Catching Up! Taking the Christmas Tree Down - At Laaaaasssstttt...

Hola, darlings!

I am having guests for dinner at 4 p.m. and I've spent the morning in a frenzy of house cleaning - and I finally got the Christmas tree down, LOL!  Actually, I started the removal process on Wednesday night after I got home from the office by pulling out all of the boxes from the garage that hold the ornaments and decorations, and I proceeded to undress the tree.  It was rather sad, but a must faster process than decorating is!  Anyway, I got a long way before I called it a night.  I finished up removing the rest of the ornaments last night and put the boxes away until this coming Christmas.

I left the hard part until this morning - actually getting the tree from the front window into the garage.  In prior years I have attempted to tie it up to a more slender profile with string and then lug it, huffing and puffing all the way, across my 19' living room, down the hallway to the dinette, around the corner then across the dinette to the family room, another corner, and then wrestling the tree through the service door into the garage, where I then struggle to replace the stand pieces that always fall off, before I can actually stand the tree up again.  Then there is the complicated process of wrapping the tree in sheets to keep bugs, dust and spiders off.

I said to myself this year, "Self, there must be a better way to do this.  Let us think about this for a bit." 

My solution was to deconstruct the tree into its original three component parts.  Sounded easy enough.  When I first bought it, it came in three parts that went together easily enough.  So, bright and early this morning, I fumbled my way into the center of the three and first disconnected the three power cords that light the tree (it is one of the pre-lit kind).  Then I tugged around near the top of the tree and after some effort, voila!  The top third of the tree came off!  It actually would make a very nice little tree on its own - an idea for next year...  On to the sheet on the floor it went, and I tried to mush the branches down a little, without squishing them too much.  Then, onto the middle section.

The damnable middle section.  It would NOT separate from the bottom part of the tree!  I tugged and tugged, to no avail.  It almost all came out, but there was one section in particular that seemed to be stuck to the lower section.  I looked as best I could while balancing most of the section across my chest (it was HEAVY, let me tell you!) when, lo and behold, I spoted what looked like scotch tape!  Scotch tape?  Then I remembered.  When I put tree together this year there was a droopy branch.  No matter what I did the damn branch drooped and left a big gap between the bottom of the middle part and the top of the bottom part in that particular section of the tree, and no matter how I twisted and turned the branches, a big hole remained - much bigger than could reasonably be filled in with ornaments.  I could have parked a tank in that hole.  My eventual solution was to take a roll of scotch tape to the inner part of the offending branch where I taped it to a perfectly situated lower section branch.  I made a "rope" of scotch tape, in other words, since the string "sling" I made didn't work properly.  The scotch tape rope sling worked just fine!  Oh, and I just realized now, duh!  It was actually a drooping lower section branch that I rope-taped to a perfectly situated upper branch in the middle section.

By now, of course, I'm sweating like a stuck pig despite the 64 degree F temperature I keep my house at in the winter. I run upstairs and exchange my sweatshirt (har!) for a Goddesschess teeshirt that has seen better days.  I go back downstairs, grab scissors out of the junk drawer in the kitchen and attack the scotch tape rope.  Voila!  I can now remove the middle section of the tree!

It nearly knocked me over as I staggered backward toward the fireplace mantle under its weight (revenge???)  That section is the heaviest of the three sections by a long shot, and it was all I could do to wrestle it over to the sheet and thankfully let it drop!  KER-PLUNK.  After catching my breath, I tackled squishing it into a reasonably modest shape and I didn't care how squished the branches got, bugger tree!

Finally, only the bottom of the tree remained, the widest part, plus the collapsing stand that always falls apart at the most inconvenient moment.  I sucked in a large breath and attacked!  Two legs of the stand fell off but that was fine as I could maneuver the section onto the sheet with that part on the floor!  Success!

Well, sort of.  I had two legs on the tree stand that refused to come off.  Finally I got a hammer and attacked.  At last, they came off.  I sure hope I haven't damaged them beyond repair...  At any rate, now I had all three sections, plus the deconstructed stand on the sheet.  All I had to do was wrap it up, tie it up and drag it out to the garage.  So I thought.

Bwwwwwwwaaaaaahhhhhhhh!  I heard the Fates Evilly Laugh at me as I struggled, in vain.  The sheet was large enough to wrap around the three parts of the tree, but I lacked the rope I discovered I would have to use in order to close up the thing properly.  I briefly considered and then discarded the idea of trying to use scotch tape.  My plastic kitchen string was not up to the task - plus I would have needed an extra pair of hands in any event, which I could not manage to grow.  Damn.  Time to re-think...

After considering the problem for awhile I said to HELL WITH YOU, TREE, and grabbed two ends of the sheet and tied them together as tightly as I could.  I then grabbed the other two ends of the sheet and, tugging and pulling as hard as I could, I tied them together, too.  I then used safety pins to close up the gap in the middle.

I grabbed the "bows" at either end of the three and, to my surprise, although it was heavy I was able to actually lift the pack off the floor, flew into the dinette through the hall without banging any part of the tree into the walls (me, yeah, I banged into the walls but the tree was safe, that was the main thing), made the turn without scraping any paint off the walls or bending any branches, made it to the family room and made the turn toward the service door (I had shrewdly moved the wing chair out of the way and lifted up the area rug beforehand and opened the service door, plus cleared a path through the clutter in the garage to the target area)---success was nearly in sight!  And then -

TA DA!  I made it!  With the brilliant pre-planning for which I am justly famed (ahem), I had positioned a large box against the north wall of the garage and the sheeted three-parted tree went into it!  With some tugging and pulling I eventually got the thing to balance, leaning against the wall rather than into the garage space, threatening to tip over at any second.

I am certain that with practice, I will get much better at this.

I am sorry to see the tree go.  The living room looks very BARE now, devoid of all its holiday glitter and clutter. No more cards taped and dangling down across the top of the fireplace mantle; no more family favorite decorations scattered about the room.  This year I consolidated storage of the ornaments into what I thought was fewer boxes, but actually turned out to be more.  How could that possibly be?  Well, whatever.  The boxes are now stacked full up to the hanging rod of the closet in the guest bedroom, but there is still plent of room in the closet. 

The living room has been more or less cleaned, and I actually vacuumed AND dusted. All of the ornaments had been lovingly dusted before being wrapped in tissue and boxed.  There is now nothing left to remind me of a lovely holiday and play-off and Championship and Super Bowl season -- the tree was left up as long as the Packers were advancing through the rounds toward the Super Bowl.  Yeah, I know, silly superstition...

One of these years, I really ought to remove the lights that are draped around the round top window in my living room.  I framed and draped them up around the outer-most casing of the window with push-in pins in - 2005, maybe?  And they've been up ever since.  I've never taken them down. Well, I'd need a ladder to do it and I sure as hell don't feel like dragging the thing out of the basement, which is its lastest storage place. That window is probably 20 feet high. I remember how I teetered-and-tottered on the top rung (GULP!) a good six feet off the floor (DOUBLE GULP!) with my fear of heights kicking in (TRIPLE GULP!) as I methodically first pushed in the pins around the outer casing of the window, and then draped the extra-long string of lights. The thing is, the lights can't really be seen from the outside of the house (other than as a vague whitish glow in the vicinity of the window), so on occasion I plug them in and enjoy the white lights outlining the huge window, which frames a rather nice view of the trees and my neighbors' yards across the street, while from the outside it does not look like I've got Christmas lights on :)  I can actually do a smidgeon of "Christmas in July."  I can't quite see Russia from that window but I do see Moonrise coming up over Lake Michigan 6 or so miles to the east...  It is so beautiful. 

Now I've got to run - still much to do.

At least the tree is down for another year!

FIDE Women's Grand Prix - Doha

We've got results for Rs 2 and 3:

Round 2 on 2011/02/23 at 15:00
SNo. Name Rtg Res. Name Rtg SNo.
12 GM Dzagnidze Nana 2550 1 - 0 IM Munguntuul Batkhuyag 2410 7
8 GM Danielian Elina 2454 1 - 0 GM Chiburdanidze Maia 2502 6
9 GM Xu Yuhua 2484 0 - 1 GM Sebag Marie 2489 5
10 IM Mkrtchian Lilit 2475 0 - 1 GM Stefanova Antoaneta 2546 4
11 GM Zhu Chen 2495 ½ - ½ GM Cramling Pia 2516 3
1 GM Koneru Humpy 2607 1 - 0 IM Fierro Baquero Martha L 2363 2

Round 3 on 2011/02/24 at 15:00
SNo. Name Rtg Res. Name Rtg SNo.
2 IM Fierro Baquero Martha L 2363 1 - 0 GM Dzagnidze Nana 2550 12
3 GM Cramling Pia 2516 ½ - ½ GM Koneru Humpy 2607 1
4 GM Stefanova Antoaneta 2546 0 - 1 GM Zhu Chen 2495 11
5 GM Sebag Marie 2489 ½ - ½ IM Mkrtchian Lilit 2475 10
6 GM Chiburdanidze Maia 2502 1 - 0 GM Xu Yuhua 2484 9
7 IM Munguntuul Batkhuyag 2410 0 - 1 GM Danielian Elina 2454 8

Rank after round 3

Rank SNo. Name Rtg FED 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Pts Res. SB
1 8 GM Danielian Elina 2454 ARM * 1 1 1 3 0 3.50
2 2 IM Fierro Baquero Martha L 2363 ECU * 1 0 1 2 1 3.50
3 12 GM Dzagnidze Nana 2550 GEO 0 * 1 1 2 0 2.50
4 3 GM Cramling Pia 2516 SWE * ½ ½ ½ 1½ 1 2.00
5 1 GM Koneru Humpy 2607 IND 1 0 ½ * 1½ ½ 2.75
6 11 GM Zhu Chen 2495 QAT 0 ½ * 1 1½ ½ 1.75
7 5 GM Sebag Marie 2489 FRA 0 * 1 ½ 1½ 0 1.50
8 4 GM Stefanova Antoaneta 2546 BUL 0 * 0 1 1 1 1.00
6 GM Chiburdanidze Maia 2502 GEO 0 * 0 1 1 1 1.00
7 IM Munguntuul Batkhuyag 2410 MGL 0 0 1 * 1 1 1.00
9 GM Xu Yuhua 2484 CHN 0 1 0 * 1 1 1.00
12 10 IM Mkrtchian Lilit 2475 ARM ½ ½ 0 * 1 0 1.50

Round 2 report from official website.

