Lilith

From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets." Lilith a/k/a Lilit Adam's first wife was a relic of an early rabbinical attempt to assimilate the Sumero-Babylonian Goddess Belit-ili, or Belili, to Jewish mythology. To the Canaanites, Lilit was Baalat, the "Divine Lady." On a tablet from Ur, c. 2000 BC, she was addressed as Lillake.(1) Hebraic tradition said Adam married Lilith because he grew tired of coupling with beasts, a common custom of Middle-Eastern herdsmen, though the Old Testament declard it a sin (Deut. 27:21). [Not the most auspicious of beginnings for a marriage...] Adam tried to force Lilith to lie beneath him in the "missionary position" favored by male-dominant societies. Moslems were so insistent on the male-superior sexual position that they said, "Accursed be the man who maketh woman heaven and himself earth."(2) Catholic authorities said any sexual position other than the male-superior one is sinful.(3) But Lilith was neither a Moslem nor a Catholic. She sneered at Adams's sexual crudity, cursed him, and flew away to make her home by the Red Sea. [Note the wings - an allusion to the ancient bird goddesses]. God sent angels to fetch Lilith back, but she cursed them too, ignored God's command, and spent her time coupling with "demons" (whose lovemaking evidently pleased her better) and giving birth to a hundred children every day. So God had to produce Eve as Lilith's more docile replacement. [Note: according to one of the biblical accounts of the creation of Eve, she was made out one of Adam's ribs; so, every time he made love to Eve, was he really making love to a clone of himself? Yechy!] Lilith's fecundity and sexual preferences show that she was a Great Mother of settled agricultural tribes, who resisted the invasions of nomadic herdsmen, represented by Adam [a/k/a man from the red earth - from the Bible, from dust you came and to the dust you shall return...]. Early Hebrews disliked the Great Mother who drank the blood of Abel the herdsman, after his slaying by the elder god of agriculture and smithcraft, Cain (Gen. 4:11) [Gen. 4:11: And now art thou {Cain} cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; - King James Version]. Lilith's Red Sea was another version of Kali Ma's Ocean of Blood, which gave brith to all things but needed periodic sacrificial replenishment. There may have been a connection between Lilith and the Etruscan divinity Leinth, who had no face and who waited at the gate of the underworld along with Eita and Persipnei (Hades and Persephone) to receive the souls of the dead.(4) The underworld gate was a yoni, and also a lily, which had "no face." Admission into the underworld was often mythologized as a sexual union. The lily or lilu (lotus) was the Great Mother's flower-yoni, whose title formed Lilith's name. The story of Lilith disappeared from the canonical Bible, but her daughters the lilim haunted men for over a thousand years. Well into the Middle Ages, the Jews were still manufacturing amulets to keep away the lilim, who were lustful she-demons given to copulating with men in their dreams, causing nocturnal emissions.(5) Naturally, the lilim squatted on top of their victims in the position favored by ancient matriarchs. [No doubt thereby triggering lots of control issues and deep psychological wounds in their male "victims."] Greeks adopted the lilim and called them Lamiae, Empusae (Forcers-In), or Daughters of Hecate. [The ancient Greek men would have hated and dreaded these Forcers-In because of their cultural preference at the time for homosexuality, copulating with females usually only to produce children.] Christians also adopted them and called them harlots of hell, or succubae, the female counterparts of incubi. Celebate monks tried to fend them off by sleeping with their hands crossed over their genitals, clutching a crucifix. It was said that every time a pious Christian had a wet dream, Lilith laughed. Even if a male child laughed in his sleep, people said Lilith was fondling him. To protect baby boys against her, chalk circles were drawn around cradles with the written names of the three angeles God sent to fetch Lilith back to Adam - even though these angels had proved incapable of dealing with her. Some said men and babies should not be left alone in a house or Lilith might seize them.(6) Another common name for the Daughters of Lilith was Night-Hag. This term didn't imply that they were ugly; on the contrary, they were supposed to be very beautiful.(7) As with their brothers the incubi, they were presumed so expert at lovemaking that after an experience with a Night-Hag, a man couldn't be satisfied with the love of a mortal woman. Notes: (1) Graves & Patai, 68. (2) Edwardes, 157. (3) Graves & Patai, 67. (4) Hays, 183. (5) Graves, G.M. 1, 190. (6) Cavendish, P.E., 99. (7) Scot, 512.

China: Now It's Bad Eggs!

I read a report yesterday morning at The New York Times about eggs being taken off the market in Hong Kong when it was discovered they were polluted with melamine. Now this report today: Eggs recalled, exports halted as China's food crisis worsens by Peter Harmsen Peter Harmsen – Wed Oct 29, 3:58 pm ET BEIJING (AFP) – Chinese retailers pulled eggs off shelves Wednesday and a supplier was ordered to stop exports, amid fears the toxic threat of the chemical melamine was far more widespread than first reported. Dalian city in northeast China said it had imposed an export ban on Hanwei Group, which sold to Japan and other parts of Asia, after some of its products were found to contain melamine. "We have told Hanwei to immediately recall all problem eggs, and we have halted the company's exports for the time being," said a statement issued by the city government of Dalian, where Hanwei is based. The problem emerged over the weekend when Hong Kong authorities said eggs from Hanwei were tainted with melamine, the same chemical that was mixed into China's milk products and led to the deaths of four babies. Officials and China's state-controlled press reported on Wednesday that eggs from other suppliers had also been found to be contaminated with melamine, which can give food the appearance of higher protein levels. Against this backdrop, some supermarkets in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities announced they were recalling various brands of eggs, although others appeared unsure what to do with the central government yet to give directives. A staff member at the Parkson Shopping Centre's supermarket in Beijing said eggs from Hanwei were no longer on sale. "We will not put them back until we receive test reports from the company that show the eggs we have do not have the same problems," she said. In Shanghai, a spokeswoman for the Lotus Supermarket chain said all the Kekeda brand of eggs from Hanwei had been removed from all its outlets across the city. "We are concerned about better protecting consumers' safety," spokeswoman Xiang Jun said. Meanwhile, authorities in Hong Kong and the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou reported eggs contaminated with melamine had been detected in brands other than Hanwei, and that they came from different areas of China. The discovery of melamine in eggs has raised concerns that the chemical could be infecting much of China's food chain. Initially, the problem was believed to be isolated to milk and other dairy products. In a scandal that made global headlines last month, it emerged melamine, which is normally used to make plastics, had been routinely mixed into watered-down Chinese milk to give it the appearance of higher protein levels. Four babies died of kidney failure and more than 53,000 others fell ill this year after drinking tainted milk powder and consuming other dairy products. The scandal led to governments around the world banning or recalling Chinese dairy products after many of them were found to contain melamine. The discovery of the chemical in eggs raised concerns that it could be in many other Chinese foods, with the suspicion that it was mixed into livestock feed to also give it the appearance of high protein. Authorities in Dalian said Wednesday melamine may have been mixed into chicken feed and led to the contamination of Hanwei's eggs. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation in China told AFP on Tuesday that melamine may be present in a wide range of other farm-raised foods such as meat and fish. FAO China programme officer Zhang Zhongjun said the organisation had asked China's agriculture ministry for answers on whether melamine had been mixed into farming feed. Premier Wen Jiabao pledged over the weekend that China's food exports would meet international norms and win the trust of people globally, as he promised lessons would be learnt from the milk scandal. But the agriculture ministry and the body in charge of the nation's food quality have remained silent about the contaminated eggs, leaving some shoppers confused and angry. "We are just helpless," Liu Lihe, a 70-year-old-retiree told AFP as she shopped in a Beijing supermarket. "I don't feel completely safe whatever food I buy. I don't know what to buy."

Fatricide for Property

Story reported at regionaltimes.com October 28, 2008 Woman accuses brothers-in-law of killing her husband to occupy his property By Younis Chandio HYDERABAD: A woman namely Ms. Zaiban, widow of Manzoor Jat, resident of village Chak No.56 near Sanghar staged a protest demonstration outside the Hyderabad press club, alleging her two brothers-in-law of killing her husband to grab property and throwing her out of home after snatching her two children. She told newsmen that she was married to Manzoor son of Nazir by caste Jat Punjabi and was living peacefully with her husband and 3 children. She said two brothers of her husband namely Naseer and Baseer wanted to grab the property of her husband that included also 32 acres agriculture land. She alleged that on 5th October 2008 her husband’s elder brother killed her husband over a quarrel. She told that accused Naseer was arrested by police. The next day her husband’s another brother from Multan arrived at her home Sanghar and allegedly after torturing her involved her in her husband’s murder. She said he took away her two children 8-year son Zulfiqar Ali and 3 and half years daughter Zunera and threw her out of her home.She complained that her brother in law has grabbed her and her husband’s all property which includes 32 acres agriculture land, two shops, 4 residential houses in Sanghar town, one plot at Hyderabad bus stand, cash in bank account, one motor cycle, 15 goats, 3 buffaloes, their home with furniture and fixtures. She further alleged that Baseer also got prepared a false divorce paper (Talaq Nama) in her name. Woman [notice, now she doesn't even have a name] said she has no place to live. She also expressed fear of life. She demanded action against her husband’s both brothers and recovery of her family’s land and other property from them. She also demanded protection to her life. An human rights body Peace and Human Rights Trust wanted to help her but an official from women development center in Hyderabad took her to the center with promise to provide her required help.

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What is most striking about this article is not the fact that such horrific acts are still being carried out with, basically, impunity, under the current local judicial system in this Indian state; it's that the rest of the article includes news about sewer charges and the celebration of Diwali; it's that this kind of horror story - the murder of a man for his property by his brother(s), the abduction of his children, the torture of his wife, the production of false papers to prove a non-existent divorce to further dispossess the wife of her widow's property - is nothing out of the ordinary! Just another day in the course of a poor woman's life in India. For Shame, India. For Shame!

