Erie City Chess Club Speed Championship

On May 1, the Erie City Chess Club had its annual Speed Chess Tournament at Barnes and Noble.  Also, we gave out prizes for the Erie City Championship that was played during March and April.

Here are the winners from the Erie City Championship:

At the left is Luka Glinsky, the overall winner.  He is a homeschooled high school senior and he has been both Junior and overall champion in the past.  In the middle is Noyakh Grinberg, the Senior Champion.  To the right is Ian MacKenzie, the Junior Champion.  He is a homeschooled high school junior.  I was unfortunately not among the winners, but our family contributed to their success:  between Christopher, Joshua, and me, we scored 0 wins and 4 losses against these 3 players.

Here is Christopher playing speed chess against Ian’s younger brother:

In the Speed Chess tournament, each player has 5 minutes to make all of his moves in the game.  That means you get 5-10 seconds per move.  The game has a lot of psychology, because precise calculation is much harder.   Playing with confidence is sometimes as important as playing well, and steering your opponent into a position where he has to think gives you an advantage.  I have been playing at a much slower pace lately (usually 3 days/move on chess.com), so playing quickly did not go well.  I was 2-5 overall in the top section.  Christopher played with the lower rated players, and he also scored 2-6. 

Luka Glinsky won the top section.  Ian Mackenzie played in the lower section and won it.

When I Was Your Age…

OK, so yesterday was my birthday, and it passed without a blog post.  Honestly, my memory isn’t what it used to be, so the day was quite far along before I remembered that it was my special day.

At my not too advanced age, I can’t tell my kids much about the hardships of life when I was young.  These are the best stories I can come up with:

When I was your age…

1)  If you wanted to change the channel on the TV, there were no remotes.  You had to get up off the sofa and walk all the way across the living room (up hill both ways, of course) to the TV, and flip the switch.  Then you had to walk all the way back to the sofa.

2)  If you wanted to make a cup of tea, you couldn’t just stick a cup of water in the microwave for 1.5 minutes.  You actually had to heat the water on the stove.  And they didn’t even have all these herbal teas.

3)  You couldn’t hide in your bedroom to talk with your boyfriend on the phone, because the phone had a cord.  And you couldn’t just push the buttons:  you had to dial the number and wait for the dialer to spin back to it’s original position.  you could break a nail or get a sore finger if you made too many phone calls.

Spring Break Scholastic Chess Championships

Christopher, Susan, and I played in the Global Concepts Charter School  Chess Club  ”Spring Break Scholastic Chess Tournament” this Saturday.  I have been looking for some time for tournaments where they could play other kids, and this one worked out well.  The timing of the tournament was perfect, and the entry fee of $5.00 included pizza for lunch.  Also, parents played free.

I got to play in the parent’s section, which was a non-competitive section for adults.  I was the only “parent” who played regularly in tournaments, so I won easily.  It was relaxing after competing in the Erie City Chess Championship during March, and finishing in the middle of the pack.

I have never been in a tournament where there were about 40 elementary school kids.  The atmosphere sure is different from an “adult” tournament.  It just isn’t as quiet for some strange reason.

Also, the kids play really fast.   When the Tournament Director tells the players to start, the players move their pieces and punch their clocks so fast it sounds like popcorn popping.  I watched one of Christopher’s games, and it quickly became “blitz chess,”  with him and his opponent taking about 5 seconds for each move.  Imagine what he could do if he stopped to think. 

Here is a shot of the players at work.

The tournament had 3 sections for the kids.  Christopher and Susan were in the same section, but they managed to avoid playing each other until the penultimate round.  There is absolutely no sibling rivalry going on, ever.  Here they are, up front, battling it out:

Christopher won that round, and went 6-0 to win first prize in the Under 500 rated section.  Susan went 3-2, with one bye, and she won 3rd place in her section.   She also has the distinction of being the only player who actually thought and wrote down nearly all of her moves.  Christopher and Susan are at the lower right with their trophies.

The next time we play in a scholastic like this, Christopher and Susan won’t have to worry about playing each other, because Christopher will have to play in the next section up.

Some April Fool’s Links, and One that Isn’t

Believing what you read on the Internet is a problem, even when it’s not April 1.  Here are some interesting links from today:

A.  Google Solves Chess - Chess will never be the same again.  Until now, many mathematicians claimed it wasn’t possible to ‘solve’ chess due to the exponentially large number of possible games (10^120).  However, in a dramatic development today the search giant Google announced that it had developed an online application which could play the royal game ‘perfectly’.

Besides playing perfect chess, ‘GoogleChess’ as the application is known, will allow users to input any legal chess position either manually or by importing a standard FEN file.  The application engine then searches for the position on a vast Google database and retrieves the ‘answer’ – the best move in that position and the result of the game assuming perfect play by both sides.

B.

  Anoop Desai requests federal bailout - After less-than-stellar reviews of Tuesday night’s show, American Idol contestant Anoop Desai formerly requested a federal bailout, in the hopes of avoiding the close call Matt Giraud (a.k.a. “Timberlake lookalike”) had to suffer through on live TV last week.

