Processing Power to Chess Rating Ratio

50 here is what the Deep Thought team wrote about the relationship between search depth and chess strength in a 1989 article: The ascent of the brute-force chess machines back in the late 1970s made one thing crystal clear: there is a strong causal relationship between the search speed of a chess machine and its playing strength. In fact, it appeared from machine self-test games that every time a machine searches one extra ply, its rating increases by about 200-250 rating points. Since each...

 NPCs in the Game "Real Life"

The NPCs have no depth. The can only carry on brief repetitive conversations about simple topics, such as the weather or football. They all follow simple repetitive paths from home, to work, to the store, and back home again where they spend the majority of their time watching television.

 Tyson is an Educator

Thanks for all your candid comments on this wall regarding my short atheism-agnosticim clip on "Big Think". I found them illuminating for their breadth as well as their depth. I note a few other possibly unexpected things about me: Not only do I not embrace labels, you will never see me debating people on the subjects of UFOs, Religion, Alternative Health practices, Astrology, or Pseudoscience in general. My speeches at TAM 6 & 9 were given reluctantly (I don't normally attend). I don't s...

 How a Swim Bladder Works

The swim bladder is perhaps the major key to the teleosts' success, and it is well worth a digression to explain it. It is an internal bladder filled with gas, which can be sensitively adjusted to keep the fish in hydrostatic equilibrium at any desired depth. If you ever played with a Cartesian Diver as a child you'll recognize the principle, but a teleost fish uses an interesting variant of it. A Cartesian Diver is a little toy whose business part is a tiny upended cup, containing a bubble o...

 Colors of Sea Life Match the Layer of Ocean in Which they...

In a curious way, the colors of marine animals tend to be related to the zone in which they live. Fishes of the surface waters, like the mackerel and herring often are blue or green; so are the floats of the Portuguese men-of-war and the azure-tinted wings of teh swimming snales. Down below the diatom meadows and drifting sargassum weed, where teh water becomes ever more deeply, brilliantly blue, many creatures are crystal clear. Their glassy, ghostly forms blend with their surroundings and m...