Daily Archives: September 19, 2023

Microsoft Publishes Garbled AI Article Calling Tragically Deceased … – Futurism

Posted: September 19, 2023 at 12:26 am

Former NBA player Brandon Hunter passed away unexpectedly at the young age of 42 this week, a tragedy that rattled fans of his 2000s career with the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic.

But in an unhinged twist on what was otherwise a somber news story, Microsoft's MSN news portal publisheda garbled, seemingly AI-generated article that derided Hunter as "useless" in its headline.

"Brandon Hunter useless at 42," read the article, which was quickly called outon social media. The rest of the brief report is even more incomprehensible, informing readers that Hunter "handed away" after achieving "vital success as a ahead [sic] for the Bobcats" and "performed in 67 video games."

Condemnation for the disrespectful article was swift and forceful.

"AI should not be writing obituaries," posted one reader. "Pay your damn writers MSN."

"The most dystopian part of this is that AI which replaces us will be as obtuse and stupid as this translation," wrote a redditor, "but for the money men, it's enough."

It's not the first time Microsoft a major backer of ChatGPT maker OpenAI has embarrassed itself with AI-generated content on MSN. It made headlines last month,for instance, after publishing a similarly incoherent AI-generated travel guide for Ottawa, Canadathat bizarrely recommended that tourists visit a local food bank. It deleted the bizarre article after criticism.

"The article was not published by an unsupervised AI," Jeff Jones, a senior director at Microsoft, claimed to The Verge at the time. "In this case, the content was generated through a combination of algorithmic techniques with human review, not a large language model or AI system."

The full story is that back in 2020, MSNfired the team of human journalists responsible for vetting content published on its platform. As a result, as we reported last year, the platform ended up syndicating large numbers of sloppy articles about topics as dubious Bigfoot and mermaids, which it deletedafter we pointed them out.

You might expect that these repeated self-inflicted embarrassments would lead MSN to increase its scrutiny of content shared with its vast audience.

"We are working to ensure this type of content isnt posted in future," Jones toldThe Vergelast month.

They don't seem to be succeeding, though. MSN promises on its "About Us" page that it ensures the "content we show aligns with our values" through "human oversight." But looking at some of the material being published on its site, that claim strains credibility.

Take the original publisher of the piece on Hunter's death, a publication going by the name of Race Track.Red flags abound, starting with the fact that its articles are bylined simply by an anonymous "Editor." The publication claims to distill the "essence of sports excellence" by being "your premier destination for all major sports news" and though it links to a Portuguese-languageautomotive magazine called Autogear in its MSN profile,that site's"About Us" page is entirely filled with Lorem ipsum text, placeholder verbiage commonly used by web designers.

Over the last 12 hours, the website has seemingly been taken down and presents visitors with a login page.

And despite having almost 100,000 followers on Facebook, the site's content gets almost zero engagement there.

Most obviously, a quick perusal of Race Track's profile shows that it has been using MSNto publish an uninterrupted stream of incoherent gobbledygook. One particularly ridiculous article profiles a "Corridor of Fame" football player called "Pleasure Taylor," which appears to be a mangled reference to NFL Hall of Famer Joy Taylor.

Another unintelligible recent piece slapped together by Race Track and republished by MSN bungled the story of Kevin Porter Jr's arrest for domestic violence, misstating facts as basic as the name of NYU Langone Medical Center, which it referred to as "Langone Medical Heart."

Upon closer examination, thearticles aren't just of abysmally low quality. As it turns out, they're also plagiarized.

Take the article about Hunter's death, which follows the same structure asa TMZ Sports story about his death, albeit with altered punctuation and a use of synonyms so liberal that the result is essentially incomprehensible.

Here's the first line of TMZ's write-up:

On review,the version published by MSN is obviously a chopped up remix:

Hunter, initially a extremely regarded highschool basketball participant in Cincinnati, achieved vital success as a ahead for the Bobcats.

He earned three first-team All-MAC convention alternatives and led the NCAA in rebounding throughout his senior season.Hunters expertise led to his choice because the 56th general decide within the 2003 NBA Draft.

Everywhere we looked, other Race Track articles on MSN are clearly ripped off from other publishers. The "Pleasure Taylor" item is evidently a mangled version of a blog byThe Cold Wire. A story about potholes in the United Kingdom is a butchered version of a piece in Autocar. And a post about tennis star Novak Djokovic is lifted fromTennis World.

After this story ran, MSN deleted the articles in question. Initially it continued publishing new articles byRace Track, but later all posts on the publication's MSN page disappeared as well.

"The accuracy of the content we publish from our partners is important to us, and we continue to enhance our systems to identify and prevent inaccurate information from appearing on our channels," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "The story in question has been removed."

Needless to say, none of this bodes well for the information ecosystem. With publications eagerly looking to replace human editors and writers, AI has unleashed a barrage of dubiously sourced content sometimes by mainstream news sites ranging from CNET to The AV Club that threatens to further erode public trust in the media.

Accusing an NBA legend of being "useless" the week he died isn't just an offensive slip-up by a seemingly unsupervised algorithm, in other words. It's also a threat looming over the future of journalism.

Updated with comment from Microsoft.

More on AI journalism: Google Unveils Plan to Demolish the Journalism Industry Using AI

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Free Speech Lover Elon Musk Seems to Be Throttling Exposure to … – Futurism

Posted: at 12:26 am

Speech on X is free if you agree with Elon Musk. Broken Engagement

X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk is seemingly limiting access to The New York Times on his platform, with engagement on X posts linking to the renowned newspaper tanking.

As Semafor reports, engagement for other influential news accounts like Politico and The Washington Post has remained relatively consistent. But one NYT link shared by former president Barack Obama reached fewer than 800,000 users, while a Politico link he shared got nearly 13 million views.

In other words, Semafor's analysis strongly suggests that Xis shifting away from what Musk perceives as left-leaning content and increasingly embracing conservative media.

If so, the hypocrisy is striking. Musk, after all, is a self-professed "free speech absolutist" so if he's throttling access to stuff he doesn't approve of, it represents a glaring double standard.

Musk has had it out for the NYT for a while now. Last month, he lashed out at the newspaperover a report about the far-right backlash to an old South African anti-apartheid song.

Shortly after, the site started making it more difficult to access content via external links on the social media platform by slowing down redirects to these sites. Affected sites included the New York Times,Reuters, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Substack, theWashington Post reported at the time.