Sebag's victory (black pieces) over Yuhua in R2, from Alexandra Kosteniuk's blog.

Susan Polgar's coverage R3, Round 3 games. 

The Horse That Sweat "Blood"

From People's Daily Online
Discovery revives legend of 'blood-sweating' horse
08:25, February 22, 2011

Recently, bones of 80 horses were unearthed from two subordinate tomb pits of Emperor Wudi, who lived more than 2,000 years ago in the Han dynasty. The discovery may rekindle a legend about the "blood-sweating" horse in ancient China, Xinhua reported.

The story of Wudi, "Emperor of the Silk Road," and the "blood-sweating" horse has already become a legend of Chinese culture, and many people are interested in the legendary horse, which disappeared long ago.

Yang Wuzhan, an archaeologist who took part in the excavation of the mausoleum of Emperor Wudi, said they started excavating the two pits in September 2009 and unearthed 40 bones of horses from each pit.

Each of the two pits has a huge cavern containing 20 caves and each is guarded by two stallions and a terracotta warrior, Yang said.

He said archaeologists have conducted laboratory work on the skeletons and confirmed all were adult male horses. "Scientists will soon carry out DNA tests hoping to determine the genus of the horses."

The finding was likely to rekindle a centuries-old Chinese legend about the mysterious blood-sweating horse from Central Asia, Yang said.

"The legend goes that Emperor Wudi offered a hefty reward for anyone who could find him a mysterious 'blood-sweating' purebred horse that was said to have roamed Central Asia, but was rarely seen in China," he said.

Today, the horse is identified as the Akhal-Teke, one of the world's oldest and most unique breeds.

Wudi left China's earliest written record of the breed, in a poem he composed for his Akhal-Teke mount, describing it as a "heavenly horse."

The horse is known for its speed, endurance and perspiration of a blood-like fluid as it gallops along. It was also believed to be the horse ridden by Genghis Khan (1167-1227).

Wudi was best known for his opening of the Silk Road, an ancient trade route linking Asia and Europe.

Construction of his mausoleum began in 139 BC, a year after he was enthroned at 16 years of age. It took 53 years to build.

The mausoleum had more than 400 sacrificial pits, more than the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang, the "first emperor" of a united China.

China Daily contributed to the story.
By Wang Hanlu, People's Daily Online

*************************************************************************

Here is some information abut the Akhal Teke horse breed from Wikipedia.

Romanian Women's Chess Championship

February 12 - 20, 2011
Sarata Monteoru


Leading Final Round 9 Standings:

Rk Name Ti FED Rtg Pts TB1 TB2 TB3
1 Foisor Cristina-Adela WGM ROU 2405 7.5 39.5 42.50 39.0
2 Bulmaga Irina WIM ROU 2260 7.5 38.5 39.25 37.0
3 Peptan Corina-Isabela WGM ROU 2414 7.0 40.0 39.50 35.0
4 Sgircea Silvia-Raluca WFM ROU 2203 6.5 36.5 29.25 32.5
5 Sandu Mihaela WGM ROU 2213 6.0 36.0 29.25 31.5
6 Baciu Anca-Otilia WFM ROU 2123 6.0 31.0 24.50 27.0
7 Foisor Mihaela-Veronica WFM ROU 2193 5.5 39.0 26.25 29.5
8 Mathe Katalin WCM ROU 2033 5.5 33.0 22.00 26.5
9 Padurariu Ioana-Smaranda WIM ROU 2160 5.0 40.0 22.50 31.0
10 Paulet Iozefina WGM ROU 2264 5.0 38.0 25.00 28.5
11 Dragomirescu Angela WIM ROU 2174 5.0 36.0 23.25 28.0
12 L'ami Alina WGM ROU 2331 5.0 33.5 22.00 25.5
13 Visanescu Daria-Ioana WFM ROU 1929 5.0 33.0 20.50 23.0
14 Mosnegutu Mariana WIM ROU 2178 5.0 32.5 21.75 25.0
15 Gelip Ioana WCM ROU 1952 5.0 31.0 17.50 23.0
16 Vasile Teodora WCM ROU 1987 5.0 28.0 16.25 23.5
17 Anusca Madalina-Maria WCM ROU 2029 4.5 39.0 20.50 30.0
18 Uta Adeline-Ramona WNM ROU 2096 4.5 38.5 22.75 29.0
19 Lolici Iselin-Amanda WCM ROU 1988 4.5 32.5 15.00 24.5
20 Florea Dorina WNM ROU 1906 4.5 30.0 15.00 21.0
21 Bulmaga Elena I ROU 1825 4.5 24.5 12.50 19.5
22 Bogdan Elizaveta I ROU 1834 4.0 30.5 13.50 19.5
23 Anton Roxana-Ana WCM ROU 1854 4.0 29.5 12.00 19.0
24 Serbanescu Diana-Maria I ROU 1870 4.0 28.5 13.75 18.5
25 Bratu Andreea I ROU 1724 4.0 28.0 11.75 17.5
26 Vasilescu Maria WCM ROU 1784 4.0 27.5 15.25 18.0
27 Iftime Diana I ROU 1624 4.0 26.5 14.00 17.0
28 Cucu Teodora-Laura I ROU 1545 4.0 26.0 12.50 16.0
29 Cusmuliuc Diana-Elena I ROU 1693 3.5 31.5 12.50 19.0
30 Stanciu Ioana-Georgiana I ROU 1683 3.0 26.0 9.00 16.0
31 Porcoleanu Doina-Olga I ROU 1811 3.0 22.5 9.25 13.0
32 Moldovan Petruta-Alisia I ROU 1691 3.0 21.0 9.00 8.0
33 Copilu Codruta-Alexa I ROU 1535 2.5 26.0 9.25 15.0
34 Ciocan Maria-Alexandra I ROU 1476 2.5 23.0 8.00 12.0
35 Nastase Andreea-Cristina I ROU 1482 2.5 23.0 8.00 12.0

Bulgarian Women's Chess Championship

February 7 - 13, 2011
Plovdiv

60th ch-BUL w Plovdiv BUL Mon 7th Feb 2011 - Sun 13th Feb 2011 Leading Final Round 7 Standings:
Rk	Name	Ti	FED	Rtg	Pts
1	Sirkova Darena	WFM	BUL	2102	5.5
2	Krumova Ani		BUL	1885	5.0
3	Yordanova Svetla	WIM	BUL	2156	4.5
4	Ivanova Simoneta		BUL	1838	4.5
5	Todorova Kalina		BUL	1813	4.5
6	Zlatanova Emilia	WIM	BUL	2049	4.0
7	Nestorova Lozanka		BUL	2051	4.0
8	Savova Stefka	WIM	BUL	2116	4.0
9	Vasileva Veronika		BUL	1705	4.0
10	Galunova Tsveta		BUL	1998	4.0
11	Vasileva Cveta		BUL	1471	3.5
12	Atanasova Elitsa		BUL	1743	3.5
13	Koleva Djuliana		BUL	1757	3.0
14	Ivanova Gergana		BUL	1786	3.0
15	Gancheva Julina		BUL	1695	3.0
16	Sergeeva Petrova Boryana		BUL	1759	3.0
17	Milanova Maria		BUL	1915	3.0
18	Miteva Silvena		BUL	1679	2.5
19	Penkova Mariana		BUL	1904	1.5

Polish Women's Chess Championship

February 12 - 20, 2011
Warsaw

ch-POL w Warsaw POL Sat 12th Feb 2011 - Sun 20th Feb 2011. Category: 2. Ave: (2299)
Rk	Name	Title	FED	Elo	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Pts	TPR
1	Zawadzka, Jolanta	WGM	POL	2371	#	=	1	1	1	=	1	=	1	=	7	2510
2	Socko, Monika	GM	POL	2489	=	#	1	1	1	0	=	1	=	1	6.5	2443
3	Szczepkowska-Horowska, Karina	WGM	POL	2254	0	0	#	1	=	1	1	0	1	1	5.5	2383
4	Jaracz, Barbara	WGM	POL	2274	0	0	0	#	=	1	=	1	1	1	5	2344
5	Worek, Joanna	WIM	POL	2274	0	0	=	=	#	1	1	0	1	=	4.5	2301
6	Toma, Katarzyna	WIM	POL	2238	=	1	0	0	0	#	1	1	0	=	4	2262
7	Dworakowska, Joanna	IM	POL	2334	0	=	0	=	0	0	#	1	1	1	4	2252
8	Kulon, Klaudia	WFM	POL	2220	=	0	1	0	1	0	0	#	0	1	3.5	2227
9	Majdan-Gajewska, Joanna	WGM	POL	2359	0	=	0	0	0	1	0	1	#	=	3	2167
10	Lach, Aleksandra	WFM	POL	2172	=	0	0	0	=	=	0	0	=	#	2	2093

Belarus Women's Chess Championship

January 16 - 24, 2011
Minsk

Final Results:

ch-BLR Women 2011 Minsk BLR Sun 16th Jan 2011 - Mon 24th Jan 2011. Category: None. Ave: (2098)
Rk	Name	Title	FED	Elo	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Pts	TPR
1	Sharevich, Anna	WGM	BLR	2332	#	=	1	=	=	0	1	1	1	1	6.5	2238
2	Ziaziulkina, Nastassia	WIM	BLR	2301	=	#	1	0	1	=	1	=	=	1	6	2201
3	Eidelson, Rakhil	WGM	BLR	2245	0	0	#	1	1	1	=	=	1	1	6	2207
4	Kusenkova, Natallia		BLR	2026	=	1	0	#	=	0	=	1	1	1	5.5	2186
5	Stetsko, Lanita	FM	BLR	2142	=	0	0	=	#	1	=	1	1	1	5.5	2173
6	Revo, Tatiana		BLR	2031	1	=	0	1	0	#	0	=	1	=	4.5	2106
7	Homiakova, Elena	WFM	BLR	2157	0	0	=	=	=	1	#	0	1	1	4.5	2092
8	Bogdan, Ekaterina		BLR	1991	0	=	=	0	0	=	1	#	1	=	4	2067
9	Morgaenko, Ekaterina		BLR	1828	0	=	0	0	0	0	0	0	#	1	1.5	1855
10	Malatsilava, Volha		BLR	1930	0	0	0	0	0	=	0	=	0	#	1	1766

6th FIDE Women's Grand Prix

6th FIDE Women Grand Prix 2011 (Doha QAT)
Tue 22nd Feb 2011 - Sat 5th Mar 2011

Website

From The Week in Chess:  The first round of the FIDE Women's Grand Prix in Doha got off to a start with a bang with only one draw in the six games. It also saw a decisive battle between the only two players in the field that can win the Grand Prix as a whole. Nana Dzagnidze's win with black against Humpy Koneru, even at this early stage, pushes her closer to winning the whole event by damaging her rival and strengthening her quest for at least second place.


