CINDERS IN SPAIN

Lost Lights

2009-01-18T19:32:00.002Z

Through the gloaming I can still see the spark
A call to the stars I cannot forget
The lost lights that held the bellowing dark

Those stars in the night seem lonely and stark
From the hill where the city casts its net
Through the gloaming I can still see the spark

Flames that never burned nor yet left a mark
In memory I see they flicker yet;
The lost lights that held the bellowing dark

Though they’re fading now, like a watermark
The tears, the yearning, the love and the sweat
Through the gloaming I can still see the spark

The road not taken; we didn’t embark
It glows no brighter than your cigarette
The lost light that held the bellowing dark

The dance of the beacons still fills my heart
Lighting the wrong path I cannot regret
Through the gloaming I can still see the spark
The lost lights that held the bellowing dark.

Mark_W (January 2009)

The Splendour and Misery of Cities

2008-12-02T18:38:00.003Z

The (admittedly rather florid, if not actually perfervid) title above is partially stolen from Samuel R. Delany. I’m not sure if the book (The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities) ever actually appeared, and what follows has absolutely nothing to do with Delany. It always struck me as a marvellous title though, and rather apt for the following ramble about cities...

Somewhere on RD.net (and I must confess I’m unable to rouse myself from habitual sloth to find it again) Richard Dawkins says something to the effect that there are times when he’s tremendously proud of and impressed with the human race, and what the questing minds of its members have achieved. (I think it may have been in a piece where Michael Shermer remembered a meeting with Dawkins).

I felt something vaguely similar, years ago, when walking one evening up in the hills on the outskirts of my home city (Exeter). It was dark, just past the gloaming (to sneak in one of my very favourite words.) Though you could still pick out some landmarks like the cathedral in the distance, the view was largely of a gentle orange glow, nestled in the hills. Although there were (and are) parts of Exeter I either found depressing or scary places to walk through, and parts that, especially in the harsh light of day, I thought somewhat ugly, I remember thinking, by night, how beautiful it looked, and how clever and marvellous it was that it was there. It was an oddly elegiac feeling, since, though the impression of the beauty of the city was a very strong one, you couldn't get rid of the knowledge that the warm glow of the streetlights was masking quantities of misery and unhappiness. It’s a quite different and more complicated feeling to that which you get when contemplating unspoilt countryside or wilderness, as in those cases there aren't (as it were) the further layers of splendour and misery painted over the original canvass.

[Being, even in those far off days, a rather bookish and geeky fellow, I was also thinking about the old quote about civilization being "built on the backs of unremembered bloody giants", and the lines from Magnum’s song “Les Morts Dansant”: When the field has become a garden/And the wall has stood the test/Children play and the dogs run barking/Who would think or who would guess? (Though obviously in this case, the field had become a city, and the “field” in question in the song is a battlefield, so I don’t really know what I was thinking of, there...)]

I’m slightly conflicted here. I no longer live in Exeter, and now reside in the fastnesses of the Western Marches (or ‘Wales’, as normal people call it). I wouldn't go back; usually I love the slower nature of rural (or small town) life, and things like the fact that when once visiting relatives that are even further from civilization than I am, they were genuinely amused when I locked my car after arriving for the evening...I’m also much calmer thinking about my daughter growing up here than I think I would be if I lived in some vast metropolis.

And yet, there are times when I do miss how easy it is to lose yourself in a big city.

Lawrence Miles once said:

When we're young, we're taught that the city is the anxious, aggressive part of the world, while the countryside is a haven of constant peace and slow-paced good manners. This is completely untrue; there are so many people in the city that they become a kind of background static, and since none of them are likely to confront you personally, it's possible—no, easy—to spend hours walking around a metropolis like London in a state of Zen-like calm. The city is what we've come to think of as the countryside.

