-advertised local one day or weekend event, I had managed to overlook that on December 16th there had been a chess tournament held at the foot of our road in Santa Lucia, Cartagena, 60 metres or so from my front door!

This was a tournament organised by "Neighbours Against Drugs".
Although they had organised many other events, this was their only chess tournament.

It was held under the auspices of a local community association.

When told next day of this event "... in Santa Lucia", I spoke of the idiocy of overlooking a tournament in the very road in which one lived, although I was using that as a figure of speech and was then uncertain of the precise venue.

Yet it turned out that that was indeed exactly the road in which it was held!

It was remarked by fellow Grand Masters in Cieza that I had remembered the more important thing.

g) James Sorrie had expressed interest in my coincidences when I met him in Nov 2004 at the WWTBAM? studios. I later sent him some (See Entry 224).

He then asks a question which prompts Tarrant to mention Ingram and comment on the wierd coincidence.

h) And this on the day Charles set off for His Holiness and Christopher´s wife was hysterical over his affair.

i) Sorrie himself then again gets on the show, and again fails to make it to the hot seat.

j) As Ingram nears The Dalai Lama, Tarrant, for the first time in his life, has to confront headlines in which he is (accurately) described as a "cheat".

k) It was only some days after I had begun the first draft of this entry, and under the same heading that it now has, that the significance of the names of the two Charities struck me. Tarrant was the Patron of HEADWAY, a Charity for victims of brain injury.

http://www.headway.org.uk/sitePages.asp?step=4&contentID=1363&navID=140

Ingram raised money for SENSE, a Charity for those who suffered various degrees of combined deafness and blindness.
I used money given to me by Tarrant for successfully answering some Quiz questions he had posed me to sponsor Ingram as he raised money for SENSE.

http://www.sense.org.uk/

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16625030&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=bonus-for-millionaire-tv-cheat--name_page.html
Ingram was raising money via an organisation called Charity Challenge.

l) Also - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=411529&in_page_id=1773
Twin Peaks....
As I conclude that the traditional enemies of science and religion may be no more than two different paths to the same truth, Tarrant comments on the coincidence of his writing out, on a show that aired that week, a second cheque for £1,000,000 to an Ingram.

Also, in the week that Ingram set off to the foothills of the highest mountain, another Ingram is presented with the highest prize Tarrant may bestow.

A family name is given; a formal appellation.

But the christian name is chosen.

Ingram means ´ignorant´.
... ... ...

In an interview he gave within a year of the Ingrams´conviction, Tarrant said, to icBerks, that he would play himself in any film of the crime, but the reality would be hard to improve upon.
He added that he might like to do a bit of acting in the future, "... perhaps in a soap opera as a gangster...", as a shift from his ´Mr NiceGuy´ image, and had already received a few such offers.
He said that he would be trying a few things over the next couple of years.

He reiterated contemplating such a move in 2009 -

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article2259800.ece
... ... ...

Re verdicts, consider also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=435267&in_page_id=1773

(228) Burning bright

2007-12-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

A lady styling herself " Mollypops " started a thread at the torrevieja.co.uk site
http://www.torrevieja.co.uk/
at their General Chat message board on August 9th 2006 to which she gave the quaint heading
Lobster Lobster.

The thread progressed thus (my handle was Parsifal and my wife´s, beastess)

- I live in Quesada and I am looking for a Lobster Restaurant. Can anyone recommend one and/or phone number ??? Thanx jessi

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 8:31 pm Post subject:
There isn't one in quesada to my knowledge. The best fish restaurant we went to was El pescador in Torrevieja, their number is....965715474.

jimmy
Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:26 pm Post subject:
There's a restaurant beach side at Play flamenca that has a 'Lobster Night'.Don't know the name but sure someone else will.

beastess Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 9:09 am Post subject:
It´s a Belgian Restaurant called Den Engel. We have had a few birthday treats there. it´s not cheap but excellent. 23.95 per person plus drinks. It´s a simple formula - lobster soup followed by a whole lobster with salad, chips and mayonnaise. Best washed down with a white Belgian beer called Grimberger(? spelling) in my opnion.
Book ahead. The staff speak a few languages and are very pleasant so it´s a good place for a night out.

Parsifal Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 8:44 pm Post subject:
" Lobster, Lobster, Burning bright..."

Parsifal Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 7:25 pm Post subject:
Here´s a nice coincidence, I made the above entry last night, obviously inspired by Blake´s poem Tiger, Tiger, since the thread has the heading Lobster Lobster.
This morning I get the following e mail -
From : update@team.game.co.uk Sent : 11 August 2006 08:41:11 Subject :
GAME: Burning Bright
This turns out to be a new computer game about Tiger Woods, even though the name of the game itself is NOT Tiger, Tiger, nor Burning Bright.
Blake´s poem was written pre-Darwin and is about his perception of supernatural design in the natural world. " What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? " he wrote.

Den Engel means ´the Angel´.

(227) Sacha in Diver Tienda

2007-12-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

On July 13th 2006 when we were paying a visit to the town which would a fortnight later become our new home, Cartagena, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartagena%2C_Spain
my son entered a games shop on Calle Alfonse x111; Diver Tienda.
But at the precise moment he did so his mobile went off.

It was the staff of the shop calling him - whom they did not know would even be in Cartagena that day and whom they assumed to be 30 miles to the north - to say that a game which he had ordered on a previous visit had now arrived.

