At 13, Magnus Carlsen became the world’s youngest grandmaster and the third youngest of all time. Today, at 19, he’s the youngest world No 1 in the game’s history.

The Norwegian wunderkind has stormed his way to the top of the chess world, and could become the youngest world champion ever.

Time’s running out, though, if he’s to depose Garry Kasparov, who rewrote the record books at 22.

The reigning champion, India’s Viswanathan Anand, successfully defended his crown against Bulgaria’s Veselin Topalov this year, which means Carlsen won’t get a title shot until 2012. Kasparov is now Carlsen’s advisor and coach.

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When I got to know one of my best friends in middle school, he told me that his father was a Member of the Parliament in Finland. I’m not sure if I really knew what that meant, but it sounded important and cool, so I told Mom about it that night.

“Really? What’s his last name?” Mom said, mostly out of curiosity than anything else.

“Ekman,” I said.

“Huh. I don’t remember a Member of the Parliament by that name,” Mom said.

The Finnish unicameral Parliament has 200 members. Father may know best, but I figured Mom knows a lot, too, so I confronted my buddy the next day. With the best possible argument, of course:

“My Mom says there’s no Ekman in the Parliament.”

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I’m writing this while sitting at a desk at the NHL head offices in New York. New York City. Behind me, under me, I can see the 6th Avenue, the Avenue of the Americas, with all the people scurrying back and forth like ants, jumping in and out of taxicabs – very un-antlike behavior.

When I look up, I see a wall with the photos of all NHL captains this season, from Jonathan Toews to Niklas Lidström to Mikko Koivu.

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Seeing people fall down is funny. It is, admit it. They look so helpless, and out of control, and that’s hilarious. Sure, you don’t want them to dislocate their hips or break their shoulders, but that’s not what you’re thinking when you see a big dude run as fast as he can and then slip and fall into the swimming pool.

I didn’t used to be a slapstick kind of guy, but hearing Wife laugh at all the people falling in movies, and in America’s Funniest Home Videos - why AFV, and not AFHV? - has made me appreciate the genius of looking stupid.

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The bus was parked on the church parking lot, and the kids were running around, throwing their bags into the storage under the bus, laughing and swapping stories about what they were going to do once they got out of their parents’ sights.

I sat in the window seat, biting my lip. And I cried.

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“Great athletes never have lousy names. If your name is Frederico Trepalano, you are not going to be a great ballplayer. Michael Jordan is a great name. Easy to remember. Seven letters and six letters. Usually, if they combine to thirteen, they're good names. I'm into numbers.”
– Larry King, Esquire, August 2010

Easy for Larry to say, isn’t it? Larry King is the perfect name, nine letters and all. The “L” kicks it off nicely, then there’s wide, American “arr” that makes your face really work, the “y” ties the “arr” to the hard “K” perfectly, with the ringing “ing” as a radio stinger, leaving audio ripples in the air, a pause that you don’t want to break when you hear the name so you just sit there, in awe.

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I’m not very good with conflicts. Never have been. It doesn’t matter which side of the argument I’m on, or whether I think I’m right or wrong, I feel almost physically ill when I’m stewing in conflict soup.

My personal problem is, though, that my brain is almost too quick to cook up pretty good oneliners to strip my adversary. Even worse, my mouth is just as fast to spit them out.

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Not only do Wife and I quote movie lines, such as “Let’s ride!”, back to each other, we also imitate movie action in our lives. Not to the extent that we’d fly to Mexico to save a poor village from El Guapo, or that I’d be working on a time machine in our garage - although I do like Doc Brown’s hair, a lot - but when we like something in a movie, we’ll make our own version of it.

(Writing the above sentence, I also realized that there’s another line we do use with each other. A lot. Whenever one of us says something like, “Oh I hate that” or “I really liked that buffet”, the other one says, “Oh yeah? How much”, to which there is only one correct answer: “A lot”. It’s a scene in Life of Brian, a movie that Wife can recite from beginning to end, which really makes me admire her. How much? A lot).

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There’s an old joke in Finland, a popular one, that goes like this: “When the Swedes switched from left-hand side traffic to driving on the right side of the street, the move was made in steps. First, only trucks and buses…”

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