Man vs. machine! What could be better than that? Garry Kasparov and Deep Junior face off over the next couple of weeks in NYC. Check out this CNN report on the match. The first game was won handily by Kasparov, check out this report at Chessbase. Chessbase is the best place to follow the match -- take a look at their media page. A brilliant addition to the popular literature on artificial intelligence is Feng-hsiung Hsu's Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion, a behind the scenes account of the last time Kasparov faced a computer in public. Computer chess is a topic that really interests me and I've been reading a lot lately on the topic. A big post of various resources is coming soon. And guess what? Yep, there is a Claude Shannon connection.