Gary Kasparov on AI and Chess

Here is a nice article here on chess and computers.

This time, the narcisism is explicit

25 Things about Mike

1. I was almost born on Mother’s Day, 1975. I’ve been just as punctual ever since.

2. I like to cook, and every once in awhile I will invite a bunch of people over as an excuse to do something big and fun. Hence Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s also a good motivator to clean up the apartment clutter.

3. I sometimes play Powerball lotteries when the prizes get over $150 million. The odds of winning are roughly 1 in 150 million, so at that point, your expected winnings (odds times the prize) is equal to the cost of the ticket. Ignore taxes. And the odds for multiple winners. And other details. THEN it’s a mathematically sound investment strategy! If the prize goes up to 200 million, you should expect to make 25 cents! [insert joke about the stock market in 2008 here! LOL]

4. I like my car, and it makes me feel good every time I get in it and zip around, but I do not want to be one of those guys who takes a picture of themselves standing next to their car, and even worse, posts it online.

5. I want to buy a Persian rug someday – one of the expensive ones. They are the most beautiful thing I think I could own. I also want to buy a Wegner chair and a Shaker side table. There's an element of status symbol here, but they are also intrinsically beautiful, and being near such things on a regular basis is a small part, and not the most important, but still, of a good life.

6. I want to build a house someday. I constantly doodle house plans on SketchUp. If it weren’t for that minor detail of having to make clients happy, I’d like to have been an architect.

7. I don’t buy orange juice any more, just oranges.

8. I have 20/10 vision, but I suspect it won’t last forever. I think I'll miss it, but then my glasses will help me look smart.  Or at least smrt.

9. I really like Belgian beer, but a cold Budweiser after a hot day outside is wonderful.

10. I’m going to see Tom Waits someday in concert. More generally, despite how much I like music, I don’t go to many concerts, and maybe I should change that.

11. I’d like to live in Austin Texas someday, but often times I’ve found I liked the idea of something more than the thing itself. That goes for things like mountain biking or stereos, or some of the things on this list, or getting my PhD, or moving here and there. The best places I’ve lived were really only so because I had a good group of friends around.

12. I have a weird fascination with hot-rod Volvo’s. It makes no sense. I’m hoping that this is just a phase.

13. I like most any BBQ or grilled food – yeah, duh.  It's funny that BBQ is one of those things that causes people to become obsessed with naming or tracking down the best.  Very good is good enough, very close to the top is close enough, and you can keep your perfectionism and OCD.  On the other hand, I'm happy those people are around to drive the pile forward.  Just don't want to be them.

14. I think graduate school is a bad idea for just about everyone (80% of those who apply). Just say no to pyramid schemes, because that’s what academia is, in a time-labor sort of way. Actually, college isn’t that great an idea for some people (25%) too.

15. I like Eric Hoffer’s aphorisms.  For instance: “We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.”

16. I want to age gracefully into a cool old guy, perhaps with a pipe. People are too obsessed with looking young. How about a little dignity instead?

17. Baseball on the radio is a good thing.

18. Last year I had a sinus infection, and it strongly affected my hearing so that guitars and pianos sounded really out of tune. It was bad enough that I couldn’t listen and enjoy any music much until it cleared up.  It was odd that I wasn’t deaf, but that everything sounded wrong. Which was bad in its own surprising way.

19. I like machine shops, and would probably make a good $3 an hour machinist. I’d probably make a good $4 an hour auto mechanic too. Okay, $3. I’m thinking of buying a Sherline mini-milling machine because I belong to the more money than ability club.

20. I want to see a shuttle launch. Also, I want to go to New Zealand (to see Bret and Jermaine’s childhood homes). I would like to drive a 911 on the autobahn, or even the ‘ring. I’d like to go to London. Possibly France.

21. I like P.G. Wodehouse’s books, and people who also like them too have excellent taste and are good eggs.

22. The “Stuff White People Like” list applies way too much to me.

23. I believe that no good comes from meetings over thirty minutes, so make up a reason to leave. If you have an assistant, arrange for them to call you 25 minutes into the meeting, and beg forgiveness when you “have to leave for this emergency that you were just told of…"

24. I think the two blinking red lights on the Washington Memorial look like snake eyes.

25. Men should not wear shorts or sandals if they are not at the beach or in the water; So I don’t.

in which I admit my limitations to myself

I have only bought manual transmission cars, yet when I read about how to shift a semi-truck, I'm pretty sure I'd want an automatic after about 3 city blocks.

Also, reviewing semi-truck tractors is kinda genius. The money quote paragraphs belongs, as you'd suspect, to the transmission:

There are no synchros, which means every shift requires a double-clutch maneuver: clutch in, shift to neutral, clutch out, wait for revs to drop on upshifts or add 200 rpm on downshifts, clutch in, select gear, clutch out. Simple, right? Mess that up, and you’ll be anxiously hunting for a gear that correctly matches the road speed with engine speed, all while the road speed quickly drops off. Haphazard shifter wiggling commences, and the gears make their displeasure heard. Put simply, the transmission hates you and wants you to fail. And I did, several times.

Negotiating the 18-speed shift pattern is a confusing, mind-numbing, who-the-heck-thought-this-made-sense-to-begin-with nightmare. The shift gates are laid out in a dogleg pattern, with low (think of it as gear zero) to the left and down. To the right lie one through four in an H-pattern. From here, the shift pattern follows more of a modified double-helix arrangement. Positions five through eight are the same as one through four but accessed by flicking a switch on the front of the shift knob that chooses among the ranges. Those keeping score at home might notice that that’s only nine speeds. To account for the rest of the ratios, zero through eight are further “split” into low and high, selected by another switch on the left of the shift knob. As a result, there’s a low version of low (or zero) gear found in the lower range. And there are four reverse ratios. No kidding. A diagram on the center console attempts to simplify all of this; we’ve included it in the gallery to confuse you further.

Hunter Thompson couldn't have said it better. I'm going to wait to see what makes Consumer Report's Best Buy, tho...