Econlinks: The applied maths edition

• Serious fight on evolutionary theory ground. The bulk of evolutionary theorists seem to be set on taking Nowak et al to the guillotine, but there is also a small minority of fans: among them, my former Tinbergen Institute colleague Matthijs van Veelen (see a picture of him from when he was older, wiser, sporting a big white beard; NB: yours truly is the junior black-and-yellow fellow at his left, learning on the job) and his co-authors have a nice correspondence in Nature supporting Novak et al. PS. Note also that one co-author of the controversial paper is Romanian mathematician Corina Tarnita (whom, allegedly, many girls would/should like to have as role model)
• The wave equation and tsunami propagation: a concise exposition by Terry Tao. Brings back nice memories of my maths classes at Utrecht University.
• Life arithmetic with (unavoidable?) implications: "Life is short. Have an affair".
• New chess strategies (more)? Now to the good guys: the latest (and seemingly, last) Amber chess tournament was clearly won by Aronian-- followed in the combined rankings by Carlsen and Anand: these three are in my view also the only consistent, long-run runners in the chess marathon. And related: Carlsen's bold decision to challenge a by-now-obsolete chess world championship format.  
• Greg Mankiw with the correct (and scary) budget arithmetic. 
• This is piece of cake, walk in the park: should have focused on predicting Burgundy 2011 vintage quality :-). But agreed, it was better than mine.
• A trip through a Mandelbox. Via Alex Tabarrok at MR.
• The science of stout foam. Or: the time of cheaper Guinness is nye! I confessed already that I had chosen a great Condrieu (relative to the other wines I had at Alinea, this was the one unforgettable) on St. Patrick's, but obviously I still fancy the good old Irish stout! 
• On continuous harmonic spaces (the original paper). Shows that consonance and dissonance  in music are to a considerable extent routed in nature and can be described/defined mathematically, beyond cultural or time relativism. We like it!

Econlinks: On crises. And opportunities

• Crises and opportunities in Balkan science policy (start, more). A word of caution for my Romanian pals, among whom a new risk of self-denying optimism-- expected to turn into the usual complacency-- appears contagious: con calma, this is at best a mediocre start (though, granted, a start it is). Not to mention that before reaching (competing with?) the West, the East needs to tackle (be inspired by?) the more (and increasingly so) academically attractive South.
• ...in which it is revealed that crises may hide huge opportunities. Earlier on the Kseniya phenomenon.
• A wealth of economic ideas? Taxing prostitution in the Netherlands and witchcraft in Romania.  Good luck.
• Chess crisis: what did they give Magnus to drink/smoke in Holland?! In words.
• Opportunities? Best predictors of the number of heterosexual sex partners.
• Somebody save Maastricht, tourists will desert it. 
• In praise of reading and fiction: Mario Vargas Llosa like no other. Also, hopes that the Literature Nobel Committee has finally decided to do a Nobel Committee job.

Econlinks: Kamelåså et al

• 
  
  Before I come up with my Econ Nobel forecast -- a week to go, stay tuned-- let us take a look to the 2010 Nobel Ig prizes related to Economics. The Economics Ig Nobel itself is perhaps not very unexpected this year--though not very creative either (I wonder whether Oliver Stone is behind this too; his latest movie gets pretty mediocre reviews-- IMDb, RottenTomatoes-- despite all the hype). The "Management" Nobel Ig reads much better (but I still need to check out that paper): "Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. REFERENCE: “The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study,” Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, Physica A, vol. 389, no. 3, February 2010, pp. 467-72."

• Mankiw's excellent advice for all new college freshmen. Do learn some Economics, Statistics, and Finance, (ok, even Psychology, though this is second order) for your own sake... Couldn't have phrased it better.

• 
  
  He rocks no matter the topic, or context. Colbert for President (Stewart can make an ideal Vice-President).

• 
  
  What would happen if Lars von Trier were in charge with marketing Denmark. Not that the real (at least, intended, later withdrawn) ad  was much smarter. (With thanks to Fred for the links). If you ask me, the Danes should hire these Norvegians for the perfect branding job. Anyhow, good or bad PR, I am heading that way (momentarily with a headache in Schiphol's Crown Lounge). Inter alia, training a bit for future chilly times in Chicago.

• 
  
  And finally, keeping it in Scandinavian context: Magnus beat the world. And he got a date with Liv Taylor: I'd say that's worth the effort. See also his interview on the Pauw and Witteman Dutch TV show, before the world match (partly in Dutch, but you'll manage).



