onoway

Sounds a bit as though someone should have told Cameron not to ask the question unless he would be content with whatever the answer was. Apparently he also didn't think it would happen. It's going to be an interesting time in Europe and in the British Isles for the next while. Good luck to you all.

I don't know specifically about Swiss but usually that happens in a small UNclocked tourney, the faster pairs move and there aren't enough pairs once they split so people end up playing each other twice or more. Basically you end with two tourneys inside a tourney. It's a major reason to use the clocked option in small tourneys. Of course, then people get upset about having to wait for the others to finish before changing, everyone is in a hurry these days or else trying to prove they're not.

Actually that might be a useful tool to put on profiles, a system of symbols. If someone was found to be cheating to have a symbol attached to the profile.. or if someone consistently abandoned a tourney/team match if they weren't doing well...

I believe it denotes that they've represented their country and won in international competition...perhaps it would be more meaningful if the star was in a different colour, such as black..or red... :ph34r:

I have to wonder about one thing. Over and over it becomes pretty clear that however the system is set up, in reality Angela Merkel has been the decisive figure in most of the most dramatic issues that have faced the EU. So.. what happens when she retires? Who has the strength of will and commitment ( right or wrong) that she has, and what would be the result of someone getting in there like a more socially sophisticated Farage? How many people in history who have had access to such power, haven't sooner or later, grown to abuse it? Oh, and as an example of constraints imposed by the EU, what farmers can grow is now limited, so that ( as an example) a British firm specializing in restoration of historic properties had to break the law and run the risk of fines or possibly more, to grow a variety of rye that used to be grown traditionally for thatching. It is no longer permitted to buy sell trade or even give away that variety of cereal crop, although it seems if you already have it you are allowed to grow it, you just can't use any of it except on your own property. This only makes sense if you are trying to force people into buying the newer varieties, good for seed companies, not so good for diversity and resilience ( since many new varieties are derived from very similar genetics) and certainly not indicative of enhanced freedom but rather the opposite. Just sayin' .

Some time ago, I posted a link to a study done regarding rats developing major tumors when fed GMO corn. One or two people had some questions about the protocol which I couldn't answer. It turns out that the courts DID get the answers when the scientist in question took Monsanto to court for defamation. The link is obviously to an obviously biased article, but what is stated as fact is indeed so. http://www.realfarmacy.com/seralini-defamation-lawsuit/

That shocks me more than I can say, that's unbelievable, I thought the Danish government (and by extension people who would want to be in it) was well past such sociopathic tendencies. How terribly sad and distressing.

right, so someone who emphatically screams that he's proud of being a sexist bigot, a racist who promotes violence, a fraud and a liar who swindles people out of their money somehow deserves more credit/trust than someone who at least appears to understand that some behaviours are not acceptable. I'd hate to live in your world.

Perhaps also the idea that so many politicians are desperate to distance themselves from Trump that it would be easier to keep some sort of control over him, make him a sort of lame duck president, than it will be if Hillary gets a huge mandate. She most certainly has big business interests at heart and that seems to be one of the major things that people that people most resent and (accurately or otherwise) don't see Trump as having.

I wonder if there is any chance of people who really don't want to see Hillary become President voting for Trump thinking he has no chance, a protest vote as it were. That might make for some very scary consequences although from here not sure that either one isn't going to lead to scary ( but different) consequences.

Anything I can do just let me know, happy to help in any way I can

What is the advantage of demanding a 2/1 response be a 5 card suit if a major? If p opens a & responder has 13 hcp and ♥KQJx in a 3433 hand what is the advantage of bidding a minor instead of the ♥ suit? I don't have the hand that generated this discussion ( a general point that came up in a kib box) but as a rule I thought the idea was to show your partner your hand as clearly as possible. So why waste a bid ( or so it seems to me) on a 3 card minor when you already know you aren't going to be playing in it and it is far from being your best suit?

