Beppe Grillo, one of the most successful bloggers in the world (last time I checked his blog was number 11 in the world by traffic) descends in Italy's confusing political arena.

From August 30th to September 2nd I will attend the 29th edition of "Physics in Collision" in Kobe, Japan, to hear a few interesting talks and to present a poster on behalf of CMS, about the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson.

Posters are what they sound like -big, illustrated sheets of paper. Many conferences have a "poster session" in which authors of the posters stand in front of their creation and discuss the details with colleagues and answer questions about the contents. Before the poster session, each poster is usually presented by the author with a short oral memo -five minutes each at PIC.

Sometimes playing online chess gives me some satisfactions. I only play 5-minute chess, but five minutes (times two, five for each player) are a looong time, during which adrenalin flows free in my veins. Chess is a drug: these 5-minute games are addictive, exhilarating, and damaging to one's ego at times. But when things go the right way, it really feels good.

Today I was paired with a Mongolian international master, IM Myagmarsuren, by the automatic pairing system of 5-minute blitz games on the ICC. Here is the game, with minimal commentary.

Shatar-Tonno, ICC July 10th, 2009, 5' blitz

1. Nf3 d5 2. g3 Bf5 3. d4 c6 4. c4 e6 5. Nc3 Nf6 6. b3 Bd6 7. Bg2 Nbd7 8. c5
Bc7 9. Nh4 Bg4 10. f3 Bh5