'...AND ANAND MOVES HIS BISHOP TO E6, OH MY, CROWD GOES WILD!!!' The World Chess Championship is under way with Magnus Carlsen scoring the first win in the 5th game of 12 to take a 3-2 lead. He will be on his way to becoming the greatest ever if he defeats Viswanathan Anand, although Kasparov and Fischer are still widely seen as los supremos. The organisers have tried to stir up a media storm and may yet succeed but it seems unlikely that the characters will inspire the public imagination like the eccentric Bobby Fischer or even the politically savvy Kasparov. Carlsen and Anand are just too normal while the cold war, which provided the backdrop for Fischer and Kasparov, is over. For all those chess buffs out there this is a chance to burn up some extra calories without leaving their seats. You can watch live and compute your version of the multiple combinations before the players actually commit. Do you in fact burn more calories when you think hard? The jury is out on this. It seems the brain chugs along most of the time, burning about 20% of our energy. But it's not certain that you consume more gas when you're trying to beat Larsen at his own game. One thing we do know is that brain is still some way ahead of machine. Sure, Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997 but, despite the exponential options thrown up in chess, the process is still essentially mechanical. Massive supercomputers like the Titan in Tennessee are probably only around 1/50th as efficient as a human brain. The Titan fills a house-sized building, while the brain is the size of a spanspek, yet makes far more computations. The QSL comes from Radio WKPT, Jonesborough, Tennessee. The station, using just 5kW was heard in Johannesburg in 1993. The station president sent best wishes for SA just before democracy in 1994.
No comments:
Post a Comment