Rank after round 1

Rank SNo. Name Rtg FED 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Pts Res. SB
1 2 IM Fierro Baquero Martha L 2363 ECU * 1 1 0 0.00
7 IM Munguntuul Batkhuyag 2410 MGL * 1 1 0 0.00
8 GM Danielian Elina 2454 ARM * 1 1 0 0.00
9 GM Xu Yuhua 2484 CHN * 1 1 0 0.00
12 GM Dzagnidze Nana 2550 GEO * 1 1 0 0.00
6 3 GM Cramling Pia 2516 SWE * ½ ½ ½ 0.25
10 IM Mkrtchian Lilit 2475 ARM ½ * ½ ½ 0.25
8 1 GM Koneru Humpy 2607 IND 0 * 0 0 0.00
4 GM Stefanova Antoaneta 2546 BUL 0 * 0 0 0.00
5 GM Sebag Marie 2489 FRA 0 * 0 0 0.00
6 GM Chiburdanidze Maia 2502 GEO 0 * 0 0 0.00
11 GM Zhu Chen 2495 QAT 0 * 0 0 0.00

SNo. Name Rtg Res. Name Rtg SNo.

1 GM Koneru Humpy 2607 0 - 1 GM Dzagnidze Nana 2550 12
2 IM Fierro Baquero Martha L 2363 1 - 0 GM Zhu Chen 2495 11
3 GM Cramling Pia 2516 ½ - ½ IM Mkrtchian Lilit 2475 10
4 GM Stefanova Antoaneta 2546 0 - 1 GM Xu Yuhua 2484 9
5 GM Sebag Marie 2489 0 - 1 GM Danielian Elina 2454 8
6 GM Chiburdanidze Maia 2502 0 - 1 IM Munguntuul Batkhuyag 2410 7

Egypt, Egypt, Egypt!

[D]amage to Egypt's heritage may have been greater than previously thought, as officials reported new cases of break-ins at archaeological sites...

Well, I figured the archaeologists who were out in the field weren't lying about what was going on. Now we know.

February 17, 2011
AP
King Tut's stolen dad found; Egypt sites to open  The good news is that the small (about a foot tall)  Akhenaten has been recovered!

From Science
Egypt's Hawass Fires Back at Critics
by Andrew Lawler on 22 February 2011, 12:02 PM

More on Akhenaten's statue recovered
Priceless Pharaoh Statue Found Near Garbage Can
February 17, 2011
Discovery News

Egyptians have launched a variety of "Come Back to Egypt" campaigns on the internet and social media, which is really cool! More power to them, but will tourists be so ready to come back so quickly?

'Come back to Egypt' campaigns aim to attract tourists, Egyptian expats
Thu, 17/02/2011 - 12:36
Heba Helmy
Almasryalyoum English Edition

A Little Squirrel Action

I have not posted anything about my furry little friends for awhile. A human friend sent this to me.



And a slightly more sophisticated version:

Ice Storm

In vain did I try shoveling out a path from my front stoop to the road and mail-box this morning.  My shovel does not even penetrate the top layer of the ice-snow mixture.  Goddess - I don't even know whether to laugh or cry.  So I'm just trying to laugh about it as my crunch-crunch-crunch footsteps are left behind and the shovel makes no dent at all.

I took these photos of the barberry shrubs that are alongside my front stoop.  They, at least, were a little spot of beauty in this frigid wasteland.  Oy, and I hear the plowers/salters coming through again - not that it has made any difference on the slick roads in the subdivision in which I live; except for piling up more frozen non-penetrable ice chunks at the foot of my driveway.  You know what - I'm getting too old for this.  Damn.

Ruan Lufei to Appear at North American Chess Center, Skokie, IL

Great news!

The North Shore Chess Center's March Master Simul / Lecture will feature WGM Lufei Ruan. WGM Ruan was the runner up in the 2010 World Women's Chess Championship! She will provide us insights on her experiences of the championship tournament, review 2-3 games from the event and take questions and answers from the audience.

The lecture will begin at 4pm on March 12. The event is free to members of the North Shore Chess Center and $10 for non-members. You can join for membership up to the beginning of the event!

Space is limited to the first 50 registrants.
Members maintain priority registration over non-members.

North Shore Chess Center
5500 West Touhy Avenue Suite A | Skokie, IL 60077
(p) 847.423.8626 | (f) 847.779.0324

Website.

End Game: Bobby Fischer - from Salon

A review of Frank Brady's new book.

Sunday, Jan 30, 2011 16:01 ET
Laura Miller
"Endgame": The genius and madness of Bobby Fischer
How did one of the greatest chess players of all time end up a paranoid, hate-filled old man?

On the cover of Life, 12 Nov 1977.
Fischer, at the peak of his career.

The life of Bobby Fischer was a compendium of secrets and puzzles from the very beginning. Who was the biological father of the 11th World Chess Champion, possibly the greatest player of all time, and certainly among the top five? Why did he retire from the game after winning his historic match with Boris Spassky in 1972 and refrain from playing publicly for 20 years? What was he doing during those two decades? Why did he espouse a venomous anti-Semitism despite being Jewish himself as well as close to and reliant upon many Jewish friends? Why did those friends put up with him and why, over and over again, did they run to his aid, when his behavior toward them was often contemptuous? And, above all, was he insane and, if so, did his genius have some connection to his madness?

Frank Brady's "Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall -- From America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness," cannot answer these questions conclusively, but it presents Fischer's story with an almost Olympian evenhandedness that ends up making it far more absorbing than any sensationalized account. Brady knew Fischer as a child, as Fischer was emerging as a chess prodigy in New York City, but the author renders himself almost invisible in this book. The cloud of chaos and ire that Fischer walked around in all his life doesn't seem to have infected his biographer at all.

It should be said upfront that "Endgame" contains no detailed accounts of chess games or moves, and can be read and understood even by those who don't play at all. (My most recent game was with a 6-year-old; we were evenly matched, given that he'd just learned the rules and I could barely remember them.) The book may, perhaps, leave chess aficionados unsatisfied on that account, but this decision makes "Endgame" intelligible to anyone interested in the human aspect of Fischer's life and career.

Among the misperceptions Brady aims to correct is the prevalent belief that Fischer was neglected or unloved by his mother, Regina, a brilliant, Swiss-born American who married a German biophysicist while studying medicine in Moscow. Bobby was born in Chicago, at a point after his mother had separated from his legal father, who was living in Latin America and unable to enter the U.S. due to his Communist ties. There are goods reasons to believe that Bobby's biological father was a Hungarian Jewish physicist (and refugee from Nazi Germany), Paul Nemenyi.

Brady offers many instances in which Regina supported and provided for her son throughout his life (including signing over her Social Security checks to him during his 20 years of reclusion), pointing out that most of the privations and loneliness of Bobby's childhood arose from the fact that the family was very poor and Regina a working single mother. She did allow Bobby to travel alone to chess matches when he was a young as 9, and when she moved overseas to resume her medical studies, she left the 16-year-old boy to live alone in the family's Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment. However, given her son's unquenchable obsession with the game and general disregard for adult authority, she probably felt she had little choice in such matters. As far as Brady is concerned, the relationship between mother and son was always loving.

However, if Bobby suffered from a genetically rooted mental disorder, chances are he got it from Regina. She went through a brief period of disorganization and near-vagrancy at the time he was born, an episode ominously echoed by the years Bobby spent living in flophouses and shambling around Pasadena, Calif., after the 1972 match with Spassky. Whoever his biological father was, Bobby also inherited a highly specialized and often volatile intelligence that would also make him the youngest American to attain the rank of chessmaster at 14 -- and at 15, the youngest international grandmaster to that date.

The qualities contributing to these triumphs were Fischer's ferocious capacity for total focus on chess, his highly competitive personality and his phenomenal memory. In his youth, he lived, breathed and ate chess -- literally: Brady recounts that the pieces of his personal set became encrusted with crumbs and other food, and Fischer jokingly complained when the admirer who bought the set as a keepsake cleaned them. His mother often worried that he was neglecting his schoolwork (not to mention his social life), and at one point insisted on conducting all their domestic conversations in Spanish until he improved enough to do well on a language exam.

Fischer's outside interests never did him much good, however. He seems to have had little use for romance and sex (until, late in life, he became preoccupied with the need to reproduce his own genius), and his more profound ruminations led him first to embrace an evangelical church run by a radio preacher, then to dabble in a series of faiths. His final spiritual flirtation before his death in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2008, was with Roman Catholicism, but he also considered the philosophy of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, always adopting a one-foot-in/one-foot-out stance toward the rules and proscriptions of any given creed.

