BBC: “A Canadian team has created a computer program that can win or draw any game, no matter who the opponent is. It took an average of 50 computers nearly two decades to sift through the 500 billion billion possible draughts positions to come up with the solution.
Month / July 2007
The Follicle of the Century
Ladies and gentlemen, Phil Spector’s hair.
Binelli Talks with DeLillo
I have no idea if Mark Binelli’s interview with Don DeLillo was killed by Rolling Stone, but Guernica Magazine has picked it up.
The Herring Wonder Returns!
Roundup
- Ron Howard will be
destroyingdirecting Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children for the big screen. - Douglas Coupland’s JPod is being turned into a 13-part television series. (via Bookninja)
- Okay, this is sort of a Harry Potter link, but not really. Frank Wilson’s words about hubristic security measures are well worth reading.
- Maud on out-of-town bookstores.
- Matthew Tiffany has the scoop on Tom McCarthy’s next novel — excerpt here. And then of course there’s this.
- Dan Wickett offers a third panel of literary translators.
- David Ulin outs himself as a Leonard Maltin Movie Guide junkie. I have to confess. I pick one of these puppies up every year too and have spent too many hours, often with beer and friends, pondering its odd subjective slant (four stars for The Cider House Rules?). It’s always good to have a backup for when the IMDB goes down.
- I don’t entirely agree with Charles Taylor’s argument, but he does have many good points about mass readership.
- Someone has purchased Mediabistro: “A woman with a boa and a dream and a bad laugh has emerged from the hubbub of the internet triumphant.”
- William Gibson “briefly noted” in The New Yorker? The times they are a-changing?