(226) Here I am

2007-12-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

At 9:30 p.m. on June 15th 2006 I drove up to a bus stop in Playa Flamenca expecting my wife and son to have arrived on a bus from La Union. The bus had not shown, but they were often a few minutes out so I parked up, thinking to myself: "I said I would be here at 9:30, and here I am."
Those last three words made me think of the chorus of the Simon and Garfunkel song " The only living boy in New York ". I varied it to " The only living boy in Playa Flamenca ".
I then thought on how odd it would be if that very Simon and Garfunkel song were then to come over the radio. I turned on the car radio, and scanned across to the first audible channel. This turned out to be Costa Hollanda.
The only living boy in New York was playing, as I pointed out to my wife a couple of minutes later when she alighted.
I have never heard it since, via any medium, and the occasion when I had previously heard it had certainly been many, many years before.

(225) Easterton and new housing

2007-12-20T14:45:00.000-08:00

Circa 12:30 on January 24th 2006 I flicked across the TV channels and saw that on BBC1 there was a show presented by Nadia Sawalha. I had seen her before presenting a show, around that time of day, about people moving to Spain called A Place in the Sun, and, since we intended to buy a new place with my show winnings, I stayed on it.

But it was not that, and proved to be something called Accidents Can Happen. I had never heard of it before.
It seemed to be about mishaps to people´s family homes and portrayed, amongst other cases, that of a guy whose thatched cottage had caught fire when he was away, and that he lived in the tiny village of Easterton.
I recalled that as where the Ingrams lived.

I then went upstairs and saw that an e mail from a lady at the Daily Mirror had arrived.
It mentioned a piece in that day´s paper about my win on Millionaire? which drew attention to my support for Ingram and how I had only been able to answer question seven on the show because I had driven past the stones of Avebury when Bob Woffinden and I were returning from visiting him at his home in September 2005, and then only because of a navigational error on my part as I misdirected Bob back to the M4 motorway.

(224) Le siége perileux

2007-12-20T14:36:00.000-08:00

" One must resolutely make the matter known at the court of the King. " The hexagram of Breakthrough. I Ching

" There is often mixed motivation in people´s actions. " Fiona Pitt-Kethley

"A man must make his opportunity as much as take it." Francis Bacon

Celador rang me on November 20th 2005 to say that I had qualified for the show. I took the call at a chess meet at the Paragon Hotel in Birmingham, and asked teammate, GM Stuart Conquest, if he would like to accompany me as my guest.
He had previously said that he had been struck by my book, Coincidences, and thought it would "Make you a millionaire."

On the evening of November 21st I watched part of a TV programme about Charles Dickens in America. It was presented by actress Miriam Margoyles.

Several years earlier she had sat next to me on a Victoria Line underground train, and a few years before that my wife had conversed with her at an Orange Literary Award party.
In the programme she visited the school for the Deaf and Blind where Helen Keller was taught.
I had agreed with my wife that if I ever got into the hot seat I would give 10% of my winnings to charity.
For the January 2005 show I had said it would go to victims of the tsunami.
This time I intended to give it to SENSE; a charity catering for people who have suffered deafness/blindness through e.g. their mothers contracting rubella.
I chose SENSE as Charles Ingram had raised thousands for them through sponsored runs and walks. It was my intention to sponsor him.

Later in January 2006, the very edition of The Daily Mirror which would contain a reference to my sponsoring Ingram to run for SENSE also contained an item about the trial of a man who had played a prank of putting antifreeze into a friend´s drink and thereby, quite unintentionally, rendered him deaf and blind. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16625030&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=bonus-for-millionaire-tv-cheat--name_page.html

After Ingram ran the Flora London Marathon I met him and his family at a reception for all runners who had been sponsored for SENSE (some 400) at London´s The Coliseum.
I had only been there once before and that was to see the ENO performance of Parsifal (see Entry 143).

Five days later I discovered from Grandmaster Keith Arkell, when I was wearing the SENSE tee shirt that I had been given at the presentation, and in which I had posed for a photo with Charles, that the wife of Grandmaster Aaron Summerscale had also been a runner for SENSE.

On the evening of November 20th I met up with some friends, including musician Jay Kouchak,
http://www.jasonkouchak.com/
at a café in London. Jay agreed to be one of my five Phone-a-Friends.
I crashed at Mahmood Ahmed´s sister´s house in Harrow.
As I left in the morning he pressed upon me a book; The Wisdom of Crowds. I had noted it at a bookstand at Alicante airport a few months earlier, and had leafed through it for perhaps 30 seconds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_crowds

I began to read its introduction on the evening of November 20th, and noted how it gave instances of the average estimates of large groups being more accurate than those of experts. That immediately made me think of the Ask the Audience lifeline of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
I then moved on to the opening chapter and saw indeed it did address that very phenomenon, saying that whereas Phone-A-Friends in the States were right 62% of the time, the audience were on no less than 91% of opccasions.

At 2:07 p.m on November 21st I was trying to ring Jay from a train when he rang me to say that he had just been walking down New Bond Street and bumped into film director Guy Ritchie.
I had made a note re approaching Ritchie, whom I knew to be a chess fanatic and whose coach, Allan Norris, was a friend of mine, as a possible entré into the film world. Jay had chatted with Ritchie about his latest film, Revolver, and had left some contact details.

Some years earlier Allan had asked Ritchie´s wife, Madonna, on my behalf whether she would like to make some videos on yoga with me producing them, but the Queen of Pop had declined. The previous night Ritchie´s name had cropped up in conversation between Jay and myself apropos his love of chess. Neither of us had met him.
When I was on the show for the second time, in October 2000, my guest in the audience was Nick Foster, who had been my best man. He taught the Ritchies clay pigeon shooting.

