2/1/07 Solving ODEs, part I
List of 50 years of Moore Instructors at MIT
I'm managing two fantasy sports teams on Yahoo Fantasy Sports:
Ricci Flowers football team and Ricci Flowers basketball team.
For the football team I was lucky enough to get Tom Brady. But
I haven't spent time managing the team. Luckily, in real life,
the Green Bay Packers are doing well this year, at midseason
they are 7-1.
I'm actively managing the basketball team (on Yahoo Public
Fantasy Basketball Blog).
United States Chess Federation
My USCF provisional rating is
2094
I played in one simultaneous exhibition against GM Alexander Goldin (around 1999 at Madison, WI). He was rated 2700 at the time and he had the top U.S. rating and he playing against 25-30 players or so and I was lucky to get a draw. He sacrificed the exchange, twice giving up a rook for a bishop in an open position. To thwart his attack I had to sacrifice the exchange twice in return. (For part of the game, when GM Goldin came to my board he would start muttering in Russian, so I guessed I must have been doing something right!) It ended up being a Queen + 2 pawns versus Queen + 2 pawns ending, with his pawns being more advanced. But I was the last player standing, so GM Goldin was gracious enough to offer the draw in a better position.
The other simultaneous exhibition I played in was in the mid seventees, against IM William Martz (Wisconsin's first titled player) at a mall in Milwaukee. I was the last player standing that time too and managed to have two rooks and a queen against his king and this time I was unlucky enough to get the draw by stalemating him while essentially playing blitz chess (5-10 seconds per move) with him. IM Martz was nice enough to give me a chess book for the draw as a prize! Chess Blog).
Want to improve your chess? An excellent coach/teacher is Cyrus Lakdawala of San Diego. He is an International Master and his current USCF rating (November 2007) is 2549. In the October 2007 list, Cyrus is 40th overall in the U.S. Number 1 is Gata Kamsky. His handle is "kawas" on the Internet Chess Club. One of his students is Elliot Liu (USCF rating 2305) who is a FIDE Master.
About 5 years ago I had the pleasure of playing bughouse chess with IM Lakdawala as a partner (bughouse is a chess variant with teams of two (with two chess boards) competing where your partner gives the pieces he/she captures to you and you can drop these pieces on your board as your move!) A team loses when one of its players gets checkmated or loses on time. Bughouse must be played with chess clocks!
There is a very interesting article by Math and Science writer Dana MacKenzie in the March 2007 issue of Chess Life and Review, titled "Sac Your Queen on Move Six! (A New Anti-Computer Variation)" USCF
Interested in chess problems? Harvard mathematician Noam Elkies is a noted Chess problem composer.
Here's a very short introduction to the game of Sudoku I wrote How to play Su Doku
I collect postage stamps, especially those from Taiwan.
Here's a picture of a nice set (not mine) of 4 stamps
Scott #1037-1040
Scott #1199
Scott #1097
Here's a rare U.S. stamp Inverted Jenny
San Diego Stamp Show Calendar 2007 Show Schedule
I also like to listen to music sometimes. Some favorite groups are: Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Santana, The Who, Madonna.
Sports I like to play include: tennis, ping-pong, basketball, and softball.
My dad is an emeritus Professor of Physics at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
My mom is an amateur artist.
My brother is a computer engineer.
