chessnutz

(our weekly chess puzzle)
************************

Ludmilla Snurdface versus Mary Lou Bint

New York 1978.

***************************************

White has black's king neatly locked away in the corner. One last overwhelming all out strike will finish it. But Black found an interesting get out of jail free card. Can you spot it?

**************************************

Solution: Bint sneezed green phlegm all over the table. Snurdface, a notoriously picky player, refused to continue with her pieces covered in snot, thereby conceding the game.

considerations of claims of supernatural apparitions at medjugorje

From the Heelers emails...

To Professor Louis Belanger

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: James Healy
To: "louisbelanger.lb@gmail.com" <louisbelanger.lb@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, 8 February 2013, 18:14:30
Subject: re Your suggestions on the internet youtube site that the claimed visions at medjugorje have been faked.

Salut Louis.

I've been viewing some of your footage on Medjugorje via Mr Youtube's nifty little website.

Has your view on the claims regarding these apparitions remained constant since the 1980's?

Your most well known clip from the 1980's where a man's finger is stabbed towards Vicka's eye while she is supposedly having a vision, is very interesting to me.

I am highly intrigued by Vicka's recoil.

But does it show what you say it showed?

The motion of the finger is so fast that I am left asking myself, do you really intend to claim the Vicka herself saw it and reacted to it?
You have claimed that you were present at the recording of the supposed vision and that you did not see the finger being stabbed towards Vicka's eye.
You also insist that you did not arrange for the man to stab his finger at Vicka's eye.
In any case you say that the motion was too quick for you to see it.
And you also say you did not initially see Vicka recoil.
You state that you only saw the finger stabbing towards her eye, and a subsequent recoil on her part, when you reviewed your footage.

If the finger actually contacted the eye, we might expect the body to recoil anyway.
In such circumstances there would be no loss of credibility for the visionary.

Could the recoil be explained as a bodily motor response rather than a conscious response?
A bodily motor response arising because the finger came so close or because it actually contacted.

Is there any conceivable scenario which maintains the supernatural postulation as an explanation for the apparition in spite of the head recoil?
I mean any other possible explanation.
Say, if a guardian angel moved Vicka's head because the finger was going to impact the eye?
I mention guardian angels Louis, because on reviewing the footage repeatedly, I find it difficult to accept that Vicka saw that finger and recoiled from it consciously, when you yourself insist that while looking right at her you saw neither the finger being stabbed towards her eye, nor her recoil from it.
You say that the finger and the recoil only came to your attention on a frozen segment of film.

Your narrator on the youtube footage, Miss Carol Vorderman asserts that any recoil by a supposed visionary from a very real finger being jabbed into the supposed visionary's eye, indicates that the supposed visionary is not having a real vision.

I am interested to know whether you or Carol Vorderman claim that this standard for defining the genuineness or falsehood of a supposedly supernatural vision, is based on an established scientific rationale.

When I look closely at the footage I still can't honestly assert with certainty that the child is flinching.

There is an incredibly momentary movement of the head.

Again I ask, does that necessarily show what you say it shows?

I am also intrigued by the manner in which you obtained the footage.

Did you know in advance that the man was going to stab his finger at Visca's eye?

Did you deliberately leave your camera running when Vicka was afterwards asked about the flinch?
At what point did you become aware of the flinch and decide to question Vicka about it, since you say you weren't actually aware of it while you filmed it?
At what point did you forget to switch off your camera?
How long had the camera been running before you or your assistants alleged to the teenage Vicka that she had flinched and that people needed an explanation for her flinching during a vision?

You claimed not to have known of the planned finger stab nor to have deliberately left your camera on later in order to film Vicka responding to the suggestion that flinching from a finger being stabbed into her eye meant she was lying about having visions.

My journalistic instinct is that the man who stabbed his finger at Vicka's eye had planned this action with you which is why you were able to film it so perfectly. I would also suggest that the camera being left switched on later when you claim Vicka explained her flinching by saying the Blessed Virgin Mary had been about to drop the baby Jesus, was also a deliberate act on your part which would seem to be a form of entrapment.

Your own actions even if you had planned in advance to have an accomplice stab his finger into Vicka's eye, or sought to entrap Vicka afterwards, though questionable (and in my view wrong) need not necessarily invalidate the footage and evidentiary data which you have obtained.

But a commitment to absolute truth is essential in any investigator and or investigation.

J'espere votre reponse!
Amities.

James

king pilchard the snurd

(A newly discovered Shakespearian tragedy which scholars believe must have been written after the bard, aka the swan of Avon, aka Sir Francis Bacon, heard Christian commentator Mary Kenny assert that her friend Irish Presidential candidate Michael D Higgins, is deeply spiritual.)

