Back in the late seventies Lake City had a thriving chess club. Approximately twenty players met weekly at the old rec center just off Main Boulevard. I have been trying to resurrect the chess club, but the number of players is miniscule compared to what it once was. We meet at 6:30 PM every Tuesday night at Panera. You are invited.

One recurring problem we have is that an odd number of players show up, and that means that one person has to sit and twiddle his thumbs while everyone else plays. Last week I decided to do something about that problem. I invented a three-player chess game. I know there are already-existing three-player variants of chess, but I find the boards awkward. Especially when pieces are moving through the center of the board, they behave in what I believe to be un-chessic ways. 

My solution was to use the Glinski hexagonal board and put three armies in three of the six corners. We play-tested the game at our last meeting and decided that the Glinski board, with five circles of hexagons, was too small. I went home and added a sixth circle of hexagons, and I think the board is now large enough. Here is the array of the pieces on the enlarged board:

A clearer picture of how the pieces are set up can be found in this diagram:

For clarity, I have left the squares uncolored in the diagram.

The rules are as in orthodox chess, with the differences as follows:

MOVES OF THE PIECES: Instead of a rank and file, hexagonal boards have a file and two 30-degree cants. Thus, a Rook can move in three directions rather than four. The Bishop moves through the corners of the cells in three diagonal directions. The Queen combines the moves of the Rook and Bishop.

                

                 

THE ROOK'S MOVE

THE BISHOP'S MOVE

 

The King moves one cell on the file, cant, or diagonal. There is no castling. Stalemate is a loss for the stalemated player. The Pawn moves one cell forward on the file and captures one cell forward on the cant. The Pawn can make an optional two-cell first move. There is en passant capture. The Knight moves one cell on the file or cant followed by one cell on the diagonal.

MOVES OF THE KING AND PAWN

MOVE OF THE KNIGHT

Because there are three diagonals, the Glinski board has three different colors for the cells. For clarity, we have kept all the cells white in the diagrams.

PLAY OF THE GAME: White moves first and attempts to checkmate either Black or Tan. Tan moves second and attempts to checkmate either White or Black. Black moves last and attempts to checkmate either Tan or White. First player to checkmate an adversary is the winner. The un-checkmated player garners a half point draw.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST NO-NO WHEN BEING ARRESTED?

In order of likelihood of making matters worse, do not:

Offer physical resistance, either violent or nonviolent.

Attempt to escape.

Refuse to comply with reasonable directives.

Verbally abuse the officer or otherwise be disrespectful.

Doing the first two have a high degree of probability of leading to physical injury, and they will certainly lead to additional charges.

Doing the third has a lesser chance of physical injury but can lead to additional charges.

Doing the last has a low chance of resulting in injury unless you are being arrested by an unprofessional police officer or an officer who has been having a bad day. It could, however, result in additional or elevated charges. If it is a warrantless arrest, it’s the officer’s decision what charge to book you under. Almost every criminal act violates a number of statutes. Copping an attitude increases the likelihood of getting booked under the highest number of charges and/or the most severe charges. There is a high percentage of prosecutors who will simply rubber stamp the officer’s charges without engaging in the requisite critical analysis.

Here are a couple of do’s:

Respectfully decline to answer questions about the charge on grounds that the answers might tend to incriminate you. You might think you can bull skate your way out of trouble, but you’ll more likely dig a hole for yourself with your tongue.

Ask for a lawyer. You’re probably not going to get one, but this should end questioning, and if it doesn’t, whatever answers you give to continued questioning are likely to be held inadmissible.

Do remember that the officer is most likely a decent human being with a family he/she would like to go home to at the end of the shift, and in this day of escalating violence against officers they can tend to be jumpy.

