Enjoy the late Rahsaan Roland Kirk, from way back in 1967, playing in Prague. Great music for a rainy day….
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Disgraced chess player “retires” after getting caught
This is the stuff of spy movies. Chess grandmaster Igors Rausis fessed up to cheating and has “retired” from chess after being caught cheating. Apparently he was confronted with a grainy photo showing him sitting fully clothed on a toilet with a phone during a match. A phone was then found in the stall. Rausis later confessed. The articles I read did not suggest how the photo was taken. Did somebody sneak into the bathroom and snap a photo over the wall of the stall? Or perhaps there was a hidden camera in the ceiling. It seems the chess mandarins were suspicious and had been on the case.
Suspicion was aroused because Rausis had a remarkable record for a player his age – 58. He became the oldest player to rank his way into an elite club – the top 100 players in the world. Super high-level chess (and the same goes for the game of Go) has been a young person’s game.
I suppose the temptation can exist due to the strength of robot or computer players. In chess and in Go as well, the strongest AI players regularly beat the best humans. I haven’t played any chess in many years and I was never very strong at it, but I am an avid Go player (I’m puny and weak in the scheme of things, but I love the game). It’s now possible to have a crazy-strong AI in chess without having a super-computer.
In Go, I know it is possible to run an AI on a phone or iPad simultaneous to a human game. I wonder how much cheating goes on during online Go play? It would not surprise me at all to learn that there are people out there who cheat simply to look like winners. I know there are sandbaggers out there, people who pretend they are lower level players in order to win games.
It seems crazy that people would do such a thing. There have been cheaters in many sports, even at the highest levels, and in other games as well, such as bridge and also in video games. For some people the game is all about being the victor at all costs. The human condition is very strange indeed.
Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
Question Mark
I was out in the garden the other day and saw this lovely butterfly. I can’t recall ever seeing one like it. I thought it might be an Eastern Comma butterfly, but I asked naturalist Miles Hearn if he was familiar with this one and he suggested it might be the Question Mark butterfly.
I looked it up. The Question Mark is olygonia interrogationis. Apparently the underside of the wings provides camouflage protection, making it look like a dead leaf. On the underside of the hind wings, there are silver markings which resemble question marks, hence the common name.
Kamayan feast at Tinuno
Tinuno is a Filipino restaurant located on Howard St, here in Toronto, in the Bloor & Sherbourne area. They basically serve Kamayan feast. What is that, you ask? Well, they serve a combination of grilled items, layed out on banana leaves. There are shrimp, muscles, squid, fish as well as bbq pork, ocra and eggplant, all on top of garlic sticky rice. In the corners there are piles of mangos and some orange slices.
The unusual thing about this eatery is that you eat these Kamayan feasts with your hands (you wear ultralight plastic gloves, which are provided). It’s simple grilled fare (with the exception of the skewered grilled pork, which has some kind of bbq sauce on it), nicely prepared and presented. It was all excellent. I especially enjoyed the grilled milkfish and the bbq pork skewers.
You need at least 2 people to get the feast (I don’t know what single diners do there) and the more people you have, the more grilled food they pile on. Dinner is $15/person, very reasonable for what you get. This place turns over a lot of customers. They were almost full when we arrived, but by the time we finished dinner, there was a line-up of people waiting to get in.
Tinuno isn’t the kind of place you sit around for a long time over drinks. Since the menu is so simple, you get served dinner fairly quickly after you sit down, and while there is a simple dessert menu, we were full after all that food, and headed on home after dinner.
If you plan to eat at Tinuno, make a reservation online. It’s a busy place, and for good reason – tasty food at reasonable prices. Recommended.
The Don Valley in bloom
Today’s nature walk with Miles Hearn took place along the Don Valley. We met at the foot of Beechwood Drive, near the place known as Crother’s Woods. This area was named after the Crothers Caterpillar company which operated until 1979 on a site where a Loblaws now sits. They later moved up to Vaughan and are now called Toromont. My late father-in-law George Gregory worked for Crothers for many many years. He started in an entry-level position and worked his way up to VP.
This is a beautiful time of year to walk through this area, as there are so many wildflowers in bloom. I’m included pictures of several of them in this post. One of the first we noticed was Bindweed, the precursor to the flower we know as morning glory (not to be confused with the yummy Vietnamese green which also goes by that name).
Bird Vetch and Crown Vetch are not related, even though they share part of a name. We saw plenty of both this morning.
Those common whitish butterflies with the black or grey splotches are called Cabbage Butterflies.
Canada Thistles present a delightful contrast between soft and prickly.
I learned today that female Staghorn Sumachs are the ones with the flowers turning red. The flowers on the males stay whitish.
This robin just enjoyed a bath in the river.
Chicory is a reliable and very pretty wildflower, widespread in our area.
Creeping bellflower are pretty but can be invasive.
Catbirds were calling all morning….
Daisy fleabane…
Lots of goldfinch around. This one was showing off close-by.
This Rose-breased goldfinch sang and sang. We finally spotted it.
Motherwort….
Bird on a wire….
The Timothy was loaded with pollen….
And finally, the very pretty St. John’s Wort
41st Avenue
Jack Antler is:
Eugene Knapik, clawhammer
Ted Myerscough, guitar
This tune was written by Mark Jones. I learned it at Midwest Banjo Camp a few years ago at a workshop about Grandpa and Ramona Jones and family, taught by Cathy Barton.
Filmed on the streets of Toronto by Candy Minx.
Jack Antler on the Lake Shore
Jack Antler (that’s me on clawhammer banjo and Ted Myerscough on guitar) will be busking in the gazebo at Lake Shore and Eighth St. in New Toronto (north side) on Sunday between 2 and 3:30 pm – courtesy of the Lakeshore Village BIA. If you’re out and about, please stop by and say hi.
Buckin’ Dun
I forgot I recorded a video of this tune a couple years ago. I came across it when I was looking for a version for my duo partner Ted to reference. I learned this tune from Cathy Barton from whom I learned many of my fave tunes.
Mad Magazine shutting down
It’s been widely reported that MAD magazine is shutting down after 67 years. I read it some from about age 12 to 16, and it was certainly my introduction to political satire and parody as a young teen. I wasn’t a big comic book guy (how curious that so many years later I’d be writing a graphic novel), and MAD was one of the few things in a comic format I read with any regularity.
Thinking back, I realize that MAD was an ad-free publication. They must have sold a lot of subscriptions in their heyday to pay the bills with sales alone. I didn’t always like it, and even within individual issues, I recall appreciating some pieces quite a bit and ignoring others which didn’t seem relevant or interesting to me.
I haven’t looked at a MAD publication in many many years, and when I heard this morning they were shutting down, I realized I didn’t know MAD still existed. I think of it as a cultural staple of my youth, and I appreciate that something like it existed.
Did MAD have any special meaning or importance in your life?
27th Street 