Samhain: Pagan celebration honoring the dead

I was raised a Roman Catholic; I believe this holiday was incorporated into the RC Church as "All Souls Day" that used to be celebrated on November 1st. I was taught in Catholic school as a child - and literally spent half a day in church (not voluntary) - praying to God to release souls from Purgatory. I haven't been a RC for a number of years, so I do not know if this holy day is celebrated any longer. From The San Francisco Chronicle (sfgate.com) By Susan Fornoff, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, October 28, 2008 Word on the street's been pretty kind to witches in recent years, what with kids embracing the sorcery of the Harry Potter novels and Broadway glorifying blond Glinda and green Elphaba in the fluffy "Wicked," loosely based on the smart and rather dark novel by Gregory Maguire. Add to that the unblinking Bay Area acceptance of all that is different or outrageous, and this just may be the year to party with the pagans. The fast-growing community's biggest holiday - or sabbat, as holidays are also called - Samhain, arrives this weekend, mixing themes of harvest, renewal and communing with the dead. The latter isn't all that wacky, and in fact sounds like a form of prayer, with the addition of a celebratory "spiral dance." "I wouldn't know anyone who conducts a seance," said witch Deborah Oak Cooper, a member of the Reclaiming collective. "At the Spiral Dance (expected to draw more than 1,000 celebrants to Kezar Pavilion on Saturday), there's a trance journey, where you go to the Isle of Apples and visit your beloved dead. It's a meditation period: You go and look around and see who wants to visit." "You might create an altar and make an offering," said Starhawk, a political activist and the Bay Area's best known contemporary witch. "Then you can sit down and talk: 'Hey, Mom, sorry I was such a hard teenager for you to deal with. Now I understand how that must have been for you, and I wish you were here so we could sit and talk about it.' " Starhawk often represents paganism in mainstream media and events, but she admits that there are no definitive statistics on participation, partly because paganism covers many, many traditions. Imagine a religion with hundreds or even thousands of churches with congregations of no more than 13 (the number of full moons in a year, considered the maximum size for a coven). Modern paganism defies not only quantification but even definition. Try this one, from the Pagan Educational Network: "a broad, eclectic contemporary religious movement that encompasses shamanistic, ecstatic, polytheistic and magical religions. Most of the religions termed Pagan are characterized by nature-centered spirituality, honoring of pre-Christian deities, dynamic personal belief systems, lack of institutionalization, a quest to develop the self, and acceptance and encouragement of diversity." So there are Neopagans and Wiccans and Rosicrucians, Faeries, Druids, Gardnerians, Asatru, worshipers of the God, worshipers of the Goddess, worshipers of nature. "There's no clearinghouse," Cooper said. "It's the most disorganized religion, and that's part of the appeal." But negative stereotypes and stigma aren't. One pagan man who lives in Florida didn't want his name published because he said his neighbors surely would raise eyebrows; on the other hand, Bay Area witches said they don't need to hide their brooms in any closets. Several witches, in fact, stepped up eagerly to lay claim to the "pagan Martha Stewart" apron. (That apron would surely be black. Said Starhawk: "Witches often do wear black because night is a time of power and mystery, and also because black is slenderizing and doesn't show dirt.") "Martha and I both find crafty uses for herbs, flowers, home decoration and recipes," said Rabbit, proprietor of the Sacred Well metaphysical shop in Oakland and high priestess of the Come As You Are Coven. She added, rather craftily, "Our definitions of 'craft' might be different." Indeed. Starhawk was eagerly awaiting Dinner of the Dead, a feast that features food the participants' ancestors would like, creating a potentially global menu. Cooper was making sugar skulls - symbolic of ancestral wisdom - and votive candles to memorialize her beloved dead on her altar; there'll be a martini set out for Dad on Saturday. Astrologer Fern Feto Spring (wisestars.net) will pour a glass of wine and fix a plate of food for her grandfather. "I put flowers, usually marigolds and anything else that catches my fancy and seems like something my dead might appreciate," she said. And Rowan Fairgrove was practicing Samhain songs for her pagan singing group, maybe even a "calling on" song or two for taking blessings to houses that are visited on the holiday. Paganism sounds so much like other religions, and Samhain like so many other rituals, because, celebrants say, it is based on Celtic traditions and moon rituals. The celebration of the harvest sounds like Thanksgiving, the introspection brought by summer's end (technically, for pagans, when the sun reaches 15 degrees of Scorpio, or Nov. 7 this year) so much like New Year's Eve. And Saturday's festivities sound like the Day of the Dead celebrated elsewhere in Cooper's neighborhood, the Mission. "A lot depends on the mythos of the tradition people follow," said Marilee Bigelow, renowned tarot reader at Ancient Ways in Oakland. "I always have an altar in honor of Persephone, and so I always have pomegranates out." Last weekend, there were several spiral dances and dinners with the dead in the Bay Area, and also the Witches Ball in Santa Rosa. Rabbit's CAYA celebration Friday night will start with a potluck "dumb supper," based on an ancient tradition of dining silently with one's ancestors and beloved dead. Then priestesses and priests will "aspect" various gods and goddesses - high theater, said Rabbit. "Typically, the priestess or priest enters into a light trance and offers prophesy, wisdom and advice in the voice of the deity being aspected," she said. "Costumes, props and other theatrical components complete the overall effect. "After aspecting, our ritual will then move forward to the crowning of our winter king and queen. The premise is that when we appoint these individuals to represent the health, prosperity and safety of the community during the winter season, it is then the community's obligation to keep them safe, prosperous and healthy until they are relieved of their duties in May by the May king and queen. ... Finally, we complete the ritual with a spiral dance - an ecstatic, celebratory dance that serves to represent the turn of the Earth toward the next seasonal phase." The big events on Saturday include a spiral dance at Kezar Pavilion, where there will be altars set up for air, fire, water and earth, as well as for guests to honor their dead. One might call it Bay Area paganism's annual coming-out party - except that here witches feel little need to hide. "Mostly what I have experienced," Spring said, "is people making jokes of 'Wriggle your nose and make that traffic go away.' " Pagan celebrations Here are three local Samhain celebrations that welcome public participation this weekend. All are alcohol free and family friendly. Friday Come as You Are to Samhain: Potluck Dumb Supper (Dinner With the Dead) and ritual honoring deities of the Otherworld. 7 p.m. supper. 8 p.m. ritual. Bring a clearly labeled dish to share or your own brown-bag meal. $10-$20 sliding scale. Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Main Hall, 1924 Cedar St (at Bonita), Berkeley. Saturday NROOGD Public Samhain: Crafts, divinations, honoring the dead. 7:30 p.m. doors open. Ritual at 8. Suggested donation: $10-$20. No one turned away for lack of funds. San Mateo Unitarian Universalist Church, 300 E. Santa Inez, San Mateo. Reclaiming's 29th Annual Spiral Dance Ritual: Reclaiming's largest ritual. 6 p.m. doors open. Ritual at 7:30 p.m. Admission: $20-$100, sliding scale; 60 and older and 15 and younger, $10 and up. No one turned away for lack of funds. Kezar Pavilion, 755 Stanyan St., San Francisco. Take a closer look There's no clearinghouse for all of the nation's covens, sects, affiliations and practitioners of paganism, and Google can take one on quite the meandering exploration. Search "spiral dance ritual" on YouTube, and try these resources to learn more. AncientWays.com: Ancient Ways Book Store keeps a bulletin board and binder, and, in February, presents the annual PantheaCon, which brings together many practitioners of paganism in San Jose. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. 4075 Telegraph Ave., Oakland (at 41st Street). Cayacoven.org: The Come as You Are coven of many cultures is an example of the many choices available for Bay Area pagans. This group of 250 is celebrating Samhain on Friday night, with a potluck Dumb Supper and ritual in Berkeley. Cog.org: Covenant of the Goddess, a national umbrella for Wiccan congregations and practitioners, calls Berkeley home. Communityseed.org: Community Seed is an active pagan center in Santa Cruz that is holding its Samhain celebration Saturday at the city's Masonic Lodge. It has events year-round. NROOGD.org: The New Reformed Order of the Golden Dawn, now in Berkeley, originated in 1976. Reclaiming.org: Rooted in magic and Goddess worship, this San Francisco group seems to be one of the largest and most organized. SacredWell.com: This is one of the newer metaphysical shopping spots, and the fledgling Web site has a blog about magic and other pagan issues. 536 Grand Ave., Oakland. Starhawk.org: The author and political activist is the best-known witch in the Bay Area, and her frequently updated site contains information and events related to all of her passions. Thespiralpath.org: The Fellowship of the Spiral Path brings Northern California neopagan groups together. Witchvox.com: Perhaps the closest thing to a national directory for pagans, this site contains easily accessible listings by locale of groups and events, as well as lots of essays and information. - S.F.

Update

Hola! The Showgirls have been sending me updates from Bonn, but none of them make much sense. It seems they are up to their beautiful ears in intrigue. Bambi seems to be claiming responsibility for GM Kramnik's win in Game 10 yesterday to bring the score to Anand 6/Kramnik 4. Play resumes tomorrow. Kramnik would have to pull off a nearly impossible feat - winning the last 2 games, just in order to force a play-off with Anand (rapid chess and then blitz and then - the dreaded Armageddon game if it comes to that), and he would have to win in the forced play-offs in order to reclaim the title from Anand. Depending upon what further reports I get (or not) from the Girls, I'll cobble a report together soon. Things will reach a climax - one way or another!!! - if it comes to a Game 12 in any event. We'll see, darlings. Meanwhile, good news is - I finally lost that blasted 10th pound! Weighed myself this morning and it was gone, vanished! Hopefully, forever! I'm a week behind schedule - target date for losing the next 10 pounds is November 25th. In celebration of my 10 pound weight loss, tomorrow I'm treating myself to an exclusive spa haircut - but since I'm pinching my pennies just like everyone else seems to be these days, it's only because I got a 50% off coupon. I haven't gone to this place before, but the hairdresser seems very sweet - young enough to be a daughter and outside today handing out coupons without a scarf or gloves on! She took my half-kidding scolding in good course so I made an appointment practically on the spot. I'm going for a "Posh" Beckham layered, angled bob (with bangs). Will let you know how it turns out, darlings!

