Is chess useful for anything else than chess?

I think Einstein is quoted saying something like "chess is complete waste of time". I would have to both agree and disagree with this idea. The discipline and path of learning, in and of itself, could be nothing but good and useful. But sometimes if I play too much I feel like I am 'wasting time'. But can time even be 'wasted'?

I like the comment that Russians once used the game symbolically to battle capitalism, interesting.

Rael wrote:

Mr. DelaCruz

Sheesh.

a) it was a Star Wars reference. I was talking to Luke_Skywalker.
b) what're you offended by out of curiosity... the word "faith"?
c) I'm not sure if I should say "Welcome to the internet" here, and ask you how it's been working out for you to go around asking people to politely refrain from offending you, or to say Welcome to the planet Earth.

If the sentence "I find your lack of faith disturbing" really offends you, please do not leave your house. Ever. There's a real danger that you might see and/or hear things slightly worse, and requesting that these offenses politely refrain from offending you will not be 100% effective in all instances.

Here is an article written by a doctor in Darfur about a time the Janjaweed Arab militia raped school girls in a village in Sudan I read this morning, so you actually have something real to be offended about:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article4362968.ece

p.s. I find your mental fragility disturbing

 Thank you for the article Rael.

I have a friend working in Darfur who told me this story and more but what is happening there never fails to lose its impact.  Puts our comfortable easy lives in perspective.  Sadly, it won't stop people complaining about trivial matters.

I work at a juvenile detention center and we have a pretty serious gang problem.  Our day is divided into various forms of time (rec time, free time, constructive time).  I pushed to get chess added as a "constructive time" activity.  It was already a free time activity.  I then instituted the crudest ranking system you've ever seen based on the only free thing I could find on-line to keep track - a crappy Excel spreadsheet that's more work than it's worth.

That was about three months ago.

Today I have 18th Street, MS-13, Bloods and Crips sitting across the table from each other.  They talk about the game.  They congratulate each other on good moves.  They've gone from trying to sharpen toothbrushes to stab each other to sharpening their openings to show the other guy up.  In the last three months, I haven't had to restrain a single juvenile on my unit.  That's well below the other units' average.

I'd say chess definitely has a purpose other than a simple past-time.

Wow, neospooky, that is really commendable. I just found out about MS-13 this week due to that incident with the AK-47 in California.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/ROAD_RAGE_KILLING?SITE=AP

Did you hear about this?

other than meeting people, having fun, and giving your brain a workout,  no... it most deffinently is not...

Rael wrote:

Mr. DelaCruz

Sheesh.

a) it was a Star Wars reference. I was talking to Luke_Skywalker.
b) what're you offended by out of curiosity... the word "faith"?
c) I'm not sure if I should say "Welcome to the internet" here, and ask you how it's been working out for you to go around asking people to politely refrain from offending you, or to say Welcome to the planet Earth.

 For the record, my name is seperated at the middle. About your points b and c:

b) No, it was your implication that people lacking "faith" are in some way pathetic or "disturbing".

c) Your insulting attitude is unnecessary. All I did was ask for you to refrain from posting offensive comments, just as I'd expect yo uto say the same to me if I wrote "I find your faith disturbing". Apparently, instead of responding politely you decided to lash out with venom which hasn't been seen since the days of the Old Testament god. 

"If the sentence "I find your lack of faith disturbing" really offends you, please do not leave your house. Ever. There's a real danger that you might see and/or hear things slightly worse, and requesting that these offenses politely refrain from offending you will not be 100% effective in all instances."

So if, for example, you are offended by somebody saying "I find your faith disturbing"; you should "never leave your house"? Quite frankly, your double-standard ridden, condescending, hypocritical attitude is what I've come to expect from "Christians" like you. I suppose you are right, it was too much of me to ask that you refrain from posting abusive comments.

No, if you wrote "I find your faith disturbing" I wouldn't care. It's a sentence. Yikes.

"...lash out with venom which hasn't been seen since the days of the Old Testament god"

That's a touch over the top wouldn't you say? Gosh you're sensitive.

"posting abusive comments."

Report Abuse

Here's the link to report abusive comments. Go ahead, maybe erik is bored and needs a chuckle.

No, if you wrote "I find your faith disturbing" I wouldn't care. It's a sentence.

Riiight. Because we all know that if something is "just a sentence" it can't possibly be offensive...

That's a touch over the top wouldn't you say? Gosh you're sensitive.

Over the top? What do you mean? It's just a sentence. Anyway, I find it to be perfectly on par with your arrogant response.

Here's the link to report abusive comments. Go ahead, make erik is bored and needs a chuckle.

Whether Erik finds your comment to be offensive or not is irrelevant to whether it actually was. Besides, I'm not in the habit of "reporting" on people.

eternal21 wrote:

BirdBrain wrote:

Luke, if I say you don't exist, you do after all.  Hard to lie about the truth.  If you don't want to believe, fine, you can deny the truth.  But telling others God doesn't exist won't change the truth. 

Don't confuse "truth" with "belief", and "knowledge" with "faith".  Just because you say something exists, doesn't make it so.  You need to prove it first.