Weekend econlinks: The quest for perfection

• Gelman writes a useful overview on causality and statistical learning (caveat lector: I have only read through Angrist and Pischke's book, among the three Gelman mentiones; that one is very well written, but aimed at junior graduate students at best: hence, the book's tag "an empiricist's companion" is overselling it; and that has nothing to do with Josh Angrist kindly "advising" me to change my PhD topic/focus, sometime in my beginning graduate years, because 'nobody serious would be interested in structural modelling' :-)). I guess I would position myself more within the “minority view” set, represented here by Heckman (I wouldn’t say that is really a "minority" within Economics alone, by the way), but the usefulness of these debates cannot be questionned. And an outsider's (to Economics) opinion, such as Gelman's, is always more than welcome. Related, the WSJ talks about statistical time travelling to answer interesting counterfactuals; I have a feeling I'll stick to my structural guns for now...

• An excellent article on the junior meritocracy and the perils of standardized testing at very young ages. I share most of the worries expressed therein and indeed agree that the marshmallow test would say at least as much, and probably more, than a standardized intelligence test, in the case of toddlers. My general take is that young humans have much more complex personalities than usually warranted, in ways that elude any catch-all type of tests: after all, some even fall in love at 3 years old.

• The perfect, employer-focused, resume. Uses creativity somewhat differently than its more modern counterparts; I am sure Leonardo would be the one to get all the flyouts and job offers today, as his modern CV were obviously recession-proof.

• The ubiquitous problem with such academic et al rankings (which I brought over and over, including in earlier posts and articles, particularly concerning the academic ranking obsession in Romania, where they also-- still! -- have problems understanding that a publication 'anywhere in ISI' can be total nonsense) is that they try to rank overall, ie. over all disciplines, often over (too) long periods of time etc. The only meaningful hierarchies in science are those done on specific disciplines and, even better, subdisciplines, and over shorter periods of time, thus revealing top new places etc. Then, inter alia, one would not be able to claim that biological sciences are advantaged, since there would be a within-discipline focus. I haven’t heard a single serious (but plenty of marginal) scientist(s) stressing the relevance of the rank of her/his university/institution over that of her/his department/research group. Politicians and journalists should take note, too.

• The perfect chef? That is intriguing enough: I would certainly like to know whether one can trace his whereabouts anywhere around Chicago, in the near future. And the (allegedly) perfect place for the greatest wine-- Rekondo, San Sebastian-- for the far(ther) future.

• Gastronomic sacrilège: where have all the great cheeses gone-- roquefort, camembert, brie de Meaux, Saint-Félicien, gruyère, comté, münster, pont l’évêque, cantal, reblochon, tomme de Savoie, crottin de chavignol?! Worse, together with the cheese, soon gone might be oysters, and epsilon common sense... Quo vadis, France?

• Searching for the perfect chess player, human or machine... Put your money on AI; leave poker for humans.

• The most exciting scientific upshot I've heard about in a great while: explaining the tip-of-the-tongue moments. It comes finally clear (although at this stage I understand it is still just speculative/conjectural, and needs more testing) why polyglots (such as I like to consider myself...) have more of a problem in remembering specific words than people who use a single language: “ […] this kind of forgetfulness is due to infrequency of use; basically, the less often you use a word, the harder it is for your brain to access it." Good, I will feel much better when invoking 'lapsus memoriae' next time :-).

• The quest for the better, simpler, (American) living times: old, but superb Daily Show clip, via Tabarrok, on MR

• Economics research in perfect worlds.


• How very true, though my feeling is that the battle for the brightest junior (and not only) Economists is far from over. It is sadly not Europe overall that might offer an alternative for European economists (not a chance: for starters, Europe needs to cut that embarrasing red tape where academics depend on useless, worthless, ridiculous bureacrats, and to think of attractive real wages... ), but Canada and Australia, which look more and more like worthy competitors to the USA (top; the bulk is way worse than pretty much anywhere in western Europe) places (related, earlier).

Sunday night econlinks

• Good, Gelman is even more pissed off with Greenspun's to-a-large-extent-nonsense than I was: 9th bullet point.

• The culture of Old Europe (aka, new European Union...), via Gabi Istrate; I've also promised him I would carefully look at/comment on this: the promise is still there, the time-- not yet... :-).

• I am very curious how big this can/will get. After all, a whole Nobel might be at stake (I confess: I never really liked Gore, on any dimension; I still think he is submediocre or worse; however, I thought/still think that some of the climate guys/gals who won within the IPCC were more than decent...). This is not so much about scepticism (of any kind/degree), but first and foremost about scientific honesty. Seemingly a very rare quality today.