At the time, Musk called the NYT a "declining, once-powerful, but fundamentally doomed to be regionaland increasingly archaic legacy publication."

And that's without getting into an earlier and equally ugly chapter: back in December of last year, roughly a month into his chaotic stewardship of the social media platform, when Musk started mass suspending Twitter accounts of journalists who criticized him.

In short, Musk has made it clear with his recent decisions that free speech is simply not a priority on the platform. His actions, which have historically spoken even louder than words, paint a troubling picture of what X is turning into: a Wild West where disinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories flow freely.

Whether threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League, suing the state of California over a law requiring social media companies to publicize their content moderation policies, or remaining silent after a man was sentenced to death for tweets critical of his government, add up to a winning strategy remains dubious at best.

In fact, Musk himself has admitted that X may be failing under his leadership and he seemingly has only himself to blame.

More on X: Elon Musk Says He Has to Sue Jewish Anti-Hate Group to Prove He's Not Antisemitic

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ChatGPT Goes Down Right as Sam Altman Defends It in Washington – Futurism

Posted: at 12:26 am

Oops! ChatNot

ChatGPT went down on Wednesday morning and the timing of its outage couldn't have been more unfortunate.

While OpenAI's world-beating chatbot suffered its second major outage in as many weeks, big tech executives were convening in Washington to plead their case to lawmakers over the future of AI.

Among several notable figures in attendance was Sam Altman, CEO of the AI startup who probably hoped to put on a better face amidst increased scrutiny over ChatGPT's falling user traffic for the past several months.

According to OpenAI's status page, the issue, described as "elevated error rates and increased latency," was being investigated starting at around 9am EST. Then, about an hour later, an update acknowledged an "outage for most conversations with ChatGPT."

It would take nearly two hours since the troubleshooting began before the incident was declared "resolved" a hefty length of time for any site to go down, nevermind with Congress looking to you as an industry leader.

Needless to say, it's not the best look for the world's (diminishingly) hottest AI product, especially since these outages have apparently spiked in frequency over the past few weeks.

The last outage of note occurred on August 31, during which the service "severely degraded."

But only two days before that, ChatGPThad suffered yet another "major outage," which blocked users from accessing the web UI entirely.

To add to OpenAI's worries, the chatbot continues to bleed users for the third month in a row, after reporting in July its first decline in web traffic since its release.

And in more ceremonious a loss, ChatGPT was stripped of its title as the fastest growing app in history, dethroned by Threads.

In Washington, Altman was joined by other industry titans including tech hyphenate Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

The meeting, known as the AI Insight Forum, was chiefly organized by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

"We all share the same incentives of getting this right," Altman said after the closed-door meeting, as quoted by The New York Times.

We'll have to wait and see how sincere he's being this time around. Altman has once before stressed the urgent need to regulate AI to lawmakers only to turn around and throw a tantrum over the EU doing just that.

More on ChatGPT: Paper Retracted When Authors Caught Using ChatGPT to Write It

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Tesla Engineers Hated the Cybertruck So Much They Started … – Futurism

Posted: at 12:26 am

Elon Musk: "I don't do focus groups." Truck of Lemons

If you thought Tesla's Cybertruck looks weird and ungainly, you're not the only one. Apparently, some Tesla staff thought the same of the electric pickup with its sharp angles, futuristic silhouette, and absurdly large windshield wiper according to a new excerpt from Walter Isaacson's blockbuster just-dropped biography on Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Some engineers at the company hated the Cybertruck so much,in fact, that they started to put together a secret alternative design for the Cybertruck in 2019, according to a section of the book highlighted by Insider.

"A majority of the people in this studio hated it," said Tesla design leader Franz von Holzhausen, as quoted in the book. "They were like, 'You can't be serious.' They didn't want to have anything to do with it. It was just too weird."

But that design apparently never gained traction, because the futuristic armored-looking demo Musk had unveiled back in November 2019 hews quite closely to the factory production model that has been recently seen in company-sanctioned photos and on the street.

"I don't do focus groups," Musk is quoted as saying in the book.

The Cybertruck has been plagued with issues such as misalignment of doors and smudgy exterior.

But as silly as you may think the Cybertruck's design, it's a serious venture for Musk and Tesla because they are going after the lucrative light-duty truck market dominated by the likes of Ford, whose F-series is the most popular and best-selling vehicle in the United States.

If Tesla gets it right, just as states like California mandate the sale of zero-emissions vehicles by 2035, and successfully takes a chunk of the market from Ford, which is pumping up their own electric light-duty truck in the market, then that would position Tesla to be a major automaker for years to come.

It's the kind of audacious move that's characteristic of Musk, who bought the social network Twitter last year and renamed it X.

Musk is going for all the marbles in the auto world and beyond but of course, it remains to be seen whether it will all pan out.

More on the Cybertruck: There's an Issue With Cybertrucks: They're Ridiculously Smudgy

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The Avant-Garde in Georgia (19001936) – Announcements – E-Flux

Posted: at 12:26 am

The opening exhibition of the europalia georgia festival, The Avant-Garde in Georgia (19001936), will present, for the very first time in Europe, a largely forgotten chapter in the history of avant-garde art. The Georgian avant-garde will be shown and contextualised through a large body of works (paintings, drawings, films, photographs and decors as well as costumes from films and theatre plays) mainly kept in Georgia.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Russian Empire and the October Revolution, in a turbulent world context, Georgia declared its independence in 1918. This brief, enchanted interlude ended with the Soviet invasion of 1921. Nevertheless, it allowed for an abundant and inspiring avant-garde creation to flourish. Artists developed new artistic practices that redefined a general attitude to life, which took many forms and combined Georgian traditions with Eastern and Western influences. They interacted in paintings, drawings, writing, films, photographs, performances, typographic research, books and plays. Movements as diverse as (neo-)Symbolism, Futurism, Dadaism, Zaum, Everythingism, Expressionism, Cubism and Cubo-Futurism coexisted in an unprecedented creative ferment. The year 1936 and the great purges ordered by Stalins regime marked the end of Georgian avant-garde creation, but the ideas persisted down the generations and resurfaced in the 1970s.