At the studio a guy who had taken some details on me before, did so again. He asked me about Christmas presents, if I won money, and I mentioned that the Spanish celebrate it principally on Jan 6th, which is also known as Epiphany.
Then at rehearsal a guy got the dummy question:
"On which date does Epiphany fall?".

During the afternoon I rang Phone-A-Friend William Hartston´s home to check all was okay. His elder son, James, answered. He assured me that his father would be available as a Phone-a-Friend that evening.

In 1989 Hartston had varied from established family tradition and had not named his son William, but James William. (See Entry 128).

I won the second fastest Finger First trial of the night and so, over six years after I had first entered the studio, qualified to play.

It is not enough to win: others must also lose.

The only other Grandmaster to reach the studio stage of this competition was American Maurice Ashley. We had played in 1998 and drawn our game.

The £8,000 question was -
"The standing stones of Avebury are in which county?"
Bob Woffinden had pointed these out to me on September 17th 2005 as we drove back from visiting Charles and Diana Ingram at their Wiltshire home (see Entry 222).
I told Tarrant, that this was how I was able to give the correct answer. We had only ended up going past the stones through something of a misdirection on my part.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury,_Wiltshire
And that coincidence even made its way into the Daily Mirror -
http://www.mirror.co.uk/archive/tm_method=full%26objectid=16620070%26siteid=89520-name_page.html

The recording ended, and I was to return the following day to face the £16,000 question.

On January 18th 2006 I received an e mail from Dr. David Nias.
He recounted that he had been on holiday and drove from Sussex to Bournemouth, where he had been only once before. In planning the return trip to London he decided to drive through the New Forest and then to Salisbury to read the Magna Carta, and then on to Stonehenge and Avebury - but only drove past because it was raining.
When the Millionaire? question came up on TV on Jan 14th 2006 he immediately responded by saying to his sister that he had just driven past Avebury, so it must be in Wiltshire.

On the morning of Nov 23rd 2005 I received by e mail an edition of a Sceptic newletter which contained a piece by Richard Dawkins deprecating the idea of design in the natural world.

I also got an e mail from James Sorrie, whom I had met at the Elstree studios in November 2004 when I had appeared as a contestant and he as a reserve. We had each previously contributed to threads at the Quizzing.co.uk website pertaining to the case of Charles Ingram. I had also thrown in some coincidences of mine at those threads.

When we had met, James asked whether I had experienced any recent coincidences. That remark seemed to indicate that what I had posted had intrigued him, so in October 2005 I had the temerity to e mail him a bunch of Ingram-related coincidences of mine.

On November 8th 2005, James had contacted me about an investigation into possible cheating on the Australian version of the show in the case of a man who had won the top prize.

On November 23rd 2005 a thread went up at the Quizzing.co.uk site suggesting that a guy in the hot seat the previous night might have been up to something, as he mentioned visiting Major Ingram and had also taken an awfully long time to answer question seven.

In response, I tried to explain my actions.

Sorrie later remarked on how apposite it was that he should write back to me with his awaited comments on a bunch of my Ingram-related coincidences that I had sent him, on the same day that, unbeknownst to him, I was in the hot seat and also when remarks that I too might be cheating were appearing!

These suspicions tied in with those about the Australian winner.

He was exonerated, and I, prompted by Sorrie´s direction, posted pro-Ingram at an Australian website devoted to the show.
... ... ... ... ...
The number of coincidences I recorded in my life had led me to the possibility that we might be being dreamed.
But I had been turning to other possible design explanations, one of which was that something along the lines of the plot of the film The Matrix, where a computer programme is generating the reality people experience, might even be true.
I had read a few years previously a piece in the Fortean Times stating that at an American University a course suggesting just this was being taught.

I had then moved on from that to think that it could all just be some sort of game, and had reconsidered some of my most basic attitudes.

Perhaps, rather than the pursuit of enlightenment, I might be better motivated in just harmlessly seeking a good time!?

In late 2005 I was to see a quote at Sting´s website where he was saying that enlightenment for him could wait until he died.

Sting whose yearning for something more was conveyed through songs such as Hole In My Life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvVjQSZwlPE and whose desire for esoteric tuition was revealed through songs such as Secret Journey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Keolc7BpTcI and Wrapped Around Your Finger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRoUpDON0_0 , and whom I understood, many years before, to have been simultaneously consulting the same guru as myself.
Indeed, certain things tied in to suggest that this very consultation on his part may well have occured on the same day in October 1986 when I met a woman, "Linda", in the Cairn Hotel, Newcastle who said that she knew Sting and that he used to jam with her boyfriend ten years previously.
The title of his 1987 album Nothing Like The Sun may be an oblique acknowledgment of that guru consultation.

Noteworthy that in the final verse of Wrapped Around Your Finger he sings of surpassing or perhaps overthrowing the guru...

I saw some of a film on British TV on November 18th or possibly Nov 21st, 2005; The Game, starring Michael Douglas.
I had seen it before, and knew that the plot was that a man undergoes some extraordinary tricks and practical jokes at his expense, and discovers finally that it had all been a game played out as a birthday present from his brother.
... ... ...
At the studio play resumed. There was a moment when Tarrant was off set whilst I sat in the contestant´s chair and warm up comic, Ray Turner, entertained the audience. I threw in the quip,
"Why is marriage like an earthquake?"
"I don´t know", Ray replied.
"Because first the earth moves a little... and then you lose your house."
He looked impressed and said, "I must write that down."

An unfortunate addition to his repertoire, perhaps, in view of the changes in the marital fortunes of the host which would soon ensue.

