The origins of chess I read in Der Spiegel that Renate Syed, an indologist from Munich has found evidence for the theory that chess actually comes from India and originated as a war practice game called caturanga around 450 AD. The pawns were the infantry, the rooks were bronze chariots with archers, the bishops were war elephants, the knights were obviously horses and the queen used to be the minister who only moved one field diagonally like a handicapped king. The Indian king of Kanauj gave the game of chess without the rules as a present in the sixth century to the king of Persia to test his intelligence. The Arabs conquered Persia later on and spread the game of chess around the world. They gave the queen the long radius it has now as their armies were dominated by many fast moving horses and mounted camels.

A rose is a rose is a rose The Covers Project has catalogued 11,000 song covers. They are looking for the longest cover chain. A cover chain is something like artist A has covered a song of artist B who has covered a song of artist C etc. The longest chain up to now includes 66 songs. From the Smashing Pumpkins cover of "A Night Like This" by The Cure to The Funkmeister G song "Who got the Fonk?" covered by Cavort With Whores. Never heard of that band so this sounds like a dead-end. But there are surely more covers of Smashing Pumpkins songs (to extend the chain) than the two mentioned here though none comes to my mind immediately. The most covered band are obviously The Beatles (453 covers) and the most covered song is of course "Yesterday" (58 versions). You can add a cover song if you wish.

Some things I don't/didn't like about Amazon

• Some time ago they charged me for shipping though I had placed a shipping-free order. It was their fault they didn't have a CD in stock and my order was suddenly below the shipping-free threshold.
• I wrote a review for Amazon and had to accept their conditions which said (apparently this has changed) that reviews you write for them become their intellectual propriety and they do not even guarantee to cite your name. Of course they can also censor or edit your review. This was one reason to start this weblog.
• When putting a commentary to an album on my wishlist they did not let me use the words "fucked up" as they think this is inappropriate language. "Fucked up" is usually a praise in my book.
• Probably this is not their fault but why can't I find the new Paul Auster The Book of Illusions in English which is already translated into French as Le Livre des Illusions on their site? The plot sounds very promising. Existential in the vein of the New York Trilogy after what I heard.