With works by, among others, Elene Akhvlediani, Irakli Gamrekeli, Gigo Gabashvili, Nutsa Ghoghoberidze, Lado Gudiashvili, David Kakabadze, Shalva Kikodze, Kote Mikaberidze, Petre Otskheli, Niko Pirosmani, Alexander von Salzmann, Ilia and Kirill Zdanevich.

Also at Bozar, and alsoin the framework of europalia georgia,contemporary artistMeggy RustamovaAdeishvili will present her new filmDeda Ena,which examines her mothers deportation under Stalins regime, during the 1950s, from Tbilisi to Kazakhstan, an echo of the many displacements currently happening in the region and around the world.

A production by europalia.

Curators: Nana Kipiani, Irine Jorjadze and Tea Tabatadze, in collaboration with europalia

Press contacts Sarah-Claire Vermeulen, sarah-claire [at] serenai.eu Laurence Morel de Westgaver, Laurence [at] nakami.be

About europalia georgia.

Arts festival: October 4, 2023January 14, 2024 This autumn, europalia dedicates an arts festival toGeorgia! The starting point for this edition is the countrys fascinating culture and the art scene of its bustling capital, Tbilisi, alongside that of lesser-known cities and regions. Starting October 4, 2023, visitors can enjoy a rich programme of exhibitions, performances, concerts, film, dance and theatre productions and literature across Belgium. Alongside existing work, the festival programme will feature numerous new, interdisciplinary creations, in collaboration with dozens of artists and partners.

About europalia Every two years, europalia compiles a diverse artistic programme focusing on a country or a theme. For four months, in Belgium and its neighbouring countries, europalia, in collaboration with a wide network of cultural partners, presents a biennial with a myriad of artistic and socio-cultural projects that bring together visual arts, performing arts, film, music, literature and debate to stimulate an exchange of ideas. Newly commissioned projects and artistic residencies hold a central place in the programme, which engenders a unique interaction between heritage and art.

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Sam Bankman-Fried’s Parents May Have Been More Involved in … – Futurism

Posted: at 12:26 am

Anything you'd care to share, guys? Helicopter Parents

In the months since FTX's spectacular implosion last fall, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, Stanford law professors and parents of the now-defunct crypto exchange's disgraced and currently incarcerated ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, have maintained that they had minimal involvement with the crypto company. As the company line generally went: Fried never worked for FTX, and though Bankman did work for the company briefly, his stint was short-lived and mostly dealt with philanthropy.

But thatcharacterization of Bankman and Fried's roles with the firm may be pretty far from the truth. According to new reporting from Bloomberg, former employees and partners of the exchange paint a very different picture of the couple's involvement, while legal filings show their influence and connections were instrumental to the company's meteoric success.

Perhaps most damningly, according to Bloomberg, those court documents also show that Bankman and Fried profited greatly from FTX, gleaning a cool $26 million in cash and real estate investments in 2022 alone. That's a lot of money, especially for two people who claim to have been generally hands-off from the venture.

Per the report, sources who worked at or with the firm viewed Bankman and Fried as regular office fixtures. Bankman-Fried wasn't exactly a people person; his dad, though, often reportedly functioned as Bankman-Fried's go-between for staffers and business partners. Fried reportedly made more appearances at dinners, but often played a similar role as a "mediator" between her son and his employees, according to Bloomberg.

Sources also told Bloomberg that Bankman played an "instrumental" role in the firm's choice to relocate to the Bahamas from Hong Kong, and that Bankman-Fried often consulted his father before making any major decisions.

And then, of course, there's the money.

Per the report, Bankman and Fried visited FTX's Bahamas headquarters quite frequently, staying in a $16 million beachfront condo when they did. And though they've continued to argue that the property was "temporary housing" for Bankman to work from when in town, public records for the house make no mention of FTX. It's in Bankman and Fried's name, and it's listed as their "vacation home." Elsewhere, court documents say that Bankman-Fried used FTX funds to give his parents a $10 million cash gift. This was never given back, with Bankman and Fried arguing that they would need it to pay their son's legal bills.

Still, Bankman and Fried's most quintessential role in FTX's rise may have simply been their reputations. Their legitimacy helped bolster that of their Palo Alto-raised son, whose elite background helped to sell the unkempt wunderkind persona that the founder so famously once projected. Lessons learned.

More on FTX developments: Sam Bankman-fried Complains That the Wi-Fi Is Bad in Jail

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Paleontologists Furious When Ancient Human Fossils Blasted to … – Futurism

Posted: at 12:26 am

Archaeologists were affronted to discover that billionaire Richard Bransonhad sent ancient hominin bones up on a commercial space flight, with some suggesting that the stunt reeks of colonialism.

AsNature notes, the remains weren't even launched for terribly long as they soared aboard the Unity spacecraft, operated by Branson's Virgin Galactic, just above Earth before returning groundward. But the trip, which featured six living humans and the bones of two human ancestors, has nonetheless drawn intense criticism from the paleontology community.

"To treat ancestral remains in such a callous, unethical way to blast them into space just because you can theres no scientific merit in this," Robyn Pickering, a geologist at South Africa's University of Cape Town, toldNature.

Though various fossils have gone to space since the 1980s, when NASA astronauts took some bone bits from the lizard-like Maiasaura peeblesorumup on the Skylab 2 mission, this Virgin Galactic mission marks the first time that the remains of hominin (that is, human ancestors) have been sent up on a spacecraft, Nature reports.

The bones aboard, asLive Science notes, belonged to the roughly two million year old Australopithecus sedibaand the 250,000-year-old Homo naledi, both of which were found near Johannesburg, South Africa by National Geographic's Lee Berger, who played a huge hand in the discovery of both species.

Berger, who is also South African, selected the fragments himself and had them carried by Timothy Nash, a South African-born entrepreneur and space tourist who, as Virgin Galactic points out, also happens to sit on the board of The National Geographic Society.

As one might imagine, the selection of bones from South Africa by white scientists has ruffled some feathers as well.

"As someone who is African and who is based in an African institution, this is basically a perpetuation of the past, very ugly aspects of palaeoanthropological research," Yonatan Sahle, also of Cape Town University, toldNature.

Though everything about the bones' inclusion in the Virgin Galactic mission was above board, one of Berger's fellow scientists was surprised the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) granted the NatGeo luminary's application to temporarily export the bones to New Mexico, where Virgin Galactic's mission took off from, in the first place.

