onoway

It's looking more and more like a no win situation but there is some question about what happens next if someone doesn't do anything. If a government has no compunction about using chemical weapons on its own people then they surely will have even less compunction about using them outside the borders of its country. If they have dreams of glory which reach to extending boundaries for religious or any other reasons, then doesn't this sound just a tad like Hitler with a religious twist rather than the ethnic bias (though that's there too, no doubt), which could be a focal point for fanatics? Of which there appear to be many, unfortunately. It is different from Hitler in that with today's weapons, nations don't need a whole lot of soldiers to "scorch" (to take a term from science fiction) countries many many miles away. It's this scenario which seems to be developing as various nations are governed by psychotic individuals who obviously have no care or concern for their own citizens, much less anyone else. It's unfortunate that the US has interfered so long and so actively in nations around the world because now that's coming home to roost. Even if the US does back off now, (which would give HUGE impetus to Assad and to fundamentalist fanatics) they are unlikely to be given any credit for it. How many Americans gave any kudos to Khrushchev for backing off over the Cuban missile confrontation?

And then it's back to not having a clue which version..if any..p is playing. The problem comes down to not always playing with a regular partner so it's difficult to get into conventions which come in too many flavours. Ken has a very good point. Unless playing with a reg partner it's probably better to stick with the vanilla approach. Even then, possibly; I've met a few people who have a trillion conventions listed that they play but they don't consistently end up with better scores at the end of it all than some who play only a few basic ones. The thing is sometimes wading through the lot to find out just what the vanilla approach is.

This is one of the reasons that BBO is so much less attractive now than it used to be. So many people have abused it that lots of people are retreating into this tactic, I suspect especially the better players. It really limits the options of new players to connect up with anyone other than the jokers who bounce out of seats, are unfriendly, are likely somewhat feeble players or others who are also new to BBO. Just how do new players meet friends that they want to play with regularly unless they play with random BBOers? Especially if the new players are beyond the beginner/intermediate stage? Tourneys are an option but again people tend to screen who they will play with.

that's why I got someone to speak to him who speaks his language. Apparently that didn't help. It's also difficult to explain anything when someone refuses to speak to you and even leaves the site so you can't know what they have understood and what they haven't.

not only that but some people play reverse Bergen...I would assume it was off with a partner I hadn't discussed it with. Someone asked me to play as off only over a suit bid and it's come in handy a few times so I've sort of adopted it as a choice, if there is one. It absolutely isn't what Bergen says, but it's surprising how many people play it like that anyway. OTOH Bergen plays a much higher class of player than I normally do :)

no she didn't have a shark cage but she had people with her who had "shark zappers". Can you imagine tasering a shark?? The swim has apparently been done before with a shark cage, but that affects the amount of effort it takes or something...sort of like drafting behind a big truck on the highway maybe.

or had to deal with sharks, which I was curious about...were the people with her going to shoot any that showed up, or what? Wouldn't that just bring more? Whatever, it is an amazing achievement and she richly deserves to be honored for it.

XX is another bid I have troubles with as some people I have run into at the tables play that it shows both fit and values (the way I was taught actually) and others, like most people here apparently, play that it doesn't. So what do you bid if you have a fit and values,just jump to game? I hate that sort of leaping about as it doesn't allow p to show an unbalanced hand which actually might make slam even if opps have points. Also, people often X on trash so getting derailed by a X doesn't sit well, though I take the point about punishing opps who do that. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of the suit at 2 level, not a jump, being weak, as that simply never crossed my mind. I don't understand the logic as p could well have in MY suit what I have in hers so it seems to me that nt is a much more accurate bid in that case. But then I was also taught that bidding nt (at less than 3 level) over a p's suit was generally asking for p's second suit, which is not exactly standard either it seems. The hand is also way too strong for 1nt and 2nt is unclear to say the least..and can be passed. P suggested I should just have jumped to 3nt but where are the ♣?What if p has a single suited hand and I can't get to it (which turned out to be close to the case, had only one logical entry) Thanks for the replies. I will try to update my bidding, in spite of my discomfort with this auction meaning what apparently it does mean to most people. ggwhiz..posts crossed..how do you get back into a game force with this hand after a XX? I cannot bid the opp's suit, whatever it might be even if p has shown 6 when I have only the singleton, even if it is an honor, as I think that promises somewhat more? What's forcing and what's not is a minefield, and obviously changes according to context, so how do you get there after a XX?