Goddess Diwali: Prayer - It Can't Hurt!

Diwali: Can Goddess of wealth help plunging market? 2008-10-28 10:20:00 By Radha Kant Bharati Light is the symbol of prosperity and joy. In the Indian sub-continent a great tradition coming down from centuries is Deepavali i.e. festival of lights. It is celebrated after twenty days from Dashahara on Amavasya 15th Day of dark fortnight of Kartika month of Indian calendar. Diwali or Deepavali signifies different things to different people of our Indian society. Popularly it is believed that on this day Lord Rama returned back to Ayodhya after completing period of 14 years in exile. Thus the occasion of Diwali is the celebration of victory of Lord Rama. Side by side it is also celebration of Naraka Chaturdashi, the day when the Demon of Darkness and Dirt Narakasura was destroyed by Lord Krishna. According to another popular believe the festival is linked with Laxmi Goddess of wealth and prosperity. On this day Goddess Laxmi goes around visiting clean, lighted and decorated houses during the night and distributes gifts and blessings. The festival of lights is celebrated in different ways in different regions of Indian sub-continent. On this pious occasion feasting, merry making and joyful get-togethers are main features. Nowadays, all over India the festival of Diwali is celebrated with pomp and show and with bursting crackers well past midnight. All our festival seasons coincide with an increase in air, water and sound pollution levels. Noise levels have been a matter of concern as they are harmful to health and welfare of all. Noise pollution can cause both physiological and psychological problems. Subjected to 45 decibels of noise, an average person cannot sleep. At 120 decibels the ear registers pain, but hearing damage begins at a much lower level, about 85 decibels. Apart from hearing loss, noise can cause lack of sleep, irritability, heartburn, indigestion, ulcers, high blood pressure, and possibly heart disease. Noise-induced stress creates severe tension in daily living and contributes to mental illness. Keeping in view the increasing trend in noise levels, various regulations have been issued from time to time to control noise pollution in ambient air, at source and at manufacturing stage. The Supreme Court has literally put a cap on ‘noise’, crackers can emit. It is 125 decibels on an average. The ruling has had a salutary effect. In pursuance of the judgement and to collect bench mark data, all the regulatory agencies of the State Government/ Union Territories have been advised to comply with stipulated norms and to draw an Action Plan for ensuring the compliance of the directions. The concerned agencies have also been advised to strengthen/establish environmental cells at the State and District levels to check noise pollution and also to undertake survey in major cities specially before and after the festivals to ensure compliance. Intensive campaigns are also launched in print and electronic media about deleterious effects of noise pollution. For creating awareness, most of the State Governments sent their monitoring reports of survey undertaken before and on Diwali day and the reports so far have revealed that there has been a reasonable success in arresting the menace of noise pollution. The conflict between competing interests in society - safety, health, and calm on the one hand, and tradition on the other hand, has evolved over time, and the health effects are receiving greater attention. There has been a concerted effort over the past few years to reduce noise pollution by opting for light based fireworks as-well-as maintaining the spirit of Deepavali. Courtesy: Press Information Bureau

16th North American FIDE Invitational

One of the USA's promising young female chessplayers, WFM Alisa Melekhina, participated in the 16th North American FIDE Invitational in suburban Chicago October 18 -24, 2008, put together by the North American Chess Association. Here are the final standings: 1st - IM Valay Parikh - 7/9 2nd - IM Ben Finegold - 6.5/9 3rd - IM Angelo Young - 5.5/9 4th-5th - FM Peter Bereolos & FM Florin Felecan - 5/9 6th-7th - FM Dale Haessel & IM Emory Tate - 4/9 8th - FM Mehmed Pasalic - 3.5/9 9th - WFM Alisa Melekhina - 3/9 10th - FM Aleksander Stamnov - 1.5/9

2008 Cap d'Agde

Two teams facing off.

The ladies are having a tough time of it, while young Fabiano is running away with the thing!

Here are the results through the first game of Round 5 - second game of Round 5 and further is tomorrow:

Leaderboard Groupe A Group A -

-- Le classement Leaderboard Fabiano Caruana (2640) : 4,5 4.5
Vassily Ivanchuk (2786) : 3,5 3.5
Maxime Vachier Lagrave (2716) : 3,0 3.0
Ivan Cheparinov (2696) : 2,5 2.5
Bu Xiangzhi (2704) : 2,5 2.5
Alexandra Kosteniuk (2525) : 2,0 2.0
Katerina Lahno (2488) : 1,5 1.5
Marie Sebag (2533) : 0,5 0.5
Average Elo 2636

Groupe B

Magnus Carlsen (2786) : 3,5 3.5
Teimour Radjabov (2751) : 3,5 3.5
Hikaru Nakamura (2704) : 2,5 2.5 Anatoly Karpov (2651) : 2,5 2.5
Hou Yifan (2578) : 1,5 1.5
Humpy Koneru (2618) : 1,0 1.0
Sebastien Feller (2526) : 1,0 1.0
Almira Skripchenko (2455) : 0,5 0.5
Average Elo 2634

Essent 2008

GM Marie Sebag, who earned the GM title in early summer playing in the "Open" section of the Individual European Chess Championships, was the sole chess femme in this event (held in Hoogeveen, the Netherlands, I just love that name), and she had a rather rough time of it, taking some lumps, scoring 2/6, earning a sub-par performance rating. Sokolov ran away with the tournament this year. 1. Sokolov, Ivan NED g NED 2650 5 2847 2. Adly, Ahmed g EGY 2586 2½ 2538 3. Smeets, Jan g NED 2604 2½ 2532 4. Sebag, Marie g FRA 2533 2 2488

Ancient Carved Stone Discovered in Denmark

This is a really interesting discovery. Sensational Stone Age discovery October 20, 2008 An ancient stone with a phallic motif provides new information on Stone Age art and symbols. A young couple walking along Horsens Fjord in August this year made a sensational discovery – a 5-7,000 year old stone with a scratched motif. The 13x10x4 cm. limestone shows a man with an erect phallus and two fish. Archaeologists at Horsens museum were taken aback, and immediately passed the stone on the National Museum to determine whether the motif was indeed from the Stone Age or simply a later work of art using an ancient style. Ertebølle Culture “But now we’re sure. We believe the stone to be from the Ertebølle Culture between 5,400 and 3,900 BC. It’s the sort of discovery that is only made once a decade,” says Horsens Museum Archaeologist Per Borup. Apart from its phallic representation, the man in the motif seems to have some form of head dress with animal ears – possibly in the tradition of an Indian shaman. Edited by Julian Isherwood

Hatshepsut: Pharaoh of Egypt

AUB president sheds light on female pharaoh Daily Star staff Friday, October 24, 2008 BEIRUT: The American University of Beirut's (AUB) new president, Peter Dorman, who is also a professor of archeology and an expert on ancient Egypt, gave a presentation Wednesday about Hatshepsut, the only woman to reign as a male pharaoh over ancient Egypt. Organized by the Society of the Friends of the AUB Museum and held at the AUB Archeological Museum, the illustrated lecture was titled "Gender Trouble in Ancient Egypt: The Case of King/Queen Hatshepsut." It attracted a large audience, including Culture Minister Tammam Salam and his wife. In his talk, Dorman highlighted the uniqueness of the reign of Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, who assumed the role of male king of ancient Egypt, through her garb and title, as depicted in the hieroglyphs contemporary to her time of rule. Hatshepsut is the fifth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty (1500 BC) of Ancient Egypt and wife of Thutmose II - also Hatshepsut's half-brother - who died a few years after becoming king without a direct heir to the throne. Thutmose III, Hatshepsut's stepson and nephew, was too young to assume kingship at the time. As a result, Hatshepsut claimed power as queen regent, and then usurped it, by claiming to be the legitimate heir, by virtue of being the daughter of a king. Seven years into her rule, she also assumed the role of male king. "Hatshepsut holds a unique place in ancient Egyptian history since she is the only woman to rule in the guise of a male ruler," said Dorman. While surveying the circumstances that led to her becoming queen then assuming legitimacy for rightful heir for kingship, Dorman supported his observations with archaeological evidence - mostly derived from her funerary temple in Dayr al-Bahri on the banks of the Nile - that showed the evolution of her role from queen to king. "Hatshepsut no longer claimed legality for being wife of a deceased king; rather, by being the eldest surviving heir to the throne, and tracing legitimacy to her father in life and death," said Dorman. In conclusion, Dorman noted that Hatshepsut's images were intentionally and meticulously desecrated and destroyed after her death by Thutmose III, and experimented with possible reasons for this fact. "Hatshepsut may have been forgotten, but with research we have been able to recover important aspects of her life," Dorman said. Dorman is an international leader in the study of the ancient Near East, and in particular the field of Egyptology, in which he is a noted historiographer, epigrapher and philologist. He is the author and editor of several major books and many articles on the study of ancient Egypt and is probably best known for his historical work on the reign of Hatshepsut and the Amarna period. His most recent monograph, "Faces in Clay: Technique, Imagery, and Allusion in a Corpus of Ceramic Sculpture from Ancient Egypt" (2002), examines artisanal craftsmanship in light of material culture, iconography, and religious texts. In 2007, he and Betsy M. Bryan of The Johns Hopkins University came out with an edited volume titled "Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes." Since 2002 Dorman has chaired with great success the distinguished department of Near Eastern languages and civilizations at one of the world's top research universities, the University of Chicago. Prior to that, he spent nine years (1988-1997) heading the epigraphic efforts at Chicago House in Luxor, Egypt. From 1977 to 1988, he worked in curatorial positions in the department of Egyptian art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. - The Daily Star

The Rich Cheat on Their Taxes - NO!