Rachel King, an archaeologist at the University College London who specializes in cultural heritage policies, said that South Africa has generally been very protective of its artifacts, which makes the inclusion of theA. sediba andH. naledi bones on the Unity mission all the stranger.

"What are regulators for, if theyre going to let someone do this?" King mused. "Its potentially a pretty big thing, and a pretty big shift."

SAHRA and South Africa's University of Witwatersrand, which stores the bones, insisted in press statements that the risks involved in taking ancient remains to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere were outweighed by the benefits.

In a media statement viewed by Nature, SAHRA representative Ben Mwasinga said that the agency was "satisfied that the promotional benefit derived was appropriately weighted against the inherent risk of travel of this nature," and Witwatersrand said that because the bones were selected in part because they had been extensively 3D scanned and photographed a characterization that King scoffed at.

"If I document one of South Africas World Heritage Sites," the British archaeologist said, "could we then bulldoze it and put up a shopping mall?"

More on hominins: Scientists Puzzled by Human-Like Skull That Matches No Known Species

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Stars of the future shine in chess’s ancestral homeland – Washington Times

Posted: at 12:26 am

The recent FIDE World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan, just confirmed what many have long predicted: India, the country with the longest history with our noble game, may also be the country with the brightest future.

In a result that caused a sensation in the ancient homeland of chess, four young Indian grandmasters were among the eight quarterfinalists at the elite 206-player open knockout tournament, with rising 18-year-old superstar GM Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa losing in the hard-fought finals to former world champ Magnus Carlsen. Pragg with the result booked a berth in the upcoming FIDE Candidates tournament to pick the next challenger to reigning world champ Ding Liren of China.

India, after a few centuries adjusting to the modern, European version of the game, already has produced one world champion in the great Viswanathan Anand, who at 53 is still the ninth-ranked player in the world. And GM Humpy Koneru at 36 is the fourth-highest-rated female player on the planet. Thanks in part to the craze inspired by Anands success, India also boasts one of the worlds most active chess scenes and enjoys considerable commercial support for promising players.

The result: the deepest bench and richest chess farm system of perhaps any country in the world.

Even at his tender age, the Chennai-born Praggnanandhaa has been a player to watch for years an international master at 10, a grandmaster at 12 and already the 19th-highest-rated player on the late FIDE global list. He defeated another former world champ, Bulgarias Veselin Topalov, with a sparkling attack against the great attacker at the annual Gibraltar Masters tournament in 2020 just before COVID-19 shut down international play.

In a Classical French after 13. Bf2 Ba6 14. Bxa6 Nxa6, Black manages to rid himself of his problem bishop but gives Pragg the opportunity to immediately commence an attack on the kingside.

After 21. Qxf2 Qd7 22. Qh4 Qd8, Black is clearly trying to trade down to ease the pressure, but White has other ideas: 23. Nf6+! gxf6 (Kh8?? 24. Qxh7 mate is a hard no here) 24. Rad1! (simple and deadly; the rook lift 24. Re3? [also bad would be 24. exf6? Qd4+ 25. Qxd4 Nxd4 and Black wins] is tempting, but Black holds on 23fxe5 25. Rg3+ Kh8 26. Qh6 Qd4+ 27. Kf1 Qxa1+ 28. Kf2 Qd4+), and Topalov must give up his queen as 24Qc7 25. exf6 Kh8 26. Rd3 is now decisive.

Black gets a rook and knight for his queen, but Whites attack is by no means spent. Another piece falls after 28. Rf1 f4 29. g4! Rd3 30. gxh5 Rg3+ 31. Kf2 Nxh4 32. Qxh4 Rxc4 33. Re1, and Black decides to pack it in.

GM Dommaraju Gukesh, 17, another of Bakus Indian quarterfinalists, is, like Pragg, a Chennai native and insanely talented. His win over veteran Armenian GM Gabriel Sargissian from last years 44th Olympiad, held in Chennai, channels Pragg-Topalov in striking ways: a kingside assault and a timely minor piece sacrifice result in White getting a queen for a rook and minor piece and a winning edge.

Out of a QGD Ragozin, the kings castle on opposite wings and Gukesh has a half-open g-file for his major pieces to exploit. Black rightly seeks queenside counterplay but cant shake Whites single-minded focus on checkmate on the other wing: 19. Rg5 Ba6 20. Rdg1 g6 (always a scary move in these positions, but 20Bxe2?? 21. Rxg7+ Kh8 22. Qxh7 mate was not an option) 21. Bxa6 Rxa6 22. f5 Ba7?! (few humans would even consider it, but the engines like 22Rc6!?, with the idea of defending after 23. Kb1 Qe8 24. Qe4 Be7) 23. e6!? (stronger was 23. Kb1 right away, in lines like 23Rd8 24. e6 Rad6 25. fxg6 fxg6 26. Rxg6+ hxg6 27. Rxg6+ Kh8 28. Qe4!, and if 28Rxd2, White wins with 29. Qe5+ Kh7 30. Qh5 mate) Kh8? (missing a last chance to defend with 23fxe6 24. fxg6 h6! 25. g7 hxg5 26. gxf8=Q+ Kxf8 27. h4 Qd7, and Black is still fighting) 24. Kb1 gxf5 (see diagram), and White just needs one tempo to break through.

Gukesh finds it with 25. Bxb4! Qxb4 26. Qg2 (the lineup of the big guns on the g-file proves too powerful) Qe4+ (Qb8 27. Rg7 Rxe6 28. Rxh7+! Kxh7 29. Qg7 mate) 27. Qe4 fxe4 28. e7! Re8 29. Rg8+!, and White cant be stopped from getting a new queen.

Any hopes Blacks bishop and rook can set up a fortress disappear after 33. Qg5+ Rg6 34. Qxa5, and the White a-pawn will run free even if the position locks up. Things conclude more quickly after 40. Qxe4+ Kf8 41. Qb4+, as 41Kg7 (Ke8 42. Qb5+ also picks off the rook) 42. Qg4+ is curtains.

-

Looks like Beth Harmon has really and truly played her last imaginary game on the ceiling.

Despite social media rumors (and some wishful thinking to the contrary), Netflix officials are saying there will not be a second season of the phenomenally popular The Queens Gambit series, and no reprise of actress Anya Taylor-Joy as chess prodigy Beth Harmon. With Garry Kasparov among the shows technical advisers, the series brought a new level of realism and sophistication to the actual chess played by the actors.

