The last week, for various aspects that are too private to go into in this forum, was not the best for either Morgan or myself. We needed a good weekend, and I think we got it.

Morgan was volunteering at Boston GLASS for an event on Friday after which he came to the Flat. We got up Saturday morning and I introduced him to Star Wars. It turns out he'd actually seen it before, but had not remembered it well. We still had a good amount of fun.

I was scheduled to assist in the direction of the 1st MA State Scholastic Qualifier in Woburn this weekend so I had rented a car for the weekend. We used the car yesterday to simply go where we couldn't go by T. So we went South.

I had planned for Cape Cod - at least the elbow. I grabbed my binoculars thinking we might see birds. It turned out to be a fantastic choice. Morgan & must have made a sight on the road because Morgan used the binoculars as a vision aid as we were driving. The binoculars enabled him to see and read signs that he'd never seen before. He had a wonderful, wonderful time!

As we travelled south we mentioned Plymouth, and I just turned off at the right exit. The mission was to see Plymouth Rock, which neither of us had seen. After an amazing bit of traffic - turns out that Pymouth's Thanksgiving Parade had just been held - we finally found the Rock. So, mission fufilled. It's...a rock.

After lunch at a local pizza place - The Pie Hole (we selected it because of the name!) - we went on to Cape Cod and finally I was able to find Oyster Pond Beach, which was the same beach that Roukie, Kyle & crew went to about 2 years ago. Again, the binoculars enabled Morgan to see things he'd never been able to see, including the US Coast Guard lighthouse. The wind, though, sort of drove us away from the beach in short order. One of these days I want to visit the Atlantic Coast without being driven away by wind & temperature.

Going back we stopped at Ikea, to get a new, larger frying pan. Morgan & I are doing more breakfast cooking and we've figured out you can cook more than 1 egg at a time if you have a larger frying pan. And I was able to introduce Morgan to dinner at Ikea. Again, I lamented the fact that they've decided not to build one at Assembly Sq., something I'd waited for since before I moved to Boston.

As I mentioned, today I was Asst. Director for the 1st MA State Scholastic Qualifier. It turns out that Morgan went to Walden Pond with a few members of the Arlington St. Meetinghouse congregation.

So, yea, a good weekend.

Is LiveJournal dying for me? That would be scary after more than 10 years. I've been doing LiveJournal more continously than virtually everything else in my life.  I know I'll never do Twitter because its simply too short. But Facebook as the ability to do long posts, so...

Damn social media.

And what's worse is that I'm trying the "Rich Text" method in LJ for the very first time. This is the first time I've posted without writing raw HTML code. Part of the reason for that is that I'm now doing several blogs in several different environments/software now doing entrees for the AAVSO, the MA Chess Association, and the New England Nor'easters US Chess League team.

In any event, several months ago I started looking into and researching a DSLR camera. Traditionally I've never been much into picture taking, and I think this is one of the reasons it took so long to move forward with this. However, my picture taking has gone up in recent months as I've started taking photographs in the chess world and some of them are being published (to some extent because I'm one of the few people doing it). I also wanted to start to re-do some astrophotography and start to potentially participate in the new work being done in DSLR bright star photometry.

Since a DSLR was such a large investment for me Nathaniel Burbank wonderfully allowed me to borrow his Nikon D50 for awhile to see how things would go. And largely, being me, the camera sat on the shelf for a long time. Then as the New England Open approached (the first time I'd taken photos as a chess tournament) I decided to try to learn the camera enough to do pictures at the tournament.

A modern DSLR is a complicated device. I did learn enough to do reasonable pictures - two of which were published in Chess Life Online last month - but the greatest issue was that this showed me how much more I needed to learn about a particular camera. This is what finally pushed me over the edge to getting my own DSLR. It made no sense to me learn a Nikon D50 if I was going to be getting a Cannon Rebel 1100D. I was also getting some introductory tips from Tony Cortize, who is a professional photographer and a long-time MA chess tournament photographer. This was invaluable to my intial experimentation.

Above you can see the results of some of my initial experimentation with this portrait of Pollux. I've fallen in love with a narrow depth of field, which is something you don't get at all with a snapshot camera because you can't adjust the aperature. However, you need to be able to adjust the aperature. I took several pictures at the Quincy Chess Club that didn't work out as well as I wanted because the aperature of the Nikon was stuck at F/2.5.