Miles means something quite specific by “city” here (i.e. not “the suburbs” which he feels are anxious and aggressive) and I think he’s right: I have fond memories of several days spent wandering around London on my own in just such a fashion...(This doesn't work for all cities, of course. I once spent an afternoon walking around Sharm el-Sheikh, and ended up as far from a state of “Zen-like calm” as is emotionally conceivable...)

I’m also very attracted by the “City of Cities” idea, of cities being somehow alive with, to quote Miles again, “secret histories and hidden architectures.” Again, it’s a marvellously elegiac idea (which always, because I’m odd, tends to put me in mind of Luigi Cherubini's gorgeous Requiem in C minor). It’s the same feeling I get when reading Jeff Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen; and I defy anyone who’s ever been lucky enough to look out over Prague in winter from up by the Castle not to have felt something similar...

So although I don’t live in a city any more, (or perhaps because?) I do find myself increasingly (in some way) nostalgic about them.

To come full circle and end with another great title, one of Lawrence Miles’s novels is called This Town Will Never Let Us Go. That’s what it feels like...

A Sophisticated Way To Live?

2008-11-10T22:31:00.002Z

There was an interesting article in the G2 section of The Guardian today, about the linguist Daniel Everett. Much of this was about his decades long study of the language of the Piraha people of the Amazon basin, and how this lead him to doubt Noam Chomsky’s “universal grammar” theory of linguistics, but it was a couple of other things I found most interesting.

Firstly, Everett was a missionary. His intent in learning the language of these people was so he could translate the bible into their language and convert them to christianity. Eventually, he translated Luke’s gospel, and read it to the tribespeople, who were completely unimpressed. Everett had become unimpressed with religion too, in his time in the Amazon. The Piraha people, he says, were “living life the way I’m saying it ought to be lived; they just don’t fear heaven and hell.” He lost his faith, and, with that loving charity so that so often, sadly, marks out (fundamentalist) christians, his wife left him and two of his adult children cut off contact with him. (Though, to be fair, part of their problem seems to be that he waited a decade after losing his faith to tell them…)

Anyway, what I found most interesting though, because I genuinely don’t know whether I agree with it or not, is the question of whether it is right that these remote tribes should be left alone. Everett seems to think they should, and that they don’t see themselves as lacking anything until religion or capitalism introduces the outside world and its desires and dissatisfactions. The Piraha language has no words for “hello”, or “thank you”, no words for colours or numbers, and no way of expressing history outside living memory. It’s a language suited for people living in the moment in a harsh hunter/gathering environment. “Living in the moment,” says Everett, “is a sophisticated way to live. I don’t see depression. I don’t see some of the things that afflict our society…”

And yet…Is the primitive life really as noble and pure and self-sufficient as we like to imagine it is? There are doubtless aspects of the developed world such people could do without (certainly, I’d say, they could do without any of our religions), but the tribe Everett dealt with was reduced to its last 100 or so people half a century ago by an outbreak of measles. Should we adopt a strictly non-interfering policy when that means standing by as generations are almost wiped out by preventable diseases? The Piraha people are very rarely violent, but should we adopt a strictly non-interfering policy with any developing peoples that still are? If we don’t interfere are we condemning such people to short, poverty-filled lives, when we could be doing something about it?

I haven’t spent decades in the jungle like Everett, and I’m not sure what I think to be honest, though it’s one of the things I worry about sometimes…

Ad Astra

2008-10-28T19:49:00.004Z

Saturday night, out here in what I tend to (absurdly) insist on referring to as The Western Marches but what the rest of the planet calls Wales, was a crisp, clear, and cloudless affair. As there isn't anything approaching much of a streetlight glare out here in the wildnerness beyond mains gas range, the stars were particularly bright, impressive, and awesome, so I wrapped my daughter up in her thickest coat and took her out to have a look...

The look of wide-eyed awe in her eyes as I lifted her to my shoulders and pointed out The Plough, and the way she said, "Thank you, Daddy, for showing me the beautiful stars - I think even if I had a very tall ladder I couldn't reach them!" fair brought a lump to my throat, and made me suspect that something may have found its way into my otherwise rugged and manly eyes...