Netflix shot down similar rumors last fall and was at it again last week, telling Chess.com in a statement, There will not be a continuation of the series.

On a happier note, Beth can retire knowing her last game will forever be her upset win over world champion Vasily Borgov.

(Click on the image above for a larger view of the chessboard.)

Praggnanandhaa-Topalov, Gibraltar Masters, La Caleta, Gibraltar, January 2020

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Be7 7. Be3 b6 8. Qd2 Nc6 9. Be2 O-O 10. O-O cxd4 11. Nxd4 Nxd4 12. Bxd4 Nb8 13. Bf2 Ba6 14. Bxa6 Nxa6 15. f5 exf5 16. Nxd5 Nb4 17. c4 Rc8 18. a3 Nc6 19. Rfe1 Bc5 20. b4 Bxf2+ 21. Qxf2 Qd7 22. Qh4 Qd8 23. Nf6+ gxf6 24. Rad1 Nxe5 25. Rxd8 Rfxd8 26. Qxf6 Ng6 27. h4 h5 28. Rf1 f4 29. g4 Rd3 30. gxh5 Rg3+ 31. Kf2 Nxh4 32. Qxh4 Rxc4 33. Re1 Black resigns.

Gukesh-Sargissian, 44th Olympiad, Chennai, China, August 2022

1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 Bb4 5. Qa4+ Nc6 6. e3 O-O 7. Bd2 dxc4 8. Bxc4 Bd6 9. Qc2 e5 10. dxe5 Nxe5 11. Be2 Nxf3+ 12. gxf3 a6 13. O-O-O b5 14. Rhg1 b4 15. Ne4 Nxe4 16. fxe4 Qe7 17. f4 a5 18. e5 Bc5 19. Rg5 Ba6 20. Rdg1 g6 21. Bxa6 Rxa6 22. f5 Ba7 23. e6 Kh8 24. Kb1 gxf5 25. Bxb4 Qxb4 26. Qg2 Qe4+ 27. Qxe4 fxe4 28. e7 Re8 29. Rg8+ Rxg8 30. Rxg8+ Kxg8 31. e8=Q+ Kg7 32. Qe5+ Rf6 33. Qg5+ Rg6 34. Qxa5 Rg1+ 35. Kc2 Rg2+ 36. Kb3 Bb6 37. Qe5+ Kf8 38. Qh8+ Ke7 39. Qxh7 Re2 40. Qxe4+ Kf8 41. Qb4+ Black resigns.

David R. Sands can be reached at 202/636-3178 or by email at dsands@washingtontimes.com.

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Stars of the future shine in chess's ancestral homeland - Washington Times

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The 15 Best Episodes of Cowboy Bebop – MovieWeb

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Since its release in 1998, Cowboy Bebop has become one of the most influential and popular anime series of all time. Bringing together the Western and space opera genres, alongside dozens of others, the series has become one of the biggest hits in the medium, helping define and legitimize anime for a wider, international audience. The adventures of Spike Spiegel, Faye Valentine, Jet Black, Edward, and Ein are some of the most memorable in the medium, and with the English dubs 25th anniversary quickly approaching and Shinichiro's new anime on the horizon, now is the perfect time to examine this unmatched epic.

With 26 episodes (or sessions, using the show's terminology), picking the best of the best is a tall task. Cowboy Bebop bridged genres with style, bouncing from space western to neo-noir thriller to horror, cyberpunk, and comedy, sometimes all in the same episode. This subversion and melding of genres allowed for unique and varied storylines, as well as the introduction of dozens of fan-favorite characters. The following fifteen highlight the best the series has to offer, each with excellent world-building, powerful plots, and incredible characters. So prep your engines and get ready to blast off into this gritty, vast galaxy. See you, Space Cowboy.

On the hunt for a new bounty, the dragon-tattooed Decker, and the crew of the Bebop split up to track the target down. At a bar, Spike meets VT, a cargo hauler with a particular disdain toward bounty hunters, but after Faye loses Decker at a children's restaurant, VT agrees to help them catch the man. The problem, of course, is that Decker flees into an asteroid mine, sending the trio on a wild chase through narrow passages. On the way, VT's past and her hatred of bounty hunters become painfully clear.

"Heavy Metal Queen" makes this list not because of its memorable plot. In fact, other than the chase through the asteroid, there isn't anything particularly unique about this plot. It's a by-the-numbers bounty hunting narrative. However, Session 7 showcases what Cowboy Bebop does best. It introduces a new character, and in the course of about 20 minutes, it makes you fall in love with them. We know so very little about VT, but her inclusion makes the episode. Her personality, the mystery surrounding her past, all of it just makes this episode stand out in the best possible way.

Needing to find cash for a grocery run, the crew of the Bebop takes a new bounty for a man named Giraffe. Once they track him down to a hotel, though, they discover a much deeper conspiracy. Giraffe is killed by a sniper bullet, and in his final moments, he gives Spike a cryptic warning: don't be fooled by how he looks. They soon discover that Giraffe didn't work alone, and they begin the hunt for his partner, Zebra. What follows is a bizarre, high-science fiction exploration of the world of Cowboy Bebop, with an ageless child and the consequences of human experimentation.

"Sympathy for the Devil" delves into the world-building of Cowboy Bebop in a way only seen in a handful of episodes. The creators of the show left a lot of details ambiguous. Spike, Jet, and Faye are living parts of this vibrant galaxy, so they aren't stopping every episode to ask the bigger questions about how their world came to be. This episode gets to dive into a part of the series only hinted at before, namely the construction and destruction of one of the astral gates and the subsequent tragedy it caused. It adds a dark, weird science element to the plot, which helps shake the grounded reality of the majority of the series.

Just after her introduction in Session 3, "Honky Tonk Woman," Faye Valentine makes her explosive return, only this time she's on Spike and Jet's side. After capturing the known eco-terrorist and Space Warriors gang leader Twinkle Maria Murdoch, the crew of the Bebop is faced with a dilemma. The Space Warriors have threatened to release a powerful biological weapon against the planet Ganymede if Murdoch isn't released. However, despite complying with their demands, the terrorists fire the missiles anyway, provoking a race against the clock for Spike and Faye.