GOSPEL PARALLELS

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM.
CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO GO TO THE WEBPAGE 

When I was a senior in college I developed an intense interest in the historical Jesus. I read many accounts of the “Quest for the Historical Jesus,” and decided to embark on my own quest. I embarked upon an intense study of the Gospels which lasted until I graduated from law school and began to practice law. Even after that time I still would engage in sporadic bouts of Bible study, and I have amassed two thick books containing notes of my studies.

 

One thing that I was especially intrigued by was the Synoptic Problem—an attempt to explain why the first three Gospels were so similar while at the same time being so different. I read as much as I could about the Two Document Hypothesis, the Four Document Hypothesis, the elusive Q Gospel, Proto-Luke, and many other theories of how the Gospels came to be. I examined several Gospel harmonies and Gospel synopses; and I decided I could distill the various harmonies and synopses into a more harmonious synopsis of my own. I worked on this synopsis for several years and made many false starts toward producing a manuscript of my synopsis. Since most of my work was done in the years BCE (Before the Computer Era), I found the project rough sledding as a spare-time project.

 

Now that we are firmly in the CE (Computer Era), and I have retired from full-time employment, I have decided to publish a manuscript of my synopsis. You might ask, “Why another synopsis (or harmony) of the Gospels. Aren’t there enough already? My answer is, “Yes, there are many, but I find none of them entirely satisfactory.” In harmonies, the authors try to interweave the Gospel of John in among the Synoptics. Given the wide differences between John and the Synoptic Gospels, this is a very difficult task which renders unsatisfactory results. In most synopses, the passages from John are either ignored or consigned to footnotes, another unsatisfactory treatment. Among the synopses, the pseudepigraphal gospels are usually ignored. Throckmorton’s is different in that his synopsis puts pseudepigraphal passages in footnotes.

 

I wanted a synopsis which moved John’s parallel passages out of the footnotes and into the main text. I also wanted the main text to include passages from what I consider the two most important pseudepigraphal gospels, Thomas and Peter. Although they are far inferior to the Canonical Gospels, they are far superior to all the other pseudepigraphal gospels which I have read, and they just might contain a small amount of authentic material.

 

The Synoptic Gospels contain many of the same stories in almost precisely the same order. These stories are called parallels. Although we see many sequential parallels in the Synoptics, many of the parallels are non-sequential. For example, Matthew and Luke report that when Jesus first enters the Temple during the Passion week, he immediately cleanses it. Mark says he just looks around and returns the next day to cleanse the Temple. Then there are doublets—stories which sound a lot like other stories but are sufficiently different to cause the reader to be in a quandary as to whether they are telling different versions of the same story. For example, Matthew reports the exorcism of two Gergesene demoniacs; but Mark and Luke say that Jesus exorcized one Gadarene demoniac. Then we have doublets, which tell very similar stories but are sufficiently distinct details that they are likely different incidents. For example, all three Synoptics tell the story of Jesus healing a leper, but Luke also tells a story about Jesus healing ten lepers. Then there are passages that I call analogs: they tell similar stories, but the stories are very different. For example, Luke’s Parable of the Prodigal Son is similar to Matthew’s Parable of the Two Sons, but they are so dissimilar as to be two different stories. Likewise, the Parable of the Sower, which appears in all the Synoptics, has an analog in Matthew’s Parable of the Weeds.

 

How do we prepare a synopsis which melds all these different types of stories into one harmonious whole? I have tried to accomplish this task by putting the sequential parallels in boldface and arranging them in parallel columns. The non-sequential parallels are included with the sequential parallels, but they are not in boldface. They may be put in parallel columns, or they may be set out below the sequential parallels. I have treated the doublets and analogs the same as non-sequential parallels, but they are usually placed below any non-sequential parallels. The bottommost entries in each section are the pseudepigraphal parallels and doublets.