Call me a sentimental old fool if you will, but there are times, notwithstanding all the horror and madness and credit crunches, and the 5,271,009 other things that give us cause to fret and worry and despair, that, despite everything, this world and the universe that surrounds it seems a glorious and magical place, and it's an honour to be around to soak it in...

Dodgy, or Just Awesome?

2008-10-10T22:35:00.004+01:00

Olympic 200m champion Veronica Campbell-Brown had some interesting words to say recently on the subject of female athletics world records.

She said: "The men enjoy all the glamour because they're capable of breaking world records. Women don't have that luxury."

It’s an interesting point. Here are the current women’s track and field world records, with the date set, and time the record has stood:

100m: 10.49; 1988 (20 years)
200m: 21.34; 1988 (20 years)
400m: 47.60; 1985 (23 years)
800m: 1:53.28; 1983 (25 years)
1,500m: 3:50.46; 1993 (15 years)
5,000m: 14:11.15; 2008 (< 1 year)
10,000m: 29:31.78; 1993 (15 years)
3,000m steeplechase: 8:58.81; 2008 (< 1 year)
100m hurdles: 12.21; 1988 (20 years)
400m hurdles: 52.34; 2003 (5 years)
High jump: 2.09m; 1987 (21 years)
Pole vault: 5.05m; 2008 (< 1 year)
Long jump: 7.52m; 1988 (20 years)
Triple jump: 15.50m; 1995 (13 years)
Shot put: 22.63m; 1987 (21 years)
Discus: 76.80m; 1988 (20 years)
Hammer throw: 77.80m; 2006 (2 years)
[Although, according to Wiki, the person who set this mark is currently serving a suspension, and has had a further world record (78.61m) disqualified.]
Javelin: 72.28m; 2008 (< 1 year)
[This record relates to the new specification of the javelin following the 1999 change in the center of gravity – the previous record under the old specification (80.00m) was set 20 years ago in 1988.]
Heptathlon: 7,291 points; 1988 (20 years)
4x100m relay: 41.37; 1985 (23 years)
4x400m relay: 3:15.17; 1988 (20 years)

Of the more recent of these records, three (5,000m, 3,000m steeplechase, and Pole Vault) are in events that have only relatively recently become part of the women’s programme, and another (400m hurdles) has been an Olympic event only since 1984. The world records in the vast majority of the long-standing Olympic events have stood for over two decades, and in most cases have never really been threatened. Campbell-Brown is a double Olympic champion at the 200m, yet her personal best at the distance is 21.74, over a third of second (an age in sprinting terms) slower than a 20-year-old world record

By contrast, only the discus and hammer records have stood since the 1980s in the men’s events, and eight records have been set this century (four of them this year).

What in the merry blazes is going on?

Given the revelations about doping that followed the collapse of the former East Germany, there have occasionally been calls for certain world records to be “reset”, or for there to be a some sort of additional secondary world record, though it is difficult to see how this would work (even though some of the doubts, it must be admitted, are not entirely without foundation) especially since far from all of these records are held by athletes from the former GDR, and to retrospectively cast doubts on the achievements of competitors who never failed a drugs test, doesn’t seem, well, particularly sporting. (The closest athletics has yet come to anything like this is for completely different reasons: due to questions over the wind speed reading, the 100m record is now annotated by the Association of Track and Field Statisticians as: "probably strongly wind-assisted, but recognised as a world record".)

In any case, though, are these records necessarily dodgy? Might there instead have been an unprecedented flourishing of talent in the 80s? It is not without precedent for records to stand for this long. To pick the achievements of just two stout and unimpeachable servants of athletics from my own corner of the world, Sebastian Coe’s quite remarkable 1981 world record for the 800m stood for 16 years, and to this day only one person has ever run faster, and Kathy Cook retired from athletics in 1986, and still holds the UK records for the 200m and 400m.