While Faye made her debut in the prior episode, this is the episode that cemented her as a member of the crew (albeit begrudgingly). Her character added a ton of personality to the ship, as well as plenty of drama and conflict with the other bounty hunters. More than that, though, this episode played some more with the science fiction setting, exploring things like powerful mutagens, space terrorists and the nature of the spacegates. It really helped set the precedent for the weird, wacky, yet still serious adventures on the horizon, as well as the endless possibilities of this universe.

Related: Why Netflix Shouldnt Give Up on Live-Action Anime

After collecting the bounty on three ship hijackers, the crew of the Bebop lands on Venus. Here, Spike meets and briefly mentors a young man named Rocco, who is carrying a mysterious, wrapped package. However, a group of gang members chases Rocco down, and Spike discovers that the package contains a stolen plant, one that is incredibly rare and valuable for its medicinal properties. With it, the rare disease known as Venus Sickness can be cured. Rocco stole it from the gang to sell it and fund a surgery to restore his sister's site. Spike decides to find and save the young man.

Rocco's story in "Waltz for Venus" is short, but it fully highlights the show's incredible plotting and characterization. His story is tragic, even if the character is goofy and exaggerated from his first moment on screen, and the viewer becomes immediately invested in his mission. Some of the best episodes of this series explore the impact of crime on this galaxy, and this is a great example of that. Also, the chance to explore another planet is fascinating, even if our time and experience with the place are extremely limited. Venus is a showcase of Cowboy Bebop's incredible design sensibilities.

After stumbling upon a murder in a back alley, Spike ends up with a target on his back. The killer, a bizarre man in a clown getup, is seemingly unkillable and unstoppable in his pursuit of the bounty hunter. After nearly dying at Mad Pierrot's hands, they discover the man is the result of cruel government experiments to create the ultimate assassin, experiments which drove the already unhinged man completely insane. Despite the danger involved, Spike is lured to an abandoned theme park for his final confrontation with the deranged assassin, even if it means his death.

"Pierrot Le Fou" is one of the best examples of how Cowboy Bebop plays with genre. While it still fits into the grander universe of the Space Western, this episode introduces elements of the horror and thriller, with Mad Pierrot taking the place of other unstoppable killers like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. With chaotic action and an incredible villain, this episode has become one of the most recognizable in the entire series. While Mad Pierrot never makes another appearance in the series, his role in the episode adds a unique flair of darkness and insanity to the show.

As the Bebop lands on the planet Ganymede, Jet seems out of sorts. Given that it was his last posting with the Inter Solar System Police, the planet holds a lot of memories for the older man. Jet takes the opportunity to visit his ex-girlfriend, Alissa, at her bar, and he discovers that she will be closing the bar and leaving with her new boyfriend, Rhint. After their meeting, Jet discovers that Rhint has a bounty on his head and tells Spike that he will handle it. After all, he was the type of cop to never stop until the case was closed.

Of the members of the Bebop, Jet Black receives the least amount of time on the screen. As the ship's pilot and the oldest member of the crew, he has a lot of memorable moments throughout the series, but overall, we don't often get to explore his character or his past. This means that any episode centered around this crucial character immediately grab a viewer's attention. While "Ganymede Elegy" doesn't do anything particularly unique or interesting with its plot, the emotional context that it gives to Jet helps cement it as one of the all-time best episodes in Cowboy Bebop.

With the Bebop suffering from some technical issues, Jet agrees to hear out an old friend about a possible target. Apparently, a group of convicts has taken over an ISSP prison ship, killing all the guards and flying it through the Ganymede Gate. After learning that the mutiny was led by Udai Taxim, the Red Ragon Syndicate assassin that took Jet's arm back when he was a cop, Jet turns the job down, but with his past hanging over his head, he agrees to help Fad out. However, Fad knows far more than he is letting on, and the secrets behind Jet's past will come crawling out of the shadows.

Following on the heels of the last entry, "Black Dog Serenade" is another great Jet focused episode, but it wins out over the last for its more compelling plot. The action sequences are incredible, especially the dog fight near its end, and the deeper exploration of Jet's time as a cop is incredible. One of the most interesting elements of crime stories are the good cops in a sea of corruption, and Jet represented that in this episode. This episode was another great opportunity for viewers to better understand this retired cop, as well as the world he used to live in.

A new cult has sprung up in the solar system known as SCRATCH. Their goal is to digitize the soul, copying the consciousness and transforming it into pure electrons. Their leader, Dr. Londes, has drawn the attention of ISSP, and with a massive bounty on his head, Faye has gone undercover in his organization. However, Londes has seen through the bounty hunter's act, trapping her on the planet. The rest of the Bebop crew must track her and Londes down, splitting up to tackle different leads. However, what Jet and Edward discover about the cult leader goes beyond anything they'd ever expected.

"Brain Scratch" is one of the few episodes of the series that fully delves into the cyberpunk genre, exploring the border between humanity and technology. It feels like a truly natural progression for this futuristic society, with the cult representing a unique twist on transhumanist philosophy. While it feels a little out of place in the grand scheme of the Cowboy Bebop universe, the philosophical debate at the core of this episode is fascinating, and the overall investigation into SCRATCH and Londes takes some truly unexpected turns.

The Red Dragon crime syndicate has a new leader. Vicious has taken over the gang after brutally killing its former leadership. After learning about the massacre, Spike becomes embroiled in the search for Vicious. Unbeknownst to his fellow crew members, Spike was a member of the Red Dragons and has a complicated history with their new leader. However, the stakes are raised when Faye is captured by the Red Dragons after attempting to collect the bounty on one of their former leaders. With a debt to pay, Spike and Vicious meet at an old cathedral for one of the most iconic fights in all of anime.

"Ballad of Fallen Angels" introduces the main throughline for the entire Cowboy Bebop series, and for that reason, it is an incredibly important episode. Vicious' appearance in the series is brutal, befitting his name in every way, and the enmity between him and Spike is one of the most interesting dynamics in the entire show. While many of the reasons behind this dynamic remain a mystery when the final credits roll, the impact of this episode can't be matched. The fight scene at the end is incredibly iconic, and the brief glimpses into Spike's past leave the viewer hooked.

