Word: chess
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...Harlem Chess Center, which opened four months ago, it is common for grownups to get thrashed by pint-size chess prodigies. In the same tough neighborhood, the Dark Knights team at Mott Hall, a middle school for gifted students, last year won the national championship in the prestigious U.S. Chess Federation tournament. The victory was especially sweet because the Dark Knights didn't have the private chess tutors used by many of their opponents and couldn't afford to compete in as many practice tournaments. Their win "sent a message to the community about achievement," says team booster Welsh...
...touting. It was discovered half a century ago by the founders of game theory, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. They made a distinction between zero-sum games and non-zero-sum games. In zero-sum games, the fortunes of the players are inversely related. In tennis, in chess, in boxing, one contestant's gain is the other's loss. In non-zero-sum games, one player's gain needn't be bad news for the other...
...tight spot. On the other hand, Russia can't afford to push too far. Says Dowell, "Russia and France are both aware that if they make the Security Council unworkable, they'll be left on the sidelines in international decision-making." And so goes the great diplomatic chess game at the U.N. Your move, Dick...
...emerging technologies that purport to bind people together have also created a new information class imposed on the others. Not everyone has a computer, so there is that class of outsiders. Even among the insiders, people seek virtual localities where they find their own kind--chess players chat with chess players, militia members with militia members. Since communication is the soul of democracy, the Internet should have become the great equalizer, but most people are in touch with their own, home alone...
...have cause to be less sanguine about this noosphere business. Viewing the noosphere up close and personal--from the inside--we can see that its potential for good and evil is about equal. The Internet can unite people across distance, but it is indifferent to whether they are chess players, crusading environmentalists or neo-Nazis...