POTW Update, Week 31, Day 2

Sirtuck takes the lead in the Pick of the Week contest.  His pick for week 31, Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), jumped 7.68% today as analysts forecast solid Q3 earnings for the credit card processor.

Click to see larger image.

One of My Childhood Heroes Has Died

Robert James “Bobby” Fischer died on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008 at his home in Reykjavik, Iceland, after an extended illness.  He was 64 years old.  Yes he was a certifiable nut job in his later years, but it will likely be a long, long time—if ever—before the chess world will see another player with Fischer's ability.  He was one of my childhood heroes and the one who more than any other inspired me to learn the game of chess.



You can read a nutshell version of his most interesting life story on Wikipedia or any of a number of other Web sites, so I won't bother to repeat it here.  But I would like to put up a copy of a very famous game he played.  It was Oct. 17, 1956, and Bobby Fischer was only 13 years old when he faced off against Donald Byrne in the Rosenwald Memorial Tournament in New York.  Byrne had won the U.S. Open Chess Championship three years earlier and was awrded the title of International Master in 1962.  This game came to be known as “The Game of the Century” and has been disected and discussed thousands of times in chess circles.

   Donald  Bobby
   Byrne   Fischer
   White   Black

1   N-KB3  N-KB3
2   P-B4   P-KN3
3   N-B3   B-N2
4   P-Q4   O-O
5   B-B4   P-Q4
6   Q-N3   PxP
7   QxP    P-B3
8   P-K4   QN-Q2
9   R-Q1   N-N3
10  Q-B5   B-N5
11  B-KN5  N-R5
12  Q-R3   NxN
13  PxN    NxP
14  BxP    Q-N3
15  B-B4   NxQBP
16  B-B5   KR-K1+
17  K-B1   B-K3!!! (sacrificing the queen)
18  BxQ    BxB+
19  K-N1   N-K7+
20  K-B1   NxP+
21  K-N1   N-K7+
22  K-B1   N-B6+
23  K-N1   PxB
24  Q-N4   R-R5
25  QxP    NxR
26  P-KR3  RxP
27  K-R2   NxP
28  R-K1   RxR
29  Q-Q8+  B-B1
30  NxR    B-K4
31  N-B3   N-K5
32  Q-N8   P-QN4
33  P-R4   P-R4
34  N-K5   K-N2
35  K-N1   B-B4+
36  K-B1   N-N6+! (here it comes!)
37  K-K1   B-N5+
38  K-Q1   B-N6+
39  K-B1   N-K7+
40  K-N1   N-B6+
41  Resigns

"I regard Bobby Fischer as a mythological combination of sorts, a centaur if you will, a synthesis between man and chess."—Garry Kasparov

Aloha, Bobby.

“Pick of the Week” Stock-picking Contest

Would anyone be interested in trying their hand at a weekly stock-picking contest?  Well I've been running one for the best part of two years on an internet stock forum called “$$$Mr. Market Is HUGE!$$$”  I just moved the contest from that board to a new one I set up, and so far there are only three other players besides myself.  I expect a few more of the regulars will be coming along eventually.  It's fun!  It's educational!  It just might be very profitable too!  So check it out.  I call it the “Pick of the Week” contest.

2008 Holiday Schedule for the NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX

2008 Holiday Schedule for the NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX
Tuesday	January 1	New Year's Day
Monday	January 21	Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday (Observed)
Monday	February 18	Presidents' Day
Friday	March 21	Good Friday
Monday	May 26	Memorial Day
Friday	July 4	Independence day*
Monday	September 1	Labor Day
Thursday	November 27	Thanksgiving Day*
Thursday	December 25	Christmas Day*
*The markets will close at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday,July 3, 2008; Friday, November 28, 2008; andWednesday, December 24, 2008.

FDA Members Alleged to Be Involved in Scandalous Ethical Violations

This story provides a revealing look into the mechanics of the FDA drug approval (or disapproval) process, and the picture is not pretty.  If the allegations are true, it would appear that doctors serving on the FDA advisory panel have voted against granting approval to market potentially life-saving drugs largely—if not solely—for the reason that they have large financial investments in companies that produce rival treatments.  Does it get any uglier than this?

IBM Updates Free Symphony Suite

For those of you who like to try low-cost (or no-cost) alternatives to Microsoft Office, you might want to try IBM's free Lotus Symphony suite.  IBM released an update to this suite yesterday, though it is still in beta testing.

Illegal Immigration in Small-town America

I see in the news that the little township of Riverside in Burlington County, New Jersey—where I lived briefly as a child in the early 60s—has voted to repeal a law that was voted in in July 2006.  The law would penalize employers or landlords $1,000 to $2,000 for hiring or renting to illegal aliens.  Riverside’s population of about 8,000 is estimated to be nearly half comprised of residents who are here illegally, many of whom come from Portugal and Brazil.

And why did this little township repeal this common-sense law?  Because they don’t believe they can afford to defend the legal challenges in federal courts!  What an outrage!  On the one hand the federal government demonstrates that it is absolutely willing to look the other way and not enforce its own immigration policy, and on the other they’re populating the courts with “justices” who will sometimes rule in favor of illegal immigrants—as happened earlier this year in Hazelton, Pennsylvania—thus stifling the efforts of small-town America in making and enforcing policy that is the federal government’s responsibility in the first place!

In the words of former Ohio congressman, Jim Traficant, “Beam me up!”