Is this a 2/1 auction? We play that Bergen bids are on over a X, also transfers. [hv=pc=n&[hv=pc=n&s=skhkj98daj854cj42&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1sd2d2h2sp2nppp]133|200[/hv] If it isn't then why isn't it? People keep saying that it's not because the X shows a hand with opening values but that doesn't mean that partner can't also have opening values and who should you trust anyway, an opp or your partner? Also, if the consensus is that it isn't a GF auction then what should the bidding be? 2♥over the X and then 3♦from south over p's 2♠? Would that force to game?

It astonishes me that apparently at least the US army now has the capacity to spy on people with cameras and tapes that are housed in something the size of a house fly and they can supposedly hit a man sized or smaller target from who knows how many hundred miles away but they can't seem to come up with an effective way to help the rebels do what the western governments at least have publicly and frequently agreed needs to be done. It would be sort of the equivalent of turning a known pedophile into the general hard core prison population but when the powers that be want a (likely) result but don't want to be held responsible it's an optional and often effective technique. Only thing is, here nobody seems to be able to do anything without getting the credit (or blame) for it. No doubt the rebels would be delighted to claim credit for taking out the regime in whatever manner they can, even if it's just pushing a button when told. They could likely even be convinced it was 98% their own doing. Even if it was a thin lie it would likely be more or less happilly accepted by the rest of the world; I doubt that Russia is any more eager - or financially able- than the US or any other country to engage in a major confrontation now. Giving everyone a way to say that it was the rebels that did it with a "lucky strike" or whatever takes all of them off the hook of having to do more than bluster to save face. If the US had kept out of it entirely from the beginning then that would be one thing. This half hearted involvement in something else again. It would seem to be in an impossible situation now..if they back off then they've look like they've been chased off by a vicious bully who called their bluff and if they don't they're in a possibly much worse scenario. It's time someone thought a bit creatively, beyond the direct nose to nose sort of thing they seem to be considering. In the meantime apparently nothing much beyond promises is being done for the refugees either.

For sure it is a very difficult situation. However, there's certainly no question at all that the regime in Syria has been directly responsible for the brutal assassination of citizens, including children, on an ongoing basis.It looks to me as though all the dithering has just made things worse, actually. It's like a parent saying don't do that...no I mean don't DO that.... I am warning you, don't do that again... If you do that again I am going to have to do something you will regret...why do you keep doing that, do you want me to have to punish you? ... oh please don't do that...etc I don't know how you get out of that without causing feelings of shock and betrayal because you stopped dithering and actually followed through. Not the sort of parenting which is recommended. Not that I think the US should be a "parent" to the world, but since that's the role it has chosen to adopt for decades now, what can you expect? Aside from that, governments (including ours) which value human life and suffering well below that of business concerns when it comes to intervening in situations elsewhere should not be expected to change those values when dealing with their own citizens. just sayin'

Agree in principle but now if only we could all agree on what those changes should be. It was a lot simpler when it was possible to know what challenges you were likely to have to face. We've changed the world so much we don't even know what we need to know. We don't really have water that's truly fit to drink anymore, the air in many cities is unfit to breathe, and governments approve of a degree of known poisons to be embedded in our food. Perhaps we could start there....