 

In arranging the stories, I have tried as much as possible to adhere to the numbering system worked out by Albert Huck and Hans Leitzmann.  I have also tried as much as possible to have each story confined to a single page. Where it is not possible to get all the information on one page, I have subdivided the stories and added letters to the section numbers. For example, Luke’s Discourse against the Pharisees is in Huck’s Section 154, but I have subdivided it into 154A-F. When I can’t get all the non-sequential parallels, analogs, and doublets on a single page, I have also subdivided the sections and given them trailing letters. For example, Luke’s story of Sending out the Seventy is placed in Section 139A. The additional material is in Section 139B.

 

Sometimes this system breaks down, as in the story of Peter’s Denials. The parallels are not sequential, but making separate sections for each of the non-sequential parallels would have been tricky, so I put them all in a single section and set them out in boldface despite the fact that they weren’t truly sequential.

 

Throughout the synopsis I have used public domain translations of the texts. The main text will come from the WEB Bible, which is available online at Biblegateway.com. Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas come from Mark M. Mattison’s The Gospel of Thomas: A Public Domain Translation. Quotations from the Gospel of Peter come from M.R. James’ The Apocryphal New Testament.

 

You will encounter some unfamiliar words in the pages of this synopsis. I have appended a glossary of those words at the end of the book. One word which ought to be defined at the outset is “pericope.” It is a technical term used by Bible scholars which means “Bible story.” Thus, the Parable of the Prodigal Son is a Gospel pericope, as is the story of the baptism of Jesus.

 

Regrettably, the text of this book is single-spaced without spaces between the paragraphs. Although it makes reading somewhat more difficult, doing otherwise would have made the book a great deal longer and more expensive.

THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS?

 Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001), the British astronomer who gave the Big Bang its name, was a maverick among his contemporaries. He denied that the Universe started with a Big Bang, and he said that the likelihood of life arising on Earth through the accidental combination of amino acids (the theory of abiogenesis) was similar to the likelihood of a tornado roaring through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747. Hoyle was aware that he had many detractors, but he said, “I don’t care what they think. It is better to be interesting and wrong than boring and right.”

Something else that Hoyle said was, “I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.” One scientist who fits Hoyle’s aphorism is Paul Davies (b. 1946), who has written many books discussing God and physics (e.g. God and the New Physics, The Mind of God, and The Goldilocks Enigma). In his books Davies wrestles with the questions of how the Universe came to be and why it is so conducive to the spawning of living things, including sentient living things such as ourselves.

He examines and rejects many explanations, including the explanation that God made the Universe.  In The Mind of God Davies asks the question, “In what sense might God be said to be responsible for the laws of physics?” He then summarizes the thoughts of Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) on the subject. Leibniz first posited that God must be rational. Otherwise, how could we live in a rational Universe? The next attribute of God must be that He is omnipotent. He made everything. How could He not be omnipotent? A rational, omnipotent God must also be perfect. This concept is probably beholden to St. Anselm’s (1033-1109) Proslogion, where he argues that God is someone “than whom there is nothing greater.” What else can we say about a rational, omnipotent, perfect God? He must be omniscient. Leibniz held that God must have these characteristics. Then Leibniz asked the question, what kind of a Universe would be made by a rational, omnipotent, omniscient, perfect God? The best of all possible Universes.

Leibniz’s theory that we live in the best of all possible worlds was savagely ridiculed by Voltaire (1694-1778) in his work Candide, where he made a learned nitwit by the name of Professor Pangloss the butt of his jokes. Of course, Voltaire made the problem of evil his argument against this being the best of all possible worlds.

Of course, we, with our limited knowledge, doubt that this is the best of all possible worlds. But what’s best for us may not be best for the Universe as a whole. To those who would criticize God for making a less-than-perfect Universe, Rev. J. Vernon McGee (1904-1968) said, “This is God’s Universe, and God does things His way. You may have a better way, but you don’t have a Universe.”

Davies, of course, doesn’t believe God created the Universe, but he seems to think that our Universe is the best of all possible Universes. He bases this opinion on the twin facts that mathematics so perfectly describes everything in the Universe and that the Universe is perfect for the spawning of sentient life. In his book The Goldilocks Enigma, he considers several explanations for this, including the theory that God made the Universe. I forget which explanation he said that he  preferred, but I do recall that when I read all the possibilities he put forward, I decided that God is the simplest, best explanation for the Universe being the way it is.