How the Rich Cheat On Their Taxes by Janet NovackThursday, October 23, 2008 A new study based on unpublished Internal Revenue Service data shows the rich are different when it comes to paying taxes: They hide more of their income. The previously unreported study estimates that taxpayers whose true income was between $500,000 and $1 million a year understated their adjusted gross incomes by 21% overall in 2001, compared to an 8% underreporting rate for those earning $50,000 to $100,000 and even lower rates for those earning less. (The "net misreporting rate" as the IRS calls it, includes both underreported income and inflated deductions.) In all, because of their higher noncompliance rates, those with true incomes of $200,000 or more received 25% of all income, but accounted for 40% of net underreported income and 42% of underreported tax in 2001, the new analysis finds. The study was written by Joel Slemrod, an economics professor and director of the Office of Tax Policy Research at the University of Michigan's business school and IRS economist Andrew Johns. It has not been officially endorsed or even released by the IRS and seems sure to add fuel to the election season debate over whether those earning $250,000 or more should pay higher tax rates, as Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, has proposed. The Slemrod/Johns analysis uses unpublished data from special research audits the IRS conducted on a sample of 45,000 individual returns filed for 2001. It was the IRS' first such research effort since 1988, and it led the agency to estimate the 2001 gross "tax gap" at $345 billion. The main reason for the income-related cheating disparity: Higher income folks receive more of their income from sources that are easier to hide, including self-employment earnings; income from rents, partnerships and S corporations; and capital gains. "The distribution of noncompliance lines up pretty closely with who gets income that's hard (for the IRS) to keep track of,'' Slemrod says. Still, he notes, the distribution of income by source doesn't explain all the increased noncompliance at higher income levels. In its 2001 tax gap study, the IRS estimated that individuals underreported business income by 43% overall. Sole proprietors, who report self-employment income on schedule C of their tax returns, underreported their income a stunning 57%. By contrast, the IRS found, 99% of all wages were reported by individual tax filers. The obvious explanation is that workers have no choice--their employers report their earnings to the IRS and withhold taxes on them. Meanwhile, net capital gains for 2001 were underreported by 12%, the IRS estimated. The IRS receives reports from brokers of taxpayers' gross sales of stocks and bonds, but not of their initial costs or profits--therefore it has no way to easily check their reported capital gains. (Last month, as part of the $700 billion bailout bill, Congress mandated that brokers report the basis of any stocks bought in 2011 or later.) The new study seems to show that the really rich are more tax compliant than the merely well-off, although not nearly as compliant as middle- and working-class wage slaves. Those earning $2 million plus had an 11% underreporting rate. But Slemrod told Forbes that he was "less comfortable" with that finding, noting that the very rich may have made use of techniques that IRS research audits didn't detect. "I just don't know whether these audits were able to track down really sophisticated noncompliance or Swiss bank accounts. They may underestimate it (noncompliance) at the top,'' he says. Indeed, in the past several years, the IRS has collected billions in back taxes from wealthy taxpayers who used dicey tax shelters to manufacture huge phony losses in the late 1990s, 2000 and 2001. But the IRS didn't get a handle on the nature or extent of these shelters until years later and relied on tax shelter promoters' customer lists and special self-disclosure programs, not audits, to find most of the taxpayers involved. Currently, the government is suing UBS for the names of 18,000 wealthy Americans it believes may have had unreported Swiss bank accounts. Copyrighted, Forbes.com. All rights reserved.

Happy Squirrels!

Today I ventured forth to do a list of errands: (1) ice melt (2) mulch (3) birdseed and sunflower seed (4) gasoline (5) wine - lots of wine. Mission accomplished! When I got home, I put out some sunflower seeds for the squirrels, along with some fresh peanuts, and whistled for my furry little buddies to come eat. They appeared within seconds. It never ceases to amaze me. My whistling leaves much to be desired - I'm sure a bird can't hear me from 6 feet away. Still, they come. Check out this little guy or gal - photo from Bishek, Kyrgyzstan. The hair around the ears - how cute is that? Sort of reminds me of GM Alexander Khalifman's hair back in 1999, when he won the FIDE World Chess Championship in Las Vegas.

Antique Chess Set Stolen

Some questions: Were the thieve really after the set and just took the other stuff to cover their tracks? Are the thieves chessplayer? Would your run of the mill thieves (ahem) understand the value of a hand-carved 17th century ivory chess set??? Is this actually some insidious plot to gather some pieces of the legendary Montglane Chess Service in an attempt to recreate the Elixir of Eternal Life? Story from The Australian.news.com Thieves steal 17th century chess set October 25, 2008 BRAZEN thieves have made off with an antique hand-carved chess set after breaking into a Brisbane home. Police say the home on Franklin Way, Wakerley, in Brisbane's east, was robbed on October 13. "Thieves brazenly removed palings from the front wooden fence of the ... home to gain access to the yard,'' Queensland Police said. "They then broke into the house and stole a quantity of personal items, including jewellery, a laptop computer and the antique chess set.'' Police said the 17th century chess set was a much-loved family treasure and its 32 black and white pieces were made from hand-carved ivory. The chess pieces are also distinctive because they are each made up of eight individual sections of ivory.