One of the few constants in Fischer's life -- besides chess, that is -- was his anti-Semitism, a bizarrely capricious version of the prejudice that absolved anyone he considered a "good person" (whatever their faith or ethnic background) and labeled anyone he disliked or distrusted a "Jew," again without regard to their religion or background. He was also convinced, at various points in his life, that the USSR and the U.S. government were plotting to assassinate him.

Although many of Fischer's anxieties sound delusional, he was that rare paranoid whom many people are genuinely out to get. His complaints, early in his career, that Soviet chess players were colluding to maintain their nation's dominance of the world's championship turned out to be well-founded. At the height of his rivalry with the Soviet players, a secret chess lab was even set up in Russia to suss out his game and devise ways to thwart him. Due to his mother's leftist activism and his own visit to Moscow as a teenage prodigy, the family's phone was tapped, their associates questioned and their lives monitored by the FBI.

The U.S. government's animus toward Fischer began with his rematch with Spassky in 1992, an event sponsored by a Serbian propagandist. By participating, Fischer was in violation of American sanctions against Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. He had been refusing to pay income taxes for years, in retaliation for a lawsuit that went against him in an American court. This hadn't been a problem during the 1980s, when he was mostly broke, and U.S. officials might even have been willing to shrug off the sanctions violations, but in the 2000s, Fischer made dozens of appalling anti-American and anti-Semitic broadcasts from a small radio station in Japan, where he was living. These got onto the Internet, and in particular the ones made directly after 9/11 may have provoked the U.S. to step up its efforts to chastise him.

Fischer became in effect a man without a country, living in Eastern Europe and Asia, until he was arrested for a passport violation while entering Japan and detained there for months as his fate was disputed. Finally, Iceland agreed to offer Fischer citizenship in 2005 and he spent the last three years of his life there. He died of kidney failure at 64, refusing dialysis because he mistrusted doctors and conventional medicine.

Just how crazy was Bobby Fischer? Those best qualified to judge, such as the psychiatrist friend who kept him company in his final days, insisted he was not schizophrenic or psychotic; he didn't hallucinate or lose touch with reality. However, he clearly wasn't mentally healthy. The intensity of his attention to chess was certainly compulsive, and it unbalanced his life in addition to making him one of the game's greatest players.

But Fischer's celebrity seems to have done him more damage than anything else. It fueled the grandiosity that lies at the heart of all paranoia and it turned him into an imperious diva who inflicted ridiculous demands -- that a hotel raise the level of his toilet seat by exactly 1 inch, for example, or that he be paid outlandish fees just to discuss the possibility of a high-profile match -- apparently for the sake of exercising arbitrary power. People tolerated treatment from him they would not have suffered from anyone else, which surely didn't help with his difficulty perceiving limits. The world loved Bobby Fischer for his genius and his charisma, and too much of it forgave him too easily for his hateful, crackpot diatribes. But for all that it adored him, it didn't do him any favors.

Buy it at Barnes and Noble.  I prefer to remember Fischer as that handsome young man at the top of his game.

A Beautiful Chess Chess at the Met

Chess set, late 18th century

Russian (Kholmogory)
Walrus ivory
Pfeiffer Fund, 1960 (60.146a-pp)

Source: Chess set [Russian (Kholmogory)] (60.146)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Three of the pieces are modern replacements.


Chess was avidly played in Russia by czars, princes, and merchants. The design of this chess set reflects the Indian influence in the introduction of the game to Russia, probably during the eighth or ninth century. Initially, the moves were a bit different from the European version of the game.

Although the two sides of this set—Russian Christians versus Muslims—are not differentiated by color, it is easy to distinguish them and the type was a standard Russian design. As in Indian sets, there are ships for rooks and elephants for bishops. The king is seated on a throne. Also as in Indian sets, next to the king is his vizier, here represented as a Roman officer. The pawns are Roman and Muslim soldiers. The elephants of the Christian side have mahouts but there are none on the Muslim side. The pierced, ajouré bases of these pieces are attached with ivory pins. They are carved with Neoclassical acanthus-leaf tips, which helps to date this set.

The town of Kholmogory, roughly fifty miles up the river from Archangel, was famous for its carvers, who used bone and walrus tusk for their productions. The sea mammal was landed in Archangel and every part of the walrus—the meat, skin, feet, and ivory tusks—was valued, for food and other products.

Source: Chess set [Russian (Kholmogory)] (60.146)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

New Jen Shahade Book: Play Like a Girl: Tactics by 9Queens

From Jen Shahade (two-time winner of the U.S. Women's Chess Championship):

My latest book, Play Like a Girl!: Tactics by 9Queens  was just released from Mongoose Press. The book is filled with chess puzzles and combinations, all executed by female chess champions. A perfect prequel to my first book, Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport, I hope Play Like a Girl! will motivate girls and women to enter the male-dominated chess field. The book is available at 9queens.org, amazon, Mongoosepress or USCF Sales. All author royalties go to 9 Queens initiatives to bring chess to those most in need of its benefits.

 Daniel Meirom and I created the book trailer below, Lipstick Checkmate. It features me and Abby Marshall, the first woman to win the Denker tournament of high school champions, playing on a chess set, composed of items from long forgotten make-up bags, luxury brand promotions and drugstore bargain bins. If you like it, pass it along or tweet/facebook it! Also see some production stills on jennifershahade.com. 

Finally, if you would like to report on or write about Play Like a Girl, contact me for more information, the official press release or a review copy.

Thanks for all your support and have a great weekend, Jennifer 

--
Jennifer Shahade
uschess.org/clo
jennifershahade.com
9queens.org
twitter.com/jenshahade

Stormy Weather!

Ohmygoddess, Mother Nature is doing a number on Wisconsin today, geez!  Just barely had all the snow melted out of my driveway after a week-long thaw that was soooooo nice (except for the icy sidewalks in the morning caused by melting snow, before the temperatures rose above freezing on a couple of days) when today, ICE/SNOW/RAIN/ICE/SNOW/RAIN.  You get the idea.  I expect before this is over there will be hundreds of trees severely damaged, thousands of people without power because ice-coated power lines snap under the strain, and several people killed in car accidents because stupid people WILL drive in this weather and go too fast for conditions. 

We were supposed to have an investment club meeting this morning (we meet for breakfast at 9 a.m.) but we called the meeting off after consultations on the forecast yesterday afternoon.  However, by 8 a.m. this morning no sign of the storm.  I got dressed, had breakfast, read some of the newspaper, and headed out to the supermarket at 9 a.m.  It felt "wet" outside, that is, the air was heavy, but there was no precipitation.  That is, until I got half a block away from home, LOL!  I first heard (did not feel) little "pings" on what was left of the snow banks and, about a minute later, could feel "pings" on my now being pelted with ice pellets face. Thank goddess for a good hood!  That mostly sheltered my face as I continued my mile walk to pick up essential items: wine, bread, milk, eggs, birdfood.  I have a 2 week supply of squirrels' peanuts and almonds already in stock :)

By the time I made my way back home it was snowing in earnest, the roads and sidewalks were already coated over and the salt trucks were already out!  I was to the market and back in 55 minutes (I had a long wait in the check-out line, that slowed me down; evidently everyone else had the same idea I had - get to the store before the storm started.  Crap!) .  Ever since, it's been snow/ice/rain in repeating cycles.  I've got the t.v. on now and there is an unending scroll across the bottom with cancellations.

I just hope my power doesn't go out!

Tomorrow it looks like I'll be trying out my Yak Trax for the first time.  No more penguin-walking to the bus stop!

Here's Five Demi-Goddesses' Tribute to the Queen of Soul

I didn't watch the Grammy's - gag me - but tonight I came across this totally worthwhile clip from the broadcast show of a tribute to Aretha Franklin - good job, ladies, good job!

Three Million Women at Close of Festival for Goddess Kannagi

Reported at gulf-times.com online
3mn women take part in temple event
By Ashraf Padanna/Thiruvananthapuram
February 19, 2011

More than 3mn women swarmed the Kerala capital yesterday to offer ‘pongala’ to a Hindu goddess in what’s billed as the largest congregation of female devotees in the world.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, 2.5mn had participated in the women-only event in 2009. Authorities put this year’s figure at around 3mn.

Devotees from the southern districts of Kerala as well as the bordering districts of Thirunelveli and Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu visit the city on the culmination of the 10-day annual festival at the Attukal Bhagavathi temple and cook the ‘pongala’ offering for goddess Kannagi.

The offering is prepared using rice, jaggery and coconut on makeshift hearths along the city roads. Then priests sprinkle sacred water on the cooked rice, and the women begin their return journey.

Yesterday’s festivities began around 11am when the chief priest of the temple lit an earthenware pot from the fire of the sanctum sanctorum of the temple.

It was then passed on to the women devotees, who were lined up across the main roads of the capital city, occupying a staggering 13sq km of area.

Cricketer Sreeshant’s mother Savitri Devi, who came from the port city of Kochi, was among those who made the offering along with several film and television stars.

“I prayed not for my son but the whole Indian team who are playing against Bangladesh in Dhaka today and other matches in the World Cup. They had all come to our home and they are like my son,” Devi said. “I used to come and offer pongala every year and I believe it’s because the goddess’s grace that Sreeshant is in the team.”

The temple is dedicated to Attukal Bhagavathi who is believed to be an incarnation of Kannaki, the central character of the Tamil epic Silappadhikaram.

“I’m here for the first time. I am really excited to see such huge crowds of women,” said 43-year-old Retnamma Kumar, who came from Kottayam.

*************************************************

It's hard for me to wrap my brain around 3,000,000 women converging on one spot.  That's like five times the population of my home city!  Well, more power to them, and I hope their prayers and offerings bring positive results.  We sure as hell need it these days.  Perhaps if we had more worship of the Goddess and less worship of Mammon, particularly in the USA, we'd all be better off. 