Desai filed a TARP application with the Treasury Department Tuesday night, shortly after the show.

“Why would President Obama stop at cars? My fans have rights, too,” Desai, 21, told News Corp.’s Fox and Friends Wednesday morning. “Is Simon Cowell somehow above the ruler of the world? You saw how happy people were about Slumdog Millionaire. This will be a good thing for America. And you know this is the story political reporters want to write: ‘Previewing a Jindal rise, young Indian American wins.’”

C.  Obama Orders Chevrolet and Dodge Out of Nascar - Unfortunately, Car and Driver Magazine took down their original link, probably under pressure from the Obama administration, so this is a copy of the original article.

In a move sure to spark outrage, the White House announced today that GM and Chrysler must cease participation in NASCAR at the end of the 2009 season if they hope to receive any additional financial aid from the government…

“Automakers used to operate on the principle of ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday,’ but the Auto Task Force’s research just doesn’t validate that as true,” said the statement from President Obama.

 

 

On a more serious note, this looks like an April Fool’s link at first glance, but it isn’t.  Malcom Stewart, the deputy solicitor general, was arguing before the Supreme Court that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act allows the government to forbid distribution of films and books that advocate for or against a political candidate.

A Clear Danger to Free Speech: Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart Argues For Banning of Books -

Just last week, the Obama administration argued before the Supreme Court that it has no principled constitutional problem with banning books.

The case before the court, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, involves a documentary-style film, Hillary: The Movie, that ran afoul of campaign-finance laws designed to censor so-called stealth ads as well as electioneering paid for by corporations or unions.

To be fair, the film does amount to partisan advocacy. It’s a scorching indictment of the former Democratic presidential front-runner, produced by an unapologetically conservative outfit. It’s as one-sided as a MoveOn.org-produced documentary about George W. Bush would be. But, some might wonder, should partisan advocacy ever be illegal in a democracy?

Several justices asked the deputy solicitor general, Malcolm Stewart, if there would be any constitutional reason why the ban on documentaries and ads couldn’t be extended to books carrying similar messages. Stewart, speaking for a president who once taught constitutional law, said Congress can ban books “if the book contained the functional equivalent of express advocacy” for a candidate and was supported, even slightly, with corporate money. Such advocacy, Stewart conceded, could amount to negatively mentioning a politician just once in a 500-page book put out by a mainstream publisher.

Virtually every newspaper in America is owned by a corporation; does that mean they can’t endorse candidates anymore? To even ask such a question as if it were reasonable shows how close to the heart of our democracy the poison has reached.

 

This Little Light of Mine: An Earth Hour Post

The nut jobs who came up with “Earth Hour” got their symbolism perfect.  For Earth Hour, we are all supposed to turn our lights off and stop using electricity for one hour, starting at 8:30 p.m. tonight.  The UN is even turning its lights off, and they are expecting to save a whopping $102 in electricity costs.

Of course many people will switch to candles, which cause 10X to 100X the CO2 emissions that are caused by a similar amount of electric light.  (They are also romantic, and may contribute to “overpopulation,” but that is another story.)  So they won’t be in the dark at all, but they will feel good about themselves while they increase the air pollution in their homes.

But the symbolism is perfect.  The inventors of Earth Hour do not understand what humans are, and so their only solution to problems facing humanity is to plunge people into darkness.  Their only solutions to the world’s problems involve reducing what people consume, or even trying to reduce the number of people on the planet to consume resources.

What they don’t understand is that people, unlike animals, produce as well as consume.  So, I can use less than $1.00 of electricity to power my computer, and create something valuable, or analyze data to reduce thousands of dollars worth of waste in a manufacturing facility.

Or a person can use less than $1.00 of electricty to power woodworking tools that will turn a pile of wood into a dining room table. 

Electricity and other forms of energy are relatively cheap, and very useful, and people who choose to stay in the dark probably don’t understand how cheap and useful it is.

So, for earth hour and every hour, you should thank God that energy is so easy to get these days (for example, you don’t have to burn cow dung for fuel, or chop down a tree and wait months for the wood to dry), and use it freely for useful things.  Instead of living in the dark, like a mushroom, let these African children set you straight:

AFRICAN CHILDREN’S CHOIR – THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE

My Wild Neighborhood

A few years ago, we moved from a house on a city block, to a house in a cul-de-sac that borders a woods.  The difference in wildlife is amazing:  for example, my kids counted something like 46 species of birds that have landed in our yard.  That includes the flock of wild turkeys that sometimes walk through the neighbor’s yard.  They must know about the firearms ban in the city.

Unfortunately, some of the mammals are acting like they own the place.

At supper time, we often see a herd of deer moving through our neighbor’s yard.  One night, the deer were on the neighbor’s driveway, as he drove his SUV into his garage.  You would think they would be spooked and run away, but instead they walked off at the speed of a teenage jaywalker who wears his pants hanging halfway down.

I have also seen deer tracks in my FRONT yard, less than 10 feet from my mailbox.  Don’t they understand what it means to be a “wild” animal? 

