Vladimir Kramnik, World Chess Champion!

Kramnik beats Topalov after Rapid tiebreak games and is the new 'reunified' World Champion. The twelve-game + 4 tiebreak games of the match took place in Elista, Kalmykia.

for much more on the match, please go to http://www.chessclub.com/ Internet CC &
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/ Susan Polgar Chess Blog

TOPALOV vs KRAMNIK (Sept, 21 - Oct, 13)

NAME FED FIDE RES 1 2 3 4 5* 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 T2 T3 T4 Topalov BUL 2813 7.5 0 0 ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 1 0 ½ ½ Kramnik RUS 2743 8.5 1 1 ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 0 1 ½ ½

Kramnik forfeited game 5

T1 T2 T3 T4
Topalov 1/2 0 1 0
Kramnik 1/2 1 0 1

TIEBREAK Results Tiebreak-1 (25 10) drawn. Tiebreak-2 (25 10) 1-0 Kramnik. Tiebreak-3 (25 10) 1-0 Topalov. Tiebreak-4 (25 10) 1-0 Kramnik. Kramnik (2.5) - Topalov (1.5) Final score of the Match: Kramnik (8.5) - Topalov (7.5)

Terrell Owens Blames Poor Game....

Terrell Owens Blames Poor Game On Drew Bledsoe, Offensive Line, Hamid Karzai, NASA, Samsung

DALLAS—Troubled, underperforming Dallas wide receiver Terrell Owens lashed out in a press conference at the Cowboys practice facility...

The U.S. Congress - Our 'Moral Guardian'

MrKen is as disgusted these days with the U.S. Congress as he is with the 'Dear Leader' in the White House.

First, there are the myriad scandals - from the 'page' sex stuff to Jack Abramoff & Tom Delay. Conspiracy, influence peddling, tax evasion & hypocrisy are Capitol Hill's entrenched method of doing business.

Congress now actually 'works' less than 100 days a year. Most of what 'legislation' that it passes (or fails to pass) should cause massive riots in the streets, were not most Americans ensconced in their Imperial-induced stupor of bread, circuses and war ***. In September, citizens rioted in Hungary, when it was discovered that their government had lied to them about the economy.

For example, this summer the Senate rejected, 56-42, a bill fusing the cut in estate taxes with a $2.10 increase over three years in the $5.15 minimum wage. The bill also would have revived a host of expired tax cuts, including a business research and development credit and deductions for state sales taxes, college tuition and teachers' classroom supplies.

The Center on Budget & Policy Priorities -- http://www.cbpp.org/6-20-06mw.htm found that---

• The minimum wage now equals only 31 percent of the average wage for private sector, nonsupervisory workers. This is the lowest share since at least the end of World War II.
• Since September 1997, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has deteriorated by 20 percent. After adjusting for inflation, the value of the minimum wage is at its lowest level since 1955.
• While since September 1997 the minimum wage has remained at $5.15 an hour, the cost-of-living has risen by 26 percent.
  

During this same time period, Members of Congress have given themselves eight raises, worth more than $31,000, or more than $15 per hour for a 40 hour week. (Congressional Research Service, 4/18/06; CNN, 6/28/06) In June, the Republican-controlled House voted to give Congress another raise in 2007. If the Senate approves this legislation (7/28/06), members of Congress will receive an additional $3,300 in 2007, which would bring their salaries to $168,500.

http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/dpc-new.cfm?doc_name=fs-109-2-120

*** Please refer to my previous posts reviewing the book 'Empire of Debt'.

More on our 'Moral Guardian' to come soon.

World Chess Championship Tiebreak

Match is tied 6-6. Playoff on Friday the 13th!

The playoff will take place tomorrow, Friday the 13th! Who will face the curse of the 13th?

Which one will be the favorite going into the rapid, blitz and sudden-death playoff tomorrow?

They are both efficient in rapid but not considered as strong as someone like Anand. Some think that Topalov is a better rapid player. However, Kramnik did beat Topalov 2-0 in a rapid playoff during a world championship knockout event before.

So will it be Topalov?

Or will it be Kramnik?

If Kramnik wins the playoff, we will have a unified World Champion. However, if Kramnik loses the playoff, will he have a case in court about game 5?

Karpov and Korchnoi stated that they think Kramnik should have walked out after game 5. Garry Kasparov criticized Kramnik for not playing game 5. He also said in one of his lectures in NY that "Out of the first five games, the fifth was the most exciting." None of them talked about continuing the match and sue in court in case if he lost.

To read more, please follow the hyperlink at--- http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/

The playoff format is 4 rapid chess games (25 minutes per player + 10 seconds increment per move).

If the score is still tied after the 4 rapid games then the players will play 2 blitz games (5 minutes per player + 10 seconds increment per move).

Official Rules:

3.7 Tie-breaks

3.7.1 If the scores are level after the regular twelve (12) games, after a new drawing of colours, four (4) tie-break games shall be played. The games shall be played using the electronic clock starting with 25 minutes on the clock for each player with an addition of 10 seconds after each move.

