Ramanujan Redux

Really, this again?

WuChess, a partnership between Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and ChessPark, a social network around online chess playing, launches today. It’s the “world’s first online chess and hip hop community” and will also include exclusive videos and mp3 of the “hottest cats in hip hop.”

See a tour of the service here. That’s as far as most of you’ll get on WuChess, because, incredibly, they’re charging $48/year to join. ChessPark, by contrast, at least has a free version (but no videos or mp3s, sadly). The company promises to donate “a portion of the profits” to the Hip Hop Chess Federation.

Awesome. Hip hop, chess and $48 per year - definite winner.

I wouldn’t pay $50 to talk to most celebrities, much less match wits with RZA. Only Charles Barkley makes the cut right now.

The Internet is free for a reason–it’s to make us more open to each other, not to allow the richer and the privileged among us insider access. It’s to bring us on the same level, not place celebrities on a pedestal. Yardbarker allows athletes the opportunity to connect with their fans. Why can’t celebrities acknowledge that they’re human too?

Well, we all like hot showers (the sane ones amongst us). And we all claim to be energy conscious. Yet when we’re in that hot shower, we stay there for 30 minutes when it probably takes at most 5 minutes to wipe up the body. Why? Because being in a hot shower feels good.

So how do we solve this? Why not create a shower system that makes your water hot for five minutes, then progressively cools the water so that it becomes lukewarm, tepid, and then outright cold. That way you can get your shower running fast, and still get five minutes of pleasure, and feel free to get on with your day when you start to scream at disgust at the water falling to 65 degrees. Just another way to save time in the moving world without you having to do anything. Just a thought.