The game show “Jeopardy!” will pit man versus machine this winter in a competition that will show how successful scientists are in creating a computer that can mimic human intelligence.

Two of the venerable game show’s most successful champions — Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter — will play two games against “Watson,” a computer program developed by IBM’s artificial intelligence team. The matches will be spread over three days that will air Feb. 14-16, the game show said on Tuesday.

– David Baulder, Associated Press.

Awe-some. Finally, someone has thought to combine two of my favorite things: Jeopardy! and human-robot competition.

You may remember Watson from this post in June. At that point, Watson was still prone to prolonged bouts of answering “Tommy Lee Jones” to clues that had nothing to do with him. I really hope that happens again in the televised version, because computer malfunction is eminently more hilarious when it suggests the computer’s fascination with Tommy Lee Jones.

Also, if by some chance the correct response to every single answer in all three days of Jeopardy! play is “Tommy Lee Jones,” then you know the fix is in.

As of June the computer didn’t appear ready to beat the upper echelon of human competitors, so unless IBM has made some adjustments, smart money’s on Jennings or Rutter.

Of course, I imagine the computer has a reasonable advantage when it comes to betting in Final Jeopardy!, since presumably it has got some sort of matrix to determine the optimal bet given the amount of money it has relative to its opponents. At least I hope it has that. I always wish that existed when I pause the show before Final Jeopardy! and try to determine how each contestant should bet.

It would be kind of awesome if Rutter and Jennings had to conspire to beat the thing in the last round, though I guess that wouldn’t be in the spirit of competition. And it would be even more awesome if, as I suggested in June, Jennings uses the last bit of life in his battered body to scribble the correct Final Jeopardy! response, takes his last breath after learning he has defeated the machine, then is commemorated in folklore forever.

I mean, that would suck for him. But it’d make for a really good story.

Finally, it would be hilarious if all the conventional introductions and mid-game banter extend to the machine. “A computer from Hawthorne, New York: Watson.” Then at the break it tells Alex about the crazy time it got lost in Paris or something.

The falloff could have far-reaching consequences beyond the beginning of the end for an American tradition, hunting enthusiasts say. With fewer hunters, there is less revenue for a multibillion-dollar industry and government conservation efforts.

“As paradoxical as it may seem, if hunting were to disappear, a large amount of the funding that goes to restore all sorts of wildlife habitat, game and nongame species alike, would disappear,” said Steve Sanetti, the president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Hunting generates billions in retail sales and pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into government conservation efforts annually through license sales and federal taxes on firearms and ammunition sales.

– Associated Press.

Interesting read. Turns out big-money hunting industry funnels money back into conservation efforts, and I guess that makes sense: hunting is a great way to convene with nature and then shoot at it.

Again, and for the hunting enthusiasts that will inevitably find this post and comment on it: I have no moral issue with hunting, it’s just not for me. I will say, though, that if people aren’t going to hunt anymore, then someone’s going to need to do something about the deer population eventually.

In my neck of the woods, there are deer — and dead deer — everywhere. A deer-on-car accident is a massive lose-lose. Messes up your car, quite possibly messes up you, and messes up the deer most of all. I see ’em off on the side of the road and it scares the hell out of me.