We went to see Randi talk on Monday. The photoset is here. I was somewhat disappointed. Randi gave a very meandering talk with no central thesis. It was more like story time with "grandpa Randi" than a lecture. Michael Shermer did a much better job when he presented a Woods Lecture a few years ago.

In other news: chess has suddenly become a popular recreation activity at my workplace. This has re-awakened the long dormant chess circuits in my brain. It is interesting to me that lots of my friends and co-workers don't know me as a "chess person". Once upon a time it was a major part of my life.

My father taught me to play at a fairly young age. Once I got over losing my first game, I enjoyed playing chess a lot. My parents were always looking to get me involved in activities, but I was a socially inept child. When placed on a sports team I would just sit on the field and pull weeds. In a stroke of genius they realized that they could get me involved by sending me to summer chess camp run by the legendary Mike Zabawa. I remember him as a very intimidating man, kind of a hard-ass, but I learned a lot from him.

I played great deal of chess in middle school and early high school. Hell, I even started the chess club at my middle school (Zabawa's club across town was so good that my middle school had never even bothered to form a club). In the later half of high school I became more interested in role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and socializing with girls and forgot about chess for a few years. In college Ryan and Andy were very into chess and we would play game after game after game just to kill time in the dorms. Once grad school started I didn't play again for a long time. Now everyone at work is interested and I am experiencing my 3rd chess era.

I think the moral of the story is that I am a big nerd.