At a conference, I was in a giant library with suspended landings and a Victorian design. I met Sylvester Stallone who had apparently gone back to grad school. His project was to produce a Bayesian algorithm for winning chess. So far, he had succeeded in creating one that would maximize the chances of "swarming" the enemy. Although real chess players had totally destroyed him in a match, he was going to enter it into a contest against other algorithms.

The entire time I talked to him, I treated it as a real presentation. I could really feel myself thinking of interesting questions, no matter how silly the premise was. After a while, Sly turned into a guy named Ed who used to be in one of my classes. He claimed that he just needed to tweak a few things and he would be able to win the contest. His poster consisted of snapshots of games he had won against a computer by progressively fanning out his pieces in a pseudo-chaotic manner.

Then (and I'm not sure if it was a separate dream) I was with four "friends" (only one of whom is real) trying to summon a demon by drinking green gatorade and eating hot dogs in ketchup. I have no idea. Apparently though, it worked. We were in a small classroom full of college students, so when the demon came, everyone panicked. I think we did it so that we could kill the demon, but I don't remember what happened after that.

posted by Larry at 7:12 AM