There is so much left to learn on a whole hosts of fronts. T-rings are a good example. I understand the basic concept - be able to attach a DSLR to the eyepiece are of the telescope - but I literally am going to need to physically see someone go through the process of physically attaching a camera to a telescope in order to understand the inter-relationships between the individual parts. With the scope and mount that I have, I can see myself doing very bright lunar photographs, but that's probably it. Doing star trails and meteor shower photographs would be nice, but that will take a site that I may have access to only perhaps twice a year.

So, we'll see how this goes, now, as time goes on.

Or, in my case "The Thrill of Victory, and the Agony of Being a Complete, Moronic, Stupid, Idiot, Greedy, PUTZ!!"

It was as bad a day today as it was great, yesterday.

Yesterday I won against someone nearly 270 points above me. It was almost unprecidented. I then won against someone who was basically at my rating.

Today the 3rd Round was against someone 298 points above me, and I lost. OK, that's fine.

Fourth Round was painful in the extreme. I was playing Eddy Wang, 200 points above me. I was hopeful. Eddy outplayed me. He controlled the game. We got down to an endgame where we each had a Rook and a few pawns. Eddy had an extra Knight.

Slowly I realized that if I could exchange Rooks my King was in a better position to kill his a-pawn and then be able to control the a8 Queening square as I walked MY a-pawn down to victory.

I offered the exchange of Rooks. Eddy took it. I had the game. I had a won game! I moved my King across to the Queen side on the way to kill is pawn on a7. His Knight danced in to try to stop me. My pawn was on a3. His was on a7. My King was on a6 ready to take the pawn. Eddy's Knight moved 44. ... Nd6.

"Kill the pawn! Kill the pawn!" my mind screamed! I responded with 45. Kxa7??? And thereby won myself the "Worst Move of the New England Open" Prize. :-( :-(

Eddy did 46. ... Nb5+ forking the a-pawn that was winning the game for me, and my King. He then killed MY pawn, and the game that was mine was gone.

Like I said, "The Thrill of Victory, and the Agony of Being a Complete, Moronic, Stupid, Idiot, Greedy, PUTZ!!"

Still, my estimated rating so far is going up by nearly 85 points. Tomorrow is the last two games.

I've been blogging here for slightly more than 10 years now. This month is only my 2nd blog entry, which is unprecedented. Am I migrating to FaceBook with its shorter, but still far more meaningful than 140 (or whatever) characters? I don't know. We'll see.

But this weekend - hopefully - will be significant enough for journal entries. Although you folks may not think so.

I write you from the hotel bed of the Four Points Hotel in Leominster, MA, site of the 72nd New England Open. This was the infamous 6 round tournament where I lost all six games last year, one to Pooja Welling who had only ~600 USCF ELO at the time.

The sun has just risen. I sleep horribly at hotels. Combine this with raging grass allergies and sleep is a rare commodity. We'll see how that affects me.

In the next bed over still sleeps FIDE Master Chris Chase, a force in E. MA chess since he's been in 11th grade back in the 70s (I've been reading the old Chess Horizons to prove it). Literally picking me up after moving all week, we got here to Loeminster around 2200. Chris, of course, is playing in the top section, and is currently the 6th seed.

Chris has been very encouraging saying that I need to come out of the Open with at least a positive score. My goals, for better or worse, are more modest: 1) Do better than I did last year (which means winning one game out of the 6), and 2) to raise my rating by at least a point. Save for the fact that my schedule over the last 6 weeks has been so busy I've not trained in any meaningful way as far as I'm concerned, both these goals should be attainable. I've beaten people who have ratings populating 66% of my section in the last year.

Time to make the donuts...

The Messicks have had a proper, yearly refuge for as long as the Messick and Cleary families have been intertwined. At Lake Sunapee, NH, most of the Messick girls have been here, yearly, from birth. The tradition is in its now third generation as the girls get married, have kids, and bring their families here, always the 1st week of August. The husbands, interestingly enough, have learned that neither the time, nor the place, is negotiable. Now, of course, it is more than a mother, father, six girls, and a few friends. Now there are several families involved and three generations. One husband, from what I understand, suggested at one point that they could get another cabin a bit farther away to have more room. "No," the answer came.

"But it would be the same lake," he said.