2011 Aeroflot - Final Standings

A Group (86 players):

Rank Name Flags Score Fed. M/F Rating TPR W-We Col.Bal. Rat-HiLo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 GM Le, Quang Liem 6.5 VIE M 2664 2809 +1.73 -1 2649.4 1 1 1 1 ½ ½ 1 0 ½
59 WGM Ju, Wenjun w 4.0 CHN F 2514 2557 +0.54 -1 2606.0 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ 0 1 ½ 1
68 GM Kosteniuk, Alexandra w 3.5 RUS F 2498 2493 -0.08 -1 2583.3 0 ½ ½ 0 1 0 0 1 ½
80 WGM Pogonina, Natalija w 3.0 RUS F 2472 2381 -0.90 1 2563.3 0 0 0 1 ½ 0 ½ 0 +
84 WGM Paikidze, Nazi w 2.5 GEO F 2455 2402 -0.66 1 2575.0 ½ 0 0 0 ½ 1 0 0 ½

B Group (106 players):

Rank Name Flags Score Fed. M/F Rating TPR W-We Col.Bal. Rat-HiLo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 GM Kotanjian, Tigran 7.0 ARM M 2519 2705 +2.10 -1 2490.4 ½ 1 1 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 ½
26 GM Zhao, Xue w 5.5 CHN F 2494 2518 +0.31 1 2439.1 1 1 ½ 1 ½ 0 0 1 ½
49 Guo, Qi w 4.5 CHN F 2310 2424 +1.39 -1 2423.4 ½ ½ ½ 0 0 1 ½ 1 ½
64 WGM Kochetkova, Julia w 4.0 SVK F 2311 2406 +1.16 -1 2451.6 0 1 1 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ ½
65 WFM Mammadova, Gulnar Marfat q w 4.0 AZE F 2284 2363 +0.97 -1 2405.9 0 1 ½ 0 1 0 0 ½ 1
67 IM Romanko, Marina w 4.0 RUS F 2404 2445 +0.52 1 2499.3 ½ ½ 1 0 1 0 0 1 0
85 WIM Ivakhinova, Inna w 3.5 RUS F 2324 2326 -0.03 1 2420.4 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ 1
87 Wang, Jue w 3.5 CHN F 2252 2322 +0.77 1 2400.6 ½ 0 1 ½ 0 ½ 0 0 1
91 WIM Tarasova, Viktoriya w 3.0 RUS F 2289 2291 +0.04 -1 2417.1 0 ½ ½ 1 ½ 0 ½ 0 0
93 WIM Charochkina, Daria w 3.0 RUS F 2314 2271 -0.53 -1 2401.9 0 ½ 0 1 0 0 0 ½ 1
96 WGM Kovanova, Baira w 3.0 RUS F 2391 2202 -2.26 1 2315.4 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 0 ½ 1
100 WFM Bajt, Indira w 2.5 SLO F 2215 2217 -0.02 -1 2381.6 0 ½ ½ 1 0 0 0 ½ 0
102 WFM Adamowicz, Katarzyna w 2.5 POL F 2103 2164 +0.47 -1 2324.7 0 0 0 0 ½ 1 0 1 0
104 WFM Saduakassova, Dinara w 2.0 KAZ F 2225 2125 -1.14 -1 2358.1 ½ 0 0 0 0 0 1 ½ 0
105 WIM Dolzhykova, Kateryna w 2.0 UKR F 2303 2079 -2.53 -1 2304.1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0

C Group (106 players):

Rank Name Flags Score Fed. M/F Rating TPR W-We BH 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 Shahinyan, David j 8.0 ARM M 2271 2558 +2.73 52.0 1 1 ½ ½ 1 1 1 1 1
10 WGM Burtasova, Anna w 6.0 RUS F 2294 2299 +0.08 47.5 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1
13 WFM Repina, Varvara w 6.0 RUS F 2280 2273 -0.02 47.0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0
19 Xu, Huahua w 6.0 CHN F 2104 2288 +1.96 43.0 1 0 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 1 ½
24 Rjanova, Valery w 5.5 RUS F 2156 2249 +1.26 46.5 1 0 1 1 0 1 ½ 0 1
25 WFM Kineva, Ekaterina w 5.5 RUS F 2120 2162 +0.45 46.5 1 0 1 ½ 1 0 0 + 1
30 WCM Enkhtuul, Altanulzii w 5.5 MGL F 2119 2259 +1.83 43.0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 ½
33 WFM Nikolaeva, Alexandra w 5.5 RUS F 2199 2146 -0.45 35.5 ½ 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1
52 Dogodkina, Julia w 4.5 RUS F 2070 2196 +1.48 43.5 1 0 ½ 1 0 0 1 1 0
54 WIM Kharashuta, Ekaterina w 4.5 RUS F 2296 2147 -1.74 42.0 1 ½ 1 0 ½ 0 1 0 ½
68 WFM Shustaeva, Natalia w 4.0 RUS F 2105 1864 -1.80 39.0 1 0 1 0 0 0 ½ ½ 1
83 Saikhanzaya, Ganbaatar w 3.5 MGL F 1704 1927 +2.12 34.5 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 ½ 0
92 Anu, Bayar w 3.0 MGL F 1957 1867 -0.96 36.5 0 ½ ½ 0 1 0 0 1 0
94 Polozova, Marina w 3.0 RUS F 0 1892 1892 32.0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0
96 Khalilova, Khadija Gyunduz w 3.0 AZE F 1702 1864 +1.44 29.0 0 ½ ½ 0 0 1 0 0 1

Games in Ancient Indus' Mohenjo-daro

Article from Past Horizons
Wednesday, February 16, 2011 | Featured, News

Play was a central element of people’s lives as far back as 4,000 years ago. This has been revealed by an archaeology thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, which investigates the social significance of the phenomenon of play and games in the Bronze Age Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan.

It is not uncommon for archaeologists excavating old settlements to come across play and game-related finds, but within established archaeology these types of finds have often been disregarded. [That sure is right!]

“They have been regarded, for example, as signs of harmless pastimes and thus considered less important for research, or have been reinterpreted based on ritual aspects or as symbols of social status,” explains author of the thesis Elke Rogersdotter.

She has studied play-related artefacts found at excavations in the ruins of the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro in present-day Pakistan. The remains constitute the largest urban settlement from the Bronze Age in the Indus Valley, a cultural complex of the same era as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The settlement is difficult to interpret; for example, archaeologists have not found any remains of temples or palaces. It has therefore been tough to offer an opinion on how the settlement was managed or how any elite class marked itself out.

Elke Rogersdotter’s study shows some surprising results. Almost every tenth find from the ruined city is play-related. They include, for instance, different forms of dice and gaming pieces. In addition, the examined finds have not been scattered all over. Repetitive patterns have been discerned in the spatial distribution, which may indicate specific locations where games were played.

“The marked quantity of play-related finds and the structured distribution shows that playing was already an important part of people’s everyday lives more than 4,000 years ago,” says Elke.

Rest of article.

This is the caption from the article:
Chess pieces from Mohenjo-daro.
Photo: bennylin0724, Flickr

Are these chess pieces? As far as I know, there is no concrete evidence that chess was played 4,000 years ago by the people living in the Indus valley city-states/settlements.  But, it has to be admitted that the pieces are suggestive of the Staunton-designed pawns from the 19th century which, perhaps, own their inspiration to just such ancient game pieces.*  But to call them chess pieces?  Blasphemy!  Then again, "if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..."

* It is known, for instance, that Staunton modeled his knight pieces on the horses in the Elgin Marbles ensconced in the British Museum.

Unfortunately, we don't know exactly where the pieces in the photograph were excavated, or how old they are.  The use of the photo in the article suggests that they are all from Mohenjo-daro, but it doesn't really say so, does it?  These could be a collection of gaming pieces from any museum in the world, which often seem to lump together without distinguishing ivory Islamic chess pieces together with 4,000 year old Egyptian faience senet pieces, 900 year old hnefatafl pieces and 400 year old bone chess pieces from Russia! 

3,000 Year Old Tomb Complex Being Excavated in Xinjiang

This article is mostly propaganda - it hints at special finds but doesn't describe anything in detail -- and yet still manages to give away the location of the tomb complex sufficiently clear enough that I'm sure looters have already found it.  The article was published by the national mouthpiece of the People's Republic of China on February 16.  By now they have already bribed the guards to join in the looting of what ever the local government officials haven't already appropriated for themselves from the items recovered by the archaeologists.  I don't give a hoot where the complex is located, okay?  Just tell me what's in it and quit the bullshit!  You'll see what I mean.

Published at globaltimes.cn as reported in the Peoples Daily Online, which is geared specifically toward English-speaking people like me, whom the Chinese government (and most Chinese citizens, evidently) assume are stupid and ignorant, and easily duped.  Hmmm, sounds familiar...

3000-year-old tomb group found in Xinjiang Source: People's Daily Online [09:54 February 16 2011]

The Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology reported on Feb. 14 that it discovered an ancient tomb group covering an area of more than 10,000 square meters 100 kilometers south of Hami City in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This is the first time that a tomb group dating back 3,000 years has been found in Hami region.

Chinanews reported that the tombs group has a large scale and a dense distribution. It was also the first time that a tomb with a sacrificial altar was found in the Xinjiang region. Most burial objects were made of pottery and wood, but some objects made from stones, bones, horns, bronze and iron were also found here.

The director of Hami's Cultural Relics Bureau said archaeologists had already excavated more than 150 ancient tombs in the last two months.

At the excavation site, archaeologists found something special, including some materials never before discovered, special construction styles and some unique burial customs. In addition, they also found various precious cultural relics under unique cultural background.

Judging from the current situation of the group, archaeologist said it might be remains of an early Iron Age settlement dating back about 3,000 years ago.

The tomb group was located at the southern margin of ancient Silk Road. From those unearthed cultural relics, archaeologists were able to ascertain that the ecological environment, including the amount of water and plants, was much more favorable at the time than they are currently.

A Timely Reminder: The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

The following report takes a look at climate change in the Middle East some 4200 years ago, focusing on one city in particular, and how it managed to survive when so many of its neighbors did not.