After receiving a cryptic message from an old associate, Jet arrives on Mars only to find that his friend, Pao Pu-Zi has seemingly died. While standing at his tombstone, Jet meets Pao's daughter Meifa just before a pair of Blue Snake syndicate assassins try to kill them both. Meifa believes that her father is still alive after the hyperspace anomaly that caused his disappearance. Using the message Jet received as well as Meifa's knowledge of Feng Shui, the pair undertake a dangerous mission to track down the missing man.

Surprise, surprise, it's another Jet Black-focused episode. Really, though, the few glimpses into Jet's past that we get are such stark changes of pace for the series. Outside of the three episodes featured on this list, Jet is largely a mystery in the grand scheme of the series, which is a shame because he is such an intriguing character. This episode combines a lot of the best elements of this series. There is a criminal underworld throughline mixed with the weird science of previous episodes, all brought together by the emotional threads of Jet's past and his relationship with Meifa and Pao.

While Jet is off trying to afford food for the crew by collecting the bounty of a womanizing con man, Faye tells her origin story to Ein. Centuries before, Faye was cryogenically frozen after a traumatic accident in hopes that when she awoke, they would be able to heal her. Awakening in the 27th century, she discovers that she has a $300,000,000 Wulong debt to the hospital, but a lawyer named Whitney Haggis Matsumoto has agreed to help her. However, nothing is as it seems in the world of Cowboy Bebop, and Faye's story may just connect to Jet's present target.

Faye Valentine is a cornerstone of much of Cowboy Bebop's humor and drama. For the entire season, viewers had wondered at the source of her massive debt, and "My Funny Valentine" explains it all in heartbreaking detail. It's a surprisingly grounded and emotional story, relying on the drastic contrasts between past and present Faye to help us understand the depth of her trauma. While we spend a great deal more time with Faye's character than Jet's, these emotional glimpses into their motivations and histories are some of the greatest moments in the series.

Related: 10 Anime Story Flashbacks That Made the TV Show More Interesting

A crew has pulled off a massive heist by hacking into the tollbooths of an Astral Gate, stealing money from the passing vehicles. Despite capturing the bandits, the crew of the Bebop cannot collect the bounty without their leader. With only a series of chess pieces as clues, Edward begins a game of chess with a mysterious man named Chessmaster Hex, whom the crew discovers is actually the mastermind behind the plot. Using Ed's game, they track the 98-year-old genius to a spaceship graveyard in empty space, but what they find there will surprise them all.

Second only to Jet in terms of screentime, Edward is one of the most interesting characters on the Bebop. While "Bohemian Rhapsody" isn't solely her episode, a great deal of it focuses on her and her drive to defeating the Chessmaster Hex. The story is an intricately plotted mystery with plenty of thrilling twists and turns, with one of the most unexpected endings in the entire series. While we still leave the episode with more questions than answers about Ed, the chance to explore her character was a hilarious glimpse into the young, eccentric genius.

Bounty hunters Spike Spiegel and Jet Black are in pursuit of a bounty on the Tijuana asteroid colony. Their target is Asimov Solensan, a crime syndicate member on the run after the murders of several of his allies. Nicknamed the "Red-Eyed Coyote," Asimov is in the possession of a potent combat enhancement drug called Bloody-Eye. Along with his girlfriend, Katerina, Asimov has landed in Tijuana in hopes of pawning the drug and making some quick cash. With the syndicate and the police on Asimov's tail, Spike and Jet have their work cut out for them if they hope to bring the criminal in alive.

The episode that started it all, "Asteroid Blues" had to be on this list. It brilliantly introduced every aspect of the show, from its Space Western genre to the blend of serious and comedic storytelling. While the series only improved from here, this episode needs to be mentioned for inviting viewers into one of the most complex and interesting series in anime. The exciting plot and gangland storytelling are some of the best in the medium. Most anime have a "three-episode rule," but if you aren't hooked on Cowboy Bebop from this first episode, then the series just isn't for you.

Faye disappears from the Bebop, fleeing with the crew's accrued income. However, while Jet is intent on tracking her down, Spike is more concerned with news from his past. Julia, his former girlfriend, has seemingly reappeared on Callisto. Parting ways, Spike learns that Vicious has arrived on the planet in hopes of carrying out a deal for the Bloody-Eye drug, while Jet tracks down leads about Faye's whereabouts. Meanwhile, Faye has her hands full with a mysterious saxophonist that she meets in a bar, one with a vendetta of their own.

These final two entries are a bit of a cheat, given that they both contain two episodes each. However, given the episodic, bounty-of-the-week structure of the series, continued storylines between episodes are a rare occurrence. "Jupiter Jazz" is an incredible example of Cowboy Bebop's raw, emotional storytelling, delving deep into the intensity and seriousness of this world. While it doesn't quite reach the top spot, the episode manages to explore the brutality of this world while also digging more deeply into the enmity between Spike and Vicious.

A power struggle has erupted within the Red Dragon syndicate. After his failed coup, Vicious' former allies are all being killed by Red Dragon assassins. Given his connection to Vicious, Spike is hunted down by the Red Dragons, only to be saved by Shin, a former associate. After receiving a message from Julia, Spike renews his search for his past love. However, fate is cruel, and after Vicious escapes his execution and wrests control of the syndicate away from its leaders, Spike is forced to do battle with his former friend and ally in the climactic episodes of the series.

Of course, the final two episodes of Cowboy Bebop had to be on this list. The cornerstone of these episodes is Vicious and Spike's rivalry, their galaxy-spanning hatred for each other. Full of intense gun fights, deeply emotional storytelling, and an intimate look at Spike's past, "The Real Folk Blues" episodes are two of the best, not only in the series, but in anime as a whole. Everything in the series led up to this moment, and nearly every storyline reached a compelling conclusion. While there are some unexplored aspects of the narrative, Spike's story reaches its fitting end in truly explosive fashion.

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The 15 Best Episodes of Cowboy Bebop - MovieWeb

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Evolution Earth | Islands | Episode 2 – PBS

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[Animals chattering] [Campbell-Staton] Islands are laboratories of life... places to see evolution in action.

[Rustling] On the most famous island laboratory of them all, Charles Darwin, or Chuck D, as I like to call him, got his first glimpses of how changes in the environment shape life.

And those animals are continuing to change... updating our understanding of what evolution means in the 21st century.

[Water bubbling] [Upbeat theme music playing] My name's Shane Campbell-Staton.

I'm an evolutionary biologist.

