Game Over: Kasparov And The Machine

Chess – I used to be vaguely good at that once.

I remember joining my junior school’s chess club, and winning several games, albeit more because the lesson finished than anything else. UK junior chess champion Demetrios Agnos lived around the corner from me too, and he gave me some useful advice.

As I got older though, I became more bored and impatient. I’d let pieces get taken, purely because I wanted something to HAPPEN.

One time Herschel and I sat down to play a game, and it’s the only time I’ve known him, and me, to both fall so utterly silent for so long. (barring the obvious exceptions – during a journey, when unconscious, throughout a Jacques Tati movie etc.)

And Herschel and I both got thrashed by Chris over the internet once too. And of course I played Frank once.

Tonight however I sat down to watch a DVD of the movie Game Over: Kasparov And The Machine.

Frustrated as I often am by the Internet Movie Database (“Hm - We don’t know anything at all about your favourite film – why don’t YOU click here to tell US”), this time their synopsys is definitive:

Garry Kasparov is arguably the greatest chess player who has ever lived. In 1997 he played a chess match against IBM's computer Deep Blue. Kasparov lost the match. This film shows the match and the events surrounding it from Kasparov's perspective. It delves into the psychological aspects of the game, paranoia surrounding it and suspicions that have arisen around IBM's true tactics. It consists of interviews with Kasparov, his manager, chess experts, and members of the IBM Deep Blue team, as well as original footage of the match itself.

And it’s truly amazing how a single suspicion – that IBM cheated – can be strung out to fill an entire movie like this.

Part of the theory goes that, at one point, the computer made a move that was so completely illogical, that no computer could ever have been programmed to make it. This suggests that maybe actually a human being was deciding the moves, with computer advice – the best of both worlds.

Where this fascinating film fails for me, is simply in its narration – the whole thing is whispered to give it some sort of conspiratorial feel, but all this did for me was make it hard to make anything out.

There’s also a lot of talk about exponentially expanding scenarios making programming a computer to play chess impossible, however while there may be an infinite number of possible sequences of moves, there is still only a very high finite number of possible positions to the game.

Most chilling is one interviewee’s assertion that thinking is the only thing that man is better at than any animal, so when a computer suddenly comes along and does that one thing better than us, we lose our supremacy of the planet.

A fine watch – and for me, far more interesting than actually playing the game.

Rock Bottom

So it's come to this - I am now actually ironing Flatmate Dave's shirts to lessen my rent...

Elongation

Work no-one pays.
A radio-show no-one listens to.
A blog no-one reads.
A ministry no-one benefited from.
A guy no girl sees any potential in.
Never worth just one free meal.
Purity always rejected in favour of "bad boys."
A lifetime of backed-up love that no-one would ever receive.
(keeping respectful distance never ever recognised)
Deep, universal conviction that he must never ever be allowed to be kind.
A poet never allowed to write.
A voice that mustn't cherish.
Arms too afraid to hug.
Hands too slapped to hold.
Eyes that mustn't make eye-contact.
God forbid that they smile slightly.
Words too petrified to even whisper now.
Truth punished as though lies.
Energy no-one felt.
Tears no-one dries, so they run out of water and stop.
Imagination that can no longer even dream.
Truth and honesty still live silently within.
Time… so much time.
I envy you all.

CLCA

I first missed a service at CLCA on March 7th 2004. There was a really good feeling there after the service though. It had been a baptism service, and the thronging atmosphere was so friendly, that it was hard to shake the feeling that there were people around who I knew. (In fact I had come with people I knew, but they didn't count!) :)

Since then I've made several plans to stop in one Sunday, yet repeatedly only got there for the end of a service, or on one occasion to find the service had been replaced with a Christmas pantomime.

Tonight Flatmate Dave and I showed up in good time for the start of the service, only to find ourselves faced with a visiting guest-speaker. Said speaker proceeded to deliver what was, to all intents and purposes, a prosperity message, a perspective that I always feel only tells a part of the story, and one that God will not apply to everyone.

The lady next to me gushed enthusiastically "This is the only church I've ever been to where I haven't felt condemned!" And indeed the sermon reflected this. I had to wonder if maybe they were missing a tiny unpopular part of the puzzle.

Today, though I didn't feel condemned, I did find it easy to feel intimidated by a church with 8,000 members. Everyone doesn't know everyone else. There are so many people on the stage, that they surely can't all know each other either. There are signs and cords up telling you where you're not allowed to go. Something about so much packaging always makes me feel a little distanced and distrustful. Perhaps I should trust as much as the lady next to me appeared to.

