Boston Blitz and World Championship

On October 22, 2008, the Boston Blitz clinches the playoffs by beating the Philadelphia Inventors 3-1. Marc Esserman and the erratic Krasik came through, scoring two wins against their counterparts. Ilya was the first one to finish and won with a vengeance against the passive Bengston. Ilya quickly came out and exposed his opponent’s underdeveloped position, and eventually forced Bengston to give up a pawn and the game.

The next game to finish was board 3 where the outstanding Marc Esserman played against the lowest rated IM I know, Richard Costigan. Costigan generated a huge attack against Marc’s queenside in the Dutch, but Esserman controlled the position and his opponent resigned on the 30th move. (Image 28th move) After the game, Esserman analyzed the position and quickly found 28.Nd6 which equalizes for Costigan, but it was missed by both players in the time scramble.



With that, Larry Christiansen simplified into a draw against Sergey Kudrin. In the game, Larry sacked an exchange for a central pawn mass. After Krasik and Esserman won, he liquidated into an endgame and quickly offered a draw, which was accepted.

The last game to finish was Eugene Perelshteyn’s. He grinded down his opponent Thomas Bartell in a Maroczy bind, which simplified into a passive rook and pawn endgame , much to the chagrin of the aggressive player Jorge Sammour-Hasbun, who didn’t want him to exchange pieces. Bartell defended well, against Eugene’s technique and a draw came by repetition.

Meanwhile, in the world chess news, the World Championship Match between FIDE World Champion Viswanithan Anand, and former world champion Vladmir Kramnik, is almost over. The chances of Kramnik coming back from a 5-2 deficit are slim. The people at Tianmen Square had a better offer. Kramnik himself admitted that the match was lost.

Stop the fighting children!!!

grow uP

A truly calming space

Sitting here with a panoramic view of the lake in front of me, the wooden deck to my left with a set of outdoor furniture on it, an old BBQ grill stands resolutely in the corner, lonely in the winter. It is a nice place to relax, through the sliding door and the screen, to feel the sun and the fresh breeze. On sunny days, people sail on the lake. The damp wood underneath me after the recent rain, feels refreshing to my feet. Some nights we turn on the outdoor heat lamps and just sit and talk.

In front of me, fifty feet pine trees stand, the branches swaying in the high winds; to the right is my hard tennis court that we play on occasionally. I can see my sailboat still docked on our small beach, with the lake water lapping up to its side. Piles of dead branches enforced our fence that keeps the Canadian geese away. I can hear them in the fall and spring going awk awk awk…

Out here in the suburbs, I hear the sounds of nature daily, birds chirping, pine trees rustling, and the thump as a bee preparing for winter crashes into an invisible barrier, trying to get inside to help those tomato plants it sees.

I work here all the time, my classroom away from school. It was always somewhat cold in this place, unless it was summer and the AC broke. It was built as a 3-season sunroom, so no insulation in the floor exists. I would curl up into a ball with my sweater to warm up my freezing feet. This dining room was a much smaller room than the one in our previous house. Though I cannot remember it well, I know that our old dining room was formal; we only used it when we had a lot of guests over. The table wasn’t cluttered up with papers and books like where I am now. It is filled with papers and books; we have to move all them whenever we want to eat.

My mom and I usually sit in this room, both of our computers whirring. The tap of the keys and the click of the mouse are heard here all day long. I feel sometimes lonely, with a computer as my companion, but there will be my dad, who watches CNN as a first time voter in the next room, and my mom, who is always nearby, ready to help me, whenever necessary. So in reality, there is no space to contemplate my isolation.

I don’t know how my mom can survive being this close to me. She toils along with me, doing her work on her computer and her digitizer, something that is almost always with her, unless if she is reading or sleeping. Since I switched to homeschooling; it seems more arduous for my mom to keep managing me. She stays up until I fall asleep, and some of my habits annoy her to no end. There is no physical education class at home, so I spend all my energy, “bouncing around the house,” that is why my mom signed me up for karate and tennis. Although she can leave me at home it seems to stress her out even more. She’s always worried that I will be hurt and although she is really annoyed with me, she cares about me. She is a true mom.

On the weekends, it really gets lonely here on the dining room. My dad is probably playing chess downstairs, or doing some work outside, otherwise he would take me biking. My mom, with my sister at her harp lesson, is away from the house. After I finish all my school work, I usually play on my Wii or watch TV. This room is totally deserted. A truly calming space, to get work done…

Palin-Biden Debate

Biden-Palin debate.

Palin is clearly memorizing her phrases, you can tell because she's not really thinking. When she is uncomfortable, she shifts her body language and goes back to her catch line.

Biden is a very seasoned candidate. He always has a point.

Does the end justify the means?

