the frig blig

Teachers in the Harrold school district in Texas are to be allowed to carry concealed firearms when the new school term opens this month. — BBC News

If I was a student in Harrold I’d sure as hell want to pack my own heat to defend myself against the bastards and even the odds. It’s your right according to the second amendment to the U.S. constitution… oh right, you’re not a citizen until you’re 21 in this country…dang!

A historic sign of the times occurred this afternoon when computer go program MoGo defeated Korean go professional Myungwan Kim 8P at the 2008 U.S. Go Congress in Portland OR. The computer played with a 9-stone handicap and won by 1.5 stones.

MoGo was written by French programmer Sylvain Gelly and ran on a borrowed European supercomputer with 800 CPUs. MoGo is available for download at Gelly’s home page.

With the current pace of technology I now expect to see computers defeating human professionals playing even games in my lifetime…a vision both exciting and depressing.

I just installed MoGo on my laptop and played it a quick game, and I’m impressed, it played some moves so good it was spooky…but MoGo’s yose sucks. OTOH I made MoGo play white…if I gave it 9 stones and more thinking time it would probably give this 8k a run for his money. I’ll try it, but not tonight.

Hanging loose at the beach in Yachats, in the zone.

The muffler in my auto blew on the way down to Oregon. The Corvallis repair shop I had it replaced in had these muffler sculpture dudes out front.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

This link was posted on Josh’s blog and it’s just so sweet I had to post it here on the Blig.

Before:
After:

One of my favorite comedians George Carlin died last night. I used to watch him on Rowan & Martin when I was a kid and he always cracked me up.

He gained notoriety in the early 1970s for his ‘Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV’ routine. George was not afraid of controversy, of having unpopular opinions or of speaking them. He enlarged his audience with those tactics and made them think.

Lots of people are bold; few were as funny and observant and had as much fun playing with words as Carlin. He got cranky and mean in his later years, but was still an interesting character.

Dang, what’s that up there on the roof, looks kinda like a frisbee?

Saw this hiking the Cedar Butte trail a few weeks ago. The owner kept out of sight however.

Is here. Read it and leap.

The U.S. Supreme Court just announced that, by a 5-4 vote, the right of prisoners to demand a court hearing to judge the legality of their imprisonment has been reaffirmed — overturning the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to kill it. This, on Bush senior’s birthday of all days!

I’m no lawyer but I believe this right is covered by the 6th amendment to the U.S. constitution? Which is, lest we forget, a living document as today’s news illustrates. There are plenty of folks who certainly didn’t forget, behind bars for years and still waiting for their day in court.

Freedom 1, Bush 0 (at least for now)… and Congress wasn’t even involved.