• The current world chess champ was in Romania some days ago, but nobody within the national mass media seems to have noticed. Of course not, they are all busy with one of the most pathetic presidential elections ever; they always manage to keep themselves busy with the least important things.

• The battle of the IT giants takes every possible form. In case you're wondering whom I am putting my money on, here's something to help you; these guys seem to know what's important for tomorrow: a small step in that direction with a (preliminary version of) automatic captioning for YouTube .

• I guess I am not in such of an intimate relationship with Tokyo after all (despite this...), since I didn't manage to meet any of the city's "groundbreakers" (though ok, fine, between me and you only: the truth is that I've been playing hard to get with Tao Okamoto)

• Only reinforces one point Easterly (and a minority of others) has been stressing all the time; this is how development should be done: help them to help themselves.

• The underrated Economist: A.C. Pigou.

• The research agenda of some of my LMDG colleagues: enter Rasmus Lentz and co-authors.

• "[s]urely the biggest police action we have ever had in Danish history" or one of the rare occasions when I am glad that I am not closer to Copenhagen...

Weekend econlinks

• Acemoglu on how nations can get rich: "Fix incentives and you will fix poverty. And if you wish to fix institutions, you have to fix governments"

• Blogossary. With some definitions completely redundant.

• Carlsen is finally right where he should be. For now in Blitz.

• Diploma mills and degree mills. Romania has plenty, Denmark at least one very famous case (though Wikipedia is too slow for that).

• Caballero on sudden financial arrest. I don't agree with everything: the moral hazard is not merely fuzzy reasoning in the context.

• What's up with all the vampire hype: Tyler Cowen's answers. If you want the perspective of a vampire on why vampires are popular, you can meet me in private.

• "If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot." And many other smart thoughts from Umberto Eco (Part 1, Part 2).

• The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: it exists (and seemingly functions well). Reminds me that I still have to read Edward Castronova's "Synthetic Worlds"...

• Undercover Michelin inspector. Clearly not such a flashy job as Anton Ego's, but if they were to consider hiring part-time, amateur (willing to heavily train on-the-job, though) food inspectors, I would be very interested... :-)

• Very little time left for you to trade Romanian Potential President stock. You have to act NOW! :-)

Sunday econlinks

• One of the reasons I just love reading Landsburg: he is acid and funny. Here's something that hopefully will open a longer exchange between him and Krugman: I really think Steve Landsburg is the proper counterpart to Paul Krugman in any debate (NB: Mankiw is great, but too serious and not engaging--understandably-- enough in the type of debate Krugman seems to love). And I tell you beforehand that I shall bet all my money on Landsburg :-). This for instance should be kept for posterity: "But sometimes I think Paul Krugman is out to top them all, by excelling in two activities that are not just disparate but diametrically opposed: economics (for which he was awarded a well-deserved Nobel Prize) and obliviousness to the lessons of economics (for which he’s been awarded a column at the New York Times)."

• The semicolon is dead; long live (or rather: resurrected is) the interrobang?!

• Who should go to college and who should pay for it: with many specialist opinions (via MR). Signalling seems to be dominating as point of view, though I myself think that university also has a genuine positive effect (I agree that matters most for the students in the top of the ability distribution). Else, all might be boiling down in the limit to competition between cats with fraudulent diplomas (via boingboing, via MR).

• Kirman has been writing about these things for quite a while now (with high frequency recently), and almost always on such a revolted tone; these things are happening within Economics, for quite some years now, much of what he mentions is mainstream or closeby (think of social interactions and networks, herding behaviour in finance etc). Plus arguing for discarding these old and well known models (my belief is that most serious economists are very well aware of their limitations for each specific context), just for the sake of discarding them, is madness (who is ideologue here?...). I really don't think this is the way one should argue for different approaches. All my respect for Alan Kirman's scientific work, but with his (especially recent) comments he does seem to go/fall a long way in the direction of non-Economists misinterpreting Econ fundamentals (first bullet point), or, worse, of the several nonsense people writing now and then in The Guardian, e.g. here (6th bullet point) or here.

• The "10 simple rules for scientists" collection at PloS Computational Biology (via MR). Some are redundant, others are great; within the latter category, I think everybody should memorize the "10 simple rules for doing your best research, according to Hamming" (though ok..., rules 5 and 10 are very much location-specific :-)).

