World Chess Champion Magnus to Retire and Other Stories

Up until recently I never heard of Magnus Carlsen, but having gotten into chess again after a 50 year hiatus it was inevitable that I would learn of him. My friend Dan, whom I have been playing on Friday nights since June, asked if I had seen the movie Magnus, a film about the Norwegian chess prodigy who became a grandmaster at age 13 and world champion in 2013.

So, one evening instead of starting the evening with a chess match we watched the film Magnus instead. Great film. It's essentially a documentary of his life by a family that recognized his gift and nurtured it. The film follows his development from pre-school to his defeat, at age 22, of 5x World Champion Viswanathan Anand.

When the news broke that he was retiring, it now meant something to me. How many times do you hear announcements in which you are clueless who they are talking about?  His brilliance lay in his intuitive approach when playing.  

For the record, Magnus will not be retiring from competitive chess. He's simply not planning to defend his title. 

Trivia: Magnus mean "great" in Latin, a name he has lived up to.

Middle segment of recent match: Hansen v Newman

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IN OTHER NEWS 

Lower airfares are returning this fall. The average airfare for round-trip domestic flights this fall is $298, according to data from travel-booking app Hopper. That’s down from May, when average fares exceeded $400. (WSJ)

Brad Pitt pays $40 million for house on the California coast. House was built just over 100 years ago, a very reasonably priced fixer-upper for sure.

According to a new poll from the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics finds a majority of Americans think the government is corrupt and stacked against them.

Senators from opposition parties stage walkout during plenary as senate president shuts down a motion for the impeachment of president Buhari over the security situation in the country. (Nigeria)

Seeing every indications that terrorists are about to take over Abuja, Nigeria Federal Ministry of Education has directed the closure of all Federal Govt colleges in Abuja & has ordered immediate vacation of students in the Nation's capital. (Punch)

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On a more positive note, check out the latest blog post from Nevada Bob regarding his battle with cancer (Part 3):
Nevada Bob Takes His Cancer Fight to Tijuana

Local Art Seen: Eris Vafias and Dissonance @ Pizza Luce

Pizza Luce's featured artist for the month of March is Eris Vafias of Superior. Though unable to attend Wednesday's opening reception I was able to swing by yesterday mid-morning to share here what I missed.

Eris has been orchestrating the numerous Artist Kamikaze events that have taken place in the Twin Points, a competition involving the pairing of artists of dissimilar mediums around a specific pre-determined themes. 

Looking at the various paintings and multimedia assemblages brings to mind echoes of several 20th century artists. Some of the paintings bring to mind Cy Twombly's later work, and the free-flowing loops with colored sections brings to mind some of the Spanish modernist Joan Miro's abstract designs.

I see Miro.

Black and white linear forms on a more subtle textured colorless field.

Lively and living organic forms.

Foreground and background fluidity scurries about with  endless motion.

Detail from the above.

Detail- from another piece hearkens back organic designs from the natural world.

This last painting has imagery from the ancient game of chess and today's Tetris. The chess pieces stand in what appears to be the opening stage of a duel, just before the duelists have been instructed to take 20 paces. The color scheme has natural sources, earth tones, slate and sky, It's the beginning of a longer story. It could even be a post-modern romp on Thomas Eakins' The Chess Players or Duchamps later years of immersion in the chess diversion, most famously depicted in Julian Wasser''s photo of Duchamp playing chess with Eve Babitz.

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Reminder: Tonight Marah in the Mainsail will be performing at The Red Herring and The Jane Gang will be playing at the Keyport at 5:00 p.m.

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Meantime life goes on all around you. Get into it.

Tech Tuesday: AI Is Here and It's A Game Changer

I first learned about TED Talks through T.J. Lind, the high school kid who in 2011 helped me publish my first four books on Kindle: The Red Scorpion, Unremembered Histories, Newmanesque and The Breaking Point & Other Stories. For those unfamiliar, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. The TED Talks are short motivational/inspirational talks covering nearly every topic from life issue to global concerns, business lessons to the future of technology. You can learn more about the TED organization here.

I bring all this up because yesterday I read a very interesting article that had been posted on LinkedIn by Bill Gross, a Cal Tech grad and entrepreneur, most noted as founder and CEO of Idealab. The article was titled Top 8 Things I Learned at TED 2017.

Gross begins by noting that he's been attend TED events for 21 years and has listened to over 2000 TED Talks. He's also given a few. He claims that at this year's TED Conference he attended every single talk, 94 in all.

The one I wanted to share here was Gary Kasparov's talk. You may remember Kasparov as the reigning world chess champion who in 1997 was defeated by Big Blue, an intelligent machine designed by IBM. In his talk he shares his feelings about this match. He also shared about another experience he'd had involving machines. In 1995, twelve years earlier, Kasparov played 32 games at once with 32 computers and won. In his talk he noted that when he lost in '97 no one seemed to recall his earlier victory over these 32 computers which he played simultaneously.

A couple weeks ago my brother shared with me a story about my neighbor Mr. Fuchs who on one occasion paid money to play against a highly ranked chess champion. Mr. Fuchs was a neighbor of ours who taught me how to play chess in seventh grade. I enjoyed the game a joined the chess club in school as a result, bought a few books about opening moves.

So on this occasion where he went to play this chess master he was one of maybe 48 players. The master looks at each board briefly and moves a piece, then takes a step to the next board, walking around the room making moves as the players spend all the time in between studying options so as to determine their next strategic move. Halfway through the game when the chess master returned to Mr. Fuchs' board he studied the situation and then toppled his king, indicating that Mr. Fuchs won. My neighbor was the only player who won that day.

I knew that much of the story, but did not know this, which my brother Ron shared with me over Easter. Mr. Fuchs said afterwards, "He saw so far ahead that he could see that it was over. I didn't even know what he saw."

Today's A.I. computers, like that chess master, are continuously calculating. They see far beyond what we can even imagine. But Kasparov says that the computer's victory in 1997 was actually a human achievement. People made the machine. That is why when you watch the video of Watson winning a game of Jeopardy over top Jeopardy minds, the IBM/Watson team is seen celebrating in afterwards.

Kasparov ended his talk by noting that "he feels that AI has great potential for human/computer advancement, and that there’s only one thing that humans can uniquely do, and that’s dream, so he urges us to dream big."

What are you dreaming about today? Keep stirring. Pay attention. Open your eyes. And when the time is right, seize the moment and make it happen.