POST COLONIAL THEORY

I'm learning about an academic and activist phenomenon called Post Colonial Theory. I never heard of it before, and I might be severely misconstruing what I've learned, but it seems to me that the bedrock of Post Colonial Theory is as follows:

Heterosexual white males of European descent began to overrun the world not long after Columbus sailed, and eventually wound up carving out a world-wide colonial empire which marginalized and exploited the people of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. This marginalization and exploitation continued for centuries, until it began to fall apart after World War II. 

Even now though, heterosexual white males of European descent continue to marginalize people of other races by insisting that the best way to gain knowledge is through the use of the scientific method, observation, experiment, logic, and reason, supported by rigorous, peer-reviewed research. These methods are products of Western culture and are used as tools of White Supremacy to keep people from previously colonized ethnicities on the margins of society.

The solution is to reject these Western white male "hetero-normative" tools of White Supremacy and use other traditional, emotional, non-rational methods of gaining knowledge. This is the kind of thinking behind the website A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction (endorsed by the Oregon Department of Education), which states that that “white supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms” when educators require students to show their work. I wish I'd known that when my high school algebra teacher insisted that I show my work. I could have confronted him about how unfair he was being.

What the Post Colonial Theorists seem to want to do is to jettison white male heterosexual educators who use the tools of White Supremacy like the scientific method and logic, and replace them with educators who are not white, male, or heterosexual, and who do not use White Supremacy tools like logic and reason.

This all seems to be based on a value judgment that white males of European descent are evil because of this history of imperialism. If that is true, then the vast majority of the people claimed to have been marginalized by white male Europeans are also evil. On every continent with the possible exceptions of Australia and Antarctica, ethnic groups have engaged in imperialism, conquering and subjugating people of other races, exploiting them, and remaking the conquered lands into their own image.

It began with Sargon of Akkad and continued through the Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Egyptians, Chinese, Mongols, Arabs, Turks, Zulus, and Maoris, to name a few nonwhite ethnicities who have embarked on a program of conquest and subjugation.

A GOLD MEDAL FOR "VARIATIONS ON THE THEME OF CHESS"

Last Saturday was the Florida Authors and Publishers Association awards banquet. Although I was registered for the banquet, I decided that the uncertainty surrounding the pathway of Hurricane Debby dictated that I not go. So I stayed home to batten down the hatches for Debby. As it turned out, I could have gone and gotten back before the hurricane hit, but I am satisfied that I did the right thing by staying home.

As it turned out, we got flooded. I feared that the water was going to come into the house, but it stopped at the western side of our house. It probably took out the air conditioner's air handler, but the inside of the house stayed dry. We were without power for about 15-20 hours, and our septic tank is still submerged, but with the help of our friends and our son, John, we got through it OK. 

I was naturally curious about how I did in the contest, but information on the web was scanty. Today, however, they sent me my Gold Medal. Being colorblind, I thought it was Bronze until I compared it to previous Bronze and Gold Medals. When I received notification that I was a winner, I predicted that I would get a Bronze, and I was just a little off.

Now, with that Gold Medal and a $10 bill, I can get a small cup of coffee at Starbucks. It ain't like a Gold Medal from Paris, but I take a good measure of pride in the accomplishment. When I submitted the book, I was sure I wasn't going to win anything.

If you are among that small minority of people who like Chess and Chess Variants, you'll like "Variations." I'm now working on a book that should have a somewhat broader appeal, but it will never make the New York Times best seller list. Advice for aspiring authors: Don't quit your day job.

After I finish my current project, I am planning on writing a popular account of the trial of Jesus. About ten years ago I did a heavily footnoted "scholarly" treatment of the trial, and my son John told me that the five people who would read the book would enjoy it. He was right. This next book, however, won't have any pretensions for being a scholarly work. Maybe more people will read it.