To switch sports, Don Bradman played Test cricket between 1928 and 1948, averaging 99.94. The next best (for a minimum of 20 innings) is Mike Hussey’s much inferior (relatively) 70.60, and he has currently only played half as many matches as the Don did…

(Of course, there is more than just talent going on. Though the Don played before advances in bat design, covered pitches, and so on, he also played before advances in preparation, and the availability of video footage of players’ entire careers to base bowling plans and field placing strategies on.)

Still, sometimes people are just ahead of their time, or quite absurdly outside the norm (in all sorts of fields, not just sport) – and with the amount of sport that goes on nowadays, might we expect to sometimes come across these once in a generation or once in a lifetime talents that mere mortals take years or decades to catch up to?

I suspect many will (quite possibly rightly) suggest I’m being a bit naïve, and a hopeless sporting romantic here (O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago! &c.) and I have to say, I’ve been as disappointed as anyone at the doping scandals in various sports that have surfaced in recent years; and yet, I really like sport, and, in my rosier (or rose-tinted) moments, I still think it’s sometimes nice to cling to the hope that it may not be quite as broken as it often seems to be...

Unlucky, Captain? Part 2

2008-09-22T21:20:00.005+01:00

Following the US’s victory in the Ryder Cup, there has apparently been much speculation in the press regarding the decisions of Europe’s captain Nick Faldo in relation to the ordering of his team for the final days’ singles matches…

I say “apparently” because I’m not a great follower of golf (catching a few moments at a relative’s house over the weekend, I was certain I’d misheard when the Sky Sports announcer confidently asserted the match was coming from “Valhalla”. Surely that’s unlikely, I thought, what with it being fictional and everything…)

Anyway, the controversy seemed to revolve around whether Faldo had committed an egregious blunder or excellent blinder by leaving Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, and Porridge Harrington for the final three matches…

Now, the balancing act of course, concerns the following:

1] Do you put your strongest players out first (to boost the morale of the weaker players following)?; or

2] Is putting out your strongest players first a waste? (E.g. if you’re the US Captain, you’d want your best player to be up against (and beat) the best European player, not thrash the worst European player by a margin, a task which could legitimately be left (you'd hope) to one of the other fellows…)

A complicating factor is of course the state of the match when the time comes to announce the final day’s order for the singles matches…

To have a look at this, let’s assume that, as they won, the US has a slightly stronger team, so that they have the 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc. best players, and Europe has the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc.

One possible set of parings would therefore be (giving the US player first):

1 v 2; 3 v 4; 5 v 6; 7 v 8; 9 v 10; 11 v 12;
13 v 14; 15 v 16; 17 v 18;19 v 20; 21 v 22; 23 v 24

Or another might be:

1 v 24; 3 v 22; 5 v 20; 7 v 18; 9 v 16; 11 v 14;
13 v 12; 15 v 10; 17 v 8; 19 v 6; 21 v 4; 23 v 2.

Or a third:

1 v 24; 3 v 2; 5 v 4; 7 v 6; 9 v 8; 11 v 10
13 v 12; 15 v 14; 17 v 16; 19 v 18; 21 v 20; 23 v 22.

What’s going on here? Not much, in fact. In each of the permutations above, given that the US are (as we’ve assumed) slightly better, they are likely to end up ahead in any one of these combinations (on the singles matches considered here, at least), but the range of likely outcomes is wider with the first draw, where all the matches are closer…

Of course, if Europe are well behind, the latter draw, where Europe has the highest ranked player in all except one of the matches would suit them better…

But, what can the Captains do? Well, since neither the US or Europe has a concrete historical policy of always putting out their best players first (or vice versa), the only way to prevent your opponent having any influence over the pairings at all is to simply draw the names out of the proverbial hat in a completely random fashion…

So, whoever takes over from Nick Faldo as European captain next time – just make it up, man! No, seriously, just make it up....