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

 You can't teach truth to people who adamantly refuse to believe in it.  Anything beyond this would require personal conversation outside of the forum, which I am all for, and I will write you personally and discuss this (hopefully in a more friendly manner than Luke, who did nothing more than send cheap shots at me when I tried to talk to him outside of this forum). 

You know, I enjoy the occasional internet fight. But really, guy, this is the most ridiculous "argument" I've ever had with someone.

I made a comment about "Oh God, I've wasted my life", to which Luke_Skywalker said "There is no God".

I wasn't offended. The sentence came to my mind because Vader says it.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could be offended by this:

"I find your lack of faith disturbing".

I honestly can't believe it.

But hey - le'ts not ruin this thread and space on the recent topics post with our private, petty, "argument" over nothing, alright?

Rael, that is why I took my discussion outside of this forum.  It is in fact an invitation if anyone wants to discuss outside of the forum.  They can discuss personally - but please keep it clean.  I saw eternal's response and decided to talk to him personally. 

In one regards, we can see that our love of chess has brought us together, and has sparked conversation.  We can light upon other aspects of life outside of chess as well.  And this brings light to this very forum that we have decided to "waste our time on" lol.  Chess inspires inquisitive minds to come together, minds that enjoy good nature, logic, etc.  and can speak about things outside of 64 squares and 32 pieces.

 And, as you can see, I put my discussion to a dead-end here, both times.  I think that is definetely fair.  Shouldn't put any damper upon this forum post. 

Rael, sorry - I saw that your comment referred to Benjamin, not to me.  Apologies to you kind sir!

Oh yeah, for sure BirdBrain.

You know I wish someone had told me as I was getting out of bed this morning:

"Rael, I must warn you. Today you will greatly offend someone.

By quoting Star Wars. On the internet."

Rael wrote:

Oh yeah, for sure BirdBrain.

You know I wish someone had told me as I was getting out of bed this morning:

"Rael, I must warn you. Today you will greatly offend someone.

By quoting Star Wars. On the internet."

 What a riot! :-)  By the way, that was offensive.... MUWAHAHAHAHA! :-)

I have to say that this has developed into perhaps the funniest thread I've read this year.

Thanks, guys.

Rael wrote:
c) I'm not sure if I should say "Welcome to the internet" here, and ask you how it's been working out for you to go around asking people to politely refrain from offending you, or to say Welcome to the planet Earth.

 LMAO

Edit:  Sorry Ben, but you really need to learn to pick your fights better;)

This is all very funny, I hope not to get too serious by returning to the mainline of the post.

    I believe everything in our body works the way muscles do. Train them and they'll get stronger. I'm not sure it works for the pipi-machine, but it most certainly does for the brain. I'm sure chess contributes a lot to exercise our minds and keep it sharp and healthy for a lot longer. Of course you'll find guys who get completely nuts over chess and eventually go mad... but people go mad on prety much anything else so it's not something to worry abooouuttt  iuHU HU HU!! BLAH BLAHHH LALAL ALAH H hh  where was I? right.. Chess is a healthy way to spend our time, but probably not very different from those crazy dudes who actually enjoy solving complex math problems and the like.

Omicron wrote:

I'm not sure it works for the pipi-machine, but it most certainly does for the brain.

What's a pipi-machine ?

Rael wrote:

You know I wish someone had told me as I was getting out of bed this morning:

"Rael, I must warn you. Today you will greatly offend someone.

By quoting Star Wars. On the internet."

It goes beyond that. After my comment, you could have easily clarified and we could have moved on. Instead, you chose to spit out caustic remarks and take an incredibly arrogant, haughty stance of somebody who has *gasp* a knowledge of Star Wars quotes.

Really, mocking me because I didn't pick up on your cultural reference is ridiculously idiotic. But I suppose it would be just silly of me to expect anything different from you.

Finally, your:

"I'm not sure if I should say "Welcome to the internet" here, and ask you how it's been working out for you to go around asking people to politely refrain from offending you, or to say Welcome to the planet Earth.

If the sentence "I find your lack of faith disturbing" really offends you, please do not leave your house. Ever. There's a real danger that you might see and/or hear things slightly worse, and requesting that these offenses politely refrain from offending you will not be 100% effective in all instances."

...Was completely unnecessary and illustrative of your inherently pompous and offensive attitude. Although your original comment may not have been offensive, given it's origin, those remarks certainly were.

By the way, you shouldn't recommend we discontinue our argument, only to pick it back up and continue refrencing it later.

EDIT: Sorry phishcakes, but I couldn't care less about how you think I should pick my fights.

Dear God, it's me, Rael. I'm praying to you today for forgiveness. You see, it turns out I wrote a sentence on the internet that really stressed some poor soul out. But that's not all, Lord, no, in fact, when this poor soul expressed the degree of his upsetness by indicating that he'd been offended, well, Lord, I couldn't stop myself from pointing out his fail at teh internets. I'm sorry Lord, you know me, I can't help it... it's my inherently pompous and offensive attitude, Lord. I even made a little picture for him in paint, Lord, would you like to see it?

I'm trying to restrain myself, Lord, but you see, this poor soul is just so easily irritated, he's just so determined to drag out a pointless fight with me, that well, I almost feel bad not giving him the attention he so sorely craves.

So, please forgive me Lord. I hope you find this as lulzy as I do.