• La mémoire refoulée de la Roumanie-- le communisme reste "une abstraction".

• Tim Harford on the "Jamie Oliver Feed Me Beter" experiment in UK schools. Features recent econ research analysing effects of that experiment, by Michele Belot and Jonathan James; you can download a draft version here. The preliminary results suggest that good food has considerable positive effect on educational outcomes. Extrapolating: so stop telling me not to spend my money on Michelin-starred restaurants :-).

• The young Viking is on top of the world right now, according to the unofficial 14 Nov ELO ratings (though I am dissapointed he let Kramnik win the Tal Memorial this year, Carlsen tying for second with Ivanchuk). See also a (happy) Norwegian article on the matter(via Susan Polgar).

• I think "wine critics/commentators" should move-- what they should have done a long time ago-- to identify / classify wine quality ranges, rather than preserve the current practice of grading on a 1 -100 scale. In any case, the last paragraph in this article is the one to retain.

• Less then a week left before the Prediction Markets on the upcoming Romanian Presidentials close: don't waste the opportunity to trade your favourite Presidential stock! :-).

Weekend Econlinks

• Science Q&A with the female Nobelists this year.

• EMH: it really ain't dead. (via Mankiw)

• Harvard's financial report for 2009. And some of the (dire) consequences.

• Head hunting for a (younger than Mas-Colell...legal requirement, apparently) distinguished scientist to be the European Research Council's new Director.

• the NAJ Ain't a Journal of Economics. I can't understand why I find about it only now, this looks extremely interesting (via cheaptalk).

• High time for the Viking to break through! And a funny interview after the Nanjing show off. (via Susan Polgar)

• Levitt did pretty well on The Daily Show (he also did well on the Colbert Report a great while ago). Though I am rather puzzled by his statement "I am not a scientist"; I wonder whether he thinks that a. Economics is not a science, or else b. what he does is not Economics..., or else...?

• Landsburg is blogging. And he's got a couple of great posts already. Here's one of them, on Dawkins, and the origins of complexity.

• Cancer progress might be completely different than known so far.

• Polygamy preferred from any angle. Reminds me of Becker's arguments a while ago (2nd bullet point)-- by the way, they now made a book of the Becker-Posner blogposts.

• The death of the book as we knew it!/? And some nostalgia after book browsing.

Econlinks

• The Nobel Ig prizes this year. My favourite is the Literature one: "Ireland's police service for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means 'Driving License'". Almost as good as the Nigerian Literature Ig winners a while ago. At the same time, the Economics Ig for '09 is somewhat forced; the whole Icelandic population should have gotten it: as we know, they were all into banking until rather recently.

• Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times with the best piece on the Polanski saga as yet. Everybody else is awfully subjective.

• Guardian's list of where to find the best foods in the world. Room for disagreement, but still worth checking out. Unfortunately, I have recently missed the Barcelona and Tokyo places from the list... Plus a nice exposition of the contemporary American cuisine's highs.

• Somebody stop the Viking... ! More. He drew Leko and (again) Topalov in the latest two games, but he is still two points ahead. Let's hope this partnership with Kasparov (5th bullet point) works out and Carlsen stops losing the end games after dominating for most part all recent major tournaments...

• Goolsbee might indeed be the funniest economist alive, via Greg Mankiw. Of course, this was not unexpected: he'd already excelled on the (in)famous Colbert Report.

• The Dutch to the rescue of Scandinavian small towns?

• Writing from Schiphol, after almost 11 hours return flight from Tokyo. Detailed impressions in due time. Now boarding again.

Econlinks

• A summary of the debate "What's wrong with macroeconomics?" The debate goes on.

• Terry Tao's presentation of Perelman's solution to Poincaré's conjecture. There are chances you still won't understand much, but this is way better than attempting to directly digest Perelman's original articles :-).

• Here's Paul Graham's rule of thumb for recognizing (publishing) winners and losers: "When you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you're probably looking at a loser" . He's also got an entertaining piece on the cheeseburger of essay forms.

• "So long as you use a knife there's some love left" or a(nother) glimpse at Norman Mailer's life & oeuvre. Controversy might be his nickname, but Mailer is one embarassing omission of the Literature Nobel Prize Commitee.

• The Chess Dreamteam?

• "The paradox is this: it's best to engage with your opponents' strongest arguments--but your view of what their strongest arguments are is not necessarily their view." This quote (valuable on its own) is from a must-read post of Gelman on (strategic) citation practices.