I'm here to tell you stories from filmmakers, scientists, and local experts across the globe about a pulse of change.

The entire planet is shifting.

The climate is changing at an incredible 170 times faster than it should be.

We can't always see it.

We're so caught up in our own thing.

You know?

But the signs are everywhere.

The entire tree of life is whispering to us.

[Water splashing] We just have to pay attention.

[Snorting] Out there, things aren't what you expect.

You'll see.

For an evolutionary biologist like me, nowhere on the planet can be more special than the Galapagos.

This is Nirvana.

Recently, we'd heard of signs of change etched in the ocean... reports of crazy activity in remote coves... predators behaving in unexpected ways.

El 06:00 nos levantamos... y los lobos "Auu auu auu" gritaban "Kshh kshh kshh."

[Splashing] [Man] Oh, qu pasa?

Qu pasa?

[Splashing] [Campbell-Staton] Sea lions are hunting in a way seen nowhere else in the world.

[Man] Una locura.

[Campbell-Staton] On the trail of this mysterious behavior, we caught up with local fisherman Franklin Arreaga who thinks he knows what's going on.

Ah ha.

Estoy pensando...ha ha ha!

Atacaban los lobos, los lobos cogan, seguian, seguian las albacoras.

[Campbell-Staton] Sea lions hunting tuna.

Now, that's not normal.

Franklin should know.

He spends his whole life fishing these waters.

[Franklin] La pesquera ha estado dentro de mi familia hace 50 aos.

Yo pesco de los 14, 15 aos.

[Campbell-Staton] Oh, wow!

Yeah.

That is definitely a big tuna.

[Franklin] Es mi vida, mi pasin, mi todo.

[Campbell-Staton] Franklin says he can take us to a secret cove to try and see the sea lion hunting in action.

But there are no guarantees.

[Chain rattling] You just have to wait.

[Rattling] Time for a one-on-one chat on the state of our changing planet.

[Franklin] Antes haba bastante abundancia.

Eh, hace unos 15 o 20 aos se pescaban, se pescaba cerca de puerto.

[Line unraveling, splashing] Ahora tenemos que correr ms lejos.

[Campbell-Staton] Up to 8 hours further... [Birds calling] something Franklin puts squarely at the feet of the industrial fishing fleets just outside Galapagos' waters.

He may be right.

90% of all global fish stocks are over-fished or completely depleted.

Don't just take Franklin's word for it.

The sea lions are also having a harder time finding fish... so much so, they are changing.

Normally, sea lions hunt sardines... but with fish stocks crashing, some are switching to a new prey... something 300 times bigger-- Franklin's tuna.

And he told us they aren't just hunting a new fish.

They're taking them down in a whole new way.

But, the wait was so long, we were beginning to wonder if this was just a fisherman's tale.

Then, finally... the sea lions arrive... on the hunt.

[Splashing] And, instead of chasing the tuna out in the open water... they corral them towards the shallows.

[Franklin] Ahora vienen todos lobos saltando como delfines a traer el atn... y tratar de encaminarlas a la poza.

[Campbell-Staton] Tuna are some of the fastest fish on the planet, 4 times faster than the sea lions.

[Franklin] Son como un misil en el agua.

[Campbell-Staton] So, the sea lions start to do something else new.

[Water bubbling] Normally, they hunt on their own, but now they play as a team.

It's like they're saying, "You go on the attack, and I'll hold down the defense."

A chaser drives the fish towards a dead end, but the fish turns to open ocean.

Blockers move in and cut off the escape.

[Sea gulls crying] Now the sea lions close the trap.

The water is getting shallower and shallower.

[Sea lion grunting] The tuna are out of their depth.

As the fish tire, the sea lions move in for the kill.

[Sea lion grunting] [Sea lion grunting] If you want to get all evolutionary about it, well, hunting as a team is socialization.

[Sea lion grunting] It shows the emergence of a new culture, underwater, in real time.

[Splashing] Any way you cut it, that's something very special.

It's a behavior new to science: animals changing in response to a new world order.

As the environment shifts 10 times faster than in the last 65 million years, the question is: Can life keep up with the pace of change?

[Bird calling] [Splashing] Well, there are new discoveries about that, too... [Splashing] with a much more famous Galapagos resident.

[Splashing] It's a giant in my world... [Chirping] the finch.

[Campbell-Staton] It was finches like this that cemented my man Chuck D's revolutionary theory of how animals change over time, how we all got to be who we are.

The incredible thing is, now they're doing it all over again.

Darwin showed that one kind of finch, isolated on different islands, can change into different kinds of finch with different kinds of beak... You have a beak for seeds... [Chirping] a beak for flowers... a beak for bugs... Aw, yeah!

[Chuckling] even a beak for blood.

Each beak adapted to the conditions of each island over millions of years.

"Survival of the fittest," as they say.

[Wings flapping] This isn't just a change in behavior.

It's an evolution of their physical form.

So far so good, but research is now showing that Darwin had one aspect of this story all wrong.

For 50 years, biologists have been capturing and recording Darwin's finches in every minute detail, and they've revealed something that would amaze Darwin-- the speed of change.

[Birds chirping] This is the guy to tell us all about it, one of the latest to dedicate their life to the birds-- local scientist Jaime Chaves.

[Jaime] For any evolutionary biologist to have even the chance to be on the Galapagos to study finches is kind of a gift.

[Campbell-Staton] Speaking to him, it's hard not feel a little jealous.

[Jaime] I'm just amazed by the amount of data that these little birds have been producing.

[Campbell-Staton] Nothing like a bit of data.

[Jaime] The difference between these two birds is the beak sizes.

So, this bird on the right-hand side has a smaller beak compared to this one on my left, although being both from the same species.

[Campbell-Staton] These tiny variations can mean the difference between life and death.

[Jaime] Almost 1 millimeter in beak length.

That maybe doesn't sound too big, but a dramatic environmental event can wipe out half of the population, because those birds didn't have the beak shape to respond to that dramatic change.

[Campbell-Staton] You don't need a whole different island for evolution to take place.

The data now show that all it takes is a big enough driving force, like a severe drought, and beak shapes can change almost overnight.

[Jaime] Evolution on the Galapagos is actually very fast.

We can actually measure how much evolution can happen between year 1 and year 2.

[Campbell-Staton] So, there you have it.

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Evolution Earth | Islands | Episode 2 - PBS

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