In Pursuit of Wisdom

 My office has arranged for a virtual fun event called  Marqeta Talent Show  where people can demonstrate their different talents in a festive manner. I thought of hosting a simultaneous chess show with some of my fellow players of Marqeta Chess Club. When someone joins Marqeta, they need to say what is their superpower, usually something funny or some passion that they cherish. When I joined Marqeta, I claimed my superpower as the ability to play chess in 10 boards in parallel with 10 opponents, making each move in less than 10 seconds and win all the 10 games! Of course, I am not that good, specially if 1 or 2 of the opponents are seasoned players then I have no chance. But then, a superpower is supposed to be flashy or funny. So I gave it a try. Our SVP Brian Keilly was hosting the All Hands and told me he wants to test my superpower. Well, it's not easy to arrange a simul like this and we decided we will figure out a way later. I remember every once in a while Brian w...

  Last Tuesday Ahyan and I played the 5th and 6th round of Tuesday Night Marathon online over chess.com arranged by Mechanics Chess Institute. The games are live analyzed by FIDE Master Paul Whitehead and Abel Talamantez. After a nice win by Ahyan at 5th round he was jointly in second position with 4 out of 5 in the open section which is phenomenal at his age and rating. Ahyan and I joined the commentary by invitation from TD Judit Sztaray after the 6th round for a short time. Here are some excerpts from our games and the commentaries. The TNM newsletter for this round may be found here -  https://www.milibrary.org/chess-newsletters/931

  I have been thinking of learning Philosophy without going to a college or enrolling in Philosophy courses for some time now. Philosophy is such a vast topic that the biggest trouble for me was to figure out where to start, what are the major areas of Philosophy that I should focus on, and how to go about it within the limited time I have. Apart from my spiritual quest, I was very intrigued by  Jordan B Peterson 's mentions of  Friedrich Nietzsche  in one of the best books I have ever read  12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos . Some of my early attempts were watching the  Philosophy Crash Course  in YouTube (and planning to do these 47 videos another go in the next few weeks), reading  50 Philosophy Ideas you really need to know  by  Ben Dupre,  listening in audible  50 Philosophy Classics: Thinking, Being, Acting, Seeing: Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from Fifty Key Books  by  Tom Butler-Bowdon , and r...

  I have been fascinated while listening to and reading about the Universe since my childhood. But most of those readings have been random, organic in nature just like my readings on everything else -   science fictions , detective novels, history, biography,   cricket , soccer, and so on. The notable exception is Chess and Software Engineering which I have done pretty significantly in terms of   method and volume .  In 2015 I started reducing my overall time spent reading, learning, and playing chess (it was not an easy decision, believe me). That gave me extra time to focus on my pursuit of knowledge outside of my day job and family responsibilities. So I picked up first to understand religions and particularly Islam as I felt it's my duty to know in detail as a Muslim.  About 3 years  of reading, watching videos, enrolling in seminars on topics related to Islam, Comparative Religions, Atheism, and relevant topics - I felt like it's good enough for m...

From the recommendation of my friend Ashfaq, I finished listening to the short story collection  Exhalation  by  Ted Chiang  yesterday. Ted Chiang has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and four Locus awards. His short story,  Story of Your Life , was the basis of the film  Arrival (2016) . In the 9 short stories and novelette of Exhalation, Ted Chiang brings out a fusion of science, technology, religion, philosophy, ethics, morality, relationship, fantasy with great mastery. He takes an idea and gives it a very human touch instead of just focusing on the core technical idea, exactly the type I like. After Cixin Liu's  Three-Body Problem trilogy  that I finished 3 years back, Exhalation is the book that is going to instill FOMO (fear of missing out) in me for the new breed of sci-fi books (I still can't come out of Asimov). The stories in this collection are listed below. The first two ar...