->lycier: tomorrow I have a Chinese player playing for IAC ...:) not with a regular partner though lycier (Lobby): I don't know lycier (Lobby): you mean we don't hold match for today? ->lycier: yes we do today and in 12 hours both are scheduled ->lycier: I have players scheduled for both times lycier (Lobby): ÎʺòÓ lycier (Lobby): why? lycier (Lobby): I'm sorry that you violated our engagement and commitment ->lycier: what are you talking about?? lycier (Lobby): match twice a week is our engagement and commitment,nothing with chinese players -> (name removed) : I need you to translate for me please, lycier is soooo confused. please tell him I have players arranged for tonight and tomorrow . lycier (Lobby): I must Protest ->lycier: if a player in the club is chinese and wishes to play for IAC I am not going to tell him or her no ->(name removed): I told him if a player in the club is chinese and wishes to play for IAC I am not going to tell him or her no (Name removed) : is he on now? ->(name removed): I would ask ni hao if he was here but he isn't :( yes he is on now and I really do appreciate your help lycier (Lobby): This is a joke,it is league activities between IAC and CBC ->lycier: do you have your team members here? Mine are all here lycier (Lobby): You have no good faith, I will be terminated with your activities.very very saddness (name removed) : ok. I told him .......................................................... I had - and have- no idea at all why you would think I was cancelling the matches when I was asking you for your player's names so I could set the match. I would not have continued on about this but calling me a liar is absolutely unacceptable. You had a chance to clarify things with someone who spoke both chinese and english and chose instead to go off in a tantrum. To then try to say it was just a misunderstanding is not sufficient.

Lycier; the facts are: We had teams ready to play and as soon as you heard one of our players was Chinese, you first got angry and said among other things that I had betrayed our agreement and so it was over and then you declined to even talk to me much less give me the names of the players for China. I got another member of IAC who speaks Chinese to explain to you in case there was a misunderstanding but that didn't appear to get through either. I even asked one of the players who had played regularly for China if he knew who was supposed to play the match and all he could say was that you were the leader of the China club. We waited until 20 minutes past the start time and you actually had logged out, then I called for subs to replace the China team players and we had an IAC team match. So that left no choice but to accept that you had withdrawn the China club from the competition. This was Saturday night. However, just in case, my team and I were ready at the agreed time on Sunday morning, the China club team - including you - was nowhere to be found, so again I got an team of IAC subs to make up a match so that the players who had come to IAC to play the China club had not got up at some ungodly hour to come play and then not get a game. How you can try to make this into ME quitting the match is incomprehensible. The facts are, when you heard that a Chinese player was playing for IAC, you threw a tantrum and withdrew. A further fact is, if a member of IAC wishes to play for the club, there is absolutely no way I am going to say he or she can't because of their nationality. That is not only absurd but probably illegal where I live. If you don't remember it going down like this, I log all my chat and can refresh your memory. lycier (Lobby): You have no good faith, I will be terminated with your activities.very very saddness .... >lycier: do you have your players here or not? ->dvd: do you have players here? Lycier is being weird because I told him that tomorrow a player for IAC happens to be chinese thornbury (Lobby): are we starting soon? ->dvd: so now he isn't talking to me ->thornbury: trying to find out what is going on with the chinese team ->dvd: if the chinese team wishes to play then I need to have names now, my players are all waiting and ready .. dvd (Lobby): oh£¬lycier is my club leader£¬you can ask him£¬ I have know nothing about that¡£ sorr And then you logged out.

Perhaps this all relates to what education is expected to do. For all too long, it's mostly been a matter of students eating and then regurgitating "facts" rather than learning to think, research, evaluate, come to conclusions. Some suggest anything else is requiring people to reinvent the wheel but imo that's not so. Once kids have the basics - having some understanding of words and numbers - the rest of it is all there for the plucking. However, if they don't know how to think and evaluate then they have no idea how to tell if that delicious looking fruit is nutritious or poisonous. By and large, teachers/schools do not encourage critical thinking. Kenberg seems to me to have hit on exactly the sort of approach which is desperately needed. Teachers need (imo) to start regarding themselves as mentors whose responsibility it is to help the students learn how to sift through data and arrive at gold, rather than simply giving them a map and telling them to memorize it, then testing them to see how well they did. This applies for some students to a greater degree than others, obviously, but should apply within the limits of the students rather than within the limits of the teacher to cope with a degree of somewhat controlled chaos. Found this some time ago but this is pertinent and I found it fascinating.