Continued from Machiavelli, does the end justify the means? If the answer yes, then you have just approved the Bush Doctrine. If we attack other nations in fear of being attacked, without sufficient evidence, we as the world leader are essentially encouraging other nations to do the same. Its like we hold up a neon sign for the terrorist groups to the same. Also, if we torture people to get information, that allows other countries to torture our soldiers. The question is: do we really want to torture people and allow our soldiers to be inflicted excruciating pain. I don't think that our soldiers deserve it. We can't risk our country's honor. Most importantly, is it even humane to torture people for any reason at all? People might say that soldiers should love their country more than their life. Does that mean we can throw away their lives, like tissues?

I believe that wars are pointless and that we should not waste our soldier's lives. Essentially, for every person a soldier kills, there will be some person who mourns for him/her and will cause even more violence. All the soldiers that come back alive, will be portrayed as heroes for a time, but only history can make the real judgment. One of my favorite books by Orson Scott Card, Speaker of the Dead, Ender was regarded as a hero of the world at the end of the war (Ender's Game), but later, he was portrayed as evil because the human's view towards the Formics changed. Ender himself also changed his view later for the reason that was only ostensible to him.

The average day of a computer

It’s 11:00 PM and my master just shut me down for the night. I can finally get my rest, but… oh, I shouldn’t be exhausted? Well, let me tell you what exactly happened today.

First I should tell you a little bit more about me. I’m about a year old, and I’m a gray Dell laptop with white outlines. My favorite maxim is that without travel, there is no fun.( Imagine those boring desktop PCs, they do nothing but sit at home.) My master can be extremely fun. Sometimes, after our work is done, we go to the theme park that was in town, where the hurricane ride gave me the thrill of my life. My master and I also like watching Naruto on the Internet together. It’s fun to get away from all the academics that my master does. I also like to talk to my master’s DS for he has very interesting tales about the games my master plays (he agrees with my master that Final Fantasy Tactics Advance A2: Grimoire of the Rift is the best strategy game ever. Personally, I think its Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.)

It was 9:30 when I woke up. My master wanted me to go onto bluejay.cty.jhu.edu to write his CAT exercise (the answer of it is confidential). Afterwards he wanted to know how I feel about his treatment to me. He was confused however and started to type random things like AMITUOFO, it is his way of having temper tantrums. I was sorely tempted to change all of the letters on my screen into binary (hello, Andrew here, my computer cannot see this and luckily it doesn’t know that I actually know binary). After a while (a while meaning 3 hours), he finally finished this essay but forgot to save it before closing the filet, so he had to spend another 2 hours writing this again (more like another 2 hours for ME!!!). He was banging away at my keyboard. It’s the same as if you humans have been whacked by a mallet for 5 hours. After a short lunch break from each other, we did math which confuses me but not my master. My master is a hard worker and we continued with chemistry lesson for a while. It’s my favorite subject because we computers wouldn’t even be alive without chemistry and every computer likes to blow stuff up.

The time has come when I need my rest. I fully expect that it will be another exciting and tiring day tomorrow (hopefully without temper tantrums.)

A Note about Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli was a Florentine scholar (1469-1527) who was a major figure of the Florentine politics of his time. He was the author of The Prince and other works. The Prince was his most well-known book which he wrote in 1513, but it was only published 5 years after his death. In The Prince, he wrote how rulers should rule. His most important maxim was that man must be adaptable to any situation he came upon. He was an unofficial ambassador, sent to neighboring countries as the Secretary of the council Ten of War after the Medici were thrown out in 1492. It worked out very well for him, as he also analyzed each country he went to. His life remained like this until 1502.

In 1502, Borgia, the son of the Spanish Pope Alexander VI, set his sight on conquering Italy. He had already gained control of most the area. As Machiavelli examined his tactical moves, he was able to win a case for a citizen militia using Borgia's philosophy, and in 1509, Machiavelli led a thousand citizens to conquer Pisa. Machiavelli's army stood together until 1512, when his troops broke ranks, and left Florence open to Medici and his comrades. Medici overthrew the republic and seized control of the city. Then Machiavelli's militia and the Great Council were dismissed and he was jobless. He hoped that the Medici's would find his talents useful. It was then when he wrote The Prince, which made him famous as that book was responsible for many events in other countries.

In 1522, there was a plot to murder Giulio de' Medici which originated in the anti-Medici circle that Machiavelli was involved in. The plot failed and the circle was broken; it's members exiled or killed. Although Machiavelli was part of the circle, his friends could not trust him to keep the secret because he worked for the Medici family. In 1527, the Medici was overthrown, but Machiavelli, at 58, could no longer be trusted to serve the Republic. He died just a month after the Republic was restored.

Why do I write about Machiavelli?

TO BE CONTINUED