Weekend econlinks

• The other side of scientific publishing: the Editor's perspective. In this case nothing to complain about (au contraire: e.g., see earlier): if only most editors (cross-disciplinary) would follow on McAfee's steps... unfortunately, plenty of counterexamples around, such as the editors involved here

• Steven Shreve on working with models in the finance world. Shreve on a similar topic, earlier.

• Troubles in the adult entertainment industry...

• Econblogs doing great.

• One of the few things Romanians could/should copy from their Moldavian neighbours

• Bill Easterly reminding us about the gains from specialization.

• They might be having a slow, if any, economic recovery, but the Japanese are way ahead than anybody else technology-wise: Isaac Asimov would have loved this restaurant in Nagoya, Japan. Related, earlier.

• The hot waitress economic index.

• The Google Translate service: not a bad job (though things can be improved: e.g. "how are you, friend?" is translated in Danish "how are you, ven?" and in Hungarian "how are you, barátom?"; in most other languages I can check it seems to work fine :-)). See also a Google Research Blog recent article on the theme.


• The race to hire economists. Or statisticians. Or their combination?

• A new business hype (?): Investing in lawsuits.

Carlsen and the last game curse

Although he seems in top shape and, inter alia, managed to even win against world champ Vishy Anand both at the Linares and at the Amber (Blindfold) tournaments (through wonderful games)..., there is definitely something wrong with Magnus Carlsen and the final games of most recent chess tournaments he has been participating in-- which is probably more frustrating to his fans than to himself, it seems, given he continues on the same frequence :-).

• January: in this year's Corus tournament Magnus was clearly winning and then he lost unexpectedly the last game to Yue Wang, which sent him to the 5th position, rather than 1st, as I wrongly predicted (at least I am happy that I correctly forecasted Fabiano Caruana winning Corus's Group B; I think we will hear a lot more that name in the future)...
• Feb-March: ok, this is somewhat different, but same in terms of implications: in the Linares '09 Carlsen does not lose the last game, for a change, but loses two games in Rounds 8 and 10, to Aronian and Yue Wang respectively, both while he was playing white; he ends up only third (with both Aronian and Yue Wang behind him...).
• March: after dominating the Amber Blindfold tournament, Magnus loses dramatically the last blindfold game to Radjabov (in fact he lost the last two games here, previously to Kramnik), and thus shares the Amber Blindfold top spot with Aronian and Kramnik, while achieving only 4th position in the Amber Combined (Blindfold+Rapid)...
• May: nothing different at this year's Mtel, in Sofia, where Carlsen usually leads with one to go, but then loses the last game to Shirov and misses again the first spot. Just great... the curse seems impossible to break.

• let us hope things will be different at Dortmund, in July (where currently 44% of the persons answering the poll on the official site predict the Viking to win...). But I keep my expectations low this time :-). Carlsen needs to break somehow the curse of the last game in order to ever become World Champion (or anywhere close enough)...

Chess games, more and less serious

First, the powerful Corus Chess tournament has started today (first game tomorrow) in Wijk aan Zee. Time for last year's Group A winner, Magnus Carlsen, to really make history. Ivanchuk did quite well lately, but I still don't see him with too many chances against the Viking Chessmaster, this time. Aronian is, however, always 'unpredictable': hence, if anything, he's the one Magnus should watch out for the most... Group B will also be very interesting: my bet is on the new hope, Fabiano Caruana: I saw some unbelievably smart games he played in different tournaments last year.

Second, computer chess games for the less professional players, such as myself :-). In order to have an idea whether I should get the new chess program for my Ipod (see also here), I should ask Susan Polgar how does the tChess compare to the Kasparov Chessmate , the latter available within the set of games offered on the screens in KLM intercontinental flights (now you know that other than watching good movies--2nd bullet point-- I also play a lot of chess on such flights...). I am obviously no pro when it comes to chess, but I won 15 games (and lost only 3) against the highest level the Kasparov Chessgame has ('strength' 2300, ie. playing against Kasparov's avatar...), which clearly says more about that game than about myself :-). If the Ipod chessgame is similar or lower in strength, I wouldn't bother (though in any case, I think it is absolutely great to have such a chess game on Ipods and Iphones)... All in all, I am definitely looking forward for Fritz-like strength in chess games on such devices as Ipods, KLM screens and the like...