To follow this a bit further, I think perhaps it's because there is an "s" on the end which in English generally implies some sort of multiple. So the "the" indicates meaning inclusion of whatever or whoever makes up the lands which together are called the Netherlands. A lot of people posted while I was typing so sorry if this is redundant

Thanks Ben I was using Firefox but when I switched to IE then it came up properly. It never occurred to me to switch browsers as it's usually IE which gives me grief if any. It's a bit late now though to contact people so am thinking we will have to sit this one out and hope there is another I guess.

well....thanks Rain, but when I click on the registered teams tab it comes up blank page and when I click on pairs looking for teammates or whatever that tab is it takes me to the IAC's google email address. Guess we may have to wait until the next one, maybe. Or maybe all this only works on the web version.

Hi Any idea how many teams there are? I am running into problems because a whole lot of people can't commit to Friday (work and all that).

I am very sorry to see the China - IAC team matches come to an end. I cannot tell a member of good standing in IAC that he or she cannot play for the club in any event because of their nationality. Since this is not acceptable to the administrator of the China Club who pulled his team out of the matches in protest, the matches are unfortunately discontinued. Thank you to the people who played, the matches were enjoyed.

Mike, I was basing the comment about cocktail waitresses on what someone I knew ( a neighbor) told me. She was working as a cocktail waitress in Dawson Creek and quitting after 8 years when she was told that she had to start cutting people off because otherwise she was liable to be held responsible if they got into an accident. She was told by her boss that someone in BC had crashed and the waitress had been held liable for serving him when he was already past the ability to drive safely. This was something like maybe 15 years or so ago. She quit because she felt pressured from both sides, the drunk customers and the fear of the law if she didn't and they got into trouble and it rebounded on her.So yes, it is hearsay but she had no reason to quit..She was well liked by her boss and co-workers, she liked the job and made very good money, didn't have another job to go to, no reason to make such a thing up and no history of lying about other things so I believed her. It's an odd thing to be an urban myth. Also, I said absolutely nothing whatsoever about tranquilizer darts except in reference to gorillas, and even then it was in the context of how people managed to capture and control them BEFORE the use of tranquilizer darts. Clearly darts aren't a sensible option with the drugs we now have, although the police are able to use tazers and that equally clearly sometimes messes people up physically rather dramatically far beyond what's normal or expected. ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Just for interest's sake I googled a bit just now and almost immediately found this http://www.go2hr.ca/training/serving-it-right/responsible-beverage-service/hotel-held-liable-drunk-driving-accident <snip> An important consideration is that "duty of care" also extends off-premises. Pub employees must not permit patrons to leave their establishment in a manner that is likely to result in foreseeable injury to themselves or others; namely, while intoxicated. In other words, commercial providers of alcohol have a duty of care to see that intoxicated patrons get home safely. <snip> This is MUCH more recent than I expected, as I said, the conversation with my neighbor was years ago. Maybe it took that long to get through to the Supreme Court?