"No," the answer came. "You don't understand. I have to wake up by this lake at this spot. I have to go to this dock. I have to swim in that cove in the morning. It's important."

The suggestion was never made again. And now this place is even more important, since it is both refuge, and shrine.

Eight years ago my foster mother died suddenly at age 55. Her ashes are scattered here.

A little more than 13 months ago, my eldest foster sister, Elizabeth, suddenly died. Again, her ashes, are here.

After Elizabeth's funeral I called my foster sister, Lillian, and asked if she'd like to engage in a conspiracy. "After all these years," I said, "I've never been to Lake Sunapee, and now its one mother and one sister too late, don't you think?"

Lillian certainly did think, and we hatched a plan where during the last Friday of Lake Sunapee, I'd just walk into camp. Just walk in.

My Blood Mother had other plans, unfortunately, passing the Tuesday before I was scheduled to come up. And so certain family members at Lake Sunapee cut things short by a day or so to be with me during the funeral.

This year was Take Two, and it worked. Oh, its not perfect. I half hydroplaned Friday night in order to get here as Boston was under a tornado watch. I write this currently from Sarah and Doug's cabin as the rain has again begun. All I can think of is that I'm probably under Magnitude 5, maybe 5.5, skies during the height of the Persied Meteor Shower, and we have not only clouds, but rain.

But it has been perfect in all the right ways. I was introduced to the Tradition of the Morning Swim. I got here late, and Tim said to me that the girls would be around near 0730 despite an entire week of having been told that the "adults" sleep in. The girls arrived at 0726. There are virtual medals given out for uninterrupted morning swims, rated downwards starting with Platinum. Since I'd only been here one day, so far, I currently hold a Platinum Medal. Course, in my mind I cheated. According to legend, one girl one year who swam nearly no morning, was awarded a virtual medal of Aluminum Foil.

I was told stories where Tim would throw coins into the water for the girls to find and spend at the office on candy. I was taken down the Robin Hood Trail where the girls played "Robin Hood" when they were kids, each one taking a specfic role. Joan, the youngest, usually played the dog.

And I was shown Mom's Tree, planted on the shore where both Mom and Elizabeth's ashes are scattered.

For the first time I was able to participate in Family Pictures. I specifically brought and held Elizabeth, Beth's old laptop which I now have, so that, in some small way, she could still be here in the Family Pictures.

I realized, with not a little sense of saddness, that I have nothing like this. The closest I'd ever come was the five or so years between ages 11 and 15 when my sister and I would go to the same place in Clayton, NY - the Thousand Islands - for vacation with my grandparents. This, with the Messicks, has now been going on for three generations. I have nothing to compare this to.

But maybe I do now.

It is now my pleasure to be able to announce that Minor Planet (40463) Frankkameny now has its own official Wikipedia entry!

So, the press has been awash in stories about (40463) Frankkameny. But what about its namesake? Who was Dr. Frank Kameny? Well, yes, Frank does have an entry in that "Repository of All Human Knowledge," Wikipedia. But now a video biography of sorts has been made by one of my colleagues and fellow member of the Task Force that created the Working Group for LGBTQ Equality within the AAS - Dr. Jane Rigby, Deputy Operations Scientist for the James Webb Telescope.

Jane gets it right, and managed to produce the best overview of Dr. Kameny's life I've yet seen.

Last Friday I posted a cryptic announcement that something wonderful had happened, but that the news was under embargo for a few days. I was trying to get in touch with some of Dr. Frank Kameny's friends so that they, really, would know the news first. That was done a few hours ago.

It is now my vast pleasure to be able to announce, in concert with the asteroid's discoverer, Gary Billings of Calgary, that the Minor Planets Center, under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union, has officially named Asteroid 40463 Frankkameny in honor of variable star astronomer and Civil Rights activist Dr. Frank E. Kameny, who passed away 11 October 2011!

Gary Billings, an AAVSO member and former Councillor, approached me last November saying that he had a few asteroids he'd discovered that he hadn't named. How about naming one for Frank. I was floored. Gary said, "Good. You write up the citation for the IAU and I'll submit it." Gary and I have been shepherding this through for the last several months. As of the 1st of July we thought the name had been rejected. Then we got notification that the name had been official approved with its publication in Minor Planets Circular 79711 on 3 July.

