Racter

Smart Boris: I guess the "other sources" component way down in the lower right corner refers to people. Back in the early 1980s, two technocrats wrote a computer program capable of inventing stories. Raconteur, or Racter for short, generated narrative content by applying a simple algorithm to random strings of words. In 1984 it "wrote" a book, The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed. Here's an excerpt:

"Bill sings to Sarah. Sarah sings to Bill. Perhaps they will do other dangerous things together. They may eat lamb or stroke each other. They may chant of their difficulties and their happiness. They have love but they also have typewriters. That is interesting."

So, after giggling stupidly in the hall for about ten minutes, I got to thinking: if a computer program, now twenty-four years obsolete, writes better prose than I do, what, for Christ, am I doing with my life?

I left that question in the hall along with my girlish laughter.

Ass-Headed Bottom: No worries, Boris. I prefer your enlightened prose to this automatic techy version of Dick and Jane. Remember, the computer is your bitch, not the other way around. But why you're learning chess is beyond me. Deep Blue--and, tragically, Vladimir Putin--have already beaten Kasparov.

Smart Boris: While computers (or more accurately, the league of mortal men and women that provided Deep Blue's programming content) defeated Kasparov in tournament play, they have not yet beaten me. Until they do, I will continue to study the old masters and revel in their fallibility, eventually disappearing into some Flemish lake:
Besides, Garry the Berry (a.k.a. Garry Chumpinsky) grumbles too much. I prefer the quiet, buggy games of Anatoly Karpov, who knows when to hold 'em and knows when to fold 'em. Knows when to walk away, too. Garry knows only how to live his life in the shadow of Gary the Snail:
In conclusion, spinning-in-my-soul MAD respect for knowing about The Other Russia. No respect whatsoever if you aren't familiar with Gary the Snail.