Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.

Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Fischer was wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In 2005, he moved to Iceland, a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph.

Garry Kasparov, the former Russian chess champion, said Fischer’s ascent in the chess world in the 1960s and his promotion of chess worldwide was “a revolutionary breakthrough” for the game. But Fischer’s reputation as a genius of chess was eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies…

An American chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15, Fischer dethroned Spassky in 1972 in a series of games in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, to become the first officially recognized world champion born in the United States.

A Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction.

The Volkswagen-size mastodon skull could fetch upward of $160,000 at auction.

The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder…

“We’ve struggled so long here just to keep this thing going,” Taylor said. “We’re kind of losing interest. You can just tread water for so long.”

Back on Dec 31, I posted an item about Michigan preventing hospitals from using checklists that could prevent a number of deaths from infections. Astute reader Bob posted a comment today that pointed to a reply by the state that refutes the article.

While some expressed concern that OHRP has prohibited hospitals in Michigan and elsewhere from implementing a program intervention consisting of a checklist and other measures to prevent certain hospital-acquired infections, OHRP has taken no such action. On the contrary, if any hospital or intensive care unit decides to implement the use of checklists or other measures only for the reason that they believe those measures will improve the quality of care provided, they may do so without consideration of the requirements of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations for the protection of human research subjects (45 CFR part 46).

We note that the op-ed also inaccurately characterized certain facts of the case involving the Michigan hospitals and how the regulations apply. In the case the op-ed refers to, the HHS regulations for the protection of human research subjects applied in an earlier time period when the use of a checklist was originally implemented as part of a multi-component program intervention being evaluated in a research study funded by HHS.

In other words, there is no reason for Michigan hospitals (and every other hospital around the country) to not implement these kinds of simple checklists given they can save our lives. If you go into a hospital, ask if they have one and if they enforce doctors and nurses following them.

Why does AT&T want to know what you’re downloading?

Chances are that as you read this article, it is passing over part of AT&T’s network. That matters, because last week AT&T announced that it is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of U.S. intellectual property laws. The prospect of AT&T, already accused of spying on our telephone calls, now scanning every e-mail and download for outlawed content is way too totalitarian for my tastes. But the bizarre twist is that the proposal is such a bad idea that it would be not just a disservice to the public but probably a disaster for AT&T itself. If I were a shareholder, I’d want to know one thing: Has AT&T, after 122 years in business, simply lost its mind?

No one knows exactly what AT&T is proposing to build. But if the company means what it says, we’re looking at the beginnings of a private police state. That may sound like hyperbole, but what else do you call a system designed to monitor millions of people’s Internet consumption? That’s not just Orwellian; that’s Orwell.

Decorating children’s wards with paintings of clowns to create a nurturing atmosphere could backfire, research suggests. A University of Sheffield study of more than 250 children, aged four to 16, found the images were widely disliked… Researcher Dr Penny Curtis said: “As adults we make assumptions about what works for children.

“We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable.”

“Children are much more happy with things stuck on the wall that have some sort of personal relevance for them, not images that are foisted upon them by adults.”

Adults choose clowns for lots of tasks – don’t we?

Maybe the kids are right?

 
 
I came across this bizarre diatribe on the Guardian accusing Facebook of being a front for the CIA, among may other possibly libelous things. Put on your tin-foil hat and read on…

Guardian – Monday January 14 2008:

The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which “identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions”.

As John has pointed out, if this is true it could explain why Facebook’s founder refused a billion dollar offer to sell it.

Whew, even his titles are long-winded rants!

• MacWorld Expo rundown. The show was packed. Apple booth a little disappointing.
• The little notebook is highlighted. My take on its “Chiclet Keyboard.”
• Gridiron the hot item.
• Game sales up.
• Time-Warner trying to gouge customers over movie downloads.
• Microsoft needs to go outside to get new CIO. Cripes, does anyone but me think this is odd. Microsoft is a computer software company and nobody can be the CIO? Incredible.
• Microsoft may buy Limelight.
• Sears selling a sub-$200 PC.
• There may be an OLED laptop.

Two alleged gang members who taunted the Miami Dade Police Department in a video posted on YouTube have been arrested by U.S. agents and charged with federal firearms violations.

Rudy Villanueva and Tony Logan, alleged members of a Miami-Dade County street gang called the Bird Road Boys, were seen in the video brandishing a shotgun, assault rifle and handguns. Villanueva was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement late Tuesday evening, and Logan was arrested early Wednesday morning.

Villanueva, who goes by the names King Bird Road and Bird Road Rudy, is the alleged leader of the gang and is seen on the video saying, “Metro Dade Gang Unit, here I am baby.” Villanueva went on in the video to say “we’s out here fighting a Cold War” and that “they come at us if they want to.”

Logan appears in the video saying “come get it” while flashing gang signs and pulling the triggers of the two handguns he is holding.

The video, titled “Bird Road Getting in Trouble,” was posted Jan. 3 and has since been taken down by YouTube.

Don’t waste your time on the Video link at the ABC site. You have to work your way through commercials and other stories to get to this one.

The companies that make the board game Scrabble are trying to shut down Scrabulous, an online version that is one of the most popular applications on the social networking site Facebook.

Hasbro Inc., which owns the rights to the crossword game in the United States and Canada, and Mattel Inc., which owns the rights elsewhere, believe the online game, developed in India, infringes on their copyrights and trademarks.

Scrabulous listed more than 600,000 daily active users on Facebook as of Wednesday and is one of the 10 most used applications on the site. People can also play at Scrabulous.com…

The game was developed by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, from Calcutta, India, who say on the Web site that they created it after they could not find an online version of Scrabble that they liked.

Uh, wonder who will win?