If I had a vote, which I don't, I'd be voting to leave as the bigger the government, the less accountable it is.Governments already are becoming a sort of expensive game where politicians - with a very few exceptions- pretend they give a rats' ass about anything that their constituents want, until they're elected. At that point they settle in to make themselves as comfortable as possible by cooperating with lobbyists who have access to the politicians that ordinary citizens can only fantasize about. The only government which has a sniff at being accountable is a small government and that's the least likely to be found anywhere anymore. Just what is it that can be done as a member of the EU that can't be done otherwise? There've been trade deals since time immemorial, people didn't need to be in the same group to trade.If they do belong to the same group, then of necessity there will be rules about who can do what , where, and this is beginning to sound more and more like an ant colony rather than a diverse, vibrant, innovative and exciting collection of human " tribes". People who study such things as human history tell us that's what humans gravitate towards, and that those tribes are limited in size. It is interesting that it seems the idea of cooperation is unthinkable unless it is codified and legalized and that won't stand up over time, it never has before so no reason to think it will now. People have broken signed agreements before, and they undoubtedly will again, so what exactly is all this serving except to try to concentrate power in an ever smaller, ever less approachable and ever less accountable group of people?

messaged you. I ran another one today, this one a 12 board tourney and heard nothing about this happening this time. I do have a question though. Is it still possible to set up a swiss team match? I see the settings for it on the web version but have been told I am not allowed to set such an event, as either onoway or as BBO_IAC so was curious. I'm not truly sure I want to, I think setting individual team matches might be less problematic even if hands do have to be loaded into each match instead of in one go for all of them, but someone is trying to set up multiple team matches as a basis for a teaching session and thought that might be an option.

For a while I've noticed a "clumping" of people into groups to play and most people rarely seem to stray far out of their friend's group to play bridge, which seems a change from how BBO was a few years back, for whatever reason. Tonight I noticed that out of 900 odd tables said to be playing throughout BBO nearly 300 of them were people playing with 3 GIBS. That was in Main alone, and doesn't include tables randomly sprinkled about elsewhere, nor tables where a pair was playing with GIBS. That's nearly 1 in 3 not playing with even one human. This may be good for business atm but is it good for bridge in the long run?

It was a trial 6 board tourney on BBO, swiss, imps, changing tables after 3 boards. Other than that stuff that doesn't affect the way the thing runs.. kibs silent, barometer on.. It's a mystery

I think that making Trump look silly by using his own public behaviour and speech is likely the most effective approach. People don't mind being associated with a gangster type or some such, it makes them feel tough and someone to be reckoned with by association. But make someone look silly - that's much less appealing to be linked to. It should be done without stridency though, a bewildered " umm how's that again?" juxtaposition sort of approach might be quite effective. People don't like to think they are being manipulated about what to think, so if there is room for them to change their minds- they just might. Put their backs up and most won't even listen, much less pay any attention except to defend their position.

Yesterday I ran a very small swiss pairs tourney and set the tables to change after 3 hands.. it seemed to go fine but after the tourney an expert (real one) player I believe to be totally reliable told me that he and his partner were scored in the second set of hand (i.e. hands 4-6) on contracts that they didn't play. The first set of hands was fine, but after they moved, somehow the contracts they played went to someone else and they got awarded the results of contracts they didn't play. How on earth can that happen? I've no way to tell, but I trust this person's word when he tells me for e.g.they set the opps on a 5!d contract but were given a score of 3!C making for that hand. Did I do something wrong when I set the tables to change after 3 boards? Should I have set it so tables didn't move at all? Or ? I've never heard of this happening before so trying to avoid it happening again.

