Happy Friday! A friend, who happens to be two-time women’s National Chess Champ Jennifer Shahade, just launched this fictional (very clever) online chess game between McCain and Obama.
Jennifer writes:

September Surprise! Instead of tonight’s scheduled debate, Barack Obama and John McCain will face off in a chess game. And what a match up it will be!

Regardless of your political stance, I think you’ll get a kick out of it.

Why am I writing about this? Well, as it turns out, Jennifer’s not the only Ms. Smarty Pants in her family. Her mom, a chemistry professor at Drexel University, founded  Science-in-Motion. “SIM, for short, brings top of the line science equipment to Philadelphia public schools that can’t afford it,” Jennifer writes on her blog . “The goal of SIM is to get kids excited about science. It works: While waiting for the presentation start, most of the kids were texting or zoning out, but by the end everyone was totally fixated on the show.”

If you’d like to learn more, kindly contact SIM.

Cheers!

Check out Paul Hoffman’s blog. Paul, my friend and former boss at Discover Magazine (when it was owned by Disney) is a master at deducing complex scientific material and cerebral challenges into terms I can understand. He did this as the editor in chief at Discover, then as the President of Encyclopedia Britannica and more recently as the author of The King’s Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World’s Most Dangerous Game.

My book club discussed this book recently and we spent a good ten minutes dissecting the meaning of the cover alone. Hard to imagine a book with chess on the cover could be a page-turner, but it is. And I’m not just saying that because Paul just blogged about me here! 

Cheers!

Darlene