BillstronBlog

That much anticipated time of the year is upon us. Yes, friends, November is International Beard Month.

I have quite a fascination with facial hair. There are just so many different ways to style it. The diagram is a good guide of the styles, but they left one type off though — The Head Straps. That is when the side burns grow straight down into the chest hair. Use you imagination on where the name comes from. My old friend and college room-mate Jamey invented that style. My personal favorite is the mutton chop. How can you argue with The King’s style. Right now I’m growing a short boxed beard. I may end up with a french fork, though. How cool would that be.

All you men out there should grow beards, too. Well… so as not to discriminate, everyone should grow beards. (Not Mrs. House though. I will discriminate against her in this case.) You can’t argue with the international community. When 6 billion people say, “Grow a beard.” You have to listen. Send me a pic of your bearded mug, and I’ll post it.

Cheers to beards!

I didn’t know that. Did you? Here are a few other things about birds that I didn’t know:

The largest cranes can be almost 6.5 feet tall.

The wandering albatross has the longest wing span. One was measure at 11ft 11in. They can glide without flapping their wings for a couple of hours and sleep while flying.

The fastest bird is the peregrine falcon. They can fly at least 120mph and up to 160mph. That is pretty fast.

I found out all this an more here. Check it out. It’s a pretty interesting read.

Those Stanford bas***ds won the DARPA Grand Challenge. They finished just a nose ahead of the heavily favorite (and favored) Red Team from Carnegie-Mellon.

The Grand Challenge is an autonomous vehicle race through the desert from approximately LA to Vegas. It covered 132mi, and the prize was $2 million. You say, “Big deal, 132mi through the desert, anyone can do that!” Well, you’re right. Any human can do that, but this is the first time a robot has done it. The race has been run a few years in a row, and last year almost no vehicles left the starting line before crashing. You can tell from the prize amount, this is a big deal. Also, you can tell from the sponsor, this is a major step toward robot tanks.

Robot tanks is a pretty scary idea. Of course, having a robot driving into the desert looking for baddies is infinitely safer for our troops. It just doesn’t seem right to have robots killing people. I’ve never killed anyone, but there must be some honor in it. Your country disagrees with another country, and you’re fighting for your country’s (therefore your) perspective. To kill you must think that your perspective is right. War is an argument to the death, and this must be the most sincere form of disagreement. A robot can’t think about the reason why it kills. It just kills because someone pushed the correct button.

It’s no good even when our robot tanks will be fighting against their robot tanks. The human life aspect of war is what keeps war in check. No government likes losing their citizens sons and daughters. Losing a robot… who cares! The government just gives a company some money for another one. The cost of war is only monetary. That is a scary thought…

Anyway… For detailed information about the competition you can check out the DARPA website here. DARPA’s website kind of sucks. So here is an LA Times article.

In case you were wondering, Cal’s robot motorcycle didn’t finish. Those damn Stanford rich kids…

As proof that usually serious scientists have good senses of humor — the Ig Nobel Awards. For the un-initiated (or un-dorky), the Ig Nobel awards are annual awards given to goofy serious research. The awards are presented by Nobel prize winners, and the audience interacts by cheering and sending paper airplanes at the award recipients. Even the name of the award is a goofy play on words.

Wired reported on the annual awards given out at Harvard today. (Check out the article here.) penguin poo pressure, meal photography, and prosthetic animal ball won Ig Nobels this year.

Some day I’d like to attend the ceremony but not as an awardee (well… not as an Ig Noble awardee). I’d love to hear about other silly scientific awards. If you know of other, shoot them on over.

In the past, I have been pretty clear on my views about President Bush. I thought he was a total dumb ass that only got elected because he shared a name with his daddy. Well… I may have to rethink my opinion. I think he may have been holding out on us.

Everyone knows that the only reason he got elected the second time is because a bunch of idiots who haven’t seen the sun in decades came out of the hills to vote for him. The reason they braved the sun is that he was supposed to make being gay unconstitutional and abortion a capital offense. Just to be clear, I’m talking about those country bumpkins that only leave their church to vote for W. Their support was the reason for his election because there just wasn’t enough normal people to bring him into office. The religious right knows what they did, and they believe that their time has come.

Since starting his second term, Bush has repeatedly given the finger to the hill-jacks that got him elected. First he backed away from his promise to ban gay marriage via the constitution. Then, TWICE, he has failed to nominate an ardent right-to-lifer for the supreme court. The pc pundits will tell you that he has backed down from a fight with the liberals, but come on… He used the religious right to get into office, and now he is discarding them. He has absolutely nothing to lose. He will never again need them to get elected to anything. It is a brilliant plan. I only wonder if it was his or the evil genius Karl Rove’s.

Kudos W!

That is my unofficial time for the Bridge to Bridge 12k Run. It takes a great rout along the Northern bay coast of San Fancisco from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate. It is billed as America’s most beautiful race. Check the official site for more details.

Today was the first time I have ran in a 12k race. In fact, it is the first time I have ever run 12k. The last 1.5 miles really kicked my ass, but I didn’t give into my desires to stop. Really the desires weren’t that great. Every piece of me wanted to finish it running. My real desires were to make that run just faster than a walk. I didn’t though. I worked hard to keep a decent pace.

I probably would have done better if I hadn’t only trained for about 2 weeks. On top of a short training time, I ran 6.5 miles on Wednesday. In retrospect, not such a good idea.

Anyway… it was great fun. I think it will become an annual event for me.