27...gxf5 28.Nxf5+ Kf6 29.Qe5+ Kg5 30.Ng7+ f5 31.Qg3+ Kf6 32.Qg6#

NASA,the ground crew,and a lot of prayer enabled the astronauts to land safely against all odds.

The mission took place from April 11-17 in the year 1970.

Black's problem here is that his king side defenses suffered a fatal leak,but unlike Apollo,he was left alone to fend for himself and quickly went down to defeat.

True story. I was top seed in a tournament, once upon a time. In my first game, I opened with 1.e3 - Van't Kruijs Opening - and won in 12 moves.

Feeling emboldened, and *far* too arrogant, I continued on my way, playing silly openings. A future international, aged about 12, brought me halfway down to earth by beating me. But by the last round I'd clawed my way back into contention against D. Houston, the loser of this game.

I played 1.e3. "I thought you might do that" he said, and replied 1...g6. It's surprisingly strong: White doesn't get time to transpose to a Nimzo-Larsen with b3, and that e3-move is useless in the Leningrad Dutch we eventually transposed into.

Yes, 1.e3 g6 2.e4 is playable, but a lot of the eccentricity had been rubbed off me by then. Mr Houston won the game and the tournament.

<Marmot> I hate to disagree, but are we thinking of the same Apollo 13? The one I've got in mind was directed by Ron Howard, which is a black mark straightaway. It had Tom Hanks, which is another. The action takes places between the Earth and the Moon, but it isn't a sci-fi movie - it's based on the actual Apollo mission ... a true life space story?

And it's very far from being the best anything, unless it's the best Ron Howard movie.

An option that one tries not to exercise, but hey, *tshyert happens*.

But nonetheless I suspect that Ed Harris and/or Neil Armstrong and their ilk would not have been allowed - ironic, isn't it? - to issue an <ukase>. It *is* a Russian word, after all - and anything Russki was deeply suspect during the Cold War. Never mind that it's a Tsarist term for a decree rather than a Bolshevist one: in 1970 USA, a Russian was a Russian, and that meant Commie.

This was pretty much the same mechanism that let Bobby Fischer and the US government each believe that the other was a communist.

Hmm ... I've just noticed you can write 'ukase' in pseudo-Cyrillic -- cyrillic using the Latin alphabet plus numerals etc to approximate the 'look' of Russian. William Gibson ('Spook Country', 2007) calls it Volapuk -- although Volapuk is actually the name of a dead universal language, a wannabe Esperanto that failed.

Some Neo-Volapuk: "OH MHe He yKa3a" -- "I don't take orders from him". Phonetically: *On mnye nye ukaze".

The Russians themselves, in Soviet times, found subtle ways to mock their leaders. For example, the words for 'president', 'presidium' and 'condom' appear side-by-side in some Russian dictionaries.

I imagine Stalin went dictionary-surfing one day - it's what people did before google, but you had to be absolute dictator of a vast tyranny - one inclined to grovelling by naming stuff after the Boss - for it to work properly.

"Where do I want to go today?

... Stalingrad, I think. Or just pop down to Stalin Street for a copy of my latest biography, *Uncle Joe and The Fish* ..."

Okay? So Stalin opens his dictionary, sees "president, presidium, condom", roars with laughter, and has all the editors, lexicographers, typestters, and printers shot. He would've exterminated the *red setters* as well, but it was pointed out that they were (a) red, and (b) dogs.

As for the moon landings ... it doesn't actually matter much, but they *did* go. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next nutcase, but this one has great gaping holes in it. Not even Stalin could have kept film productions totally secret in Mosfilm and VGIK. The very idea of Nixon's FBI - the criminal conspiracy that brought us Watergate - doing it in Hollywood is laughable.

Unless, unless ... this is like Altman's 'Secret Honor' thesis ... Watergate was a deliberate falsecard, a poisoned pawn. Designed to give the impression that government plotters were buffoons who couldn't organize a conspiracy to save their lives. While, meantime ... hmm.

Well, yes.

Clinton was courting the conspiracy-buff constituency, but doing it in a quiet way so as not to alarm the straight folks.

If you look at Clinton speeches etc -- Hillary is as good, maybe better -- they're brilliant at this sort of thing. All kinds of people come away thinking "Wow, he/she/it is *really* one of us ... blacker than Obama, whiter than Schwarzenegger, greener than the average Martian" ... "Hey, lookee here, Ms Clinton is a member of the disabled funambulist community just like me" ... "Yeah, and those hints she dropped about *people of faith* - I bet she's an Episcopal Ecdysiast too!"

Don't get me wrong. I *love* the Clintons. I desire their daughter carnally, just like my demographic is meant to, and I think they're all political geniuses. But you have to bear in mind that those people would do *anything* for power.

'Lying' doesn't even begin to cover it. Telling the truth so that it looks like a lie in order to nail down the congenital liar vote and the congenital idiot vote at the same time ... and grabbing a good chunk of the *plain old ordinary genital* vote while they're at it. Awe-inspiring multi-poly-doublethink.