Intelligent machines will continue that mechanization process, taking over the more menial aspects of cognition and elevating our mental lives towards creativity, curiosity, beauty, and joy. These are what truly makes us human.

There can be no finer example of the inspiring powers of competition to shatter the status quo than Hungary's Judit Polgar.

It didn't take long to recognise the shortcomings of the Soviet regime and to see the values of the free world.

I certainly want to be involved in politics and help shape the transition. I am in contact with regime critics who had to leave for the West. One of them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former businessman, who had to endure 10 years in a prison camp.

To my surprise I found that when other top players in the precomputer age (before 1995, roughly) wrote about games in magazines and newspaper columns, they often made more mistakes in their annotations than the players had made at the board.

The legend of the best player of chess has been destroyed.

At the northern border of Azerbaijan, Daghestan by no means contributes to the democratization of the Caucasus.