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Learning to play backgammon

Lesson one

Learning about the bits and the board.

Take the bits out of the box You will find you have fifteen white bits and fifteen black bits. Or chequers as they are called.

Look at the board. Notice it before you put any pieces, aka as chequers, on it. It looks complicated, but it isn’t once you see its basic pattern. Lay it open. It’s actually two boards separated by a gap like a main motorway running down the middle, like a motorway, Its main use is for chequers taken off the board during a game.

I’m going to explain where the starting places of the pieces are.  By the way, they all move identically so it’s not like in chess.

First though, the purpose of the game is to move your pieces from where they started right around the board. White pieces move counter clockwise (right to left).  Black pieces more clockwise, left to right. 

Now, the starting positions of the pieces. Easier to copy a diagram. There’s one in most instruction booklets, maybe in your Backgammon set.  If you can’t find a set of instructions you’ll have to put up  with what I’m about to say.

The pieces are placed in different parts of the board. Those long triangles are their parking lots. Each parking lot can take a maximum of five pieces. At the start, the fifteen pieces have special parking slots. For each player, there are two parking triangles with full up with five pieces left and two other triangles one with three pieces and one with two.  That’s the fifteen pieces at the start of the game.

To position the pieces put your first five white pieces on the top half of the board , to the right of that centre line, and five black pieces pieces opposite them,

I’m going to explain  later where the other pieces start.  First though you should know that the white pieces as I mentioned will move around right to left, and the black pieces from left to right. The numbers of places moves will depend on the dice you throw, and on other pieces on the triangles we described as parking lots.

With only five pieces on the board, you can see how the game continues. 

Each player in turn throws the two dice, and can move pieces forward, one piece for the number on each of the two dice. 

You can see the general principle if you play first white then black in turn moving the pieces, white ones in one direction, black one in the other.. For the moment it’s simple but there’s more complications when you start with all the pieces in their triangular starting places.

But that’s the subject for Lesson 2.

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In a recent article in the CNN newsletter,  Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hi and Shelby Rose provide excellent insights into effective political processes.  President Biden and Speaker McCathy seem to have avoided what was becoming a crisis which would have plunged the greatest economy in the world into fiscal melt-down.

Experienced commentators have noted this as the latest of regular periodic outburst of what looks like brinksmanship as the power battle between Democrats and Republicans breaks out.
The issue is of course the lack of cohesion inside the parties, with leaders having to play out the fiction of party unity. 

The are parallels with the political battles taking place in the United Kingdom presently. 

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Wednesday 31 May 2023
 
The headlines today.

The Daily Mail
 ‘A.I. ‘Could wipe out humanity’. Threat as bad as nuclear war’ MUST be tackled, say tech bosses.

The Independent
AI creators fear the extinction of humanity.

The Times
AI pioneers fear extinction

The source of these headlines is a newly formed pressure group, The Centre for AI Safety, whose authority is underwritten by the so-called godfathers of the current innovation. 

The BBC morning chat show has the indefatigable Nicky Campbell leading a discussion on the existential threat, although his introductory remarks seem intended to reassure us.
His expert contributors point to the core idea that the systems become cleverer than humans and seek to destroy our infrastructure. The ‘becoming cleverer’ is a dodgy metaphor, and the malevolence a projection of our neuroses. 

The side panel of the show offers information about the perils of AI

Could be used to build nuclear weapons
To spread misinformation 
Possibly destroy civilisation 

We are doomed, we are doomed. Alarmism stalks the land ...

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Monday, 29 May

I can hardly behave what I have just heard. It is late morning of the fourth of our recent Great British Bank Holidays, part of a scheme by the Govt intended to distract the voters from unpopular economic news.

 I am approaching a little group of friends outside a local deli in Didsbury, across the road from the famous northern tennis club. Even from a distance, it is clear that something serious has happened. Instead of lively chatter, I could detect only a mood of agitation as I approached.

What’s up, I asked cheerfully. They looked around, as if fearful they might be overheard. I pulled up a chair beside them. No one could look me in the eyes. Eventually, it was Rahul who broke the silence.

‘ There’s been a complaint', he said.
'Against whom? I ask.
His answer stunned me. 
‘Against us.’
‘What? How? Why?’
‘Complaints have been made about our behaviour to the Deli’ 
Judie broke in, ‘It seems there has been an objection about the way we dominate the seating arrangements here, staying for two hours preventing anyone else getting a place'.
‘You mean the way English people complain about German tourists hogging the seats by the pool with their hotel towels?’
‘Something like that, But worse’ Rahul added. ‘It’s about what we talk about.
‘We talk about all sorts of things, I protest.  ‘What’s on the news, football, what we have been doing since we last met’ I paused. ‘And politics. Was it something about politics?’
Rahul nodded. ‘The complaint specifically mentioned Brexit’.

I groaned. The word that dare not speak its name. This is serious. I remember seeing an email to my friend Keven sent from a newsletter coming from a pressure group called Make Brexit Great Again. It read ‘Members are reminded never to use the word Brexit in public as it may draw attention to you and your political preferences’

Our innocent group is under attack from malevolent forces. It all begins to make sense ...

Listen on for what happened next

TR

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The writer Martin Amis, (1949-2023), died this week after a life in the literary spotlight. 
His appointment as a professor at Manchester University, in the late 2000s resulted in a storm in a literary tea-cup. The academic spat was stirred up with some help from the Guardian. However, in that paper’s obituary this week, it is glossed over, within a brief comment about ‘his stints as a creative writing professor at Manchester University’.