Friday Night Miscellany

No Showgirls tonight, darlings! They're putting a wrap on their report - yes, I know - there are still 4 more games scheduled, but all GM Anand has to do is garner 1.5 points from those games in order to win the WCC Match outright. The Girls aren't bucking the odds and yes, they are hearing the Fat Lady Sing. Now, down to the business of the ridiculous and the sublime. There's lots to choose from, but I'm tired and Katherine Neville's "The Fire" is calling out to me, along with the fireplace and a glass of wine. Tomorrow it's running errands to get ready for the winter here, which may visit us with the first snow of the season Sunday evening, eek! It's buy mulch, bulk ice melt, bulk bird seed, bulk sunflower seed, bulk dog food (for the crows and other critters), one last 2 gallon container of gasoline (which optimistically looks forward to at least 1 more warm enough weekend where the grass can be cut before winter descends), bulk wine time, cuz I don't want to be lugging this stuff home once it drops below zero and the blizzards blow like they did last year! In the sad but sublime column, Barack Obama quits the campaign trail for a day or so during a crucial time period to visit his gravely ill grandmother. The generation that fought in and were adults during WWII is fast dying off. Obama's grandmother worked in an airplane factory during WWII and his grandfather fought in the war. My own dear father, a WWII Marines veteran, died at the age of 80 in November, 2002, just a few days before Veteran's Day. He was wounded in action and was awarded a Purple Heart. It wasn't until years later, as we all grew up that we realized he also suffered other lingering injuries from frostbite suffered in 1944. He had other medals and ribbons too, but I don't know what they were - he never talked about them. Dad's funeral was featured in a Journal/Sentinel article in 2002 close to Veteran's Day, that talked about the decreasing number of veterans available to play taps at Vets' memorial services. Now, many veterans have a taped "Taps" played at their memorial services. We were fortunate, we had a live bugle player, and as a Vet, Dad received a 21-gun salute. Dad is buried in a Veterans' Cemetery in southeastern Wisconsin, and there is a place for mom next to his grave. I have a rose carefully preserved from that service, in a glass-enclosed bookcase that houses my most precious mementos and books. I see it every day and remember the man it represents. Mom, who has had a few health scares over the years but takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin', is either 85 or 81, depending upon which date of birth she uses :) I think she'll live to be 100, at least. That's what I plan for myself, by the way. Mom is from tough Polish stock, stubborn as hell, and while I got my coloring and build from my father's French-mixed ancestry, I sure got more than my share of mom's unbending neck! My oldest brother went into the Army out of high school in the mid 1970's and served his time in Germany, was honorably discharged, and went into the Wisconsin National Guard. He eventually earned the NCO rank of Seargent - don't ask me what level because I don't know, it's not something we've talked about. My brother was still in the Guard when his unit was called up in 1991 to go serve in Desert Storm. My brother did not, however, travel with his unit, though he threw a big fit about it! He wanted to go but, you see, he was recovering from chemo- and radiation-therapy for a certain form of cancer that often strikes young men in the prime of their lives. While the cancer was pronounced eradicated, his lungs had been severely weakened by the treatments he received and his doctor refused to release him to go overseas to a desert climate which, so the doc said, would probably kill him. My brother would have gone anyway, but the government said no. So, he swallowed his disappointment and continued to serve at home. He married his long-time girlfriend, who was already a sister-in-law de facto if not de jure! She was one of the family even if there was no wedding ring. She's black, we're white. Oh, pardon me, she's African-American (she'd laugh if I ever called her that to her face, LOL!) Another mark against us, I suppose. My brother continued in the Guard until a few years ago; I'll have to check with him for the exact number of years, I believe he served 25 years in the Guard before retiring. It really yanks my chain when Sarah Palin stands up and implies in her speech that because I am a Democrat from a family of Democrats, that because I - and my family - support ideas that she doesn't agree with - we are not REAL Americans, we are NOT patriotic, we are somehow LESS than human and beneath contempt. She has crowds cheering her when this filth and calumny flows from her mouth. That tells me all I need to know about Sarah Palin, John McCain and the party and people who support this kind of "campaigning." Are we living in Germany during the 1930's - geez! Let's move on to the ridiculous, shall we? How about getting yourself and your family a brand new wardrobe to the tune of $150,000 courtesy of the Republican National Committee? (Notice the source - a British newspaper, lol!) We're not talking Walmart, baby, nosiree! Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom's, Designer Labels and exclusive designer boutiques. I want to know what happened to the hockey mom from Alaska. Oh, I forgot - she's the one caught out charging the state of Alaska for per diem expenses when oops, she was actually at home and, oops, her kids traveled on the state's dime as part of "official business" and oops, she's got a $500,000 house on a reported income that doesn't support the mortgage payment. Hmmmm.... Oh, maybe she doesn't have a mortgage. Maybe she and First Dude came up with $500,000 in cash to pay for the house in full. Gee, maybe we should all move to Alaska and cash in too! Darlings, I'm in the wrong profession. I should have gone into MAKE-UP. The McCain Campaign has paid a make-up artist over $22,000 for TWO WEEKS WORK on Sarah Palin. That's just about half of what I make in a YEAR. Nice work if you can get it. But what the hell, the McCain Campaign is funded by OUR TAX DOLLARS (public campaign financing) - Mr. McCain has made a BIG POINT of that, like he took the High Road. What's the difference between Sarah Palin dipping into taxpayer dollars to cloth herself and her family so they all look good while traipsing around the country trumpeting a bigoted, narrow-minded campaign that seeks to divide the country along racial, economic and religious lines, and the dudes who master-minded the taxpayer financed bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 million and counting, the bail out AIG to the tune of $122 million and counting, the bail out of various large financial institutions to the tune of $250 million and counting. So who cares if Palin spends a measely $150,000 for clothes the likes of which 99.5% of Americans will never be able to afford, right? Chump change. But, John McCain says that Obama's proposed tax cuts for the working poor and middle class are SOCIALISM and modest tax increases to the wealthy and rich - in reality, just peeling back the gigantic giveaways to the rich and richer given out during the Bushite years - is well, gaddummit, just plain wrong! We've got to balance the budget! We've got to pay off them Commies over in China, hell, we owe them $500 billion. You want soup lines darlings? The Great Depression ain't got nothing on what will happen in this country if McCain wins the election. The rich will eat their cake and continue to quaff their French champagne, while setting up trusts that protect their millions and billions from any liability while putting their handicapped and mentally ill children on the public dole (it's only against the law for the increasingly disappearing middle class in this country to "divest" assets when a spouse has to go into a nursing home; it's not illegal for a billionaire to put his mentally incompetent or physically handicapped child into state-funded Medicaid programs once they reach the age of majority in their state), and everyone else will just starve to death while McCain fiddles in the White House during intermittent bouts of hysteria and Sarah impatiently taps her $400 shod foot, waiting for him to croak. Gee, a great prospect, aina hey? Just remember, the guys who are bitching about SOCIALISM are the same guys who want to put your Social Security taxes to work in the "Free market." These are also the same guys who are the first with their hands out to collect their Social Security when they hit 62, and the first who try to find a way to prevent the Social Security benefits payable to their moms and dads drooling away in nursing homes from going to the state, while mom and dad are on Medicaid (taxpayer funded) because son and daughter can't be bothered to part with their parents' hard-earned millions to pay for their care. Let the stupid frigging taxpayers do it, the say! It's all legal too, and all rigged for the rich and uber-rich to get away with this kind of b.s. Irony of ironies, working class and poor people actually BELIEVE that McCain and Palin have their best interests at heart. If nothing else, this definitively demonstrates the abject failure of "No Child Left Behind", one of the shining examples of legislation left behind by the Bush Years. Cough cough. P.T. Barnam sure was right. Anyone earning less than $250,000 a year in income in this country who votes the Republican ticket is voting against his or her own self-interest, and yet they're happy to do it! Just goes to show - there are suckers born every minute, boooyah! Or brain-washed Borg. How sad. Why not just take a big knife and slit your own throats while your at it. I'm sure the Wall Street guys will get a big kick out of that. From the sad but true department, a white female campaign worker for the McCain campaign was caught out in a big lie when she said that a big black man (BOOOO!) attacked her and carved a backwards "B" on her cheek when he discovered she was a McCain supporter. I'm surprised she didn't also say he sported a turban and flowing "Arab" robes. Turns out the lady carved up her own cheek. She's not sure why... Unfortunately, I'm sure that some folks read the initial reports but have not seen the follow-up reports - and will go away thinking -- well, you can fill in your own blanks about what they'll be thinking. Pathetic. And really Pathetic. Time to go read Katherine Neville.

Possible Age of Chinese Writing Pushed Back

New archaeological discovery rewrites earliest Chinese characters dating www.chinaview.cn 2008-10-25 00:05:06 JINAN, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Inscribed animal bones and jade pieces unearthed in Changle County of eastern Shandong Province are earliest examples of Chinese characters dating back 4,500 years ago, the latest archaeological studies show. The discovery broke the record for the previous earliest known examples of Chinese characters, the inscribed animal bones and tortoise shells, known as the oracle bones, of the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC-1100 BC), by more than 1,300 years. The oracle bones were major discoveries at the Yinxu in Anyang of central China's Henan Province. The Shandong discovery was first made in 2004 by Xiao Guangde, the Changle Culture and History Committee director and an amateur collector. He noticed many sub-fossil bones were being thrown away when local peasants were digging at the Yuanjiazhuang relic site in the county. After carefully cleaning some of the unearthed bones, Wang found they bore obvious inscriptions. He also bought other samples, often at high prices, from local people. Over a period of four years, his collection grew to about 100 inscribed bones and two jade relics also with inscriptions. Lined up in order, the inscriptions bear resemblance to drawings and characters, and show objects such as a bird, a crab, a triangle and the sun. Some inscriptions emerge repeatedly. "This kind of repeating proves the inscriptions are carved by human beings," Wang Yuxin, the China Yinshang Association of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences president, noted. Li Laifu, the Shandong Oracle Scripts Association president, said the inscriptions may be left by the Dongyi people who lived in what is today's Shandong Province as early as 8,300 years ago. They made birds as their totem. However, archaeologists speculated from the bones' color, structure, and degree of their petrifaction, that the scripts had existed for about 4,500 years. "Unlike other inscriptions dated earlier than the oracle bones, these scripts are in a considerable number and are systematic," said Wang. "Their structures also follow certain rules." He reckoned the oracle bones found in Henan may inherit some characters from the newly-found scripts. However, he denied they were for divination use. "The bones and jade don't bear deviation marks such as drills, or chisel and burn traces, so the writing maybe for keeping records of events." The discoveries were named the "Changle bone scripts" after the place where they were found. Though they could not be translated at present, archaeologists believed they may provide valuable evidence in the studies of the evolution of ancient Chinese characters, and to reproduce a picture of an ancient society that was barely known. Oracle bones were first unearthed in the late 19th century at the ruins of Yin (Yinxu) in Anyang, capital of the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC-1100 BC). Yin was the ancient name for the Shang Dynasty. The ruins were listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. Editor: Yan