Unlucky, Captain?

2008-09-01T19:09:00.004+01:00

As England, have, remarkably enough, won five games in a row under new skipper Kevin Pieterson, there has been some debate on the traditional question of whether KP is a good captain or a lucky one...I’m not going to consider this here, but it did remind me of the time in 2000-2001 when then England captain Nasser Hussein somehow contrived to lose 14 tosses in a row. Surely you can’t get more unlucky than that? Maybe there’s even something spooky going on? (Some non-mathematically minded commentators even suggested he should stop calling “heads” each time to give him more chance of finally winning a toss.)

But. The chances of losing 14 tosses in a row is 1 in 2^14, or 1 in 16,384. This is indeed fairly astronomical. However. Hussein captained England in 45 Tests and 56 ODIs, meaning he contested 101 international tosses in total. There are, unless I’ve made an egregious blunder, 88 possible starting points for a sub-sequence of 14 in an overall sequence of 101, so the chance, sometime in his captaincy, of Hussein losing 14 tosses in a row is actually something of the order of 1 in 186 or thereabouts, which isn’t nearly so unlikely...

Mind you. If not exactly a case for Mulder and Scully, was this still, nevertheless, slightly odd and unexpected? How often might we expect a sequence of x consecutive heads or tails in a particular sequence of tosses? The chance of, say, x tails from a given start point is (½)^x. If there are N possible starting points for the sequence, the average number of times a sequence of x tails appear will be N x ((½)^x). So, with 200 possible start points for a sequence of 5 tails, we would expect, on average, about 200 x ((½)^5), or about 6, such sequences to turn up.

So. Let’s say we decide (as seems quite reasonable), that we wouldn’t be surprised at a particular sequence occurring, if, on average, we would expect at least one such sequence to occur; in other words when N x (½)^x is as least 1.

The expression will equal 1 when x = Log (base 2) N.

E.g. the base 2 log of 64 is 6, and 64 x ((½)^6) = 1, and the base 2 log of 512 is 9, and 512 x ((½)^9) = 1.

So, with 88 possible starting points for a sequence, the expression will equal one when x = 6.459, i.e. 88 x ((½)^6.459) = 1.000. In other words, a total lack of surprise at Hussein’s tossing performance (as it were), would only be preserved if he had lost about 7 tosses in a row, rather than 14.

(From the above, we can use the elegant, if admittedly approximate and somewhat arbitrary “rule”, that if we toss a coin N times, we should expect the longest sequence of heads or tails to be round about the base 2 logarithm of N. The base 2 log of 101 is about six and two-thirds, give or take.)

There we are then. Although not colossally surprising (especially given that Hussein is not the only international captain who has taken part in a great many coin-tosses, so before being amazed we need to think beyond the chances of just him having such a run of bad luck), it was indeed perhaps a slightly odd run. Not nearly as odd as England being 4-0 up in a one-day series against South Africa, though. Funny old game, isn’t it?

Due Credit Department: [For more of this sort of thing, see Beating the Odds by Rob Eastaway and John Haigh (Robson Books, 2007)]

The Greatest Game Ever?

2008-08-19T22:03:00.001+01:00

Perhaps not, but before coming back to A. McGrath, I’ve been recuperating by reading chess books. Below is the game Jose Capablanca – Frank Marshall, New York, 1918. In the days when I was a member of a chess club, it was study of this game, where Marshall introduced the famous Attack that bears his name, that probably earned me more points with Black then any other. (Though Marshall lost the game, he was playing one of the greatest ever, which was not something that a not very talented amateur woodpusher like me ever had to worry about...) I always used to play Marshall’s original 11th move as played in this game, rather than the more correct modern alternative, since at the low level of chess I floundered about in, it gives, to coin a chess cliché, “good practical chances”.

Anyhoo.

