INSPIRATIONAL: Bodhana Sivanandan, 10, secured a win over world champion Mariya Muzychuk

Thursday, October 30, 2025

https://www.aol.com/articles/10-old-girl-wonder-chess-042728885.html?guccounter=1

10-Year-Old ‘Girl Wonder’ Chess Prodigy Plays ‘Near Perfect Game’ to Defeat Former Grandmaster
People
Madison E. Goldberg
Wed, October 22, 2025 at 12:27 AM EDT

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NEED TO KNOW

  • “Girl wonder” chess prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan, 10, secured a win over world champion Mariya Muzychuk on Oct. 19
  • Sivanandan started playing chess during the COVID-19 pandemic
  • She is on track to potentially become the youngest grandmaster, the highest title possible in professional chess

A 10-year-old British chess prodigy defeated world champion Mariya Muzychuk — putting her one step closer to becoming the youngest grandmaster.

Bodhana Sivanandan has been described as a “girl wonder,” according to British news outlet The Times. Sivanandan, who is from Harrow in northwest London, defeated Muzychuk in what experts called a “near perfect game.”

Sivanandan secured her victory on Oct. 19 at the European Chess Club Cup hosted in Rhodes, Greece, per the outlet. After taking up chess during the COVID-19 when a family member gifted her an old chess board, she became the youngest female player in history to beat a grandmaster — and she did it while sitting on a booster sit to reach the board, according to The Times.

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I used to play a lot of chess in my much younger days.  Until I found that playing bridge was much more “lucrative”. Laugh! 

Ran into a few great players in Greenwich Village.  Never really cared about rankings.  I realized that it would take a lot of time and study to become really good enough to break into the elite ranks.For the most part, I specialized in “Queen’s Gambit Declined” because most of the players I ran into never played against it and it was often described as a “stifling crowded” opening that frustrated player used to “action”.  It had several “traps” in its opening sequence that the unfamiliar player would blunder into and be easily defeated.  In all my time playing black, no one ever opened with it against me.  Perhaps they knew better. 

Anyway, this young lady’s accomplishments have me in awe of her talent.

I also loved the Netflix trial “Queen’s Gambit” — the role of the fictional “Beth Harmon” was played by a stunning Anya Taylor-Joy — which had nothing to do with the opening and did not accurately report the exploits of Nona Gaprindashvili, who had played competitive chess with men.  

If you haven’t seen it, then you are missing a real winner.

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JOBSEARCH: Your intellectual capital walks out the door every night!

Thursday, August 30, 2012

http://nicholasnigro.blogspot.com/2012/08/anatomy-of-boss.html

Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Anatomy of a Boss…

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It was, nonetheless, an era when men were evidently men. Recently, I watched an episode where a haplessly green eighteen-year-old joined Mr. Favor’s outfit. Ordered to rein in some misbehaving cattle, the youngster was no match for the bovine ensemble’s frenzied antics. Rowdy desperately wanted to intervene on the boy’s behalf, but Mr. Favor, who had assigned him another vital task, refused to allow it. When the poor kid was trampled to death, Rowdy was disgusted with his remarkably callous boss, who had told him point-blank that “men are replaceable; cattle aren’t.” By the end of the episode, though, Rowdy somehow understood where Mr. Favor was coming from in their cow-eat-cow world.

Favor’s cool hard line, which was probably closer to the reality of the times and job, wouldn’t wash today on the small screen. He was, after all, the show’s leading man, authority figure, and hero. But then when you get right down to it, I suspect there are more than a few boss figures who believe men (and women) are replaceable. In fact, I more than suspect this…. Head ‘em up; move ‘em out!

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A couple of people at work are calling me “boss”. 

I find this humorous because I do very little “boss-ing”. It’s more about setting the objective and letting them loose.

One fellow said to me: “I don’t have to get permission to do this …”. I gave him my pat: “Does it violate any ‘standing orders’? If not, then let’s get it done and beg forgiveness if we need to. You can always blame me.”

