World Championship Chess Matches

You can follow matches live in the official website here. For Susan Polgar's live commentary, visit her blog.

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World Chess Championship 2007 - The Schedule

The match begins at 14:00h local time. Add 10:30 to get IST i.e., for instance, the first round matches begin at Sept. 14th 2007, 00:30h IST.

Round 1: Thursday, Sept. 13th 2007, 14:00h

Vladimir Kramnik - Peter Svidler
Alexander Morozevich - Levon Aronian
Viswanathan Anand - Boris Gelfand
Alexander Grischuk - Peter Leko

Round 2: Friday, Sept. 14th 2007, 14:00h

Peter Svidler - Peter Leko
Boris Gelfand - Alexander Grischuk
Levon Aronian - Viswanathan Anand
Vladimir Kramnik - Alexander Morozevich

Round 3: Saturday, Sept. 15th 2007, 14:00h

Alexander Morozevich - Peter Svidler
Viswanathan Anand - Vladimir Kramnik
Alexander Grischuk - Levon Aronian
Peter Leko - Boris Gelfand

Round 4: Sunday, Sept 16th 2007, 14:00h

Peter Svidler - Boris Gelfand
Levon Aronian - Peter Leko
Vladimir Kramnik - Alexander Grischuk
Alexander Morozevich - Viswanathan Anand

Round 5: Tuesday, Sept. 18th 2007, 14:00h

Viswanathan Anand - Peter Svidler
Alexander Grischuk - Alexander Morozevich
Peter Leko - Vladimir Kramnik
Boris Gelfand - Levon Aronian

Round 6: Wednesday, Sept. 19th 2007, 14:00h

Peter Svidler - Levon Aronian
Vladimir Kramnik - Boris Gelfand
Alexander Morozevich - Peter Leko
Viswanathan Anand - Alexander Grischuk

Round 7: Thursday, Sept. 20th 2007, 14:00h

Alexander Grischuk - Peter Svidler
Peter Leko - Viswanathan Anand
Boris Gelfand - Alexander Morozevich
Levon Aronian - Vladimir Kramnik


Round 8: Friday, Sept. 21st 2007, 14:00h

Peter Svidler - Vladimir Kramnik
Levon Aronian - Alexander Morozevich
Boris Gelfand - Viswanathan Anand
Peter Leko - Alexander Grischuk

Round 9: Sunday, Sept. 23th 2007, 14:00h

Vladimir Kramnik - Peter Svidler
Alexander Morozevich - Levon Aronian
Viswanathan Anand - Boris Gelfand
Alexander Grischuk - Peter Leko

Round 10: Monday, Sept. 24th 2007, 14:00h

Peter Svidler - Peter Leko
Boris Gelfand - Alexander Grischuk
Levon Aronian - Viswanathan Anand
Vladimir Kramnik - Alexander Morozevich

Round 11: Tuesday, Sept. 25th 2007, 14:00h

Alexander Morozevich - Peter Svidler

Viswanathan Anand - Vladimir Kramnik
Alexander Grischuk - Levon Aronian
Peter Leko - Boris Gelfand

Round 12: Thursday, Sept 27th 2007, 14:00h

Peter Svidler - Boris Gelfand
Levon Aronian - Peter Leko
Vladimir Kramnik - Alexander Grischuk
Alexander Morozevich - Viswanathan Anand

Round 13: Friday, Sept. 28th 2007, 14:00h

Viswanathan Anand - Peter Svidler
Alexander Grischuk - Alexander Morozevich
Peter Leko - Vladimir Kramnik
Boris Gelfand - Levon Aronian

Round 14: Saturday, Sept. 29th 2007, 14:00h

Peter Svidler - Levon Aronian
Vladimir Kramnik - Boris Gelfand
Alexander Morozevich - Peter Leko
Viswanathan Anand - Alexander Grischuk

Sunday, Sept. 30th 2007
Possible tiebreaks, closing ceremony

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Man Booker Prize 2007 - six novels shortlisted

The six novels shortlisted are:

• Darkmans by Nicola Barker
• The Gathering by Anne Enright
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• Animal’s People by Indra Sinha

The discussion forum at the official site is here.
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World Chess Championship 2007

The FIDE World Chess Championship 2007 will be held in Mexico City, from September 12, 2007 to September 30, 2007. The format is eight-player double round robin where each player plays every other player twice.

The eight players are,

• Vladimir Kramnik (Russia)
• Viswanathan Anand (India)
• Peter Svidler (Russia)
• Alexander Morozevich (Russia)
• Péter Lékó (Hungary)
• Boris Gelfand (Israel)
• Levon Aronian (Armenia)
• Alexander Grischuk (Russia)

The official site of the World Championship is here.

