by scribe | May 17, 2018 | chess clubs, current news, literature, off-topic
Tuesday, May 15, was an unforgettable day for me: the launch date for The Book of Why, the book I have been working on with Judea Pearl for the last three years. I’ve never been lucky enough to see a baby born, but I think that the “birth” of a book...
by scribe | May 9, 2018 | current news, off-topic, ruminations
The countdown to my book’s launch is on in earnest now: only six more days! Such metaphors as “countdown” and “launch” seem very apropos to me, because I feel like an astronaut strapped in his chair, with only ten minutes to go until...
by scribe | Feb 13, 2018 | current news, literature, off-topic
Going off topic today! I hope that my readers will forgive me. As many of you know, for the last two years I have been working on a big, non-chess book. It’s called The Book of Why, and we are now entering the home stretch. Publication date is now just three...
by scribe | Dec 21, 2017 | chess clubs, games, literature, people, ruminations
In the most recent meeting of the Aptos Library chess club for kids, I decided to show them a position from a game that I played against Shredder, the computer. (Usually my lessons are taken from the excellent book Tactics Time by Tim Brennan and Anthea Carson, but...
by scribe | Dec 6, 2017 | current news, literature, openings, ruminations
Today, like many people, I was shocked by the news in my Facebook new feed. AlphaZero beats Stockfish! For those who (like me) had never heard of AlphaZero, let me explain that it is a new deep-learning algorithm created by the same folks who gave you AlphaGo, the...
