Interview with the Eagles

[Jonathan Rogers]

Interesting article about the Eagle sisters (the chess world gets a mention as being their introduction to the fact that we don't live in a fair, genderless world)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011 ... s-fly-high

[PeterTurland]

Interesting article about the Eagle sisters (the chess world gets a mention as being their introduction to the fact that we don't live in a fair, genderless world)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011 ... s-fly-high

That is fascinating Jonathan, the mother who could not continue at Grammar school, because her family could not afford the uniform, ending up with her making her daughters work hard to get an education, events sometimes conspire.

Both of them said to be good at chess, which could mean anything, I've tried to find if they had a grade, to no avail.

The difference in sexuality, one interesting case I read about from the US, of male identical twins where one was gay and the other wasn't. All this is helping people understand the relatively new science of epigentics, that being, what happens to the fertilised egg after meiosis, for instance the mothers diet being a causal factor. Current thinking has it that, a difference in testosterone levels, in the growing foetuses causing a difference in sexuality.

[Ian Thompson]

Both of them said to be good at chess, which could mean anything, I've tried to find if they had a grade, to no avail.

Good means amongst the best for their age as female juniors. One of them won the British Girls U18 championship and at least one of them played for the England junior girls team.

[PeterTurland]

Both of them said to be good at chess, which could mean anything, I've tried to find if they had a grade, to no avail.

Good means amongst the best for their age as female juniors. One of them won the British Girls U18 championship and at least one of them played for the England junior girls team.

Thanks for that, I don't always trust the press!

I remember more than a few years ago, chatting to people at the bar in my local and after we had got the weather and football out of the way, invariably I would ask them if they played chess, when they used to say yeah I played years ago and could beat my brother or their mates at school, inferring that they were good at it, so I used to ask them would they like a game, after a while I realised, people at the bar who suggest they are good at chess are nearly always rubbish at it.

If someone asked me at the bar, if I played chess, I'd say yes but I'm crap at it.

I've got wise to it, now if I ask someone can they play chess, if they say yes, I then follow up with "do they know any openings"? When I get a blank look, I drop the subject!

[Roger de Coverly]

Good means amongst the best for their age as female juniors. One of them won the British Girls U18 championship and at least one of them played for the England junior girls team.

One of them was in the Oxford University team as well. I don't recall them getting much beyond the 150 level, which is much lower than many of their male contemporaries. I would have thought they had just as much access as the boys to the playing and training opportunities of the late 70s and early 80s - weekend tournaments, Barden arranged simuls etc.

[PeterTurland]

Interesting article about the Eagle sisters (the chess world gets a mention as being their introduction to the fact that we don't live in a fair, genderless world)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011 ... s-fly-high

What baffles me is, why people think a genderless world would be fairer.

Evolution is a deep and wide subject, the interesting thing is the different stages of complexity that evolution seemed to go through.

If what I am going to be - going on about, is in error, please relieve me of my ignorance.

Around 600 mya, life changed from from unicellular to multicellular, this might have happened because groups of cells started to collaborate and some forms of evolution in terms of gender was born.

The metaphor I always insert here is :-

Please imagine a boat with five hundred people on it and it hits some rocks, so it starts to sink, then it becomes, sink or swim, 99 women and one fertile man make it ashore.

Revisit the lovely verdant tropical island colony in 100 years.

How vibrant is this colony?

Now reverse the experiment, shipwreck 99 males and one fertile female.

Go back and visit a century later, please compare the first case, with the second case.

[Jonathan Rogers]

and now, for amusement, there is this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 75427.html