What's the old saying - I've not got it absolutely correct, I'm sure, but it is something like "those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it."  An apt lesson that applies not only to what is occurrring today in the politics of the Middle East -- with recent overthrows of established authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and unrest in Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, Jordan, Syria, etc.  One has to wonder what that old "revolutionary" is thinking about these days, holed up within his massive tent-enclave in Libya...ahem. 

As I was saying, not just a lesson that applies to politics but, perhaps more importantly in the long run, climate change.  And what, exactly, what any one civilization do about climate change?  Not a whole lot, when it comes down ot it.  Mother Earth has her own cycles, and Her own way of dealing with shit.

But while Mother Nature is doing her thing now, as She did then, there are billions of people living on this world today. Billions. So, what do you do when you've got -  millions - of people "knocking on your door" - so to speak, wanting to come in and use up your scarce resources, that are withering away at an alarming rate.  Those millions are there because the lands that they lived in are now desserts - but you're in not such good shape, either.  What do you do?  Do you let those millions pounding on your doors die off, like their cattle died off in the desserts?  What do you do?  What do you do...

Unreported Heritage News
How did they survive? New research shows Jordanian city survived climate change disaster 4,200 years ago
February 14, 2011

About 4,200 years ago a series of disasters struck cities and civilizations throughout the Middle East.

In Egypt the central government collapsed. The same state that had built the great pyramids, and kept pharaoh as the supreme authority, could no longer keep the country united. This ushered in an era of powerful provincial leaders (known as nomarchs) and rival claimants to the Egyptian throne.

A similar scenario happened in Mesopotamia where the Akkadian Empire, an entity whose power stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, also went under. This led to local rulers stepping in and taking up power.

There is also evidence of social upheaval in the Levant. The city of Khirbet ez-Zeiraqoun in northern Jordan, whose inhabitants burrowed out hundreds of meters of water tunnels into the ground, was abandoned.

Climate change is believed to be a major reason for this upheaval. Research in the Middle East suggests that the environment became increasingly arid – making it difficult to support the intensive farming that is required to feed large cities.

“Paleoclimactic data from numerous sites, document changes in the Mediterranean westerlies and monsoon rainfall during this event with precipitation reductions of up to 30%, that diminished agricultural production from the Aegean to the Indus,” wrote scientists Harvey Weiss and Raymond Bradley in a paper they published.
...

Hales Corners Challenge XIII!

It will be here before you know it!

2 Sections: Open & Reserve (under 1600).
Location: Wyndham Milwaukee Airport Hotel—4747 S. Howell Avenue, Milwaukee—414-481-8000 (mention Southwest Chess Club for $59 room rate).

EF: $35-Open, $25-Reserve, both $5 more after 4/13. Comp EF for USCF 2200+, contact TD for details. $$ Open=1st-$325 (guaranteed), 2nd-$175 (guaranteed), A-$100, B & Below-$75; $$ Reserve =1st-$100, 2nd-$75, D-$50, E & Below-$40.

Goddesschess prizes for female chess players.

Reg: 8:30-9:30, Rds: 10-1-3:30-6. Ent: Payable to SWCC, c/o Allen Becker, 6105 Thorncrest Drive, Greendale, WI 53129.

QUESTIONS TO: TD Robin Grochowski, 414-861-2745 (cell)

*****************************************************************************

Goddesschess has funded prizes for female players since Challenge VIII.  For Challenge XIII, we have a new prize structure.

For every female player in the Open, $40 for each win by a femme and $20 for each draw.  There are no prizes for the Reserve Section.  In addition, Goddesschess will continue its tradition of paying the entry fee for the top-finishing female player in the Open and the Reserve for the next Challenge, should they choose to play. 

We hope to see a great chess femme turn-out for Challenge XIII.  Take a chance, play in the Open - have some fun and maybe win some nice money, too.  Good luck! 

Southwest Chess Club Action!

Note the new location!

Starting this Thursday February 17:

Heart of the Knight Quad
February 17, 24 & March 3

3-Round “Round-Robin” (a “Quad”). Four chess players
with similar ratings to a Quad. Game/90 minutes. USCF Rated. EF: $5.00.
Must be SWCC member or join club to participate.

NO BYES--YOU MUST BE ABLE TO PLAY IN ALL THREE ROUNDS.
YOU WILL PLAY ONE GAME WITH EACH OF THE OTHER 3 PLAYERS IN YOUR QUAD
TD is Fogec; ATD is Grochowski.

NEW LOCATION- Hales Corners Village Hall/Police Station
Lower Level Community Room
5635 S. New Berlin Road
Hales Corners, WI 53130

Registration from 6:20 to 6:50 pm. It is important to arrive during the registration period as individuals will be assigned to quads based on their ratings. Players in the quad will have similar ratings. If you arrive after the registration period we cannot guarantee that you will be placed in a quad. If you know that you will be arriving late this Thursday, but want to be paired for the first round, PLEASE contact me in advance to let me know so that we can include you in the proper quad. If you know you will be late and do not inform me, it increases your odds of having no game this week. [Tom Fogec: PHONE:  414-405-4207.  EMAIL.]

EXTRA: "David's Endgame Prize" There will be a $5.00 "Endgame" prize for this tournament, which will be awarded by David Dathe. This prize will be awarded for the most interesting endgame played in the tournament. Mr. Dathe will be the judge of any games submitted, and he may annotate the endgame for the Southwest Chess Club Blog. Mr. Dathe plans to continue this for all our longer time control tournaments this year (not rapid or blitz games). All tournament players are encouraged to submit a game. Please submit the game to the TD. The game needs to be legible (readable) so the endgame can be properly analyzed. An interesting endgame is the key, not a perfectly played opening or middle game.

Blog about this event.

Happy Valentine's Day

The Pick 'n Save was doing landmark business in last-minute bouquets and cards tonight, LOL!  It was absolutely hilarious, although standing in a line three times as long as normal wasn't much fun since I only had a few items and wanted to get out of there, but boy oh boy, that store is raking in the cash today!  EVERY MAN IN LINE - young, old, tall, short, black, brown, white, dressed up and grunge - ALL HAD FLOWERS AND/OR CARD IN HAND.  Some guys were going for the gusto and having BIG arrangements made up by a clerk who was stationed at the florist's desk (there is rarely anybody there, normally). 

I happened to catch this article today that was originally published in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal.  Enjoy!

Iran Bans Valentine's Day
The regime's posture turns the smallest gestures into thrilling acts of subversion.
By MELIK KAYLAN
February 11, 2011

In another sign of its ever more improvisational approach to governance, the Iranian regime has outlawed Valentine's Day. "Symbols of hearts, half-hearts, red roses, and any activities promoting this day are banned," announced state media last month. "Authorities will take legal action against those who ignore the ban."

Some 70% of Iran's population is said to be under the age of 30, so it seems natural that Valentine's Day has caught on in a country where the young keep trying to find non-state-mandated rituals to call their own. The state, for its part, continues to respond with a Whack-a-Mole approach to any social ripple not dreamt of in its philosophy.

Theocratic regimes invariably suffer from the same besetting sin: As the world evolves, they must either revise their antiquated doctrines or try to hold the world rigidly in stasis. Iran's ruling mullahs keep choosing the latter option. And with mosque and state firmly conjoined, there's no stray detail of daily life so arcane that the scriptures can't be mobilized to rein it in.

The Iranian state has pronounced against unauthorized mingling of the sexes, rap music, rock music, Western music, women playing in bands, too-bright nail polish, laughter in hospital corridors, ancient Persian rites-of-spring celebrations (Nowrooz), and even the mention of foreign food recipes in state media. This last may sound comically implausible, but it was officially announced by a state-run website on Feb. 6. So now the true nature of pasta as an instrument of Western subversion has been revealed.

The regime's posture turns the smallest garden-variety gestures into thrilling acts of subversion. Slipping a Valentine card to a girlfriend takes on the significance of samizdat. Every firecracker set off during Nowrooz diminishes the police state's claims to omniscience. The mullahs have appointed themselves the enemy of fun; as a result, wherever fun herniates into view, it is a politicized irruption of defiance.

In "Rock 'n' Roll," the playwright Tom Stoppard proposes that rock music more than anything else—the arms race, dissident intellectuals, economic decay—brought down the communist system because it came from an unanticipated source for which the politburo theorists had no answer. Their enforcers could counter explicit resistance, but their ideologues never prepared defenses against the onslaught of pure fun. No one in charge knew how to neutralize this entirely new category of opting out through the delirium of music. In the play, the rigid communist edifice crumbles in the face of a mysteriously apolitical impulse to freedom embodied by young folk who simply "don't care about anything but the music."

Iran's theocrats scramble daily to apply systemic tourniquets to spontaneous outbursts of nondenominational fun. They must find—or conjure up—an authoritative category of evil for each unforeseen flare-up. Indecency, immodesty, un-Islamic behavior, alien Western customs, insulting God, insulting the Supreme Leader—the ideological fabric is made to stretch way beyond its natural limits.

The mullahs can offer no specific dogma against the widespread underground rock scene in the suburbs of Tehran and elsewhere. They often arrest those at basement shows or garage performances with improvised expedients—for the blasphemous nature of their gyrations, or for illicit socializing between the sexes. In being able to justify their prohibitions on religious grounds they have an advantage over their communist counterparts of old.

But under what rationale could the consumption of foreign dishes constitute an offense? Nationalism, we are told. Yet the regime expends considerable energy suppressing the Persian, as opposed to Islamic, identity by discouraging Nowrooz and other elements of the culture that date from the pre-Muslim era of jahiliyya, the so-called time of ignorance. [Frigging arrogant bastards - some day they will be hoisted on their own petards - preferable driven through their groins.]

In the end, Iran's rulers face an impossible task. Their genesis myth of a society based on a codified schema of sacred laws looks neither codified nor sacred. It convinces no one. Instead, the regime seems dedicated above all to stamping out joy wherever it may accidentally arise—a sour, paranoid struggle against irrepressible forces of nature, change, the seasons, music, romance and laughter. The Iranian people can take comfort: No earthly authority has won that particular contest for long.