There are billions of different people on the planet, requiring loads of different types of churches. I just prefer the cosiness, intimacy and, yes, trust of a smaller one, that's all.

Afterwards Dave and I enjoyed a coffee in their café and resolved to come back again yet another time, in the undying hope of experiencing a full regular service.

Oh no - I'm the pet dog

Last Sunday I dropped in again on my old landlords the Kim family from Korea. It was nice to see them all again, and Won ki and Won jin, although I was a little taken aback to find that I had now been replaced by a small dog.

Today they generously invited me to come out picking persimmons with them in Henderson.

They look a bit like very large tomatoes, but are orange, as hard as apples, and taste like swede!

BBC News Interviews The Wrong Guy

Computer expert and editor of Newswireless.net Guy Kewney has described his astonishment at seeing the BBC interview a complete stranger in the mistaken belief it was him.


As a bearded white man, he was even more surprised to see himself presented as a clean-shaven black man - with a thick French accent.

The mix-up had occurred when a BBC producer had gone to collect the interviewee from the wrong reception. As a result, instead of collecting Guy Kewney for a TV interview, the producer mistakenly collected Mr Guy Goma, who was there to attend a job interview.

Hoping to get the job, Mr Goma then found himself being ushered into a studio and fitted with a microphone.

He then met BBC consumer affairs correspondent Karen Bowerman, who began to fire questions at him regarding the recent Apple Computers court case. Applying for a job in Data Support, Mr Goma of course proceeded to gamely answer all her questions, and successfully winged the entire interview in front of people watching all over the world.

Spectacular! Watch this hero in action here:



What a Guy!

Transcript:

BBC: ...so what does this all mean for the industry, and the growth of music online? Well Guy Kewney is the editor of the technology website Newswireless….

GUY G LOOKS AT CAMERA IN DISBELIEF.

…hello, good morning to you.

Guy G: Good morning.

BBC: Were you surprised by this verdict today?

Guy G: I am very surprised to see this verdict to come on me because I was not expecting that. When I came they told me something else and I am coming. You've got to make the evidence, surely. A big surprise anyway.

BBC: A big surprise?

Guy G: Exactly.

BBC: Yes, yeah. With regards to the cost that's involved do you think now more people will be downloading online?

Guy G: Actually, if you can go everywhere you gonna see a lot of people downloading to internet and the website and everything they want. But I think, is much better for the development and to improve people what they want and to get on the easy way and so faster if they are looking for.

BBC: This does really seem the way the music industry's progressing now that people want to go onto the website and download music.

Guy G: Exactly - you can go everywhere on the cyber cafe and you can take, you can go easy. It is going to be very easy way for everyone to get something to the internet.

BBC: Guy Kewney, thanks very much indeed.

Doctor Who: The Girl In The Fireplace

Wow, what a great idea – a spaceship with portals to different moments in a person's life – bogged down yet again by intrusive forced emotional content.

The story:

The Doctor, Mickey and Rose land on the deserted spaceship the SS Madame de Pompadour somewhere in deep space, however within minutes they’ve found doorways that open out onto the planet… go on guess.

The ship’s eerie clockwork-powered robots have cannibalised the original crew’s body-parts to repair their delapidated ship. Having now run-out of crew-members, they’ve still managed to build these doorways to various years in 18th century France, so that they can cannibalise further “parts” from the body of King Louis XV’s mistress Madame de Pompadour, because she has the same name as the ship.

I'll repeat that - because she has the same name as the ship.

By chance, the Doctor and his friends conveniently encounter each doorway in perfect chronological order – the same order the robots seem to be using them in too.

There is also a revolving fireplace, which opens onto her bedroom at later and later moments in her life, in perfect sequence with the other doors that our heroes are flukily chronologically discovering.

The robots have built all the many doors onto different times, because they only want Madame de Pompadour at age 31.

Again - the robots have built all the many doors onto different times, because they only want Madame de Pompadour at age 31.

Just when it can't get any better, the Doctor falls in love with her.


First the positive stuff:

Like I said – a good original central device. It's enthralling to believe that the cupboard door to my right might lead somewhere else entirely. Even more so that it might lead to other moments in my life. Far more interesting, therefore, for Madame de Pompadour to have used this to her own advantage.

I don't normally like stories that begin in the middle, but here it was a good hook to begin 3,000 years earlier. Also, when the pre-creds scene did ultimately take place, we were able to see what was happening elsewhere at the same time, so it was still a new scene.