LOL!

After a recent bad storm, the first thing I did, dropping back to my old AT&T training, was check that all our people were safe and didn’t need anything. Then, once that was done, I started to figure out what had to get done and not done with the resources we had available.

Others were more worried about “the work”; rather than “the people”.

Guess they never heard the old Wall Street adage that: “Your intellectual capital walks out the door every night!”

Most Wall Streeters worried about it coming back the next morning. Like AT&T!

Argh!

That’s why I tell any fat old white guy turkeys, or anyone who will listen, that you have to be “the captain of your own ship”, the CEO of “You, Inc.”, or just understand what YOUR objectives are. If they happen to overlap with your employer’s, great. If not, first things first.

I’ve told more than one “employee”, who was putting the employer first, that their job is to FIRST find your next job. Good performance at your current job is an important component of doing that. BUT, it’s not the FIRST priority. Third at best!

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INTERESTING: 9 Beliefs; that’s what I missed

Friday, July 6, 2012

http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/9-beliefs-of-remarkably-successful-people.html

OWNERS’ MANUAL | Jeff Haden
Jun 25, 2012
9 Beliefs of Remarkably Successful People

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The most successful people in business approach their work differently than most. See how they think–and why it works.

1. Time doesn’t fill me. I fill time.

2. The people around me are the people I chose.

3. I have never paid my dues.

4. Experience is irrelevant. Accomplishments are everything.

5. Failure is something I accomplish; it doesn’t just happen to me. 

6. Volunteers always win.

7. As long as I’m paid well, it’s all good.

8. People who pay me always have the right to tell me what to do.

9. The extra mile is a vast, unpopulated wasteland.

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Have to think about and internalize the meme.

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INTERESTING: The Heritage Foundation and OODA

Friday, January 20, 2012

http://www.vtcommons.org/blog/heritage-foundation-then-and-now

The Heritage Foundation Then and Now
Winslow Wheeler

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Since then, Heritage has come a long way in defense policy analysis, all of it downward. On December 26, 2012 the Director of Heritage’s Center for Foreign Policy Studies, Dr. James J. Carafano, published a commentary in the Washington Examiner, “What To Do about Obama’s Pound-Foolish Air Force.” Without saying so explicitly, he implied that the legendary Col. John R. Boyd, “a fighter pilot’s fighter pilot” in Dr. Carafano’s words, would favor what the good doctor wants: to reopen production of the $411 million F-22 and to buy more $154 million F-35s.

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Not only did Carafano miss the boat on the technical differences between the F-86 and MiG-15, he ignored the even more important Boydian idea that, to win wars, people come first, ideas (i.e., tactics and strategy) are second, and hardware is a distant third. It was perfectly obvious to Boyd why two hundred F-86s achieved air superiority over 1000 MiGs in Korea and shot down 5 to 10 enemies for every American loss. Our pilots were simply far more skilled than the Chinese and Russians by virtue of better selection, more rigorous and realistic training using better tactics and better exploitation of the skills of experienced pilots, and far more flying hours (the much more reliable F-86 flew 40 hours per month to the MiG’s 10 or 12 hours). Had we changed aircraft with the enemy, our lop-sided victory tally in Korea would have been the same—an insight repeated almost verbatim decades later by the Israeli Air Force commanders after the 1973 and 1982 wars, then again by the U.S commander of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Despite John Boyd’s seminal role in designing the F-15 and F-16, he was always the first to point out that technical differences in friendly versus enemy aircraft are minor compared to differences in people skills—and that applied with equal force to ground and naval weapons.

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I love when I can find gems in posts.

Here is a “debunking” of the Heritage Foundation. The same Heritage Foundation that has been advertising on Rush and Hannity and pushing their Reagan connection.

And inside it is an excellent about why Boyd was a visionary. “People first. Ideas second. Technology third.”

A lot of businesses could use that insight.

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