A game of chess?

 

A game of chess?

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Is politics a game of chess, or it is a guessing game? It shouldn’t be a game at all, of course, but it provides material for discussion.

There was a clever cartoon by Ella Baron in The Times this morning, so clever that I had to read the comments to understand it! Nothing unusual there.

I have not reproduced it here, as I don’t want to infringe copyright.

It was a satirical comment on the latest unsuccessful talks between the US and Iran, and showed J.D. Vance and his team facing Iranian negotiators across a table. Vance is holding a handful of playing cards, interestingly all showing Kings, and declaring, ‘We have all the cards.’ Their opponents have a chess board in front of them, so the two sides are not even playing the same game, which is a telling point. The Iranian spokesman is saying, ‘Checkmate,’ even though the chess position is not showing that.

‘Checkmate’ is a corruption of the Persian phrase. ‘Shah Mat,’ meaning ‘The King is dead.’

Radiation alert!

In the wake of announcements that body scanners are to be used routinely in airports a television journalist today reported that there was concern over the risk of radiation. If passengers are really worried about radiation they would be well advised not to fly at all since flying increases exposure to cosmic radiation which can harm DNA and cause cancers. As one travels further from the surface of the earth the atmosphere becomes thinner and the magnetic field weaker and exposure to cosmic radiation increases. It is one of the major problems of space travel.
Thus, passengers flying at 30,000 feet in an aircraft confront a greater risk of harmful radiation than from an airport body scanner. The amount of radiation emitted by a scanner used for security purposes is negligible.
Perhaps people who have concerns should avoid areas of high natural radiation – Cornwall in the UK for example, or Yangjiang in China, Kerala in India, Guarapari in Brazil, or the area with the highest level of background radiation, Ramsar in Iran.
Doubtless the worries over body scanners will persist for as long as ill-informed reporters continue to make alarmist remarks.