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. Bb5 a6
4. Ba4 Nf6
5. 0-0 Be7
6. Re1 b5

Here we are in the standard position of the closed Ruy Lopez:

7. Bb3 0-0
8. c3 d5

Here it is – the Marshall Attack. Black offers a pawn in return for a lead in development and the chance to launch an attack while White is still undeveloped. If White wants to avoid the Marshall Attack, instead of playing 8. c3, he plays 8. a4 instead, as indeed Garry Kasparov often did to good effect in his games with White against Nigel Short in the 1993 World Championship match. Allegedly, Marshall had saved this for years and years, waiting for a chance to try it out on Capablanca...

Capablanca later wrote (in that amusingly over-muscular way that chess players often express themselves) that, on encountering this innovation at the board, “The lust of battle had been aroused within me. I felt my judgement and skill were being challenged. I decided that I was in honour bound, so to speak, to take the pawn and accept the challenge.” Stout fellow!

9 exd5 Nxd5
10 Nxe5 Nxe5
11 Rxe5 Nf6

So here we are – the gauntlet thrown down and the challenge accepted:

Nowadays, Black plays 11 c3 rather than Nf6, as later introduced by Marshall. I like 11...Nf6 though – it’s easier to understand I think, and the gallant Black steed can fly straight at the White king…

12. Re1

(Capablanca flings his rook straight back where it came from. A slightly odd move order ensues here – doubtless the Cuban was trying to divert Marshall out of his prepared analysis, though the game transposes into the more logical sequence 12. d4 Bd6, 13. Re1 Ng4, 14. h3 Qh4, 15 Qf3).

12. ...Bd6
13. h3 Ng4

(Black charges on! He’s a stout fellow, too!)

White cannot take the knight. (e.g. 14. hxg4 Qh4, 15. Qf3 Bh2+)

Amusingly, in his 1920 volume, My Chess Career, the mighty Capablanca gives the following line as the demonstration of why White must not take the knight on g4, lest Black win:

14 hxg4 Qh4
15 Qf3 Qh2+
16 Kf1 Bxg4
17 Qxg4 Qh1+
18 Qe2 Rae8+

This leads to the following position:

Analysis diagram:

However, far from winning for Black, in this position White can simply play 19 Be6! and win himself! A fine example of a genius “knowing” something is wrong, but rather losing interest when trying to explain it to we mere mortals...(And of course, Capablanca didn’t have the advantage of checking his analysis on computers, as do todays GMs…)

Anyway, back to the game:

14. Qf3 Qh4

(Black goes for it, still ignoring the attack on the knight (and the a8 rook, for that matter) since the knight still cannot be taken (the threat, if 15 hxg4, is again Bh2+)

15. d4 Nxf2

Black is still going for it, but the hugely-brained Cuban is starting to untangle himself now...

16. Re2

(Not 16. Qxf2, again because of Bh2+)

16. …Bg4

This is interesting. At the time, Capablanca thought this Black’s best chance. British GM and top chess author John Nunn agrees, but Garry Kasparov (no less) and Dimitry Plisetsky in the first volume of My Great Predecessors claim Black could have moved the knight to g4 instead.

Both Nunn and Kasparov give the following:

16. …Ng4
17. g3 Qxh3
18. Qxa8 Bxg3
19. Qg2

which leads to the following position:

Analysis Diagram:

In this position Nunn gives 19…Bh2+, 20 Kf1 and declares that Black’s compensation for the rook is “totally inadequate”. Kasparov gives 19…Qh4, 20. Nd2 and says there is “everything to play for”. Hmmm. I’m not qualified to argue with either of these fellows, but I think, with Nunn, I’d rather be White here…

17. hxg4 Bh2+
18. Kf1 Bg3
19. Rxf2 Qh1+
20. Ke2 Bxf2

Marshall chooses to take the rook rather than the bishop. Some think 20...Qxc1 was a better bet. White now has two pieces for a rook, enough to win if he can activate the queenside.