People who have a strong desire to live have seldom found arbitrary & artificial national boundaries to be very compelling if that's what's seen as what's preventing them from finding safety. This may only be the first wave of changes that climate change and old habits of interfering with other countries are going to generate, and is unlikely to change much whether Britain stays in the EU or not. Most people generally prefer to stay in their own countries IF they can see any future in it. Visiting is one thing, moving quite another. I've seldom met anyone who just loves moving at all, but especially to a place they don't speak the language well ( or at all), don't understand the food, music or customs and are often treated in ways they don't understand, sometimes with malice but often not. Such little things.. On a back road in Mexico I once said beeped "shave and a haircut" rhythm on the car horn to say thank you to a truck driver who had pulled over to the side of the road to let me pass. Two Mexican passengers both instantly went into hysterical laughter, telling me that I'd better not stop for at least another 20 miles for any reason whatsoever. Apparently a cheerful thanks! in Canada is accusing someone of doing unspeakable things with his mother in parts of Mexico.

I REALLY hope that Clinton refrains from doing anything of the sort, there are millions of people who wouldn't realize that she was being sarcastic. There are already far too many men who secretly believe that "a woman's place is in the stove", as Lenny Bruce (I think) used to say, who would grab onto any hint of playing dumb as a sign of actually BEING dumb and probably most of them are voters. Just watched a video which purported to explain some of Trump's success resting on one word in his slogan. "again" That holds a whole lot of implications..that America was once great, that it isn't now and that it can be "again". On some unconscious level that may resonate with a lot of people who then don't go on to the further step of asking if Trump is the one who is going to make it so. They may have a sort of instinctual reaction that he is acknowledging that what has been going down for a while isn't working very well for a whole lot of people, he hasn't been part of it, so he must be on their side in terms of intending to fix things. A truly heroic leap of faith but people react out of emotion, not logic. Perhaps unfortunately for her, Clinton is seen as very much a part of the establishment so that is going to be a difficult thing for her overcome if she allows Trump to determine the discussion. Probably Sander's strongest pull is his willingness to act on what the voters want when what they want is opposed by big business, something that is highly unlikely to get anywhere near crossing Trump's mind and is certainly up for question with Clinton. So if it ends up being Clinton and Trump it will be a fine example of how Clinton copes with difficult people..it's already pretty clear how Trump does, although how that would translate into presidential action is ...scary to contemplate.

It's difficult to know much about it from outside the country but the Guardian keeps running stories about the growing number of homeless in the UK and how subsidized housing is being sold and either torn down or renovated for high end flats or houses, and the former tenants are left to fend for themselves. Indeed someone who used to play a lot on BBO told me he and his son were being evicted for that very reason. He had looked for months for something that they could manage to afford that was still anywhere within range of where they both worked, totally without success, and was expecting to be thrown onto the street in January. Indeed I have not seen or heard from him since December. He and his son both had some issues..he suffered from ptsd and his son had some physical issues; both were working but at low paying jobs, probably more typically than most of the people in this forum or their colleagues. What he experienced seems to agree with the articles in the Guardian. In the meantime, where are all the immigrants to find jobs and affordable housing if it isn't there for the people already there, who already, for example, speak english and know how to get around in the culture? Is it really true that there are that many jobs that British won't do, that they'd rather be on the street? This is not to promote an anti-immigration theme...where I live if it wasn't for the immigrants the place would grind to a halt because people DON"T want to work at any but the highest paying jobs, but the bottom line is that they are in no danger of being tossed into the street because of it. It is an honestly bewildered question. To be fair,and this is undoubtedly true in Britain as well as the US and Canada, the lowest paying jobs hardly pay the rent, much less rent plus food, heat, clothes, transportation etc. so perhaps they have a point. As long as someone will work at the fast food, gas service station, Walmart, Amazon etc. jobs for less than it costs to live, nothing will change. Thus you get the stories of 20 immigrants living in a 2 bedroom apartment, they do fine, other than that, because if they are all working, they can afford to live if they live together. That isn't likely to be something that people from perhaps a more reserved society, raised in a culture that trains them to believe they ought to be able to live comfortably in a one family house, is willing or perhaps even capable of choosing to do. When people talk about racism in Britain, it makes me sad, as if you read about WW2, many of the soldiers sent from the US to Britain were astonished at the LACK of racism, and the Brit's refusal to accept the racist structure that went with the U.S. troops. Not a change for the better. Add to the mix that many of the multinational companies are transitioning their low paying jobs to no jobs at all through mechanization. Several fast food chains are experimenting with changing over to robots, grocery stores are increasingly using mechanized checkouts, Amazon is also said to be experimenting with deliveries made by drones as well as robots in their warehouses, so even those low level jobs will soon disappear. Seems to me that this is all going to lead to a hopelessness, anger and despair, and that is often at the real base of racism. If people are afraid that what they have is going to be taken from them they are obviously going to be angry and look for a target; immigrants are an easy one. In the meantime, Apple, Starbucks and others are reported to be paying no taxes whatever so that seems fairly business friendly to me. I really think that the focus on catering to big business has to change in favor of little businesses or we are all - not just in Britain - going to be in a whole world of hurt fairly soon. The results of the increasing concentration of money and power in a few hands is not working out well at all. It's very very difficult to see this happening with the EU set up as it is apparently working now, certainly it appears generally to be mightilly accommodating to big business. Whether Britain would be better off in or out possibly depends somewhat on whether their government continues the present path or starts looking after its people, and whether that's even a choice if they stay in the EU. Isis may only be the beginning...

