Friday Coffee, Potpourri and Nonsense
Your’s for the taking…
In June of this year the British Cardiovascular Society presented a coffee study by the Queen Mary University of London that showed that drinking large quantities of coffee daily (more than 5 cups and less than 25 cups) did not negatively impact your heart’s health.
This study contradicts earlier studies, but in as much as more than 8,000 people took part in the Queen Mary study – and each was given MRI heart scans as well as infrared pulse wave tests – significant weight must be given to the findings.
CNN interviewed the lead data analyst Kenneth Fung who pointed out that “the main message for people to take away from this is that coffee can be enjoyed as part of a healthy lifestyle, and coffee lovers can be reassured by this result in terms of blood vessel stiffness outcomes.”
You can read more about this study in yesterday’s edition of Forbes.
Ding Liren edges out Carlsen
There is no doubt that Magnus Carlsen is the best tournament player in the world today, but this does not mean that he always wins. And so special congrats to the Chinese superstar for defeating the World Champion in the tiebreaks at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis yesterday. Few players have done so in the past…
While on the topic of Rex Sinquefield’s many generous contributions to chess, I have to say that I only pay attention to the Grand Chess Tour’s classic tournaments. Not being a big fan of rapid, blitz and other types of chess, I just don’t have the slightest inclination to follow who is ahead in the Tour’s classification, as it is based more on the faster time controls. I suspect that many of my generation think the same way.
Infact, I don’t even know how many such tournaments there are, or other details, though from what I have read it is quite clear that the elite players invited to participate are suffering from burnout. Just when one tournament finishes, the next one seems to start, and that has a heavy toll on some of the players.
Numerous commentators (including Kasparov) have noted the high number of blunders (no doubt caused by fatigue, in my opinion). While I very much appreciate Rex Sinquefield’s efforts to promote chess in America (and beyond!), I think that some logistic changes would be in order. Either reduce the # of tournaments, or open it up to the top-100 players. That would be perfect! And more democratic. (Not to mention more interesting!)
La Tomatina Festival
Crazy fun must be infectious. Witness the ‘tradition‘ that began in 1945 in the small Spanish town of Buñol: on the last Wednesday of August everybody throws tomatoes at each other and has great fun. So much so that this year some 22,000 tourists have travelled to Buñol to partake.