My recollection of the time is of the arrival of a celebrity within the circle of brilliant new writers intent on rescuing English literature from its necrotic state. Already installed with a stellar reputation as a literary critic and culture theorist was Professor Terry Eagleton. 
They could have been ideal protagonists in a campus novel by Amis, or by his equally famous father Sir Kingsley Amis whose early success was through one such novel Lucky Jim. 
Eagleton was a leading Marxist scholar from nearby Salford educated in a catholic college, and then Cambridge. 
Their very different world views erupted in a battle of high intensity waged in the literary pages.
The dispute seems to been triggered by a much quoted interview by Amis at the time of the two towers terrorist attack in NY in which he said

 "There's a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say, The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan."

Regardless of ironic intent, the quote prompted the start of the feud between the two which seems to have eventually subsided to a weary truce. Amis relocated in Brooklyn, NY. Eagleton moved the shorter distance up the M6 to the University of Lancaster ...

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In the memorial event in his honour at the Edward de Bono Institute of the University of Malta, in May 2023, I offer a personal perspective, reflecting on creativity drawing on my own work, and Edward’s direct and indirect impact on it.

First, everyday creativity. My work on Everyday Creativity was influenced by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, and later by the  american educationalist Ruth Richards, who coined the term everyday creativity.

For me, it offers new ways of understanding how anyone might try to be more creative in everyday life. 

Professor Richards (no relation I’m sad to say) writes in The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity 
Everyday creativity, as a construct, is not, as some think, confined to the trivia of life. This is an important misunderstanding. It concerns almost anything to which one brings originality, any time creation occurs in an everyday context, including major projects. Nor are eminent and exceptional creators excluded. Everyday creativity can be seen as the ground from which (a later and) more publicly celebrated accomplishment can grow.  In fact, many an important invention, equation, or painting that has changed culture started with a fleeting image or wild idea on an everyday walk or hike

Bergson’s ideas are of an earlier vintage. He had become one of the first celebrity philosophers of the nineteenth century, modern times.  It was the book Creative Evolution (CE) which brought Bergsen international fame. It reached numerous editions in the decade after its publication in 1907. Following the appearance of this book, Bergson's popularity increased enormously, not only in academic circles but among the general reading public. In New York it was reported that people flocking to one of his appearances caused one of the first traffic jams along fifth avenue.

Turning to another influence in my work I pleased to be able to honour Edward de Bono. 

Edward de Bono, is perhaps the most influential communicator on the nature of creative thinking in recent times. His fame came early through his book Lateral Thinking, first published in 1970. It was to accompany him through his long and distinguished life,  perhaps eventually defining him through its impact around the world. 

It was some years later before I met Edward for the first time. In 1970, I had begun to develop interest in his ideas while working as a scientist inside a research laboratory in what was known as the New Products and Development Group. 

A few years later I joined another R&D group at Manchester Business School to take forward understanding about ways of stimulating creativity. I took with me with my copy of Lateral Thinking.
At the Manchester Business School, interest in stimulating creativity was fostered through our electives within the MBA programme. Research was supported by graduate and doctoral students some whom went on to distinguished careers in academic and industry. For the purposes of this presentation, I’ll focus on the incorporation of techniques including lateral thinking into our work.
With my colleague and partner Susan Moger, we became part of a graduate programme, particularly through the journal we founded,  Creativity and Innovation Network.

Only in preparing for this presentation I rediscovered the shared origins from our leadership invitations such as  ‘wouldn’t it be wonderful if’ to think the impossible.

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A selection of my favourite tweets posted in late May 2023.
As ever, political and ironic comments dominate ...  

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How to tell a mother that her son is about to be decapitated? 

Is this a blurb for a gory thriller? No. It’s about real-life situation involving a severed head witnessed by an unsuspecting mother. 

Let me explain. I’m afraid this involves a spoiler alert if you want at sometime in the  future  to watch a performance of Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline. 

My story involves the production currently reaching the end of its acclaimed run by the Royal Shakespeare Company, at Stratford on Avon. It marked the 50th production by their Artistic Director Gregory Doran.

The actor who has been decapitated during every performance is Conor Glean, playing Cloten, the monstrous step-son to King Cymbeline. He is also son of the evil Queen, only referred to as Queen in the cast list. Queen has succession plans for Cloten which really fall beyond his general qualifications.. 

I will avoid further reveals beyond the wry comment from a Shakespearean scholar that ‘it’s as if in Cymbeline the characters are reprising roles and themes in earlier plays. 
Betrayals (sexual and political), rape, decapitations (of course), mistaken identities through cross dressing'. 

Oh, and if this makes it  difficult to characterise, the play is described in the definitive First Folio, published shortly after Shakespeare’s death as a comedy. This has prompted many a learned article ever since. As well, of course, the even more Byzantine arguments about who wrote it.

Members of Conor’s family, including his mother Roisin, and myself, an equally doting Uncle, had arrived for the final weekend performance. 

For the record, Conor, I mean Cloten, had already been decapitated once earlier in the day in the matinee show.
As we were reaching our seats, it became clear to me that Roisin had not learned the gory fate that was about to meet the character portrayed by her first-born.

To tell or not to tell … that is the question ...

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Book marketing remains a dark art. Particularly for debut authors. There is no simple formula, and I won’t be supplying one here. What I want to share is the cover blurb for the book, ‘I Will Find You’ by best-selling author Harlen Coben, and discuss some of ways it has been crafted to achieve maximum impact. 

I came across the book as I browsed the new thrillers section of my local bookshop. It competed with others all of the same genre. Maybe the author’s name was an additional attention-grabbing device. But that would not have been enough to complete the sale. The cover, likewise, was competing with a dozen in similar glossy excellence and design.

I turned to the fly- cover information. I became hooked. It is in my view one of the most powerful examples of how such a blurb might be constructed. 

Here in full is the blurb ...

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By popular demand, I have selected a collection of my favourite tweets from the first weeks of May 2023.
Hope you enjoy them

TR

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