3.7.2 If the scores are level after the games in paragraph 3. 7.1, then, after a new drawing of colours, two (2) five-minute games shall be played with the addition of 10 seconds after each move.

3.7.3 If the score is still level, the players shall play a single decisive sudden death game. The player, who wins the drawing of lots, may choose the colour. White shall receive 6 minutes, black shall receive 5 minutes, without any addition. In case of a draw the player with the black pieces is declared as winner.

So this means that if the "armageddon" game ends in a draw, Black would win the World Championship.

Official Rules thanks to http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3421

Atheist groups growing over last 6 years

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Contra Costa Times

(MCT)

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - When Richard Golden put the word out that he was starting a group for atheists in Walnut Creek, Calif., about a dozen people showed up.

Two years later, 80 are dues-paying members and several more drop in on twice-monthly meetings to chew on everything from particle physics to court cases.

Horrified by escalating religious violence and alarmed by the Bush administration's "faith-based initiatives," which make government money available to religious organizations, atheists are coming out of the closet - and organizing.

"Local groups are springing up all over the place," said Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists. Active groups have grown by about 90 percent over the past six years, she said.

In the past few years, groups affiliated with American Atheists have taken root in Berkeley, San Francisco, Davis, Calif., and Silicon Valley.

National membership in the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group of atheists and agnostics that monitors the separation of church and state, grew from 5,000 in 2004 to 6,400 members by the beginning of 2006, said co-founder Annie Laurie Gaylor.

Meetings and rallies, once the province of older folk, now include younger people with tattoos and dreadlocks. The Internet, radio spots during "Al Franken's Air America" radio show and campus groups are responsible, Johnson said.

"They don't have the baggage that someone my age does," Johnson said. "Atheism was such a dirty word - associated with communism. Plus, this is a very scientific era. They're not afraid to say what they think."

But atheism appears to be gaining ground as a belief, not just a wave of political activism by those who fear the wall between church and state is being disassembled. Books challenging religion like "Letter to a Christian Nation," by Sam Harris and "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins appeared at No. 5 and No. 23 on the Amazon.com bestseller list Sept. 20.

"Our primary conviction is that there is only one world - there is no supernatural world - the world that is the subject of scientific investigation," he said. "We are focused, as the humanists are, on having our human potential increased in this world, rather than working everything out in the world to come..."

To read the rest of this article, please follow this hyperlink --

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/living/15675596.htm

2006 World Chess Championship

TOPALOV vs KRAMNIK (Sept, 21 - Oct, 14)

NAME FED FIDE RES 1 2 3 4 5* 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 GM Topalov, V BUL 2813 5.5 0 0 ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 1 0 ½ GM Kramnik, V RUS 2743 5.5 1 1 ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 0 1 ½

Kramnik forfeited game 5 Game 11 drawn. Wednesday is a Rest day. Final game 12 is on Thursday with a playoff on Friday if required.

Final game 12 is on Thursday with a playoff on Friday if required
(Foto: WCC Website oficial)

Curtesy http://www.chessclub.com/

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror & The Future of Reason

“For anyone with eyes to see, there can be no doubt that religious faith remains a perpetual source of human conflict. Religion persuades otherwise intelligent men and women to not think, or to think badly, about questions of civilizational importance. And yet it remains taboo to criticize religious faith in our society, or to even observe that some religions are less compassionate and less tolerant than others. What is worst in us (outright delusion) has been elevated beyond the reach of criticism, while what is best (reason and intellectual honesty) must remain hidden, for fear of giving offense. ‘The End of Faith’ represents my first attempt to call to attention to the dangers and absurdities inherent in this situation..."

“The End of Faith: Religion, Terror & The Future of Reason,” (2005), Sam Harris(Norton & Co, New York).

To read the full article about Mr Harris' book by Chris Norton, the former New York Director of American Atheists, please follow this hyperlink---

http://www.atheist.net/article/freethinkersunite.html

Maureen Dowd: Dr. Strangelove's second chance

The Bush Administration's amorality, arrogance, and incompetence are newly revealed almost on a daily basis. Now our "Great Leader" has turned to 'Dr. Strangelove' for advice, according to Bob Woodward.

Yes, Henry Kissinger is back.

The architect of my generation's 'Apocalypse', Vietnam, is now counseling George W. Bush on the Iraq War.

As recently released tapes, diaries and notes clearly indicate, Kissinger and Nixon purposely delayed any U.S. pullout from Vietnam until after the 1972 elections. Nixon knew all along that the war was unwinnable and knowingly sent young Americans to their deaths for purely political motives. On one tape Nixon says to Kissinger, "The U.S. cannot win this war. The South Vietnam regime is too corrupt" (Tapes played on CSPAN several months ago--How many Americans listened, I wonder?).

And now Henry Kissinger, this man who prolonged the Vietnam War, this discredited and unwise windbag, this utterly amoral individual-- is adviser to another crook in the oval office...