The £32,000 question was -
"The 2004 Biopic De-Lovely was based on the life of which composer?"
I knew the answer was Cole Porter.
The title Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? is from a Cole Porter song. But, ironically, the lyric continues, "I don´t, ´cos all I want is you."
It´s about a man singing that he does not wish for that status.
Later in the game, Tarrant asked me on what I would spend a million, and I deferred, saying only "Well, I am giving 10% of what I win to charity."

On January 16th 2006 I dined with Bob Woffinden at a restaurant near Covent Garden called The Punjab. As we sat down I noticed a discarded programme for the show High Society, which was apparently on at the Shaftesbury Theatre, starring Jerry Hall.
I opened it, thinking that this Cole Porter musical might contain the very song Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
It did.

The £64,000 Question was -
"To whom did Agatha Christie dedicate her novel The Mirror Crack´d From Side to Side?"
I had seen the film of this novel in 1981.
My wife had acted as an extra in it.
The plot centres around an actress whose child had been stricken with complications through the mother contracting rubella in pregnancy. Years later the mother discovers that she got the disease through a fan kissing her.
Apposite in view of my intended sponsorship
http://www.sense.org.uk/what_is_deafblindness/rubella_mmr
She therefore murders the fan.
On November 9th 2005 Fiona had read out her poem The Mirror Crack´d to a meeting of the Torrievieja writer´s circle, when she had also mentioned her appearing in the film.

I got the question right, and then also those for £125,000 and £250,000.

For the £250,000 question I phoned my wife, who gave the correct answer but also recommended using another lifeline.

The £500,000 question was -
"Which of these astronauts has never set foot on the moon?"
The options were a) Jim Lovell b) Ed Mitchell c) James Irwin d) Charles Duke.
I declined to answer and stepped down from the chair £250,000 richer.

And we advanced.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/travisp/sets/72057594061835541/show/ http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2913 http://www.mirror.co.uk/archive/tm_method=full&objectid=16620070&siteid=89520-name_page.html

On both Celador documentaries about the supposed heist of the million, Major Fraud and Steal A Million, Tarrant states how Ingram´s poor performance on his first evening in the hot seat - when Charles had expended two lifelines in reaching the 4,000 Pounds mark - led him to think -

"That poor bloody Major! He´s got about about as much chance of getting to 32,000 Pounds as he has of going to the moon in a rocket!"

Given the $ exchange rate the amount I won, with the assistance of my wife, was almost exactly that won by Av Rosen, with the assistance of his daughter (see the end of Entry 164).

I was not the first Briton with an interest in cryptozoology and the unusual to achieve this result. http://hometown.aol.com/okapionza/biography.html

It was November 23rd 2005. The next day would be the two year anniversary of when I had seen the BBC True Story documentary about the Ingrams and the trailer for a Living The Dream documentary about a family whom we knew, which had preceded it.

There had been a dummy close of the show at rehearsal, either at my appearance in Nov 2004 or in Jan 2005, where Producer David Briggs read out " Earlier tonight, James Plaskett won 250,000 Pounds..."

About 6 weeks before I got into the hot seat I had decided to watch a video, and selected one I had never seen before in its entirety; Apollo 13.
But it was a boot fair copy and I could not get it to play properly, and despite fast forwarding and rewinding and trying to adjust the tracking, I could not overcome my technophobia and without the wife´s expertise on hand, I just gave up and watched something else.

Had that video played then there is simply no way that I would have failed to identify Jim Lovell as the correct answer.

But, for all that, I had certainly glimpsed scenes from the film before, either on TV and/or video. Fiona felt that years earlier she had got it out on video hire for us.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/

Around 3:45 p.m. on December 21st 2005 I was speaking about this in Channel 103 of the Internet Chess Club http://www.chessclub.com/
and a Dutch lady, Charlotte, commented that she saw that the point that I was making was that had Fiona been in the house then I would have gone on to see the Million Pounds question.

As Charlotte observed that I saw something else go by on my screen in the Triviabot Channel, Channel 272, which I often had on in the background as a useful form of quiz training.

It had 5 options to a question which was something like -
" Which of these USA TV shows was the first to have an episode entirely filmed in the USSR?".
The comment appeared that this had indeed been a question for $500,000 faced on the US Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in early 2005 by a contestant called Gambino, who had guessed at it and so got to see the top question for $2 Million, i.e. approximately 1 Million Pounds at the exchange rates of the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABWUOQFT7lc&feature=related

Also, in 1996, Fiona had, quite uncharacteristically, purchased a paperback book; James Lovell´s account of his own troubled mission; Apollo 13. She had recommended it to me, saying that she was moved to buy it through a quote of an astronaut who said how poetic and moving it was to see the earth from space and also because she was interested in possibly writing something about how someone who had walked on the moon would adjust to life after that most extreme of expriences.

The testimony of Apollo 13 astronauts, she reasoned, would be valuable in that they at least would have had the disappointment of not doing that.

She emphasised how impressed she was by the sheer flying skills which the book revealed had been necessary to bring the stricken spacecraft home. I had leafed through a few pages, but then decided it was not for me.

The front cover of the book states clearly that it is a picture of Tom Hanks playing Lovell in the film.

In conversation earlier in 2005 with Bob Woffinden, I had said that I would give a million pounds for the experience of walking on the moon.

On, Nov 30th 2005, I said to a Phone-A-Friend, Byron Jacobs as we chatted about it all, that I would give all my prize to walk on the moon.
He said he would give £250,000 to go into space.

On Dec 1st 2005 I went to the selection of audible songs at Sting´s website, and found that it differed from the previous day. For the first time it was possible to hear Walking on the Moon at his Jukebox.
But it was a new version of that old song.
... ... ...