Hi we run IAC team match series and in an effort to simplify and speed things up we have always had the captain of the home team set up the match with bbo_iac as co-director so it's possible to find subs, and generally be available to help if a problem. That seems to be no longer a possibility as none of the captains was able to find any way to do that now. Is this the case so now I will have to set up all the matches myself? Or is there something they are all missing?

The insistence that people be "supportive" even when it isn't deserved, such as passing kids in school when they have handed in no assignments and attended few if any classes. I just dropped out of a group where someone posted an survey ( apparently on grant money, yet! ) which was supposedly designed to learn what prairie farmers and gardeners grew. When I looked at it, the survey included all the Canadian Provinces AND Territories EXCEPT Saskatchewan which is decidedly a prairie province, whereas Nova Scotia and the Yukon e.g. are decidedly not. I took exception to this and learned that it wasn't even the prairie provinces she was supposedly interested in, but only B.C.! which is also decidedly not a prairie province. This really really annoyed me especially because lately I have been listening to interviews with people who supposedly know such things talking about fake, sloppy or nonexistent research being used to determine laws and policies, especially in the Pharma world. What they are saying rings true when you think that according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, on average two-hundred and ninety people in the United States are killed by prescription drugs every day .(Starfield, B. (2000). The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4. Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health). Successful lawsuits adding up to billions of dollars awarded against at least three big pharma companies, Merck, Baxter and Pfizer, certainly suggest that the research leading to drug approval is not exactly top quality to say the least. When I took the " research" design to task, (not the author but her "work") there was a sarcastic response from the author of the study, and several people told me I should have messaged her privately, gently pointed out her mistakes, tentatively suggested maybe she should correct things. Nobody at all suggested that she should take any responsibility whatever for her sloppiness. I roared at them all privately and quit the group. Obviously a teacher or mentor would do that for a child in elementary school but it should hardly be required for such basic errors for a grant supported or indeed any university research study. I'm getting cranky, it seems :)

I am in Canada but my friend is an American. None of us thought of the CNIB or it's equivalent, and unfortunately she doesn't have an Apple as far as I know. I'll check out Dragon Dictation and see what it says, and also contact the CNIB for suggestions. Thank you both

The Dark Act was defeated by a slim margin, and now a bunch of companies ( many of whom had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars or more fighting labeling) have decided to cut their losses and start labelling if there is GMO content in their products. If the cost of the food goes up, it isn't the labelling that did it, they could have changed over for far less than they spent on supporting anti labelling campaigns.