Mr. Kaylan is a writer in New York.

2011 Aeroflot

Standings after Round 6:

Tournament A:
1 GM Le, Quang Liem 5.0 VIE M 2664 2905 +1.74 -1 2644.2 1 1 1 1 ½ ½
77 GM Kosteniuk, Alexandra w 2.0 RUS F 2498 2478 -0.15 1 2597.8 0 ½ ½ 0 1 0
78 WGM Paikidze, Nazi w 2.0 GEO F 2455 2459 +0.02 1 2594.6 ½ 0 0 0 ½ 1
81 WGM Ju, Wenjun w 1.5 CHN F 2514 2430 -0.62 -1 2617.8 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ 0
82 WGM Pogonina, Natalija w 1.5 RUS F 2472 2374 -0.73 -1 2573.4 0 0 0 1 ½ 0

Tournament B:
1 GM Kotanjian, Tigran 5.0 ARM M 2519 2751 +1.68 -1 2490.8 ½ 1 1 1 ½ 1
17 GM Zhao, Xue w 4.0 CHN F 2494 2556 +0.48 1 2440.4 1 1 ½ 1 ½ 0
51 WGM Kochetkova, Julia w 3.0 SVK F 2311 2461 +1.21 -1 2468.0 0 1 1 ½ ½ 0
58 IM Romanko, Marina w 3.0 RUS F 2404 2504 +0.82 1 2508.8 ½ ½ 1 0 1 0
67 Guo, Qi w 2.5 CHN F 2310 2374 +0.48 -1 2436.0 ½ ½ ½ 0 0 1
69 WFM Mammadova, Gulnar Marfat q w 2.5 AZE F 2284 2360 +0.57 -1 2421.0 0 1 ½ 0 1 0
70 WIM Tarasova, Viktoriya w 2.5 RUS F 2289 2368 +0.60 -1 2418.0 0 ½ ½ 1 ½ 0
77 Wang, Jue w 2.5 CHN F 2252 2379 +0.93 1 2424.0 ½ 0 1 ½ 0 ½
87 WFM Bajt, Indira w 2.0 SLO F 2215 2286 +0.52 -1 2401.4 0 ½ ½ 1 0 0
88 WIM Dolzhykova, Kateryna w 2.0 UKR F 2303 2204 -0.78 -1 2353.4 0 0 0 1 0 1
90 WIM Ivakhinova, Inna w 2.0 RUS F 2324 2338 +0.10 1 2456.6 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ ½
97 WFM Adamowicz, Katarzyna w 1.5 POL F 2103 2118 +0.04 -1 2334.2 0 0 0 0 ½ 1
98 WIM Charochkina, Daria w 1.5 RUS F 2314 2268 -0.34 1 2447.0 0 ½ 0 1 0 0
100 WGM Kovanova, Baira w 1.5 RUS F 2391 2175 -1.69 1 2353.6 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ 0
106 WFM Saduakassova, Dinara w 0.5 KAZ F 2225 1966 -1.44 -1 2360.4 ½ 0 0 0 0 0

Tournament C:
1 Gharagyozian, Artur 5.5 ARM M 2212 2578 +2.26 22.5 1 1 ½ 1 1 1
5 WFM Repina, Varvara w 5.0 RUS F 2280 2371 +0.61 18.0 0 1 1 1 1 1
14 WGM Burtasova, Anna w 4.0 RUS F 2294 2315 +0.18 23.0 1 1 1 1 0 0
22 Rjanova, Valery w 4.0 RUS F 2156 2242 +0.77 19.0 1 0 1 1 0 1
32 WFM Kineva, Ekaterina w 3.5 RUS F 2120 2136 +0.16 21.5 1 0 1 ½ 1 0
35 Xu, Huahua w 3.5 CHN F 2104 2165 +0.42 20.5 1 0 1 ½ ½ ½
48 WIM Kharashuta, Ekaterina w 3.0 RUS F 2296 2165 -1.04 21.0 1 ½ 1 0 ½ 0
49 WCM Enkhtuul, Altanulzii w 3.0 MGL F 2119 2188 +0.63 20.0 1 1 1 0 0 0
67 Dogodkina, Julia w 2.5 RUS F 2070 2202 +0.97 20.0 1 0 ½ 1 0 0
70 WFM Nikolaeva, Alexandra w 2.5 RUS F 2199 1969 -1.41 16.5 ½ 0 1 1 0 0
79 WFM Shustaeva, Natalia w 2.0 RUS F 2105 1432 -1.26 20.5 1 0 1 0 0 0
82 Anu, Bayar w 2.0 MGL F 1957 1912 -0.34 18.5 0 ½ ½ 0 1 0
90 Saikhanzaya, Ganbaatar w 2.0 MGL F 1704 1860 +0.98 15.5 0 0 0 1 0 1
91 Khalilova, Khadija Gyunduz w 2.0 AZE F 1702 1872 +1.02 15.5 0 ½ ½ 0 0 1
93 Polozova, Marina w 2.0 RUS F 0 1857 1857 15.0 0 0 1 0 1 0

Egypt: Update on Looting and Thefts of Antiquities

From Yahoo News/AP

18 items missing from Egyptian Museum after unrest
By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press Jason Keyser, Associated Press – 17 mins ago
February 13, 2011

CAIRO – A full inventory of the Egyptian Museum has found that looters escaped with 18 items during the anti-government unrest, including two gilded wooden statues of famed boy king, Tutankhamun, the antiquities chief said Sunday.

The 18-day uprising that forced out President Hosni Mubarak engulfed the areas around the famed museum, on the edge of Cairo's Tahrir Square. On Jan. 28, as protesters clashed with police early on in the turmoil and burned down the adjacent headquarters of Mubarak's ruling party, a handful of looters climbed a fire escape to the museum roof and lowered themselves on ropes from a glass-paneled ceiling onto the museum's top floor.

Around 70 objects — many of them small statues — were damaged, but until Sunday's announcement, it was not known whether anything was missing.

Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass said the museum's database department determined 18 objects were gone. Investigators searching for those behind the thefts were questioning dozens of people arrested over several days after last month's break-in.

The most important of the missing objects is a limestone statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the so-called heretic king that tried to introduce monotheism to Egypt, standing and holding an offering table.

"It's the most important one from an artistic point of view," said museum director Tarek el-Awady. "The position of the king is unique and it's a beautiful piece of art." During Akhenaten's so-called Amarna period, named after his capital, artists experimented with new styles.

Also gone is a gilded wooden statue of the 18th Dynasty King Tutankhamun, Akhenaten's son, being carried by a goddess. Pieces are also missing from another statue of the boy king wielding a fishing harpoon from a boat.

"We have the boat and the legs of the king, but we are missing other parts of the body," el-Awady said. "We are looking everywhere for them — around the museum, outside, on the roof, from where the thieves got into the museum."

He said none of the missing objects was from the gated room containing the gold funerary mask of King Tutankhamun and other stunning items from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings — the museum's chief attractions. The looters did not break into the room, he said.

The other missing items are a statue of Nefertiti, Akhenaten's wife, making offerings, a sandstone head of a princess and a stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna, and a heart scarab and 11 wooden funerary statuettes of the nobleman Yuya.

Antiquities authorities also announced Sunday that thieves broke into a storage site at the royal necropolis of Dahshur, south of Cairo, on Feb. 11. They had no information yet on whether items were missing.

The Egyptian Museum remains closed and guarded by an army unit, but workers are cleaning the vast building and the garden around it. Efforts are being made to improve security.

What's Going On In Egypt?

I pegged this guy a few days ago as a gutsy guy in a private email to Mr. Don as we were following live news broadcasts via BBC online and I was freaking out about the possibility of massive violence come Friday (2 - or is it 3? - days ago) after President Mubarak gave his speech and it was clear that he had no intention (then) of standing down.  I was walking around the office wondering - why aren't these people freaking out like I am?  Don't they know what's going on?  Don't they care?  If they know - do they really think events in Egypt won't affect them, one way or another? Oh Goddess...

Tonight I saw his name come up again in this article:

Hossam Badrawi, a stalwart of Mubarak's National Democratic Party, met with Mubarak on Thursday and later told reporters that he expected the Egyptian leader to "meet people's demands" — read that stepping down — later the same day. After Mubarak did not, Badrawi, who had been named the party's secretary general a few days earlier, resigned in protest, according to two party insiders.

Is he real, or is he Memorex?  Only the Egyptian people know for sure -- stay tuned.

The 5th Annual Grand Pacific Open

5th Annual Grand Pacific Open Chess Tournament

April 22 – 25, 2011 Victoria, BC Canada

$4000 Guaranteed Prize Fund

Come play chess on an island in the Pacific! Come to Victoria for the Easter Weekend.

The Grand Pacific Open is a 6 Round Swiss with a Guaranteed Prize Fund of $4000!
Side Events include Active, Scholastic, Blitz and Bughouse Tournaments.

This fine Canadian event has a history of promoting play by female players. This year, Goddesschess is involved - more details later.

Come on, chess femmes! Please come out and support this event. You ladies know what it is like to look around a playing venue and hardly see anyone else who is your gender.  We NEED more chess femmes playing in events like this!

More information.