MIDDLE EASTERN CHESS PIECES

 

RAMBO versus DUMBO

Our president is senile, weak, and ineffectual. His opponent is profane, pugnacious, and a habitual liar. The president seeks to retain power as best he can, and his opponent seeks to grasp that power by any means, fair or foul, preferably foul.

I imagine our country as a toilet bowl recently flushed, with the water swirling round and round as it goes down the drain. It seems we are incapable of saving ourselves, and we're going to continue that downward swirl by electing either Dumbo or Rambo.

The question is not whether Dumbo or Rambo will be best for our country; it is which one will do the least amount of damage to our already tattered Republic. It appears to me that although either candidate will do damage to our country, we will be better able to recover from the damage done by Dumbo than by Rambo.

As I see things, Dumbo's heart is in the right place, but his head is in a dark, moist place. Rambo's heart is set on power and revenge, and nothing else seems to matter to him. Whatever he needs to say or do to obtain power, he will do. And whatever he needs to say or do to retain power, he will do. He's even talking about an unconstitutional third term. And this man of God's favorite Bible verse? "An eye for an eye." As a second-term president, he will give lip service to traditional American values while trampling them under his feet. He's like the protagonist in the Piet Hein poem: 

A fellow I know can get mountains to move and all opposition appeases:

He preaches what God cannot help but approve and does
what the Devil he pleases.

DONALD TRUMP AND JESUS

 I'm seeing memes which compare the conviction of Donald Trump to the conviction of Jesus. The argument goes like this: (1) Jesus was falsely convicted; (2) Donald Trump was falsely convicted; therefore (3) Donald Trump is a Jesus figure. The comparison is fallacious. Other than the fact that both convictions occurred as a result of a criminal prosecution, there are no parallels between the conviction of Jesus and the conviction of Trump.

First, Trump is not now, nor has he ever been, the Son of God.

Second, if Jesus had been a mere human being, instead of the Son of God, Jesus’ conviction would have been lawful. It was a violation of the lex iulia maiestas for a citizen or subject of the Roman Empire to go around claiming to be a king without the permission of the Emperor. Violation of the lex iulia maiestas was a capital offense. If a merely human Jesus had claimed to be a king, he would have been guilty of a capital crime. But Jesus wasn’t merely human; he was the Son of God. God’s jurisdiction is superior to the Emperor’s; therefore God’s Son can claim to be a king without violating a law which applies to mere humans.

Third, Trump loudly proclaiming that he was railroaded does not make it true. I prosecuted and convicted several thousand criminals, and most of them claimed to have been railroaded.

Fourth, Jesus was not allowed to appeal his conviction, but was immediately crucified. Donald Trump has the right to appeal his conviction to a higher court. In due course, an appellate court will determine whether Trump’s conviction was proper or improper.

So, how is Donald Trump like Jesus Christ? Not at all.

IS STORMY DANIELS A LIAR? WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

Stormy Daniels testified today in the Trump hush-money trial. She was attacked as a liar, and the attack is scheduled to continue tomorrow. Is she a liar? It doesn't make any difference. The material facts that she testified to--that she took money from Trump to keep silent about her allegations of having sex with him--is admitted by the defense. Whether she was telling the truth about sex with Trump or not, Trump paid her off to keep silent. That is not in dispute. The relevant question is: Did he pay her off to bolster his chances of winning the presidential election? You can set up the issue as a false dichotomy: Was he trying to rig an election, or was he the victim of extortion/blackmail? I say it is a false dichotomy because you don't have to choose between the alternatives: Both can be true at the same time.

