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« December 2005 | February 2006 »

Al Gore's MLK Day Speech

Posted by spblat on January 17, 2006 09:42 PM

Listen.

Maybe you didn't vote for Gore. Or Kerry. That's cool. But check this out and see if you can stay comfortable with the way our country is being run.

This isn't simple, and policital awareness and participation isn't easy. Gore's speech from yesterday is an hour long, one of dozens and dozens of important speeches that make up our country's history. But you have to hear it, or read it, then decide what it means to you. Otherwise, the folks who are paying attention will keep on running the country without you. And believe me when I tell you they're botching it.

Read it.

Or hear it.

Then act. Do something! Even this only means supporting Bush and working to discredit Gore (then again, the best the White House could do to refute this speech was to lash out as always and predictably declare that "his hypocrisy knows no bounds"). Or if this alarms you, write your senator. Or join the ACLU. Or MoveOn. Or run for office.

Do something! Start by taking an hour--a whole hour--to listen to this speech. Really listen to it. And tell me what you think.

(3 comments) | Category: Rants

Happy Trogday Enzo

Posted by spblat on January 16, 2006 12:36 AM

About a year ago, Enzo drew a picture of Trogdor the Burninator and emailed it to Strong Bad.

Guess what! Trogdor recently had a birthday, and Enzo's drawing is one of many that Strong Bad used in a birthday retrospective.

Here's Enzo's original drawing.

Here's Strong Bad's Trogday video.

The pic goes by pretty fast, so here's a screenshot of the video with Enzo's drawing featured.

(2 comments) | Category: Family

Google and the Birth of AI?

Posted by spblat on January 12, 2006 03:28 PM

The economist has an article about Google Founder Larry Page.

But a Slashdot reader had an even more interesting comment about Google's growth.

The short version of Kevin143's point: the fact that Google is scanning and indexing every book they can get their hands on eventually means they will be able to construct an AI with access to all this knowledge, and therefore achieve a head start towards passing the Turing Test or achieving various other goals we have for artificial intelligence.

[shudder]

Kevin also suggests: "See the best sci-fi short story ever written, Asimov's The Last Question, or a simple find and replace hack of that story, The Last Query."

(1 comments) | Category: Geek!!

Xmas Trip

Posted by spblat on January 2, 2006 10:42 PM

It was a long trip back to LA, but it was good to see everybody, including the Becks who are for some reason not pictured. (Some of these photos have captions.)

Bonus: here are some shots taken by Nonni when she visited a few months ago.

(0 comments) | Category: Family