2011 Aeroflot

While I've got a steak cooking and veggie in the microwae and rice going - whew - here's the latest on Aeroflot - hint - if you haven't figured it out, "w" means "woman" -- a female player.  So, the player in the #1 position is not necessarily a chess femme :)

There are four brave chess femmes competing in Group A - here are the standings I'm interested in after Round 5 which was held today (9 rounds total):

Group A (86 Players):

1 GM Le, Quang Liem 4.5 VIE M 2664 2988 +1.72 0 2638.8 1 1 1 1 ½
63 GM Kosteniuk, Alexandra w 2.0 RUS F 2498 2527 +0.18 0 2604.8 0 ½ ½ 0 1
74 WGM Ju, Wenjun w 1.5 CHN F 2514 2476 -0.25 0 2624.8 ½ ½ 0 0 ½
79 WGM Pogonina, Natalija w 1.5 RUS F 2472 2411 -0.40 0 2580.8 0 0 0 1 ½
84 WGM Paikidze, Nazi w 1.0 GEO F 2455 2347 -0.64 0 2605.3 ½ 0 0 0 ½

YOU GO, GIRLS! These femmes are not shrinking from the toughest competition, and they'll be better for it, in the short-run and in the long-run. I'm sure this old saying (proverb) is not quite right, but it's what my mom used to tell us when we were kids: You don't cut your eye-teeth on milk glass. Make of that what you will...

Group B (106 players):

1 GM Gomez, John Paul 4.5 PHI M 2527 2822 +1.52 0 2472.3 1 1 ½ 1 1
8 GM Zhao, Xue w 4.0 CHN F 2494 2653 +0.95 0 2429.5 1 1 ½ 1 ½
26 WGM Kochetkova, Julia w 3.0 SVK F 2311 2529 +1.48 0 2467.8 0 1 1 ½ ½
44 IM Romanko, Marina w 3.0 RUS F 2404 2580 +1.21 2 2500.3 ½ ½ 1 0 1
54 WIM Tarasova, Viktoriya w 2.5 RUS F 2289 2422 +0.90 0 2424.8 0 ½ ½ 1 ½
55 WFM Mammadova, Gulnar Marfat q w 2.5 AZE F 2284 2417 +0.89 0 2423.3 0 1 ½ 0 1
76 Wang, Jue w 2.0 CHN F 2252 2370 +0.72 0 2440.8 ½ 0 1 ½ 0
80 WFM Bajt, Indira w 2.0 SLO F 2215 2343 +0.79 0 2408.8 0 ½ ½ 1 0
86 WIM Ivakhinova, Inna w 1.5 RUS F 2324 2308 -0.12 0 2473.0 0 ½ ½ 0 ½
88 WIM Charochkina, Daria w 1.5 RUS F 2314 2310 -0.05 0 2462.8 0 ½ 0 1 0
90 Guo, Qi w 1.5 CHN F 2310 2290 -0.13 0 2432.5 ½ ½ ½ 0 0
92 WGM Kovanova, Baira w 1.5 RUS F 2391 2231 -1.08 0 2362.5 0 ½ ½ 0 ½
100 WIM Dolzhykova, Kateryna w 1.0 UKR F 2303 2116 -1.13 0 2352.5 0 0 0 1 0
103 WFM Saduakassova, Dinara w 0.5 KAZ F 2225 2054 -0.77 -2 2402.0 ½ 0 0 0 0
106 WFM Adamowicz, Katarzyna w 0.5 POL F 2103 1962 -0.63 0 2310.5 0 0 0 0 ½

Group C (106 players):

1 Jensen, Bjarke 5.0 DEN M 2258 2918 +2.01 13.5 1 1 1 1 1
6 WGM Burtasova, Anna w 4.0 RUS F 2294 2414 +0.71 16.5 1 1 1 1 0
10 WFM Repina, Varvara w 4.0 RUS F 2280 2316 +0.21 11.0 0 1 1 1 1
18 WFM Kineva, Ekaterina w 3.5 RUS F 2120 2218 +0.47 13.0 1 0 1 ½ 1
25 WIM Kharashuta, Ekaterina w 3.0 RUS F 2296 2238 -0.35 15.5 1 ½ 1 0 ½
28 Xu, Huahua w 3.0 CHN F 2104 2159 +0.30 14.5 1 0 1 ½ ½
30 Rjanova, Valery w 3.0 RUS F 2156 2153 +0.08 14.0 1 0 1 1 0
35 WCM Enkhtuul, Altanulzii w 3.0 MGL F 2119 2247 +0.95 12.5 1 1 1 0 0
48 Dogodkina, Julia w 2.5 RUS F 2070 2261 +1.24 15.0 1 0 ½ 1 0
58 WFM Nikolaeva, Alexandra w 2.5 RUS F 2199 1969 -1.41 11.5 ½ 0 1 1 0
66 WFM Shustaeva, Natalia w 2.0 RUS F 2105 1534 -0.57 15.5 1 0 1 0 0
78 Anu, Bayar w 2.0 MGL F 1957 1973 +0.01 11.5 0 ½ ½ 0 1
81 Polozova, Marina w 2.0 RUS F 0 1905 1905 10.0 0 0 1 0 1
98 Khalilova, Khadija Gyunduz w 1.0 AZE F 1702 1793 +0.37 12.5 0 ½ ½ 0 0
99 Saikhanzaya, Ganbaatar w 1.0 MGL F 1704 1776 +0.30 11.0 0 0 0 1 0

Chess in Zimbabwe: National Championships

Story from mmegionline.bw
National chess championships start with free-for-all

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer
22 February 2011

The fifth Metropolitan National Chess Championships get underway this weekend with a free-for-all preliminary round.

The stage offers minnows a rare chance to pit their wits against established players and possibly cause upsets.

Defending champions have been exempted from the round that will be staged on Saturday and Sunday at Legae Academy in Gaborone West Phase II.

The champions Barileng Gaealafswe (men) and Ontiretse Sabure (women) will enter the national championships at the semi-final stage. Resident Zimbabwean chess players like Dion Moyo and highly-rated Spencer Masango are tipped to give Batswana a run for their money. Moyo is the reigning Zimbabwean champion.

Kenneth Boikhutswane, of the Botswana Chess Federation (BCF), said the announcement of the sponsorship for this year's national championships will be made just before the semi-finals.

Over the last five years, the sponsorship has grown from P10, 000 to P60, 000 in 2010. The semi-finals will be held on the weekend of March 5-6.

The Botswana players to watch are Candidate Master (CM) Providence Oatlhotse, Fide Master (FM) Phemelo Kheto, Jona Chaka, Moakofi Notha, Spencer Masango, Dion Moyo, Candidate Master(CM) Oaitse Kokome, Ivon Makabe, Candidate Master (CM) and Thabo Gumpo. In the women's section, the top names are FM Kgalalelo Botlhole, WGM Tuduetso Sabure, Onkemetse Francis, WCM Tshepiso Lopang, Thapelo Francis, Fredah Kebakile, Boitshepo Rebatenne, Faith Mbakhwa, WFM Boikhutso Modongo and Gorata Sebetso.

These are the players who did well in the season opening Air Efficiency tournament recently at Yarona Country Lodge in Mogoditshane. Phemelo has won the national championships four times in succession.

While 23 chessmen will qualify for the next round, the women category will see 17 top performers sailing through.

The incentives for sterling performances in this year's tournament are tickets to represent the country at international competitions. Good performers will qualify for the Africa Individuals tournament in Zambia in May, the Commonwealth Chess Championships in South Africa in June and the Africa Junior Chess Championships to be held at the end of the year.

Ancient Writing: Undeciphered Voynich Manuscript Dated to Early 15th Century

That's the early 1400's.  So very interesting - hasn't the Turin Shroud also been carbon-dated to about that same time period?  Two enigmatic survivors from a time we think we know about - and yet, what do we really know about then, or now, for that matter? 

University of Arizona experts determine age of book 'nobody can read'
10 Feb 2011
University of Arizona

While enthusiasts across the world pored over the Voynich manuscript, penned by an unknown author in a language no one understands, a research team at the University of Arizona solved one of its biggest mysteries: When was the book made?


[Excerpted] University of Arizona researchers have cracked one of the puzzles surrounding what has been called "the world's most mysterious manuscript" – the Voynich manuscript, a book filled with drawings and writings nobody has been able to make sense of to this day.

Using radiocarbon dating, a team led by Greg Hodgins in the UA's department of physics has found the manuscript's parchment pages date back to the early 15th century, making the book a century older than scholars had previously thought. ...

Currently owned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, the manuscript was discovered in the Villa Mondragone near Rome in 1912 by antique book dealer Wilfrid Voynich while sifting through a chest of books offered for sale by the Society of Jesus. Voynich dedicated the remainder of his life to unveiling the mystery of the book's origin and deciphering its meanings. He died 18 years later, without having wrestled any its secrets from the book.

"Is it a code, a cipher of some kind? People are doing statistical analysis of letter use and word use – the tools that have been used for code breaking. But they still haven't figured it out."

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The Voynich manuscript's unintelligible writings and strange illustrations have defied every attempt at understanding their meaning. Credit: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.  td>

Okay. Where have we seen this kind of pattern before? In board games, darlings! Think about it. Is this not a Nine Man's Morris gameboard?  I'm not saying about what's in the rest of the book - but this drawing - heh. 

Looks like the stuff one sees under one's very first microscope!  I got one when I was in seventh grade (I was 13) for Christmas, and I spent many happy hours in the attic over the next four years exploring the microscopic world of whatever it was I could find to put on a glass slide and put under the magnification lenses.  I'm sure it did not cost a lot of money.  My parents were poor and there were six children to provide for -- but that little microscope opened up a new universe to me.  I could see, up close, for the very first time, that there were, literally, worlds within worlds within worlds.  I didn't spent much time in that un-insultated attic during the winter, it was friggging cold up there, let me tell you!  But I had my own little world-fort up there, and NO ONE was allowed to cross the magic line, which was sometimes hung with a blanket-curtain, that constantly fell down.  When we moved to a house across the street that my parents bought the year I entered high school (1966 - an eon ago), that microscope moved too, and I set up a "lab" in the attic of the new house, which had three dormer windows and roomy bays!  It was a real change from the old house, but the floor still creaked and it was still dusty and mouldy and hot as hell in the summer and cold as hell in the winter.  I chose the west-facing bay to set up my new lab, and spent many hours crunched up with a blanket wrapped around in the cool days in Grandpa Newton's green leather club chair that we'd inherited after he passed. 

Well, I haven't thought about these things for a long long time, and it's making me very sad right now.