FROTHING AT THE MOUTH

 It seems in this day and age that everybody is offended by everything. A starlet wears her skirt too short, and the Twitterverse explodes with angry tweets. And the angry tweets provoke other angry tweets condemning the tweeters as twits. Then she wears her skirt too long, and we get another Twitterwar. Someone makes a casual, thoughtless remark that they would never have made if their brains had been in gear, and loud calls are made to "cancel" that person. If someone thoughtlessly refers to a person as "he" when the preferred pronoun is "ze," this is a crime against humanity. 

Fortunes are lost and careers are ended at the slip of a tongue, and almost nobody is immune to censure for the slightest offense. It's somewhat like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer.  

In the land of the First Amendment, you risk ruin every time you open your mouth. The PC police have a fundamentalist view of all transgressions against Wokeness. The least insensitive comment engenders cries for the harshest punishment. 

Many people with a strong survival instinct act as though their every word and action are being recorded on an enemy's cellphone video. Aesop is supposed to have said: "Wise men say nothing in dangerous times", and that quote has seldom been truer than it is today. Of course, the original version of Aesop's quote had been cancelled due to the man's obvious misogyny and has been gender-neutralized as "Wise people say nothing in dangerous times." Is there a statue of Aesop anywhere that can be torn down?

Anyone born prior to 1950 who has ever transgressed the least prohibition of the 21st century's version of morality is to be cancelled, written out of the history books as a hero and made a villain, and any statues of them must be torn down. 

That bigoted racist, Winston Churchill, who was largely responsible for saving Europe during World War II, is supposed to have said that a people who are at war with their past have no future. I agree.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S TEETH versus DONALD TRUMP'S TONGUE

 

At a recent campaign stop in Iowa, Donald Trump made some interesting comments:

 

“The Civil War was so fascinating, so horrible,” Trump said. “So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died, so many people died. You know, that was the disaster.”

 

Trump went on to describe the Civil War as “vicious” and suggested that “Abraham Lincoln, of course, if he negotiated it, you probably wouldn’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was.” Trump says Civil War ‘could have been negotiated.’ Historians disagree. - TheWashington Post

 

Ambrose Bierce, who served as an officer in the Union Army wrote that warfare “untied with the teeth a political knot which would not yield to the tongue.” Contrary to Trump's assertion, the political knot that led to the Civil War could not be untied with the tongue.

 

The question of whether to negotiate was settled in the election of 1864. George McClellan ran against Lincoln on a ticket which included negotiating an end to the war. Lincoln’s re-election, which was aided by Union soldiers returning home on furlough to vote, demonstrated that negotiating a compromise wasn’t favored by either side, regardless of what Lincoln did.

 

A negotiated settlement would have been near impossible for the following reasons:

 

The Southern leadership (aka the slave-owning planter class) had been losing influence in national politics for years. The population boom in the North was beginning to overpower the Southern leadership in the House of Representatives. The addition of states in areas incompatible with slavery threatened to erode the Southern leadership’s influence in the Senate.

 

The Southern leadership decided that if their economy was to survive, it had to expand its influence or withdraw from the Union. The Southern leadership saw the election of Abraham Lincoln as a sign that its national influence was going to continue to wane; therefore, they seceded.

 

At the outset of the war, Lincoln’s stated aim was to preserve the Union, not abolish slavery. His views changed over the course of the war. He came to the conclusion that the only way to preserve the Union was to abolish slavery. Shortly before the publication of his Emancipation Proclamation Horace Greeley, the publisher of The New York Tribune, complained that Lincoln had no real policy for the Civil War.

 

Lincoln replied with a letter to The New York Tribune in which he said: “I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was.’ If there were those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

 

After Lincoln’s death, Greeley wrote that he though Lincoln’s letter was intended to prepare the public for his revised war aim—to free the slaves. Lincoln had decided that he could not preserve the Union by compromising on the issue of slavery with the Southern leadership. Any compromise acceptable to the North would continue the erosion of the Southern leadership’s influence in national politics through population growth in the North and the addition of new Free States, and the Southern leadership saw such erosion as leading to the inevitable destruction of their economy and the ruin of the planter class.