More on Gobekli Tepe, Turkey

Prior post. Coverage and insight of why this is an earth-shaking discovery from Smithsonian.com: Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization By Andrew Curry Photographs by Berthold Steinhilber Smithsonian magazine, November 2008 Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple. "Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides. Schmidt points to the great stone rings, one of them 65 feet across. "This is the first human-built holy place," he says. From this perch 1,000 feet above the valley, we can see to the horizon in nearly every direction. Schmidt, 53, asks me to imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today. Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. "This area was like a paradise," says Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill." With the sun higher in the sky, Schmidt ties a white scarf around his balding head, turban-style, and deftly picks his way down the hill among the relics. In rapid-fire German he explains that he has mapped the entire summit using ground-penetrating radar and geomagnetic surveys, charting where at least 16 other megalith rings remain buried across 22 acres. The one-acre excavation covers less than 5 percent of the site. He says archaeologists could dig here for another 50 years and barely scratch the surface. Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists in the 1960s. As part of a sweeping survey of the region, they visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery. In 1994, Schmidt was working on his own survey of prehistoric sites in the region. After reading a brief mention of the stone-littered hilltop in the University of Chicago researchers' report, he decided to go there himself. From the moment he first saw it, he knew the place was extraordinary. Unlike the stark plateaus nearby, Gobekli Tepe (the name means "belly hill" in Turkish) has a gently rounded top that rises 50 feet above the surrounding landscape. To Schmidt's eye, the shape stood out. "Only man could have created something like this," he says. "It was clear right away this was a gigantic Stone Age site." The broken pieces of limestone that earlier surveyors had mistaken for gravestones suddenly took on a different meaning. Schmidt returned a year later with five colleagues and they uncovered the first megaliths, a few buried so close to the surface they were scarred by plows. As the archaeologists dug deeper, they unearthed pillars arranged in circles. Schmidt's team, however, found none of the telltale signs of a settlement: no cooking hearths, houses or trash pits, and none of the clay fertility figurines that litter nearby sites of about the same age. The archaeologists did find evidence of tool use, including stone hammers and blades. And because those artifacts closely resemble others from nearby sites previously carbon-dated to about 9000 B.C., Schmidt and co-workers estimate that Gobekli Tepe's stone structures are the same age. Limited carbon dating undertaken by Schmidt at the site confirms this assessment. The way Schmidt sees it, Gobekli Tepe's sloping, rocky ground is a stonecutter's dream. Even without metal chisels or hammers, prehistoric masons wielding flint tools could have chipped away at softer limestone outcrops, shaping them into pillars on the spot before carrying them a few hundred yards to the summit and lifting them upright. Then, Schmidt says, once the stone rings were finished, the ancient builders covered them over with dirt. Eventually, they placed another ring nearby or on top of the old one. Over centuries, these layers created the hilltop. Today, Schmidt oversees a team of more than a dozen German archaeologists, 50 local laborers and a steady stream of enthusiastic students. He typically excavates at the site for two months in the spring and two in the fall. (Summer temperatures reach 115 degrees, too hot to dig; in the winter the area is deluged by rain.) In 1995, he bought a traditional Ottoman house with a courtyard in Urfa, a city of nearly a half-million people, to use as a base of operations. On the day I visit, a bespectacled Belgian man sits at one end of a long table in front of a pile of bones. Joris Peters, an archaeozoologist from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, specializes in the analysis of animal remains. Since 1998, he has examined more than 100,000 bone fragments from Gobekli Tepe. Peters has often found cut marks and splintered edges on them—signs that the animals from which they came were butchered and cooked. The bones, stored in dozens of plastic crates stacked in a storeroom at the house, are the best clue to how people who created Gobekli Tepe lived. Peters has identified tens of thousands of gazelle bones, which make up more than 60 percent of the total, plus those of other wild game such as boar, sheep and red deer. He's also found bones of a dozen different bird species, including vultures, cranes, ducks and geese. "The first year, we went through 15,000 pieces of animal bone, all of them wild. It was pretty clear we were dealing with a hunter-gatherer site," Peters says. "It's been the same every year since." The abundant remnants of wild game indicate that the people who lived here had not yet domesticated animals or farmed. But, Peters and Schmidt say, Gobekli Tepe's builders were on the verge of a major change in how they lived, thanks to an environment that held the raw materials for farming. "They had wild sheep, wild grains that could be domesticated—and the people with the potential to do it," Schmidt says. In fact, research at other sites in the region has shown that within 1,000 years of Gobekli Tepe's construction, settlers had corralled sheep, cattle and pigs. And, at a prehistoric village just 20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the world's oldest domesticated strains of wheat; radiocarbon dating indicates agriculture developed there around 10,500 years ago, or just five centuries after Gobekli Tepe's construction. To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies. The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies." What was so important to these early people that they gathered to build (and bury) the stone rings? The gulf that separates us from Gobekli Tepe's builders is almost unimaginable. Indeed, though I stood among the looming megaliths eager to take in their meaning, they didn't speak to me. They were utterly foreign, placed there by people who saw the world in a way I will never comprehend. There are no sources to explain what the symbols might mean. Schmidt agrees. "We're 6,000 years before the invention of writing here," he says. "There's more time between Gobekli Tepe and the Sumerian clay tablets [etched in 3300 B.C.] than from Sumer to today," says Gary Rollefson, an archaeologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who is familiar with Schmidt's work. "Trying to pick out symbolism from prehistoric context is an exercise in futility." Still, archaeologists have their theories—evidence, perhaps, of the irresistible human urge to explain the unexplainable. The surprising lack of evidence that people lived right there, researchers say, argues against its use as a settlement or even a place where, for instance, clan leaders gathered. Hodder is fascinated that Gobekli Tepe's pillar carvings are dominated not by edible prey like deer and cattle but by menacing creatures such as lions, spiders, snakes and scorpions. "It's a scary, fantastic world of nasty-looking beasts," he muses. While later cultures were more concerned with farming and fertility, he suggests, perhaps these hunters were trying to master their fears by building this complex, which is a good distance from where they lived. Danielle Stordeur, an archaeologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, emphasizes the significance of the vulture carvings. Some cultures have long believed the high-flying carrion birds transported the flesh of the dead up to the heavens. Stordeur has found similar symbols at sites from the same era as Gobekli Tepe just 50 miles away in Syria. "You can really see it's the same culture," she says. "All the most important symbols are the same." For his part, Schmidt is certain the secret is right beneath his feet. Over the years, his team has found fragments of human bone in the layers of dirt that filled the complex. Deep test pits have shown that the floors of the rings are made of hardened limestone. Schmidt is betting that beneath the floors he'll find the structures' true purpose: a final resting place for a society of hunters. Perhaps, Schmidt says, the site was a burial ground or the center of a death cult, the dead laid out on the hillside among the stylized gods and spirits of the afterlife. If so, Gobekli Tepe's location was no accident. "From here the dead are looking out at the ideal view," Schmidt says as the sun casts long shadows over the half-buried pillars. "They're looking out over a hunter's dream."

2008 European Club Cup

Final ranking of women (from various Women's Teams) according to Performance Rating: 1 IM Ovod Evgenija 2429 Spartak Vidnoe 2859 3,0 3 100,0 4 2 IM Dzagnidze Nana 2503 Cercle d'Echecs Monte Carlo 2707 6,0 7 85,7 2 3 GM Stefanova Antoaneta 2548 Spartak Vidnoe 2694 5,0 6 83,3 1 4 IM Harika Dronavalli 2462 Economist SGSEU Saratov 2689 4,0 5 80,0 2 5 IM Muzychuk Anna 2508 T-com Podgorica 2649 5,5 7 78,6 1 6 GM Koneru Humpy 2618 Cercle d'Echecs Monte Carlo 2646 4,5 6 75,0 1 7 IM Ushenina Anna 2496 Economist SGSEU Saratov 2541 4,5 7 64,3 1 8 GM Chiburdanidze Maia 2489 MIKA Yerevan 2523 3,0 5 60,0 1 9 GM Lahno Kateryna 2488 MIKA Yerevan 2519 4,0 6 66,7 2 10 IM Kosintseva Tatiana 2513 Spartak Vidnoe 2507 4,5 6 75,0 3 11 WGM Sharevich Anna 2322 EPAM 2504 3,5 4 87,5 4 12 IM Maric Alisa 2405 T-com Podgorica 2494 4,5 7 64,3 2 13 IM Zatonskih Anna 2440 EPAM 2485 3,5 6 58,3 1 (US Women's Champion) 14 GM Hoang Thanh Trang 2483 EPAM 2482 3,0 6 50,0 1 15 IM Khurtsidze Nino 2417 MIKA Yerevan 2479 3,5 5 70,0 4 16 GM Zhao Xue 2518 Spartak Vidnoe 2475 3,0 5 60,0 2 17 IM Korbut Ekaterina 2459 Finek St. Petersburg 2471 3,0 6 50,0 1 18 IM Cmilyte Viktorija 2512 Finek St. Petersburg 2469 3,5 6 58,3 1 19 IM Matveeva Svetlana 2411 EPAM 2462 2,5 5 50,0 3 20 IM Mkrtchian Lilit 2443 MIKA Yerevan 2460 3,5 5 70,0 3 21 IM Kovalevskaya Ekaterina 2439 T-com Podgorica 2458 5,5 7 78,6 4 22 WGM Motoc Alina 2313 CS Cotnari-Politehnica Iasi 2452 6,0 7 85,7 3 23 WGM Hou Yifan 2578 Spartak Vidnoe 2448 2,0 4 50,0 1 24 WIM Cherenkova Kristina 2245 Aspropirgos Attikis 2423 4,5 7 64,3 2 25 IM Skripchenko Almira 2455 Cercle d'Echecs Monte Carlo 2422 3,0 4 75,0 4 26 IM Foisor Cristina Adela 2365 Radnicki Rudovci 2419 5,5 7 78,6 2 27 GM Cramling Pia 2550 Cercle d'Echecs Monte Carlo 2414 3,0 6 50,0 1 28 WGM Kovanova Baira 2379 Economist SGSEU Saratov 2413 4,5 7 64,3 3 29 IM Atalik Ekaterina 2432 EPAM 2407 3,5 7 50,0 2 30 IM Ciuksyte Dagne 2339 Panevezys Chess Club 2405 4,5 7 64,3 1 31 IM Socko Monika 2434 Cercle d'Echecs Monte Carlo 2386 2,5 5 50,0 3 32 WGM Zhukova Natalia 2488 Finek St. Petersburg 2384 3,0 6 50,0 2 33 IM Danielian Elina 2513 MIKA Yerevan 2383 3,5 7 50,0 1 34 IM Paehtz Elisabeth 2471 Economist SGSEU Saratov 2375 3,5 7 50,0 2 35 WGM Stojanovic Andjelija 2357 Rudar Ugljevik 2368 4,5 7 64,3 1 36 WFM Congiu Mathilde 2230 Vandoeuvre Echecs 2341 3,5 7 50,0 1 37 IM Gaponenko Inna 2473 T-com Podgorica 2327 3,5 7 50,0 3 38 WFM Fakhretdinova Margarita 2147 Aspropirgos Attikis 2311 4,0 7 57,1 3 39 WGM Voicu Carmen 2239 SK Gross-Lehna 2285 3,5 6 58,3 2 40 WGM Demina Julia 2357 Finek St. Petersburg 2268 2,5 4 62,5 3 41 WGM Chelushkina Irina 2360 Radnicki Rudovci 2266 3,0 7 42,9 1 42 IM Kosintseva Nadezhda 2468 Spartak Vidnoe 2263 2,0 4 50,0 3 43 WGM Cosma Elena Luminita 2340 CS Cotnari-Politehnica Iasi 2262 4,5 7 64,3 2 44 IM Peptan Corina-Isabela 2430 CS Cotnari-Politehnica Iasi 2252 3,0 7 42,9 1 45 IM Turova Irina 2381 Finek St. Petersburg 2251 4,0 6 66,7 4 46 WFM Botvinnik Irina 2239 Herzliya Chess Club 2251 3,0 7 42,9 1 47 WGM Pitam Ella 2295 Madatech Haifa Chess Club 2234 3,0 7 42,9 1 48 WFM Steil-Antoni Fiona 2166 Vandoeuvre Echecs 2229 3,0 7 42,9 2 49 Porat Maya 2167 Madatech Haifa Chess Club 2202 5,0 7 71,4 4 50 WIM Daulyte Deimante 2278 Panevezys Chess Club 2196 3,0 7 42,9 2 51 WIM Papadopoulou Vera 2196 Aspropirgos Attikis 2172 1,5 7 21,4 1 52 WIM Boric Elena 2292 Rudar Ugljevik 2153 3,5 7 50,0 2 53 WFM Vujic-Katanic Branka 2107 Rudar Ugljevik 2147 4,0 7 57,1 3 54 Genzling Sylvie 1936 Bischwiller 2140 2,0 7 28,6 1 55 WGM Karlovich Anastazia 2256 SK Gross-Lehna 2138 2,5 6 41,7 1 56 IM Petrenko Svetlana 2285 SK Gross-Lehna 2135 2,0 6 33,3 1 57 WFM Limontaite Simona 2197 Panevezys Chess Club 2105 4,5 7 64,3 4 58 Klipper Rebecca 2023 Vandoeuvre Echecs 2101 2,5 7 35,7 3 59 WGM Olarasu Gabriela 2297 Radnicki Rudovci 2099 3,0 7 42,9 3 60 Iordanidou Zoi 2110 Aspropirgos Attikis 2096 2,5 7 35,7 4 61 WIM Makka Ioulia 2220 Panevezys Chess Club 2089 3,0 7 42,9 3 62 WGM Igla Bella 2254 Madatech Haifa Chess Club 2087 2,5 7 35,7 2 63 WIM Paulet Iozefina 2307 CS Cotnari-Politehnica Iasi 2083 4,0 6 66,7 4 64 Nagel Verena 2052 SK Gross-Lehna 2023 2,0 5 40,0 3 65 Len Irina 2091 Herzliya Chess Club 2016 2,0 7 28,6 2 66 Grapsa Georgia 2121 Galaxias Thessaloniki 2006 1,5 7 21,4 1 67 Vovinkina Natalia 2147 Madatech Haifa Chess Club 2002 2,0 7 28,6 3 Annotation: forfeit points are ignored

