Hello, I am a chess robot

This image is taken from the 1989 book "Hello, I am a robot", published in the Soviet Union. I discovered it here. I think in the 1980s we all used to imagine the future as somehow more mechanical instead of cybernetic as it ended up being.

Quino's chessboxing

I think this drawing by the Argentinian Quino - Mafalda's father - was fun just because at the time of its publication nobody would have believed that chessboxing will become a real sport.

Distovagal

Today I had the chance to browse through one of my old books, "Ajedrez brillante" (Brilliant chess) by Máximo Borrell, which I bought for a few cents more than twenty years ago. I found this ad in page 93. It is about some kind of medicine. Distovagal: estabilizador del equilibrio emocional. (Distovagal: stabilizer of emotional balance).

European economy

I will not comment much on this one, as if we could evade the crisis by ignoring it. The idea under the hats is that there are more liabilities than assets, more debt than money.... and again we come across with an example in which the dark square is on the wrong right corner.

Vertical chess

My friend Jordi emailed me some pictures taken in a rural holiday home somewhere in Catalonia. There was this nice wall chess. Not very practical for playing but enjoyable as a piece of art.

Borges

In their solemn corner, the players move
The slow pieces. The board detains them
Until the dawn in its severe world
In which two colors hate each other.
Within the forms irradiates magic
Strictness: Homeric rook, swift
Knight, armed queen, crucial king,
Oblique bishop and aggressive pawns.
Once the players have finally left,
Once time has devoured them,
Surely the ritual will not have ended.
In the orient like this very war flared up
Whose amphitheater today is the earth entire.
Like the other, the game is infinite.

Obama chess arbiter between Israel and Palestine

A nice one by Shlomo Cohen