Act 1.
Scene 1.
A pub.
Enter Saint James of Gout, stage left, carrying a taper.
He addresses the assembled burghers thusly.
Saint James:
"Friends, Morons, Irishmen,
Lend me your beers.
I come not to bury Michael D Higgins
But to praise him.
The evils that men do live after them.
The good is oft interred with the bones.
Let's do the exact opposite with Michael D Higgins.
When the poor hath cried
Higgins hath wept
Particularly when the poor were his immediate family, friends or political cronies.
In that case invariably he would lavish them with free money, patronage and positions from State coffers
But I digress
When the poor hath cried etc etc
And when the atheistic communists hath taken over Nicaragua and imposed a thug dictatorship on that beknighted country, imprisoning the opposition and shutting down all the newspapers
When that hath happened
Michael D Higgins hath cheered the commies to the echo
Just like he cheered them in China, Poland, Hungary, Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia and anywhere else they were enslaving populations and committing mass murder
Did this in Higgins seem spiritual
Yet Mary Kenny hath told you Michael D Higgins is spiritual
And sure Mary Kenny is an honorable man
As are they all, all honorable men
Mary Kenny, John Waters, David Quinn, Breda O'Brien, all
All
All the token Catholics hired by Europe's most bigoted atheistic anti Catholic media groups Independent Newspapers and the Irish Times to furnish those invidious media scoundrels with plausible deniability while they pursued their odious kulturkampf against the Christian faith in plain sight
Oh Michael D Higgins is a spiritual man alright
For when his friends in the Marxian Galway Irish language movement demanded a television station of their own, Michael D Higgins forced the citizens of Ireland to finance it through compulsory taxation
That took spirit
Well neck anyway
And when his atheistic drug taking Marxian friend Niall Stokes wanted public money to keep his readerless Hot Press magazine in canabinoids, Higgins hath given him more of our money than he knew what to do with
And when the clueless Niall Stokes wanted limitless sums of public money to set up a white elephant visitorless popular music museum, Higgins gave him from the State purse all the cash he could carry
And when his friend the invidious Niall Stokes wanted to have the power to stop Christians from setting up television or radio stations, Michael D Higgins appointed Niall Stokes as Chairman of the Independent Radio and Television Commission an organisation Michael D Higgins had set up to prevent Christian broadcasters emerging in this country and with Niall Stokes in charge it did just that
And all the while Michael D Higgins was contributing anti Catholic articles for Niall Stokes' readerless Hot Press, thirty years of sneering at the ancient and beautiful Catholic faith, on my dime, that's some corruption right there
But Mary Kenny hath told you Michael D Higgins is spiritual
And Mary Kenny is an honorable man
Didst not Michael D Higgins while in government pack the Arts Council with his friends
Deed bedad he didst.

And when an Irish Film Board was established by Ministerial writ, to pour exchequer funding into films made by Michael D Higgins' friends including the American exploitation movie director Roger Corman  who hadn't had a commercially viable film in three decades,, didst not Michael D Higgins make himself the Executive Producer on fifty loss making films made with public money and remunerate himself copiously for the privilege

Of course he didst

Who wouldnst
And when the muse of poetry struck Michael D Higgins didst he not use the same Arts Council to publish his maudlin maunderings financing his woeful attempts at versification as usual with public money
You bet your bippy
Hoo baby
And didst he not fail to address allegations that he had committed crimes of sexual molestation against unspecified victims
Like just last week.
He sure didst just as the Irish police sure didst initially refuse to even listen to the allegations and then sure didst go through the motions of investigating them and finally and inevitably sure didst dismiss the allegations as something they called "third hand" without ever informing the general public what the hell was being investigated or where the hell the allegations had come from.
Didst he not spend forty years sneering at America, Israel, the Free World, Mrs Thatcher and Pope John Paul the Great
Didst he not mendaciously and arrogantly champion the Soviet Union as a model of freedom to little boys and girls unfortunate enough to be attending his college lectures
Didst he not shamelessly and shamefully spend fifty years propagandising children against the Catholic faith in the guise of delivering sociology lectures
Didst he not guilefully seduce those children from the faith of our fathers by giving them higher marks in their exams the more they were willing to betray the truth that sets us free
Didst he not
He sure didst
And were these not the very children who had most need of the Catholic Church
Weren't these the generation of children being rendered sexually incontinent before our very eyes by the cult of pornography sweeping through western society
Wasn't the Catholic Church the only thing that might have given these children the merest vocabulary to know what was being done to them
Wasn't the Catholic Church the only thing that might have saved the lost generation from porno culture, drugs culture, condom culture, atheism culture, communist culture, divorce culture, suicide culture, Michael D Higgins culture, and all the other snares of satan
All those vapid idolotries so championed in his classroom by Michael D Higgins
All those venal nothingnesses sung from the roof tops by Michael D Higgins and his friends Mary Kenny, John Waters, et al (Particularly Al. I hate him.)
Truly they destroyed much and created nothing.
And yet Mary Kenny hath told you Michael D Higgins is spiritual
And Mary Kenny is an honorable man
And I'm the Archbishop of  f---ing Canterbury
Judgement thou hast fled to brutish beasts
I die
I die pronouncing it
This Ireland that was never really bothered conquering anyone else
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself
Oh my poor country
This land of ours
This dear dear land
This emerald glistening in a mystic ocean
This womb of faith
This dwelling fit for a consecrated tribe of the Hebrew God
This Cathedral of mountains, rivers, forests, fields and stars
This idyll of rills watered by cataracts of grace
This glory writ in joyfulness
This Celtic onyx polished nay cherished by Yahweh's kingly sun and holy moon
This vault of poets, minstrels, prophets and of love
This anointed temple of the one true God
This people gentle as a kiss, noble as truth, strong as prayer
This sainted race who brought light to other nations and welcomed all men as their brothers
This land of women more beautiful than your dreams
Women more holy, more powerful, more royal, more rejoicing than their men
This dear dear land
I die pronouncing it
This gift
This wonder
This magnificence
This prism of light
This holy of holies
This earth
This heaven
This realm
This spirit
This... Ireland


(The Burghers are hushed. The French fries remain restless. James switches off the tape recorder.)

***
(First published April 2012)