Discovery of "Tantric University" Baffles Archaeologists?

Hmmmm, I think perhaps something got lost in translation here. Why would archaeologists be "baffled" by this discovery, when the "university" itself was evidently well attested-to in Indian sources? From The Times of India Archaeologists baffled by tantric varsity 23 Oct 2008, 0232 hrs IST, Pranava K Chaudhary, TNN PATNA: The recent discovery of forgotten ancient tantric university - Oddantapuri Mahavihara near Biharsharif, district headquarters of Nalanda, has baffled archaeologists here. Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) claims to have discovered the location of this forgotten university which was set up in 730 AD somewhere near Biharsharif hill. "I have made frequent visits to the site which is located on Biharsharif hill to locate the exact location of the ancient tantric university," said superintending archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) , Patna circle, P K Mishra. "On the basis of various ancient texts I found a settlement on the top of Biharsharif hillock," he said. Mishra told TOI: "At least a dozen-member ASI technical team, including archaeologists, would visit the site on Friday to authenticate existence of the university. On the basis of various ancient texts and records I have come to the conclusion that the univeristy is located somewhere around this site." A large number of seals, sealings and images of Buddhist and Hindu cult, were found at Biharsharif during 1910, Mishra said. They are preserved in the Indian Museum, Kolkata. During research, Mishra procured a model of Oddantapuri from Tibet. The model must have been imported from the original Oddantapuri, Mishra said. Interestingly, in 775 AD, the king of Tibet had established a `Sarmaya Vihara' on the model of Oddantapuri at Lhasa. It is also mentioned in the Rahul Sankritayana collection which is preserved in Patna Museum. The Tibet model of Oddantapuri is still alive, Mishra said. Ancient texts say that the tantric university was destroyed in 1199 AD when Turk Afghan Mohd Bakhtiar Khilji invaded it. Quoting various ancient texts, Mishra said that Gopala, the first king of Pala dynasty, founded a great monastery at Oddantapuri. Laksmana Sena was then the king of Bengal. "The discovery of Tantric university at Biharsharif as a major seat of learning would add a new dimension to the field of ancient Indian history. Already we have two ancient universities - Nalanda and Vikramshila in Bihar. Now a third university in Bihar would be a new dimension to the study of tantricism," Mishra said.

Oh Those Showgirls! Kramnik! Anand!

Thursday, October 23, 2008, Bonn: Candi: I can't believe it - I just can't believe any of this is happening. Anand played (1) d4 again! Oh, Bambi, it's, it's - well, I just can't think of the right word at the moment - I'm sure it will come to me. Bambi: Candi, it's perfectly reasonable that Vishy would play (1) d4 again, since it's clear by now that is a line of play he's concentrated his home prep on for months. He's been successful with it too - unbelievably successful. Why mess with success? Candi: You've been reading the commentators again, haven't you. Bambi: Yes, and so have you. Candi: I can't believe that Vlady only managed a draw. Bambi: Well, he was playing black. Candi: Yes, but he had our secret weapon moves! Honestly, is it too much to ask the man to at least play them correctly? All that effort - down the toilet! Bambi: Candi, you did deliver the letter containing our moves to Vlady, didn't you? Candi: I gave the envelope to Leaky. He's the one who answered the door at Vlady's suite. Bambi: WHAT! Ooooh noooo! But you realize what this means - what must have happened! Candi: What? What happened? All I know is that Vlady didn't play the knight moves we sent him. Bambi: Exactly! That's because Leaky didn't give Vlady the letter, he read it himself but HE DIDN'T KNOW THE CODE! Candi: Ohmygoddess! I forgot! THE CODE! Bambi: He gave Vlady the moves, but he played them out of sequence! Ohmygoddess! Candi: Oh, oh, I think I feel faint again, Bambi. Bambi: Don't you faint on me again, Candi. Pull yourself together. We've got to think about what to do! Candi: Two days ago you were telling me to read your lips, that nothing could be done. Now you're thinking about what we can do? Bambi: I'm only trying to mitigate the damage that's already been done. You studied law - remember the concept - "Mitigation of Damages?" Anyway, you were the one who suggested "Knight Moves." Candi: Oh - right. Bambi: Candi, are you in love with Vlady? Candi: WHAT! Good Goddess, no. Absolutely not! Bambi! How could you think such a thing? Bambi: You've been acting strangely ever since we got here. You didn't know Vlady was married; and you fainted when you saw the wedding pictures! Were you carrying on with him? Candi: I have not been carrying on with Vlady here in Bonn. I fainted when I saw That Woman! And you know, Bambi, something has been knocking on the door of my brain ever since I saw her photograph. She reminds me of somebody, somebody we both know, only - I can't think of who it is she reminds me of! But I know we both know her. I'm surprised you haven't recognized her. Bambi: Before you told me that those photographs of Vlady's wife were of Olga Villiers, I had no idea what she looked like. I can't say I've seen that face before. And she would have been - Candi: I want to talk about The Hex. You said we were The Hex eight years ago in London. Bambi: Yes - I'm certain of it. The only thing that makes sense is that not only did Frogius blackmail me into doing his bidding, he blackmailed you, too! Candi: WHAT? Frogius blackmailed you too? Bambi: A ha! I see it all now! Frogius must have bet heavily against the line, and in order to reap the big pay-off, he had to make sure Kaspy lost to Vlady in the 2000 Brain Games Match. Oh Goddess, and there we were, ripe pickings to do his evil bidding. I cannot believe I was so incredibly stupid! I swear I'll hunt him down if it's the last thing I do - Candi: Oh please! You're upsetting me, Bambi. I hate to see you so - so - vengeful! Vengence is Mine, Sayeth the Lord. I Will Repay! So let's let the Lord do his vengence thingy, and we get out of Dodge while the getting is good. Sounds like a plan to me! I'll start packing - Bambi: Absolutely not. I'm not leaving here until we get to the bottom of this. Tell me this, Candi. Just what hook did Frogius use on you? Candi: Oh - I don't think I want to talk about it. Bambi: Tell me, it's vitally important! Candi: Bambi! Let me go, you're hurting me! Your acrylics are digging into my arms! Bambi: Oh, sorry. Just tell me how he forced you to having an affair with Kaspy. Candi: Well, oh - I can see now just how silly I was to believe him. But at the time, he was soooo convincing. Anyway, he told me that if I didn't do what he wanted, he'd make sure not only that The International Chessoid was wiped off the face of the internet, he'd get rid of Goddesschess, too! And Bambi, I just couldn't let that happen. I just couldn't! Bambi: Now, now, that's all right, Candi, that's all right. No need to get so emotional. My goodness, you really have been uber-emotional lately. Are you sure you're not - Candi: BAMBI! Gloria Belanova! GLORIA BELANOVA! Bambi: Who? Candi: Oh, don't tell me you don't remember her! She was the Riktonator's Personal Assistant for 21 years - his faithful everything! She was to Frogius what Della Street was to Perry Mason! She's the person I had the brain knocking on, the one I couldn't remember. Only now I do. It was Gloria, Gloria - I think I've got your number, Gloria - Bambi: Ohmygoddess! Now I remember! Candi: Look at their pictures side by side - I think - Bambi! I'm having a brain flash - they're Mother and Daughter! Bambi: Ohmygoddess! Frogius sent his own daughter to London to interview Kaspy after that disastrous tournament! And - and -- Candi: Yes? And - and -- Bambi: I haven't got that far in this narrative yet, give me a night to sleep on it, I'll dream something up --

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Holy Pawn! What new revelations will the Showgirls next uncork on us, I ask you? Wow! I'm hyperventilating, darlings, I can't keep up! Intrigue! Romance! Sex? Chess - only Vlady can't follow directions, only he didn't know, because Leaky kept the letter from him, and didn't know The Code! Wait a minute - what is this "Code" business, anyway? And just what were those "Knight Moves" the Girls put in that letter delivered to GM Kramnik's suite, into the hands of GM Peter Leko (one of a team of Seconds)? Will Vishy play (1) d4 tomorrow, in Game 8? Will the Girls put together the rest of the story behind the story of what really happened in London eight years ago? And what is really happening behind the scenes in Bonn today? Will Vlady, er, GM Vladimir Kramnik, have a miraculous epiphany, and suddenly begin playing absolutely brilliant chess, winning the match (wins in 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, for good measure)? Okay, probably not.