21. Bd2 Bh4
22. Qh3 Rae8+

“Black,” Capablanca averred, “in order to avoid the exchange of queens, is now compelled to chase the king to c2, where he is safe.” He’s not wrong, you know.

23. Kd3 Qf1+
24. Kc2 Bf2
25. Qf3 Qg1
26. Bd5 c5
27. dxc5 Bxc5
28. b4! Bd6

Black’s attack is fought off, it has withered, and is no more. White’s material advantage now wins the day...

29. a4 a5
30. axb5 axb4
31. Ra6 bxc3
32. Nxc3 Bb4
33. b6 Bxc3
34. Bxc3 h6
35. b7 Re3
36. Bxf7+

And Marshall threw in the towel, as it’s mate in four.

A remarkable game from both players. Indeed, it’s been said that the only real error in the game was Marshall's 11...Nf6, rather than 11...c3, and even that’s a move that’s very much worth a punt at club level.

And magnificently so to both of them.

Stand back, let's try chess!

2008-07-15T01:36:00.000+01:00

Now (16 Jul) with added answers! (Why does “July” get abbreviated to “Jul”? How much of a hurry can you be in??)

Anyhoo.

This is quite well known, but I always find it rather fascinating:

White to play: what result?

As Lee said in the initial comments, it looks very draw-ish, but what will keep White from shaking hands and heading to the bar here will be the hope that he can move his g pawn to g4 at the appropriate moment and close off the kingside, then control the merry dance of the kings across the board so that he reaches the following position at a time when, crucially, it is Blacks move:

Black cannot now help but lose. (1...Kg2, 2 Kg6 Kh3, 3 Kh5 Kxh2, 4 Kxh6 and goodnight Vienna.)

The initial position, then, depends on the concept of opposition (and the distant opposition). That is, if the kings have one space between them (or three or five for distant opposition) the side who is not to move has the opposition, since their opponent must give way…

So, White must play g4 at the right time, then keep the opposition while the kings march across the board, so he arrives in the winning position above at exactly the right time. To do this, the White King must sometimes move away from the Black King, and sometimes move back closer in some sort of marvellous chess foxtrot…(Hmm. Note to self: calm down!)

Anyway, if White plays his g4 move straight away he will have the distant opposition so this is the right way to start:

1. g4 Ka3

White wants to hare off to kingside and clear Black’s pawns out of the way, so will be happy if Black plays (say) 1...Kb3 instead, as he can reply 2. Kb5, keep the opposition, and move closer the dance closer to the orchestra pit of glory. (Yes, I know…)

2. Ka5

White must sashay closer on the a-file before moving further across the dance floor, since 2 Kb6 Kb4, or 2 Kb5 Kb3 allow Black to gain the opposition and a draw.)

2…Ka2

(If black plays 2…Kb3, then White plays Kb5 as described under move 1 above.)

3. Kb6

Now White can move towards the pawns, but must dance away this time!

3…Kb3
4. Kb5 (and together!) Kb2
5. Kc6 (and apart!) Kc3

and the dance continues thusly in similar fashion:

6. Kc5 Kc2
7. Kd6 Kd3

About half way through the dance, now!

8. Kd5 Kd2
9. Ke6 Ke3
10. Ke5 Ke2
11. Kf6 Kf3
12. Kf5

And we have reached White’s dream position at precisely the right time! Hooray! Now, whoever said chess wasn’t beautiful?

Oh. Oh, I see…

Important Acknowledgment and Due Credit Department: This position dates back to 1935, and is the creation of N. D. Grigoriev, to whom much kudos for creating a thing of such beauty...

Department of the 4th Sentence on page 122:

It is hard to say whether this aggressive move was made with the desire to unsettle his tenacious opponent, or if it involved some oversight.

From My Great Predecessors Volume 1 by Garry Kasparov (and totally unrelated to the above, to be honest…)