Thursday, April 01, 2010

Chess News for April 1st

Some incredible stories are circulating around the internet today:

In a bid to bring more publicity to the US Championship this year, the organizers have chosen chess fan Howard Stern as the first Wild Card.  Listeners to his show report that Howard is always talking about how much he loves to play online.  And he recently played in the NY March Open.  I suggest Jessica Simpson for the US Women's.

With Europe's super-collider going online, a number of chess playing physicists tried to calm GMs worried about a potential black hole being created, including the World Champion Vishy Anand who seemed to fear that it might destroy the earth before he has a chance to defend his title.

4 comments:

BRF Fågelsången said...

Does this belong to your list?

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2010/04/breaking-news-about-lady-gaga-and-ben.html

Michael Goeller said...

The Howard Stern one is good, but most of the rest just do not amuse me. There was a later ChessBase spoof claiming that Carlsen was related to actor Matt Damon. Their story about Fischer's remains being exhumed to decide inheritance issues, if a joke, is just not funny.

Howard Goldowsky said...

The Stern idea is not a bad one! If a 1600-rated woman can play in the U.S. Championships, then why not a 1600-rated man?

Michael Goeller said...

I think Stern would be better suited to Celebrity Chess Showdown (if that ever gets off the ground).

One of the better April Fool's jokes I saw was the "inaugural issue of Natural Science magazine" -- which also reminded me of one of the dangers of such hoaxes. As a teacher of research writing (and administrator deciding grade appeals), I have seen a couple cases over the years of students who were taken in by April Fool's jokes in science magazines like Scientific American, Discovery, or others to the great detriment of their research. The Sheep Albedo effect was one of the better ones, leading to a student proposal to replace cattle with sheep or to genetically modify cows to make them all white.