Maureen Dowd: Dr. Strangelove's second chance

RAW STORY

Published: Wednesday October 4, 2006

"Tom Lehrer said that political satire was rendered obsolete when Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize for prolonging the Vietnam War," writes New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd in Wednesday's paper.

"But even the inventive Lehrer could never have imagined that Dr. Strangelove would get a second chance to contribute to misleading the public about a military catastrophe in a misunderstood land -- a do-over in scarring the American psyche and reputation in profound ways," writes Dowd.

Excerpts from Dowd's column:

#

Yet, as Bob Woodward reveals in "State of Denial," the sequel to "Bush Is a Genius," Kissinger has been one of the few trusted outside advisers that W. has listened to on Iraq. The administration has shaped its policy to hew to the 83-year-old Unwise Man's belief that the only way to beat an insurgency is to stick it out, no matter how many American kids and foreign civilians die.

Especially if elections are coming up. As the historian Robert Dallek, who is writing a book on Nixon and Kissinger, notes, "Kissinger was complicit in using foreign policy to try to save Nixon during Watergate."

Bob Haldeman wrote in his diary on Dec. 15, 1970, using "K" for Kissinger and "P" for President Nixon: "K came in and the discussion covered some of the general thinking about Vietnam and the P's big peace plan for next year, which K later told me he does not favor. He thinks that any pullout next year would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to it could set in well before the '72 elections. He favors, instead, a continued winding down and then a pullout right at the fall of '72 so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election. It seems to make sense."

Thirty-five years later, Kissinger, the consummate fawner, was once more able to sway a president with faux deference. Dr. K encouraged W. to play the tough guy on the war, even though he'd never gone to war himself.

Bolding & Italics added by MrKen45.

Curtesy of Raw Story -- http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Maureen__Dowd_Dr._Strangeloves
_second_1004.html

Man recites pi to 100,000 places

TOKYO - A Japanese mental health counselor recited pi to 100,000 decimal places from memory on Wednesday, setting what he claims to be a new world record.

Akira Haraguchi, 60, needed more than 16 hours to recite the number to 100,000 decimal places, breaking his personal best of 83,431 digits set in 1995, his office said Wednesday. He made the attempt at a public hall in Kisarazu, just east of Tokyo.

Pi is a physical constant defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.

It is usually written out to a maximum of three decimal places, as 3.141, in math textbooks. But the number, which has fascinated scientists for centuries, has no theoretical limit to the number of decimal places it can be written to. It is a constant that appears in the proofs of many equations defining the universe.

Read the rest of the article at this hyperlink-- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061004/ap_on_fe_st/memorizing_pi_1

CHESS MESS !

Chess Mess --- Something stinks in the world of chess. And it's not frequent bathroom breaks.

Opinion Journal - from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page

BY GARRY KASPAROV-- Monday, October 2, 2006 1:15 p.m. EDT

It usually takes a scandal to get the world's pre-eminent mind sport into the news these days. The latest example comes from the current world chess championship in Elista, Russia. The match between Russia's Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria was intended to unify the chess championship that has been divided since my challenger and I broke away from the international chess federation (FIDE) in 1993 in an attempt to professionalize the sport.

The first four games of Kramnik-Topalov--the match was scheduled for 12 games--received scant attention in the world press. That changed when the Bulgarians published a complaint about Mr. Kramnik's frequent trips to the restroom during the games, calling his behavior "suspicious" and threatening to abandon the match. The appeals committee governing the match agreed, and ruled to close the players' private restrooms, which would be replaced by a shared one. (How it pains me to see such distasteful events driving the coverage of a world championship.) Mr. Kramnik protested the decision by sitting out the fifth game and was forfeited. Currently the match sits suspended....

...Combine this collapsing power structure with players and managers concerned only with self-interest and making money, and what happened in Elista was practically inevitable. In fact, most of the principal actors in Elista stand to gain from the cancellation of the match. Mr. Topalov was losing at the game and so he switched to gamesmanship. If the match is aborted he can claim he wasn't defeated and so maintain his status as FIDE champion.

Mr. Kramnik rose to the provocation and now may walk off with the same faded title he took from me in 2000. For years he avoided both a rematch and unification with FIDE. If this chaos isn't resolved he can go on to claim "champion for life" standing outside of FIDE.

Just like their brothers in spirit in the Kremlin, the chess nomenclatura hope to prolong the anarchy and corruption from which they have profited for so long. Mr. Ilyumzhinov needs this match to continue, but it is he who sowed the seeds of its downfall.

For a game associated with brainpower, chess's leaders and its leading players have displayed remarkably little in recent years. They are now paying the price by having their pettiness and incompetence splashed across front pages around the world.

Curtesy of Susan Polgar's Chess Blog http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2006/10/something-stinks-in-world-of-chess.html

Here is the full article.
posted by SusanPolgar at 10/03/2006 10:37:00 AM