In August 2006 I was taking lunch at a Chinese restaurant with my family when one of us mentioned Christmas or Santa.

Shortly after that we noticed a cartoon playing on a TV screen in the restaurant in which Santa was on the moon.

When we got back home I telephoned the Ingams and a decidedly merry Charles answered and explained that he had just taken lunch with Mr Christmas. This article outlines that day in more detail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=402358&in_page_id=1770
... ... ...

An episode of The Simpsons on December 1st 2005, which I glimpsed as I walked past the TV that my son was watching, had Lisa on stage at a school receiving a cheque for $250,000.

She says that she doesn´t deserve it as she cheated.

The guy presenting the cheque, "the comptroller", then turns to the audience and says that this does not debar her, for which of us has never cheated?
She walks off with the cheque. It then turns out that this was not the real comptroller, but someone disguised as him. The imposter walks off and the real comptroller comes forward.

Immediately following was another Simpson episode. This one had Homer with an Oscar he has won, and it also featured several Hollywood celebs being hassled near Springfield. Alec Baldwin Kim Basinger and Ron Howard, the director of Apollo 13.
Two days later we were to see this episode again, in Spanish.

Also on December 1st 2005 I heard from a man with whom I had had no contact since October 1987. He e mailed to say that he had just had published a quasi-autobiographical novel in which he determined that he had to go after the Holy Grail. I did not respond.

And on that same date I spotted at the chessbase.com site a trailer for a lecture for an already given radio lecture by Andrew Martin.

It was trailered, for some reason, Love Is On The Air...

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2768
See Entry 40 and the coincidence involving Andrew, myself and that song title.
... ... ...
At Twix restaurant in La Union on December 17th 2005 I was to glimpse the end scenes of Sydney Lumet´s classic 1957 film 12 Angry Men. The plot is that Henry Fonda is a juror who succeeds in turning around the guilty votes of all the others.

On Channel 5 on Dec 23rd 2005, I glimpsed the film Suspect. Cher plays a lawyer who gets her client, Liam Neeson, acquitted by successfully accusing the judge himself of being corrupt and part of the crime.
... ... ...
On January 14th 2006 I was standing at almost precisely the same spot in the bar of the Paragon Hotel as I had been when receiving the call notifying me of my qualification. Only this time I was watching the first part of my performance being broadcast.

It also turned out that a special celebrity couples edition of the quiz The Weakest Link, featuring Charles and Diana Ingram, was broadcast on British TV earlier the same evening even though it, like my show, had been recorded in November 2005.
At the recording they had been told that transmission should be on 17th Dec 2005.

All other editions of that show had been broadcast in sequence.

(223) Feed the Birds; the song from Mary Poppins

2007-12-20T14:30:00.001-08:00

At about 2:25 p.m. on November 18th 2005 a bus passed by me at Camden Lock in North London. One side was covered in an ad for the stage musical Mary Poppins, listing some of the songs including Feed The Birds.
I remembered singing this song at school in 1970, and half-remembering it as being from that musical.
I imagined a question on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? about the musical which featured this song. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Poppins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHrRxQVUFN4&feature=related

I crossed the road and entered a café to make entries for a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? show to be recorded on November 22nd.

About 35 minutes later a group of about nine people came in and took over several of the computers around me. They clutched pieces of paper and seemed to be making some concerted effort to answer questions. I heard some on the theme of Lord Lucan being mentioned, including one about the make of car he drove.

Months or even years earlier I had imagined that a question about where his car had been found would also crop up on Millionaire?. I knew that it was at Weymouth, but also knew, unlike the group of people searching for the answer, and presumably also the question setter, that it had not been his car; it belonged to a friend of mine; Major Michael Stoop.

Then someone asked in which musical the song Feed The Birds had appeared.
I had to butt in and say that I had just been thinking about that very question coming up on WWTBAM?, and now it was being posed about me as I made entries to the show.

Their question was the fourth on a page where the question theme was St Pauls, and, after two about the Great Fire of London and a third asking who was the architect, came the fourth.

The link was that apparently in the movie Mary Poppins this is sung at St Pauls Cathedral, which I did not know.

Apparently this was a team-building exercise for a security company just up the road for which they all worked. Despite my pressing, none of them would tell me the name of their company.
... ... ...
At 6:10 p.m. on April 9th 2007, Easter Monday, I saw this question posed to a team called The Comanchees on the BBC TV Quiz show Eggheads -

"The song Feed The Birds is from which musical?"

The choices were Mary Poppins, Cats or The Wizard of Oz. The contestant chose the right one. One of the members of the resident All Star team of "Eggheads" was Judith Keppel, who was the first person to win the million on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

On April 10th 2007, when adding the above codicil, I was moved to learn more about Louise, who has added what was the first comment here, but which now appears at Entry 197.
So I followed the link to her name and discovered that she had three Blogs of her own.

At the first, on Recipes, I noted the latest recipe which she had added on April 6th 2007, Good Friday -http://louise-recipes.blogspot.com/ Millionair Shortbread...
http://louise-recipes.blogspot.com/2007/04/millionair-shortbread.html
Note my comment which I left there.

The Wikipedia entry on this song http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_the_Birds_(Tuppence_a_Bag) states

Robert Sherman ... comments: ...
"Songs have been written about a myriad of subjects. 'Feed the Birds' is the first song written about the merits of giving charity."

But I had had no conscious realisation of that, and thought I was just thinking about a song from the film about feeding birds.

