Pawns, Political and Wooden

Garry Kasparov, my old hero from my chess-playing days (which ended, for all practical purposes, in elementary school, when I was good), is apparently leading the opposition to Putin in Russia. He seems to have an almost freakish genius for organization and strategy, which you'd think is too comically literal to be true, but it is. It remains to be seen whether he'll actually achieve much, but in the interim it's interesting to note how in Russia they still do things like this because they're necessary, whereas here... well, you know the rest.