Carlsen consistence

He's just tied for first (well, he's been de jure third, if you take the tie-breaks into consideration, but that does not matter much) in the powerful Baku 2008 Grand Prix. This after he did also very well in the Amber '08 Blindfold and Rapid Chess Tournament, where in the Combined final hierarchy he tied for second. As I said before, the chess wunderkid is in the very top already (probably 4th world-wide in terms of ELO-ranking by now) and he's there to stay. Let's try a forecast: Carlsen Chess World Champion before 2012?

Viking chess

I wouldn't be as worried as Susan :-). The young viking is clearly on the way up and it appears he can't be stopped anylonger. He started Linares with two bangs ( win against Ivanchuk, win against Shirov). Nice, very nice. Though beating Anand today at Linares would indeed be amazing, even if Carlsen won't eventually manage that, he's now got serious chances to show he is already the right challenger of the World Chess Champ. The rest is just a matter of time.

A classic Alekhine's Defence and 43 moves

... is all what Magnus Carlsen needed in order to win against Topalov. Wonderful, wonderful, we love it! The kid is back in the game (while, surprinsingly, Topalov has lost two consecutive games since I last praised him...).

PS. Nothing is sure yet in Morelia-Linares, but I think it starts to look as if Carlsen were a very serious candidate to become the youngest World Chess Champion ever (thus beating Kasparov, who currently holds that record). The first opportunity for the Norwegian to do so could be in two years from now. The (only) very powerful player whom he still has problems winning against is Anand, who rightly deserves to be the world champ now and for the years to come (before Carlsen takes the title from him :-)).

Carlsen should do better

After three rounds in the first leg of the Linares-Morelia tournament (the most powerful chess tournament of this year), the Norwegian wonderkid is not yet shining. Standings and results so far can be seen here (with at least one mistake on the site: Topalov's total number of points is 2.5, after 2 victories and 1 draw, and not 2.0). Obviously I still hope Carlsen will repeat what he did at Wijk aan Zee: anything is still possible, theoretically. Meanwhile, however, Topalov seems to be in an excellent shape. You can replay for instance his game won against Ivanchuk.

Watch for Magnus...

Carlsen won the Corus Grandmaster Group A, as I hoped (totally compensating for his being last in the same top group, last year). His win was jointly with Levon Aronian, one of the three winners of 2007's Corus GM A. It was in fact very close to a triumvirate this year as well, but eventually Anand only drew Kramnik, see here the full report for the last round at Corus. What's also important is that Carlsen defeated Kramnik (currently world champ challenger; former world champ), drew Topalov (currently Elo-rated as world's number 3; former world champ), but lost to Anand (the current world champ); you can replay here the game Kramnik-Carlsen, nicely won by the young chess prodigy.

Quiz: White to move and mate in 2 moves

Here's a quick chess quiz, the 'challenger number 10' from the Corus Chess Tournament. Quite a nice one, took me a bit more than 6 (far too much!) minutes to solve: I am becoming rusty :-). If you solve it before Jan 25th at 16:00, you might want to email the key move and maybe win something. Plus of course it helps focusing a bit, in general :-)

I also hope the Norwegian chess wonderkid wins this year's Corus Chess Top Tournament (only a few more rounds to go and he's still co-leader) from Wijk aan Zee, although he made some very surprinsing blunders in the previous match he lost to Leko (see here the full report for Round 9). Otherwise, I'd bet on the current chess world champ.

Quote for week 13th to 19th of Jan '08

[...]The gift of early insight into chess or math or music is often also accompanied by a growing obsession with those activities, simply because of the wonders of connection and invention that unfold in the young mind. The world itself, with its more messy human interactions, its complicated histories, its emotional conflicts, can be put aside, and attention focused on an intricate bounded cosmos. Perhaps we should be grateful that such gifts are so rare, for if they were not, how many of us would prefer to remain cocooned in these glass-bead games? At least in mathematics and music, we may be grateful too that ultimately, with the coming of maturity, the world starts to put constraints on abstract play. Great music attains its power not simply through manipulation and abstraction, but by creating analogies with experience; music is affected by life, not cut off from it. Mathematics also comes up against the demands of the world, as the field opens up to understanding; early insights are tested against the full scale of what has been already been done and what yet remains undone. But chess, alone among this abstract triumvirate, is never tested or transformed. The only way expertise is ever tried is in victory or defeat. And if a player is as profoundly powerful as Mr. Fischer, defeat never creates a sense of limits. Seeing into a game and defeating an opponent — that defines the entire world.

Edward Rothstein, "Fischer vs. the World: A Chess Giant's Endgame"

Read the quote of the previous week.