The Blog of Jonas Martinsson

The sign-up period for the inaugural Online Chess Match Championships is now over. The list of registered players for the two divisions are: Open Division Player Rating ZwaartePaard 1942 Valiantangel 1866 leomalagar 1864 Acho 1861 tseltzer 1850 jonasil 1840 Tensaigg 1759 castleden 1745 SklavinLydia (tentative) 1737 surGeonGG 1660 TonyPrice - jumong (tentative) - Under 1600 Division Player Rating offtherook 1595 ranban    1576 farbror    1561 jerichob    1530 ...

What if humanity were extinguished right now? Have you ever considered that scenario? No one can provide an accurate probability of such an event happening, but the fact that it could happen is indisputable. While personal survival is a major force for the individual, humankind's survival is the ultimate goal for us as a species. Individuals do almost anything in their power to prevent their own destruction, but what are we doing as a species to ensure our own survival? I would argue that we're spending more effort protecting specific zoological and botanical species than ourselves. Although humanity is not an extinguished species, there are several kinds of events which could wipe us all out in a matter of hours. We cannot continue to neglect the importance of protecting the survival of humankind. Threats are manifold and I plan to discuss these in future posts as I digest the book Global Catastrophic Risks , which deals with these important issues. Chapters I have r...

How mundane it is to blog. I've put this blog on the back burner for many months now, as I've lacked inspiration for posting. Lately, I have been blogging exclusively about chess, which most likely doesn’t interest most of you. While it is a passion and I intend to keep posting occasionally on the subject, I don't want this blog (nor more life, for that matter) to focus on a board game. It is good to see that the small number of subscribers hasn't dwindled despite the chess focus of late, though. Why blog? In the end, I want to use this space to improve my writing and also to serve as a two-way communication platform with anyone else out there in the depths of cyberspace. Since I enjoy the creative process of writing, I will try to produce more stuff here, and perhaps from a more personal angle. I can't guarantee that it will work. But one thing's for sure: I will not promise to write more here; those are classical final words of the last post on dead blogs!...

The Online Chess Match Championships is scheduled to take off on June 1. It is your chance to play in a chess tournament cycle similar to the official World Championships. The main reason that I organize this tournament is to make the excitement of chess matches available to everyone on the Internet. The games will be played on the free FICS chess server. You can sign up right away!