Culture

Blitz games on the internet are a lot of fun, if you love chess as I do. Perhaps a good share of the fun is due to the complete chaos that may arise, when you have few seconds left on the clock and decisions have to be taken instantly. But sometimes you may happen to play correct chess, too. It is exceedingly rare, and when it happens it is a good indication that you have been able to hold on to clear strategic ideas leading your play into the correct decisions. One such case happened this evening to me, while I was playing some random blitz games on chess.com. The position below arose out of…

Now and then I find the time to write music for piano. It is a compelling, satisfying activity that however demands my full immersion for several hours at a time - if I want anything to come out from it. It happened again last Sunday, when I spent the whole day at the keyboard of the beautiful Yamaha C3 artistic edition I bought last year (and am still paying). But in truth, the work is only initially at the keyboard of the piano: after having taken note of a few themes and ideas, the activity switches to a software called Finale, which enables one to write sheet music and check it through a…

Creativity is one of the things that really makes us human - in fact, a number of human activities which we identify as specific of our nature, and which we believe could hardly be mimicked by artificial intelligence, rely on our inventiveness and capability of creating new objects, images, concepts, methods, or finding new purpose in old tools. Art, among all of these activities, is the quintessential result of our willful act of creating beauty - or even ugliness, if that is considered a worthy pursuit by the artist. But is art confined to being the result of an act of creation? I…

A long time ago, before starting the studies which would lead to a career as a particle physicist, I studied music. After getting a degree as a master in Antique Instruments, I studied composition for four years. But I was not particularly well versed in that tough discipline, and I did the right thing in dropping out. I was 18, and I decided that Science was going to be my job, not music. But I kept an interest in music and I continued - a bit erratically - to study the piano. Fast forward to present times. I found some music sheets and decided to try my old hand at the rather idle practice…

I know, Google has been around for decades by now, and nobody should be surprised to learn how easy they have made the life of information seekers, among other things (I am also an addict of their search engine, scholar, maps, trends, and gmail utilities). But my mouth still dropped today as I discovered their "ngram viewer". It happened by chance. I was trying to find out whether "as best as possible" is really a correct English phrase, or if it is just a tad slang, and the google search pointed to a page where the matter was settled by a cool graph: Above, the red curve shows the…

Every two years the Biennale, a contemporary art exhibition, opens in Venice from May to November. This is one of the most important events of its kind, and it attract millions of visitors to a garden that contains a few dozen different pavillions, each hosting artwork from a different country. Over fifty more such independent museums are scattered around the city center and are free entry - these are even more fun to visit than the main exposition at the "Giardini della Biennale", as they allow visitors to visit the spaces themselves, often old houses or palaces that are otherwise…

Bourbon, brandy and whiskey are all examples of alcoholic beverages which after fermentation and distillation, require years to age(mature) typically in wooden casks. Dramatically shortening this aging process through the application of sound waves, agitation and pressure is being successfully employed by people both here in the US and abroad.  In Spain, Valme Garcia, professor at the University of Cadiz and his fellow researchers have taken brandy and mixed it with American oak chips. This mix is then subjected to blasts of ultrasound which creates pressure within plant tissue. This…

Oh my… Have I been scammed? This was after reading some blogs in the net including research gate. As chemist maybe, my instinct says “wait… don’t panic and look back at what happened. Because of the many negative blogs, I feel obligated to post this blog. Here is my story. After I presented my research on nipa oil at the 31st Philippine Chemistry Congress, a lady came to me and asked me about my research. I cannot recall her name and affiliation. A week later, I received an email from Lambert Academic Publishing asking me if I would like to publish my research on nipa as a book. Thinking my…

“I know Obama was heaven-sent, but ever since Trump won, it proved that I could be president” –Ye vs. the People Based, and so very true in several ways, Kanye, greatest rapper, genius, woke, officially preparing for POTUS 2020 since 2015, has distilled it once again all down to hyper-sonic invincible rockets of rhythm and rhyme: Not Obama, the fake Back, but The Donald is the proof and the way, that he, Kanye West, can become President! And yes, we need this, and you want this; that is what you said, when crying as Obama went, when eying Oprah “I-shill-hard-for-the-establishment”, when you…

Playing chess games flawlessly is a super-human endeavour, which even machines are still having a hard time achieving. However, the occasional flawless game does arise in human practice, albeit rarely. Usually it is a grandmaster who pulls it off. The absence of sub-optimal moves can be ascertained by extensive computer analysis these days, so the quality of the moves is not in question. For amateur chess players, playing a correct chess game is of course even harder. And if we talk of blitz chess - the kind of game where each player has only 5 minutes to do all the moves - this becomes…