(222) Linking with the enemies

2007-12-20T14:25:00.000-08:00

On September 16th 2005 I chatted for 4 hours with Charles and Diana Ingram at their home. Diana mentioned that when they had travelled up to London in 2004 to appeal to their trial Judge (successfully in her case) against the punitive level of costs and damages, they had paused for refreshment at Waterloo Station.
Detective Chris White, one of the two leading the investigation against them and who testified in court and on the Major Fraud programme, walked by, spotted her... and came over to inquire how they were getting on!

Whilst I was with them, Celador rang a contact number I had left to say that I was once more through to the last 50 of a show of theirs. This time it was one to be recorded on September 19th.
As I was not there, they left a message that they would call me again the next day.

I took that call... but only qualified as second reserve.

Back in Spain I took part in a local internet discussion forum,
http://www.torrevieja.co.uk/
, which I had joined on July 28th 2005.

Whilst mentioning certain acts of vandalism committed recently against my family I mentioned that I drew strength from the Ingrams´ resolve in the face of so monstrous a miscarriage of justice.
That sparked some reaction, and one member was moved even to set up a thread devoted to views on their guilt.

A lady styling herself ´jessi´ had joined on July 25th 2005.
Her notes said that she was based in Hertfordshire and also near torrevieja. She chipped in that she "knew" they were guilty.

So my wife was moved to ask if she worked for Celador, and she replied that indeed she did.
She actually worked on the UK WWTBAM? show.
jessi had been the 1058th person to join the forum and I, three days later, the 1067th.

In April 2007 she was to mention at that forum that her "other half " also worked on the show, and indeed had spent far more time in the actual studio than she herself.

(221) The mobile lost at the pump

2007-12-20T11:07:00.000-08:00

On the evening of July 25th 2005 I managed to lose the mobile my wife had lent me when visiting a funfair some 10 miles away with my son.
Ashamed at my solecism, I returned home and confessed the loss to her before retracing my steps to see if that might locate it.
One idea that occured to me was that I might have dropped it at a filling station where we had made a brief stop.

So back there I drove, and indeed there was a mobile lying at the base of the very pump from which I had filled up.
But, alas, it was not mine!
My upwardly mobile son offered some solace, observing that it was a Nokia, "... a better make than ours, anyway."

And then it went off, and its owner was asking if we might return it to her at a rendezvous a mile away.
We did.

(220) Genealogical research about separate great-grandfather generation turns up the Great uncle Arthurs who jumped ship in the early 20th century

2007-12-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

On May 4th 2005 I was in the showroom of Global Cars in Cabo Roig, about 2 miles from our home, when I overheard another customer being addressed as "Mr Malpas".

As I drove away I tried to recall where I had heard that name before.

And then I remembered that it was that of a guy on the Internet Chess Club, an Australian who had bought a copy of Coincidences from me.

So I drove back and mentioned this to the customer; George Malpas.

He said something about a Great uncle Arthur who had jumped ship in Melbourne in 1926.
He then supplied me with the e mail of a related lady, Jackie Malpas, whom he said might be able to cast more light on the matter.

The next day I e mailed Geoff Malpas in Australia about this, but got no reply.

On August 24th 2005, having not yet received any response, I was moved to e mail him again, which prompted this reply

- >G'Day (emphasizing aussie drawl) James>>Same same down under ... pleasant surprise to get an email from the brother of such a famous man :)>>Keeping em on their toes in 103 I hope.>>Geoff

The famous brother was Allan, who had invented the Snickometer, a device for aiding umpire´s decisions in televised cricket matches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snickometer

And then again the following day I sent him -

I sent u an e mail about 2 months ago about a possible ancestor Malpas who jumped ship in Aussie about 80 yrs ago. Did you not get it? James

This time he came back promptly with -

>Can't recall the email James>>MORE coincidences eh ?>>The rumour is that my great-grandad (i think) jumped ship in Adelaide ... how come you mention this ?>>Geoff

And, struck that it was now demonstrated that there WAS a clear familial link, explained why I had mentioned it, by sending again the e mail of May 5th, which read -

I went into Global cars showroom yesterday, here in Alicante province of Spain, and overheard a customer referred to as Mr Malpas.I mentioned you and he said that his Uncle Arthur had jumped ship in Melbourne in 1926.
Hmmm..... James Plaskett

Then, at 4:10 the next day, August 26th 2005, an e mail, forwarded from Jimmy Adams, arrived for me at almost exactly the same time as I got another reply from Geoff Malpas.

This one was from a Jean Plaskett of London.

Dear James,
I have been given an old newspaper cutting of you beating Matthew Sadler in a chess game in Hastings. I am into genealogy and with an unusual name it’s easier to find people.
I was wondering if you know where your ancestors come from? Mine are from the Seaton/Camerton area of West Cumberland. I have discovered many branches from my great grandfathers generation in Workington, Whitehaven, and Canada. If you have any information please contact me by e-mail or telephone.
Many thanks Jean

I e mailed her with some family details -

"My father was Allan John Plaskett, born Jan 17th 1922. His father was Harold John, a Chemist in Leicester. My father´s grandfather, Adolphus, took ship to America in 1903, abandoning his wife and two children, and started another family, dying in Chicago circa 1927. My mother is Sheila neé Ingram, born August 23rd 1931, in Lincoln.
Her father was Bertrand Ingram, a signalman in the Navy...