Sorry Dwar It was Fluffy who was using the "I play a lot of airsoft" reference and I should have checked down further to make sure I had the right author. My apologies. I was interested to read the comment "bolas are not easy to use." offered presumably as a reason why they (or other such non lethal techniques,I assume) should not be considered. If that's the criteria for what the police do, i.e. something that's easy (which I don't believe btw, at least most of the time) then why not just "shoot them all and let God sort it out?" That would be the easiest, surely, and no risk at all to the police. According to the story, the police were sent out in response to a call "that a man was suicidal." Nothing at all about a man threatening anyone other than himself, which I think it is fair to assume would have been given higher priority as the reason police were being called if that had been the case. Even reporters would give that priority over a story about a suicidal 70 year old. When the police DO do something right in difficult circumstances people are more than willing to give them credit, such as arresting the Boston Marathon bomber. When they do something wrong they should be held accountable. Though it seems sometimes as though nobody much is held accountable any more, it's always someone else's fault. Drunk drivers successfully blame the waitress who served them. Politicians who "didn't understand " the rules about expense accounts and residence requirements for subsidies because they weren't written clearly enough. Maybe it's too much to ask.

It's informative that you see war as the best analogy for the job a policeman does. I suppose that it isn't possible to consider other options aside from meeting force with force or running away? Use of such things as a bola to trip him up so he can't run may land him on his nose but it doesn't involve danger to the police or running away and is just one example of how things might be done. If these people are not behaving like rational people, and I can quite believe they aren't, then perhaps other techniques which have been used with some dangerous creatures as gorillas and other wild animals should be considered. The collectors of such creatures for zoos were decidedly not wanting to be hurt either and you cannot reason with a cornered wild animal. It's the concept that force must be met with force that gets things escalating out of control. If someone has a gun, then all bets are off, but otherwise unless the person appears to be about to throw a knife then I don't see the use of guns as being valid. And the defense that the police THOUGHT that the person had a gun is unfortunately used too often as an excuse, as evidenced by the immediate comments of the police in Vancouver. It's too easy an excuse, they need to be able to provide a really good reason WHY they thought the guy had a gun. I believe a few years ago (was it in Calgary?) a policeman shot a kid who was waving a toy gun around. I have no problem with that, the toy looked just like the real thing and the policeman was certainly justified in thinking he needed to protect himself. That was a terrible thing for the policeman to have to live with and I'm not at all sure the parents shouldn't have had to pay for some sort of counselling for him as a sort of fine for their being asinine and irresponsible parents. Again, IF the police were held accountable then ok but all too often they aren't and that's what leads to mistrust. Agree they have a tough job but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be expected to live up to it. If they need more or different training they should get it. >Dwar : I find it really quite appalling that you should suggest a video game as a template for how people should behave in reality. In real life, getting shot in the torso will indeed hurt the victim quite considerably, and if in the right area of the torso will kill just as surely as a bullet to the head. Hunters do not always get a head shot but they most certainly bring down game anyway. It's interesting that video aficionados maintain vociferously that video games have no effect on attitudes about violence. I think you just proved them wrong.

the term "fair" never came into it. It isn't a boxing ring with Queensbury (sp?) rules. There is a whole lot of distance, tho, between a fair fight and shooting someone. People managed to capture gorillas without harming them even before tranquilizer darts.They might not have knives but they are extremely dangerous if they feel threatened. We have fit trained police who can't manage to do the same with a suicidal 70 year old? In that case, we need to get better trained police or possibly better techniques or maybe even both.

Good points. I read this right after two other stories on the news today. One about a police officer who was one of four who tazered an unarmed man to death in Vancouver airport but seems to be being in danger of being held accountable pretty much only for perjury, and the other of the shooting in Toronto. I didn't see the video of that but I heard it on the radio and it sounded as though they shot the guy about a dozen times or more. Distrust of police is fed by this sort of thing. If the police who did overreact were held as accountable as an ordinary citizen would be then there wouldn't be a problem, but all too often that isn't the case. They are SUPPOSED to be trained sufficiently in ways to deal with situations that they are not hostage to their emotions. I would also guess that people who are suicidal and of pensionable age, are not often those who are healthy and active. There are few 70 plus people I've ever met who would be able to give a fit, trained man 20 or more years younger than themselves much of a battle, and those few are not the depressed and potentially suicidal ones.