I am used to seeing raccoons and the occasional skunk at night, but this morning, I saw the fattest raccoon in the world walking tward my garbage can in broad daylight.  I snuck out on my deck, hoping to catch him in the act of eating my garbage.  I threw something at my tipped-over garbage can, thinking that if he was inside, the noise would scare him off and keep him away for a day or two, until temptation was too strong again.

But no, he ambled off at about the speed of a PENNDOT worker in July.  He was probably going to visit his lawyer, to sue me for disturbing his digestion.

If these creatures get any less afraid of humans, they’ll come into my house, log on to my computer, and start reading my blog.

Since nothing else seems to work, here is a message for all of you large non-human warm-blooded creatures who trespass on my property:

For the deer:  We can eat you!  And the economy is bad enough that you are looking tastier all the time! 

For the raccoons:  If you eat my garbage and I decide you are too gross to eat, my son can play Davy Crockett with your hide!

For the turkeys:  We can stuff you, eat you, and use your tailfeathers as writing implements!

More Personnel Problems at the Treasury Department

The day after I published this, NPR decided that it was newsworthy to report on President Obama’s problems with staffing the Treasury Department.  I’m glad they read my blog.

A week later, the problems have only gotten worse.  Timothy Geithner, tax cheat, is still alone at the top of the Treasury Department, without a single deputy secretary, undersecretary, or assistant secretary.  Here is a list of the positions that need to be filled, and other than the Treasury, not a single nomination has even gone to the Senate for confirmation.  It’s not like there’s a financial crisis going on or anything.

In fact, just this week, 3 nominees for Treasury Department positions have withdrawn from consideration, before their nominations were sent to the Senate.

George Stephanopoulos, hardly a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, reported that “H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration.”  The reason given was that “an issue arose in the final stages of the vetting process.”

Before H. Rodgin Cohen, Annete Nazareth had withdrawn from consideration.  According to the article:

Nazareth was forced to withdraw from consideration for the deputy treasury slot because senators made it clear she would face tough questioning over her time at the Securities and Exchange Commission — tenure that overlapped with the agency’s failure to catch Bernie Madoff.

Meanwhile, 

the candidate for Undersecretary for International Affairs, Caroline Atkinson, was told she had to withdraw after a “tax problem” was revealed early in the vetting process, according to officials.

Wow.  If George W. Bush had these problems I sure don’t remember them.

Freedom!!!!

Some birthdays are worth more than others.  So, for example, becoming 9 gets you a birthday cake and some presents, but you don’t really get any privileges to go with it.  Becoming 18 or 21 is a big deal, however, even though I can’t figure out why the drinking age and the voting age are two different ages.

All this is preface to noting that today is Christopher’s 8th birthday.  Being 8 doesn’t mean he can drink, or vote, or get his ear pierced, or get a tattoo, or buy cigarettes, or have a girlfriend, but it does mean that he gets to wriggle free from the clutches of the nanny state in a small way.

HE IS NO LONGER REQUIRED BY LAW TO USE A CHILD SEAT IN THE CAR.

[Of course, booster seats are still recommended until he is 80 pounds, but since we have little skinny kids, he could be 12, or even 14, before he reaches that weight, so I don't see us following that rule forever.]

To quote William Wallace,

“FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-DOM!!!!!!!”

Personnel Problems At the Treasury Department

Remember when Timothy Geithner, tax cheat, was nominated to be Secretary of the Treasury? 

A lot of senators said that in normal times, his IRS problem would be a deal-breaker, but this was an emergency, and we needed a Treasury Secretary now!!! 

The guy must be pretty lonely now.

The Treasury Department is supposed to have a deputy secretary, two undersecretaries, and eight assistant secretaries.  Unfortunately, President Obama hasn’t gotten around to sending nominations for any of them to the Senate, and so our financial crisis continues with a severely understaffed Treasury Department.  (Which may be a good thing, since whenever Timothy Geithner speaks, the stock market goes down.  Imagine what he could do with assistants.)

You are probably wondering why President Obama is so far behind in his nominations.  You won’t find the answer in the Erie newspaper; and the answer was buried deep inside the Washington Post.   

Apparently, after the tax problems with Geithner, Tom Daschle, and others, Obama’s nominees are being re-vetted,  and  “According to one estimate, as many as a third of potential nominees were found to have had some tax questions to answer. ”

Why do Democrats approve of higher taxes? Because they don’t pay them.

We’re Not Dead Yet!!

It’s bad when all of your kids get the stomach flu within 6 hours of each other.

It’s really bad when all of your kids and your wife get the stomach flu.  That leaves you, the husband, in charge of all the cooking and laundry.

[If all of your kids and your wife get the stomach flu, and your name is Jim Bob Duggar, it may be time to call in FEMA.  But I digress.]

This sickness which afflicted our entire household starts with stomach upset, and then makes its victims feel like zombies for a few days afterward.   I am speaking metaphorically, of course:  real zombies can move around and keep their food down.  Our household was kind of like this:

Or, for the more musically inclined:

We wondered if it was something we ate, but we couldn’t figure out anything that could be the culprit.  It’s not like we ate the Salmon Mousse or anything.

We are all better now, and life goes on.