Oh, She's Just One of Us - B. Frigging S.

The Republican National Committee spends $150,000.00 - ONE HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND AND 00/100 DOLLARS - on clothes for Sarah Palin. And she's supposed to be a female version of Joe the Lying Ass, Tax Dodging Plumber, an Average American. Well, I don't know any Average Americans like Joe the Plumber, and I sure as hell am glad I don't - I might be arrested as a criminal accesory after the fact! Here I am, one of those EVIL COMMY UNAMERICAN LIBERALS. I earn $45,000 a year gross. My clothing budget is around $300 a year. Last year I really splurged and spent nearly $90 (on sale) buying a pair of water-proof Sorels guaranteed to keep my feet warm to 20 below zero. That was in addition to my $300 for other clothing purchases. This year I'm only shopping for new shoes to get me through the winter, as my clothing budget has otherwise been eaten up by the double-digit increases in my electric and gas bills, my real estate taxes, and what I pay for groceries. I expect to pay a total of perhaps $50 for two, hopefully three, pairs of shoes at Payless. Woooo hoooo! Now you tell me, darlings, just who is more representative of the average American, heh? Fifi the Alaskan Attack Dog from Alaska, or yours truly from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, whose feet do not sport $400 a pair designer stilletto heels. Sarah, Sarah, how can you be so frigging stupid? You are letting these Republican a-hole duds (I'd call them dudes but actually, they are just duds) ruin your future career in politics to serve their selfish short-term goals. Sarah, you are thereby proving every single negative perjorative the Janus-faced "neo-con" Nazis who are now running the Republican party in this country have ever foisted upon the female sex. Sarah, you should know better.

Hmmm, sounds rather like Chekov on Star Trek back in the '60's bragging about all the things that the Russians did (not!): Russians the first potters on earth? Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:50:16 GMT Russian archeologists claim that the Russians were the first people on the planet to cultivate land, breed cattle and make earthenware. Russian tribes [how do they know they were "Russian" tribes?] inhabited Khabarovsk Region in the Stone Age, the archeologists said after finding a 15,000-year-old hunters' settlement on the bank of the Amur River in Khabarovsk. Stone axes, knives, scrapers, arrowheads and baked earthenware have so far been unearthed in the area. "It was the first earthenware on the globe, and though it was primitive, with plain decoration, and poorly baked, yet it was a significant landmark in the history of mankind," said Andrei Malyavin, an employee of Khabarovsk Archeology Museum. [Not necessarily the "first earthenware on the globe", but to date it's the oldest preserved evidence discovered.] Firing shaped clay is among the possible first steps toward social organization, or society. The production of earthenware shows that the group had moved beyond simple farming, and into some specialization. Khabarovsk is the administrative center and the largest city of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located some 30 km from the Chinese border. HRF/JG/RA

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Take a look at the map that is in the article. The Jomon Culture is in the area - across a narrow straight on the islands that today comprise the nation of Japan. Jomon dates back to approximately 14,000 BCE, verified by updated carbon-14 readings. Those "Russians" who created the earliest known pottery (to date) along the Amur River could just as easily have been Jomon Culture people. Thing is, we don't know, and never will know, unless we find flash-frozen bodies or well-preserved human remains and can do extensive DNA analysis! However, I doubt we are talking about blonde-haired blue-eyed Russians, the only kind of Russian the Kremlin likes to showcase. More intriguing to me is the question of whether these ancient Amur/Jomon people are related to the people who crossed over into the Americas sometime before? It seems to me that most people have an image in mind that the people who settled the Americas were primative savages who crossed over the Bering Strait during the last interglacial period while they were following the last of the giant game. This ignores the reality of the fact that, to date, we haven't found any older evidence of pottery-making anywhere on earth - not in Egypt, not in Mesopotamia, not anywhere in the Fertile Crescent, not in Southeastern Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania), not in the Anatolian Peninsula. We know that people were in South America 13,000 years ago, and in eastern United States even earlier than that! So, perhaps all the concentration on the Middle East, etc. looking for the origins of civilization is mistaken, and we need to look along the far Pacific coastline of Europe and Asia.

Oh Those Showgirls! Kramnik! Anand!

We last left Candi gracefully passed out on the bear skin rug in front of the fireplace in the Library of the cushy Villa the Girls rented in Bonn during their assignment for Goddesschess: A little while later - Bambi: Candi! Oh, Thank Goddess! You scared the life out of me, collapsing like that! You've never ever fainted before! Don't you ever do that to me again! Candi: Ooooh, ooooh, I feel so strange, Bambi. I think I need something to drink. Bambi: Here's some Boobie Beer - Candi: No, Chivas Regal. Please. With a cherry. Bambi: Are you kidding me? Where do you expect me to come up with some Chivas Regal in the middle of Bonn? Candi: Suitcase - secret compartment. Bambi: Oh - okay, hold on -- Candi: Don't forget the jar of cherries... -- a few minutes later Bambi emerges from the Candi's bedroom with a velvet-covered bottle in one hand and a jar of marischino cherries in the other -- Bambi: Okay, here we are. Over ice? Soda? Candi: Neat, please. I feel just like Patricia Neal! Bambi: Now you're being historical. Candi: Don't you mean hysterical? I feel a bit screamy, actually, and I think I'm seeing pink elephants, too. Bambi: No, I said historical and I meant historical. Patricia Neal, indeed. I've seen that movie too, you know. It's one of my favorites! Now, what was this fainting all about. Candi - tell me true - are your expecting an interesting event? Candi: No, I've been very regular this trip, but thank you for asking. I think it's the grapefruit -- Bambi: That wasn't what I was asking about - oh, never mind. What made you faint? Candi: It was That Woman! Bambi: What woman? Candi: Bambi - are you blind? That Woman! Olga Villiers! The one who interviewed Kasparov for that story in The International Chessoid's December, 2000 End of the Millennium Mega-Edition! The one where he kept saying "Bambi...Bambi..." Oh, it was horrid! Bambi: Please! Get control of yourself, Candi! Olga Villiers? Are you certain? Where did you see her? Candi: Oh honestly, Bambi, you are blind! She's right there on your laptop, those photographs from Chessbase. She married Vlady on December 31, 2006! Bambi: WHAT? Candi: It's true! Did you never meet her at TIC headquarters? Bambi: No - no, I never did. That horrid Riktor Frogius fired us shortly after the 2000 Brain Games Championship, and I haven't been back to TIC since. Ohmygoddess, are you sure it's her? Candi: Sure I'm sure. I forget names all the time, but I never forget a face. That's her! Bambi: Oh, oh - I've got to think about this for a minute - my head hurts! Goddess! Candi: Oh, Bambi! I believe you are discombobulated! Here, sit down, have some of my Chivas Regal with a cherry on top. Bambi: Thank you, Candi. Ohmygoddess! Well, you said something strange was going on, and it certainly is! Only think - Olga Villiers is married to Vlady; Vlady beat, no, he not only beat, he humiliated and destroyed Kaspy, he crushed him, in the London match; Olga Villiers does that embarrassing interview with Kaspy and Mig. Now here is Vlady eight years later married to That Woman! Coincidence? Candi: Are you asking me or telling me? Bambi: That was a rhetorical - oh, never mind. Candi, I smell a rat! Candi: Or a skanky beaver... Bambi: Ohmygoddess! I feel so used! The Hex! Candi: Oh yes, you were going to tell me all about that. What was The Hex? Bambi: Candi - use your brain! It was us! We were The Hex! Candi: Ooooh - er, okay. Bambi: That dirty rotten filthy Communist Nazi Frogius - oh, I could just kill him! I'll strangle him with my thighs - I'll strangle him with one thigh tied behind my back! Candi: Bambi, please! Control yourself. Underage people read the columns at Goddesschess, you know! Bambi: Well, they aren't supposed to! I can't control the Entire Universe, Candi. If underage people are reading our columns at Goddesschess, they'll just have to suck it up and get over it! Candi: Never apologize, never explain. Bambi: Oh, you are so right, Candi! I smell Frogius all over this Operation, his filthy fingerprints are everywhere! Ha! Candi: Ha! Okay, how do we get him? Bambi: Oh Candi, you are my very best friend in the entire world, but I wouldn't ask you to undertake this desperately dangerous mission with me. You could get hurt. Candi: Oh! Er, well, okay. I'm all for fun, but not much for danger - Bambi: Candi! I was only kidding, of course! Candi: Oh! Er, well, of course! A horse is a horse, of course, of course, unless of course, the horse is hoarse, la la la la, la la la La, la la La LAAAAAHHHHH... Bambi: Candi! Oh, you are sooooo brilliant! That is exactly the answer - Candi: Oh! Er, well, of course! A Knight Move? Bambi: Precisely! Candi: Oooooh, I can hardly wait. I just love Knights and Their Moves! But Bambi, won't you please explain to me just how we were The Hex? Bambi: Not now, Candi. We've got lots of work to do -

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Oh oh! What are those Showgirls plotting? Will it have an impact on Vlady's - er, GM Vladimir Kramnik's, play during the second half of the Match? Will a Knight Move come into play (hint hint)? And just what was The Hex, exactly? Stay Tuned for MORE LAS VEGAS SHOWGIRLS!