The storytelling in general was fairly clear – particularly at the start. The narrative stays with the Doctor for quite a while, making it easy to encounter things from just his perspective. One thing at a time.


The robots – both disguised in the human mask, and unmasked with the faceless clockwork heads – looked absolutely chilling. In both instances, you knew there was someone there, but you couldn't see their face.

The broken clock over the fireplace – again, a good disquieting idea.

Mickey's line about Sarah. It's reassuring that her appearance last week hasn't been suddenly and completely forgotten.

Second heaviest diegetic use of the phrase "Doctor Who" after The War Machines. I'd be very happy for a well-written series to do more with this, like Lance Parkin did a bit in his book The Infinity Doctors. No sign of that however, and no trust in this team after the last season either.

That's about it with the good points.

Now the negative:

There’s no explanation for why these 51st century robots are clockwork. It’s like there was an earlier draft in which they came from 18th century France.

The ship’s original crew were unlikely to have all shared Madame de Pompadour’s name. It wasn’t even written on their uniforms in the TARDISode. I doubt that they were all 31 years old as well.

Mickey doesn't get how he can understand French. He's forgotten his exchange with Rose in The Christmas Invasion:

Rose: "I don't understand what they're sayin'. The TARDIS translates alien languages inside my head all the time, wherever I am."

Mickey: "So why isn't it doin' it now?"

Rose: "I don't know. It must be the Doctor. He's part of the circuit and… he's broken."

Later Mickey had also heard the Sycorax start to talk in English and said "Yeah that's English."

Of course, forgetting the events of The Christmas Invasion should really be seen as a good thing.

The Doctor actually shouts "I've just snogged Madame de Pompadour!" Oh for goodness sake, why, just WHY did they think this would be a good line? We’re tuning-in to watch Doctor Who, not Bottom. So much for knowing your audience.

Later they do everything they can to imply that they’ve slept together, but are too afraid to give any definite proof. Which of course proves that the writers know full well that he mustn't.

Rose recognises a human heart, as opposed to, say, a cow's heart, or an alien heart for example. Neither it nor the eye have decomposed, or require blood.

And what does a ship need an eye or a heart to do exactly? Pump blood around? See an empty corridor? Erm… can't all those robots 'see' without eyes?

The Doctor can, after 150 stories, mind-meld with people. Handy that.

The clockwork robots sedate Rose and Mickey, and then bring them round again to cut them up. Resedating them certainly does not appear to be on the cards. But then, these robots aren't the quickest thinkers, repeatedly approaching people threateningly before just… stopping. All the time in the world. Really, why don't they just push them over?

The robots’ (and the Doctor’s) stupidity certainly gives all the writers less work.

The Doctor sobers-up quite suddenly, flawing the danger of his preceding drunkeness. Was he faking it? If so, why? If not, how did he sober up so quickly?

Madame de Pompadour enters the future and, having never heard it before, somehow recognises her own voice. This simultaneous use of two doors is also the only time when they are not used chronologically.

Ignoring questions of how said doorways work (e.g. had she any way of walking through said doorway and getting to the Paris corridor beyond?), her setting foot on the spaceship was one of the more interesting ideas, that sadly wasn't explored.

The Doctor says they can't use the TARDIS to travel back to 18th century France, because it is a part of events. He used this excuse in The Parting Of The Ways, and I see his argument, but it's not valid. From, say, Rose's perspective, she would just see the Doctor get in the TARDIS and dematerialise, before looking through the window and seeing him rematerialise in France in the past. What's wrong with that? He would effectively only be travelling in space, just like in most episodes. It's not a cure-all device. In the end he jumps through the window on a horse, which is not that different.

Sure enough, the Doctor has forgotten that he can build a battery to power the TARDIS key and retrieve it, as he did in Father's Day.

The Doctor is completely surprised that time moves on while he's back on the space station away from the fireplace. I didn't see it coming, but I think he would have. Certainly several of my friends did.

Rose goes to show Mickey the rest of the TARDIS. Ha ha ha, see you later, suckers. Even worse than this assertion is that the writers thought I would be more interested in staying in the console room to see the Doctor looking miserable.

Reused elements from The Empty Child:

Automated system from alien spacecraft goes to logical extreme and starts beaurocratically killing people to “do the right thing.”

Scary faceless masked zombies repeating a phrase over and over. (“You are incomplete” = “Are you my mummy?”)

Ticking = typing.

Cringe-inducing glued-on romantic plot.

Clunky dancing metaphor.

Infidelity.

