Garry Kasparov was here

Along with Bill (Clinton) and Rafa (Nadal), Kasparov is one of the top five "famous" people I'll love to share a long lunch with sometime.  It looks like I just missed a fabulous chance to do so as he was in my country, my city, and in fact my alma-mater - the great Queen's College - last week.

Dang, Queen's College, why didn't you invite me? 

What I love most about Kasparov is how he turned from
supreme mastery of one extremely well-defined field (chess)
to
an application in a much murkier but more consequential problem (liberty and liberalization.)

Like him, I also think that life imitates math, life imitates sport, life imitates chess, life imitates art, and that it is good for the world's best minds to have the balls courage to attempt the world's biggest fixes (how to achieve happiness, eternal life, food/water, health, peace, class, etc)

I think the big lessons from the Kasparov switch are: 1. you have to know when to retire, that is, when to shift focus 2. sometimes try applying the best math to the biggest problems.

Yes, Abuja and Lagos! Great visit, great enthusiasm for chess. http://t.co/Qz3E23iK3k RT @TheDeji: Were you really in Nigeria recently?
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) February 5, 2014