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Expression of Beauty

It was a classroom. The sixth standard classroom. The mathematics teacher was strolling. From left to right. After few cycles, from front to back. He had given an exercise to the students. Two, in fact. One was an algebra problem and the other was a geometrical construction. The eyes of the students were showing the signs of fear, excitement, joy, tension, wonder, etc. depending upon the mind to which they belonged. But the teacher was ruthless.

If he saw something silly, he would stop and give a special treatment of impulse-strike, aided by his strong knuckles, on the head. He was sincere in trying to explain things. You had to tell him that you did not understand. He would explain. Again tell him that you did not understand. He would explain. Again tell him that you did not understand. He was quite patient. He would explain again. Explain again and again. Tell him you had understood and do a simple and silly mistake. You would then know what others were always saying - that he was a good volley-ball player. The only thing was the hit would leave a mark on your head.

He was interested in answers as well as how it was written (algebra) and drawn (geometry construction). The line that comes between numerator and denominator would often become a line that brings you either good pat or hit. The circles and lines should be circles and lines of same thickness. If you were going to draw a line second time to get good impression, you better do it for that line completely. If some portion of the line had more strokes than the other, the stroke you left would emerge on your head or palm.

Once a parent came and asked him in front of us, why did he reduce some marks though their son had correctly constructed the geometrical object. He said,

"Mathematics is a beautiful subject. When you write about such a beautiful subject, there is no place for any ugliness there. Whether you write or talk or communicate or learn, you have to do justice to the beauty of the content. You have to discipline yourself to appreciate the subject. Just knowing how to construct will not do. It is not enough for me."

That was Chandran Sir.

I did not understand completely then. That was the age where you would associate beauty to visuals and sounds; not to few symbols and their meanings. Those words and their contents have grown along various directions over a period of time destroying the artificial markings of human exploration. They go beyond subjects and ideas. Stressing the importance of how you could express something beautiful in a beautiful manner is such a wonderful feeling to pass it on to the next generation.

I liked him then. I like him now.

Happy Teachers' day.

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Dr. Rangaswamy Narasimhan is no more ...

Dr. Rangaswamy Narasimhan, the designer of India’s first general purpose digital computer, died in Bangalore yesterday.

He played a crucial role in institutional development - Computer Science and Technology Lab at TIFR, Computer Society of India, Computer Maintenance Corporation (CMC), and National Center for Software Technology.

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Patenting Traditional Knowledge Components

What should India do when patents are granted to traditional knowledge components? We normally listen to the lament that our documentation of our traditional knowledge is poor, and hence we are losing out in the present age of patenting anything and everything.

But Rajesh Kochchar argues,

India’s strategy on patents arising out of traditional knowledge has been flawed. It has been focusing on proving that we have documentation for our TK (Traditional Knowledge). Much of India’s own TK must necessarily be unrecorded. Even where records exist, they were meant not as a legally rigorous treatise, but as an aid to oral transmission. Digitisation of TK can only prevent granting of frivolous patents, which, even if left alone, can neither benefit the “inventor” nor harm India. Digitisation may in fact act as an aid to researchers eyeing Indian TK as a guide to focused lab work.

India’s approach towards TK should be proactive rather than defensive. Instead of acting as a documentation assistant for others, it should molecularise its own tradition in healthcare and benefit therefrom under the present patent regime. Most of TK resides in the third world countries and is largely undocumented. India should evolve a strategy that can be adopted by other countries as well. Instead of trying to convince petty U.S. officials that our TK is indeed documented, India should try to work towards evolving a world consensus on the patentability of results of lab research which uses TK as the starting point.

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Book Search Engines

Pradeep Sebastian writes about buying books - used, out-of-print, rare, first editions, etc - on the internet. The following is the list of websites mentioned in the article.

1. Alibris
2. Biblio
3. Abebooks
4. Bibliopoly
5. Bibliophile
6. Biblion
7. TomFolio
8. BookFinder (for price comparison as well)
9. AddALL (for price comparison as well)

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Pretensions

When did "passion-for-tamil" become synonymous with writing-tamil-fallaciously? I have recently seen the following words in a poster that invites people to attend some conference organized by self-professed only-tamil-correct-or-not people.

The words are ஆகத்து (aagaththu) and புத்துணற்சி (puththuNaRchi).

The first word is Tamil equivalent(?!!) for August and the second word is supposed to be புத்துணர்ச்சி which means "refreshing feelings", "new perception", etc.

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True Sense - Root - Etymon

When I was searching for an online etymology dictionary, I got this link. It is surprising to know that Anaconda can be traced (one of the branches) to a Tamil word. Do visit this page to know more about it. It was also not mentioned in this article of my friend where he wrote about few words that have travelled from Tamil to other languages.

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