More details can be found right now at http://www.aavso.org/permanent-place-heavens%E2%80%A6 . It should also hit the wires in a few hours since I was just interviewed by the Associated Press.

One final comment [about 4 July's Higgs-like boson announcement]. It did not escape my attention that the mostly European LHC team made this announcement on July 4th. If the U.S. Congress had continued funding the Superconducting Supercollider in the 1990s, yesterday’s discovery would have been made a decade ago, and most of the glory would have gone to American scientists. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see the science get done. But Congress dropped the ball on a cutting-edge scientific project that barely made a dent in the federal budget, and for a long time to come we can expect the most important discoveries in physics to be made in other countries. University of Michigan physicist Gordon Kane also reminded me that if the U.S. Department of Energy had given Fermilab more funding, the Higgs discovery could have been made several years ago right here in the good ol’ USA."

-Robert Naeye
Editor-in-Chief
Sky & Telescope magazine

It's always nice when the Editor-in-Chief of Sky & Telescope magazine, colleague Robert Naeye, agrees with me. Of course, Bob being an editor said it a bit more diplomatically than I did.

The fact of the matter is that the United States is on a similar downward slide as the one experienced by the Roman Empire, and for the same reasons - we're prioritizing the wrong things. We care more about American Idol and Justin Beiber and (some of us) making the next million dollars than issues like yesterday. The result is that this nation has given up its leadership in sciences and education in general and, as we can see in this particular case, physics in particular. Instead we've become the leader in laughing stocks by spending time actually, seriously discussing creationism and "intelligent design" fiction and nonsense. And so the intelligent American physicists have been forced to work in Europe and aid the Swiss and French economies, not the economy of the United States. How intelligent was that Congress?

History has also taught us that a downward slide, once started, is EXTREMELY difficult to reverse. I feel like Churchill when he said that he wouldn't preside over the breakup of the British Empire. I don't want to preside over the slide of my nation, either. Unfortunately, it looks like neither one of us were given much of a choice. :-(

You know, those of us paying any sort of attention don't wonder why this nation is in decline. I present you the following:

The announcement today was of a Higgs-like boson particle, arguably the most important advance in particle physics in decades.

BBC America News LEADS with this story and spends 5 minutes on it, including an interview with a Harvard physicist. And yes, they had the obligatory comment from Professor Hawking, and yes Stephen does give us the popular sound-bite about his $100 bet against the boson, but he also offers a comment of substance stating that this result should give Peter Higgs the Nobel prize.

Then we go to NBC Nightly News. Here are the stories in order.
1) The weather topping 37° and the wildfires. (OK, fine. The wildfires are a significant issue due to safety. I was fine with this.) - 6 minutes.
2) How Obama and Romney were spending the day. (Who the hell cares?) - 3 min.
3) The increase of gun violence in Chicago where 15 people were shot since 1700hrs yesterday. (In the grand scheme of things, eh. But, it was interesting for me since I know have folks in Chicago.) - 30 seconds.
4) The possibility that Araffat was poisoned with polonium. (Who cares? He's dead.) - 30 seconds.
5) FINALLY, a story on the Higgs-like boson. "They call it the 'God Particle,' the sub-atomic...thing...that has long been believed to give all matter in the universe its size and shape." WHAT?? Size and shape??? The story then went on to include semi-reasonable information and then ended in a series of entertainment clips from from such things as an informational rap video on YouTube. The ONLY mention of the fact that the Higgs boson is responsible for mass in the universe was given by the rap video. Total time: 2.5 minutes.

OK, lets go to CNN right now.
The first link we find is "Scientists May Have Found 'God Particle.'" Fortunately this links to something of more substance titled, "New particle fits description of elusive Higgs boson, scientists say."

Next in line, "What is the Higgs boson anyway?" a story that links to something that first ran 7 months ago.

And then, the real kicker, a video with Michio Kaku entitled, "Boson takes us before Genesis I." I'm not a fan of Kaku at all. He plays fast and loose with scientific concepts with the public, best categorized in this particular interview with the quote, "...so the explosion of the particle broke the original perfect symetry of this crystal, giving us the broken world we see today of planets, stars, galaxies, you, me, even love."

I have a problem with him using a "perfect crystal" as a metaphor for the original singularity of the Big Bang to begin with, but then he goes on to link, even in a funny way, the Higgs boson with love? No. Just...no.

*Sigh...*