I then mentioned the coincidence of when her letter arrived -

... So, your letter, the only inquiry re Plaskett genealogy I have ever received, and I am now 45, arrives with this mail of Malpas re his great-grandfather, a relation of whom I had overheard in acar showroom in May 2005. My mother´s father, born in 1888, deserted the Navy also, and for 5 years or so was on the run.
Had he been caught he would have been hanged. He therefore adopted the name of his brother, and instead of calling himself, as he had done, Bertie Ingram, became Arthur Ingram. >
Quaint, eh?
As I observe in my book, coincidences generate coincidences.
Best wishes, James

Jean Plaskett would surely have contacted Jimmy Adams in his position as editor of the magazine Chess.

What she would not have known was that he had bought from me a copy of my book Coincidences.

On March 21st 2007 my mother happened to mention to me, for the first time, that her father´s middlename was Charles: Bertrand Charles Ingram.

Following his naval desertion he passed himself of as Arthur Ingram.

Arthur was actually the name of his brother, my Great Uncle Arthur who emigrated to Australia.
She did not know exactly where down under, though.

The Mr Malpas I chanced upon in the show rooms mentioned, after I drove back to ask whether there might be any familial conection with the only other Malpas of whom I had ever heard - the Australian who had bought my book Coincidences - that his Great uncle Arthur had jumped ship in Melbourne in 1926.

Geoff Malpas said that this sounded like his great-grandfather.

And then arrives Jean Plaskett´s e mail saying she has unearthed much about her great grandfather´s generation.

Note that Jean´s e mail only arrived aft the time of my second transmision of the appropriate e mail.
Sending it originally, on May 4th 2005, had met with no response as for some reason Malpas did not seem to receive it then.

My mother thought it more than likely that her uncle Arthur would have been in the navy. As her father hailed from Portsmouth, most of the seven boys of the family took that path in life.
... ... ...
Major Charles Ingram´s brother, Richard, was an R.N Officer, and Commander of HMS Manchester -
http://www.4ni.co.uk/news.asp?id=21920

All e mails to Jackie Malpas were unproductive.

(219) Gabriela Gruber, the rude woman of Knights Insurance

2007-12-20T10:55:00.000-08:00

A lorry swerved into my car as I drove to a tournament in Gibraltar in January 2003. The car was a write-off, although I, my wife and son all walked away without so much as a scratch.

Soon after began a complex insurance claim, one aspect of which involved a possible law suit against the lorry driver and his firm. Our insurers were Knights, who had an office a mile or so away from ours.
http://www.knight-insurance.com/motor_insurance.htm

Whilst trying to understand the procedures being taken in, for me, a foreign language in a foreign country, I was admonished by the manager of that particular branch of Knights, "Malcolm", for "hassling" the young lady who was dealing with our claim.

This annoyed me greatly and I protested that I was simply trying to understand what would be likely to be coming our way and how.
He paused for a moment and said "You´ll be lucky if you get five hundred for it", and then walked out of the room.
Then the waters clouded, and subsequent calls were met with unclear responses. They failed to trace the lorry responsible, despite being handed all necessary information by us, and also did not contact a witness with whose details we had supplied them.

An Austrian woman, with whom we had dealt when we took out the original policy, responded to several of my calls with "I don´t know!" and then just hung up on me.

Then, in a classic call, Malcolm told me that they would not handle our claim. I asked how we were to pursue it. "Please yourself", came the response.

We were awkwardly placed in that we knew little Spanish and, with an old car which therefore had only third party insurance, could not really proceed from a position of strength.
Nevertheless, Fiona and I moaned by phone and e mail with various representatives and the upshot of it all was that the founder of the company, John Knight, eventually gave us a goodwill payment of 500 €s.

I was still pissed off at being treated like dirt, and some months later, poked my nose through the door as the Austrian woman was dealing with two customers and said that I had heard that the manager had been sacked for rudeness. I walked away and she shouted out something about my being mistaken.

Still unmollified, over a year later I walked into the office and asked about Malcolm. I was informed that in fact he had retired. I noted the Austrian woman was still there.

On May 21st 2005 I mentioned to my wife that I was still of a mind to go back there and publicly tell her what I thought of her putting the phone down on customers.
She said that she thought it unnecessary now, and that, anyway, through disseminating our story on internet forums she was confident that she reckoned to have taken away at least ten customers from Knights.
I was still angered.
The following afternoon I went for a run which took me some three miles into the countryside.
I paused by some drains. There was a discarded sofa there. By it was a business card for Gabriela Gruber of Knights Insurance. I assumed that this would be the very woman.

On May 24th I went into the Knights office and, having asked, in front of her colleagues, if she were Frau Gruber, handed her the card, explaining that I had found it in a field.
"It´s covered in shit", I added.
"Quite appropriate for someone who put the phone down on me twice."
Then I walked out.

(218) Creed

2007-12-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

On July 30th 1991 I was with Cathy Forbes in Eastbourne when she exclaimed that she had just spotted that a character in the novel she was reading was called Kevin Plaskett.

The book was Creed by James Herbert and had been published the previous year. This was the first appearance of that character, even though by then she was already over 100 pages into it.
http://www.james-herbert.co.uk/creed.htm

On the morning of June 2nd 1993 I happened to think on the words of the hymn In The Deep Mid-Winter. It begins -

In the deep mid-winter
Frosty wind gave moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone.

I have been to Israel. It is a warm climate and the conditions at Christ´s birth as suggested by the above lines were hardly likely to be accurate.
I even pictured myself back at school - the only place where I had ever sung that hymn - challenging a master that our preconceptions of these conditions had been shifted to fit our own cultural and geographical biases.

That evening I was travelling on the London Underground to Plaistow. I noted that a man standing opposite me was reading from Herbert´s Creed.
I had thought that perhaps the author had taken the character Kevin´s surname from myself, as I had been British Chess Champion the previous year, when it came out (!?)