The identity of the child/woman is the story’s solution.

Bananas. (I like bananas too!)

In summary:

I expect better of the same guy who wrote Press Gang, but I really am past blaming the credited authors on this show. There is a consistency to the way that (nearly) all this show's scripts don't work. That's not several different writers all making the same mistakes as each other in isolation. That's surely just ONE person REwriting them. So it's no use blaming the author of the first draft.

In summary, a great idea, but the story was not even passable. Great potential usually requires some work to be put in as well.

Teaching English to the Koreans

Last June I promised the Salvation Army's Korean Corps. that I would organise and teach some English lessons for their members... and almost 11 months later I have just begun to keep that promise! Here I am tonight, popping-up at their Auckland Central Hall on Queen Street to both keep my word, and give them a few of their own.

Where Now For Man Raised By Budgies

"Broadcasting standards hit a new low earlier today, when aging radio has-been Steve Goble recklessly read his first radio news bulletin. Thankfully, he skipped the whole kiwi "kia ora" opening to quell any chance of his stuffing it up like the silly Englishman he is. Here's his report:

NEWS!

(Turn off the monitor - I don't want to hear his voice.)"

Dollars From Heaven

Lately I’ve been editing some audio material for a Christian podcasting website.

After finishing tonight, next to Food Town in Greenlane, a $100 bill flew past us in the wind. My friend picked it up, I took it home, and gave it straight to flatmate Dave for this week’s rent.

Flatmate Dave's TV For Sale

Doctor Who: School Reunion

Just when I thought that the TV series Doctor Who had died yet another hideous living death, tonight it unashamedly came back for just one more episode. It even had old companions Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 in it.

*** Plot spoilers follow ***

The universe is made up of building-blocks.

As logic itself is a part of the universe, said building-blocks would require something outside of logic, and outside of the whole universe, to understand them.

Souls.

Therefore schoolkids are being fed chips fried in Kerratine oil to make them super-intelligent, so that their souls can be used to construct a giant super-computer to figure out how the building-blocks of the universe work, and hence control it.

It’s amazing that a failed spin-off pilot from 1981 can be adhered to on prime time TV 25 years later, and that a joke about Croydon can be followed up after about 30. Especially with no long-winded explanations for new viewers.

I’ll start with its good points, because on the whole they were unusually good ones:

1. The start. Headmaster eats pupil, the Doctor’s undercover as a teacher. We find the story already in progress – marvellous. It’s like watching The Avengers. Better still, when the Doctor bumps into Rose furiously wearing a dinner-lady’s outfit, they say nothing to each other, and it’s all very funny implied humour. Of course it soon degenerates into clunky explaining everything for today’s perceived stupid audience, but until that happens it’s just brilliant.

2. The Doctor runs into 1970s companion Sarah again. This first scene was just lovely. Handled extremely well, and again was very funny because of everything that wasn’t said.

3. In fact, loads of funny lines throughout this whole episode, mainly about K-9. When today’s sidekick Mickey meets K-9 and realises “Oh my God – I’m the tin dog!” we were all laughing out loud, and I also couldn’t help chuckling at Finch’s deliberately Buffy-esque order to “Get the metal doggy thing.” And the line about Aberdeen too!

4. Killing K-9 off at the end was a good thing to do, and right for the story. It was of course flawed by the final ending, but rebuilding him again, or at least building a mark 4, is what the Doctor would have done. Still not sure why the school blew up in the first place though.

5. Also Mickey was treated much better as a character. It’s a credit to this series that I had disliked him so much in the first episode, but was now quite glad to see him stay on in the TARDIS at the end for the next story.

And now, I'm genuinely sorry, the bad stuff.

1. Sarah Jane’s storyline is all about how, in the original series, the Doctor suddenly left her on Earth, without saying goodbye, because he wasn’t allowed to take her back to his home planet Gallifrey, so she never saw him again. This is the entire basis of Sarah’s presence in the episode, and the subject of much dialogue and emotion, however unfortunately…

A:


Firstly, he did say goodbye, both at the time (in The Hand Of Fear) and via a message sent through K-9 a few years later. (K-9 And Company)

B:


Secondly, and rather more seriously, they already made an episode in 1983 in which Sarah returned to the show and met the Doctor again. 4 times. It was called The Five Doctors and is the most famous Doctor Who story of the original run. Here she is as they say their goodbyes yet again:



C:
Said 1983 story also featured Sarah getting to go to the Doctor’s home planet after all:



Yet despite these 3 things, throughout tonight’s episode Sarah accuses the Doctor of not saying goodbye, says she’s never seen him again, accepts his maintaining that humans aren’t allowed on his planet, and even says she’d concluded that he must therefore be dead!