The passenger alighted after a few stops and I myself took a seat. I found myself seated next to a lady and two little girls. I noted that they were conversing in a mixture of English and French. At one point a girl asked the lady "Did Jesus speak English?" "No", she was told in reply.
Shortly after that the same girl asked "Do people from different countries all think that Jesus spoke their language?"

At the beginning of April 2005 I was in the Café Capablanca in Torrevieja when Matti Kinnanen walked in and mentioned something to me about Grandmaster Kevin Plaskett now playing for this club.
I introduced myself and corrected him about my first name. I assume he had made a confusion with Canadian GM Kevin Spraggett who was now resident in Portugal. Nobody had ever thought of me as Kevin before.
I then commented that the only Kevin Plaskett of whom I had heard was a character in Creed. My wife made a small bet with me that his name was actually James Plaskett, and I took her on and won.

Whilst affirming the character´s name (he is a male prostitute) from a copy of the book in Bedford Library, I checked some details of the plot and saw that Joe Creed is a paparazzo who accidentally photographs a demon.
On April 12th 2005 I was with my wife in the Café El Vampiro (The Vampire) about half a mile away from the Capablanca. Baseball was showing on a large TV screen.
A player was announced from the Minnesota Twins. His name was Joe Crede.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/6411
I had neither come across anyone else of that precise name, nor a Joe Creed.

On June 5th 2005 I played Kevin Spraggett in the seventh round of a weekend event in Albox, about 100 miles south of our home. I had been driven there by Matti Kinnanen. I won the game. It was only the second time that I had met Spraggett, the previous being when we had drawn a game in the British leagues in 2001.
Afterwards I recounted to him some of the details of these Creed coincidences, and he said that he had a brother called James.
... ... ... ...

Molecular Biologist Fred Grimmell argues that Intelligent Design cannot be a scientific concept because if something "... can´t be measured, or counted, or photographed, it can´t be science." ... ... ...
This 2011 film. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Need_to_Talk_About_Kevin ,based on a novel of the same name, has central character who is a mass-murdering psychopath: Kevin Plaskett.

(217) Timely appearances

2007-12-20T10:46:00.000-08:00

A contributor to a thread at the quizzing.co.uk website (Phil) started moaning about his inability to get on to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
A debate developed about how to do it and with some maverick voices intimating that the show might be rigged, and others, myself included. joking about that.

Some time later, on September 1st 2004, Phil posted this -

Posted by Phil
I'm sorry I started this...although.. Been watching Classic Millionaire today on Challenge TV, they had couples on and guess who was waving at me on my telly. Charles & Diana Ingram!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ... Shame they didn't make it into the chair, it would have been a perfect hat-trick.
1 Sep 2004 17:18

Posted by PLASKETT
Well I never You see? It´s all fixed, I tell you...
1 Sep 2004 19:40

And then 9 days later....

Posted by DianeH
Aha, I sense a conspiracy! Mr Plaskett appeared on Classic Millionaire tonight on Sky (a coincidence?)
10 Sep 2004 23:14

Posted by dougal18
More WWTBAM conspiracies! Elanor of Aquitane was French and this girl had to order French numbers! Which links her with Judith Keppel. But that is enough Plaskett mode for one day.
11 Sep 2004 03:03

Posted by PLASKETT
Nobody tells me anything... quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted by DianeH Aha, I sense a conspiracy! Mr Plaskett appeared on Classic Millionaire tonight on Sky (a coincidence?) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How did I do?
11 Sep 2004 16:55

Posted by DianeH
Oh sorry, James, forgot to answer your query. I'm afraid you didn't get into the chair, but better luck next time.
11 Sep 2004 18:21

Posted by PLASKETT
Which of my glorious failures? If it was the second, then note that one of the other also-rans was Mrs (Jenny) Ingram.
11 Sep 2004 19:54

Posted by PLASKETT September 10th developments quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted by DianeH Aha, I sense a conspiracy! Mr Plaskett appeared on Classic Millionaire tonight on Sky (a coincidence?) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you, Diane, for spotting me on Classic Millionaire on September 10th 2004.
The third anniversary of the Major´s infamous appearance...

Then, circa 10:36 on October 21st 2004, a post appeared about an earlier post of Phil´s in which he had made a cheeky comment about me.

Less than two hours later DianeH responded thus -

Posted by DianeH
Coincidence strikes again! (or is it) At this very moment PLASKETT is on Classic Millionaire on Challenge TV
21 Oct 2004 12:19

Posted by PLASKETT
(Still) nobody tells me anything I should get royalties for all of my re-broadcast appearances. I mean, I got no prize money....
22 Oct 2004 10:33

Then, on January 10th 2005, I was in the UK WWTBAM? studio again as a contestant for a show which would be broadcast on January 15th. They originally had me as contestant number two, but then shifted me to seat one for reasons of colour of clothing.

Someone then told me that they had glimpsed me on TV on the evening of January 8th on a re-broadcast edition of the show on a series called Classic Millionaire.
He said that I had been in seat number one. that would have been from series five on November 12th 1999.

This edition, of the more than four hundred that had been recorded in the UK, was being re- broadcast as I had just flown in again to the UK to qualify for a show on which I would again sit in seat number one.

On January 22nd 2005 I was at a chess meet in Nottingham when Dorothy Pierre-Blanc, a chess enthusiast whom I had not seen for some years, mentioned to me that she had turned on her TV the previous Saturday and had seen a chessplayer she knew and whom she had even played and beaten, Mr Keith Pottage, in the hot seat on WWTBAM?.
I told her that I had been on that very show.