There is a theory that in The Five Doctors, Sarah offers very little spoken evidence of actually knowing who the older Doctor is, however for that to hold true, Sarah would have to be really really stupid, and be saying goodbye to a complete stranger. And neither does it explain how today she no longer even recalls having been to his planet. And it doesn't explain why the Doctor doesn't remember these events either.

(I have a nasty theory that they’re just snobbishly ignoring everything that happened after fans' favourite Tom Baker had left.)

It’s the one thing that massively lets the episode down, and leaves one genuinely wondering if this episode will be subsequently airbrushed out of history in a few years’ time, when they make yet another episode in which Sarah returns for the first time.

(The Five Doctors, it should be noted for fairness' sake, is perhaps the worst perpetrator of discontinuity in the show's entire run. (and I don't want to start checking if that's true or not) The idea that it might also have contradicted stuff from the show's future would actually be entirely in-keeping with it.)

2. There’s a lot of implying that Sarah and the Doctor had some sort of relationship going on in the 70s, however for my money this is just sexy modern TV never having heard what a friendship is.

3. K-9 has been broken for years, yet Sarah ridiculously keeps him stored in the boot of her car. Thank God she was never broken into. I can make up a reason here, but that’s really the writers' job. Why on Earth wasn’t that scene back at her house?

4. When did the Doctor rebuild K9 in time for the final scene?

5. Sarah remembers the worldwide alien invasion from 3 episodes back in The Christmas Invasion, but oddly doesn't mention the Prime-Minister’s TV appeal for the Doctor’s help. Oh dear, that means that every earth-bound character in Doctor Who from now on has to remember this too. Except that you just know that they won’t, in much the same way that no-one else in this episode mentioned it.

6. Why on Earth does Finch, whilst plotting to overthrow the universe, allow a newspaper reporter to come and investigate the school he’s doing it from?

7. The TARDIS is parked inside the school. Duh!

8. Mickey saves the universe by… errr… pulling a plug out of its socket. Kudos to him for thinking of that, when seconds earlier it had never occured to him to turn off a particular kid’s VDU, or to remove any of their headphones. On the subject of which, their headphones all vanish between shots.

9. Likewise, rather than take a sample of the oil while she is alone in the kitchen, Rose instead decides to leave it there so that she can go back in the middle of the night for it.

10. Rose doesn’t remember the Doctor dumping her back on Earth at the end of the last series. It comes as a complete shock to her that he might leave her.

11. The Doctor does not dump his companions. Again and again they dump him.

12. The curse of the Time Lords is not that they have to watch their loved ones grow old while they stay young. Most of them never even left their home planet of Gallifrey.

13. The acting direction. Anthony Stewart Head and that black guy panto the whole thing. What a waste.

14. Torchwood continues to appear identical to UNIT. This week Mickey finds a classified file across which they have written their classified name on a classified warning. Really, this is called advertising.

15. Torchwood, having identified all that flying saucer activity, have done nothing. In fact, they appear to be totally ignorant of what is taking place. No change there then, just like when Earth was invaded in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but Torchwood never even noticed, which is a shame, because those were exactly the sort of things they had been looking for all this time.

16. Finally, Rose’s phone accepts incoming calls. That’s right, Mickey rang her up to tell her and the Doctor to come investigate this odd school. Oh dear. We really are saying that in an entire year of Rose going missing on Earth, no-one even once tried calling her mobile.

In summary, I was on an absolute high after seeing Sarah and K-9 again, and a huge sigh of relief that he was still voiced by John Leeson, and not Nick Briggs. As an isolated story, it was passable. As part of a series, it was again riddled with careless story-destruction, to both the old series and the new. As I have noted again and again on this blog, the modern series repeatedly strives for emotional content, no matter how much the story may have to be broken to pieces to force it in. Tonight I have to admit that, just this once, I succumbed to the feel-good factor and was swept along by it all. Yes, I enjoyed it, except for the awful gnawing feeling inside about The Five Doctors.

In fact, I realised what I think is one of the key features of Doctor Who’s ongoing appeal, perhaps something that the rest of the series might do well to acknowledge.

It’s all part of a much bigger picture.

Cool Bananas

This morning the bus driver deliberately undercharged me for being a senior citizen, the supermarket cashier gave me a free banana, and I bumped into Tim Downstairs who gave me a lift back home again.