Over 600 of these bad boys could carve out a sweet SD skyline

I don’t know all the details of the transmission infrastructure required to add 4000 megawatts to the grid, but what I do know is that South Dakota has some 200,000 acre areas with enough wind potential to make this dream a reality. If SD can support this, let’s start courting our friendly Texan oilman right away!

But, to my surprise a ray of hope shone through my mood today proving that real men yet exist.  I don’t mean real men in the sense that they respect women or in that they are good at football, but real men by the measure that has been used to measure those who call themselves men for millenia; their ability to grow facial hair.  The 2009 World Beard and Moustache Championship just ended in Anchorage, Alaska.

Though I am required to shave almost daily, I have been unable to grow any sort of facial accutriment I was satisfied with in the past few years.  Because of this, I have incredible respect for those with the gift of great beards.  Without further adieu, I present the winner of the championship: David Traver.

Manliness Defined

For more beard and moustache awesomeness, here is a link to a BBC photo set from the event.

Tablet Netbook? Yes Please!

Engadget has a brief summary with a bunch of pics as well as a PR release from Always Innovating, which includes the fact that it is supposed to be priced for $299, have 10-12 hours of battery life and be able to run a wide variety of different OSes.

Be still my cheap computer loving heart…

Today’s big cause: guns in the classroom, or more accurately from our point of view, keeping them out of the classroom.  Senate Bill 82 is a bill to apply state carry/conceal law to public institutions of higher education and prevent the Board of Regents from restricting the policy.

Today the bill was heard in the Senate State Affairs committee and was passed onto the legislature with a “Do Not Pass” reccomendation.  This doesn’t mean that bill is dead, but that in order for it to be debated on the floor of the Senate, a motion to strike the not must be made first.  This bill is likely to be considered tomorrow and my request for you, dear readers, is action.  Please e-mail your Senators and let them know that the higher ed classroom; like the Capitol, high schools and courtrooms, is no place for guns.

Today was a small victory against the bill, but tomorrow will be the true verdict for the bill.

Sorry for the low res pictures, but because my mom has slow internet she refuses to send good high res ones so I’ll have to steal them right off her camera when she comes back up, which I suspect won’t be long…

]]> http://plweber.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/isaac-raymond/feed/ 0 plweber smallisaacandme patricknisaac http://plweber.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/math-is-cool/ http://plweber.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/math-is-cool/#comments Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:57:08 +0000 Patrick http://plweber.wordpress.com/?p=27 ]]> Hello again internets!  It’s been a while since my last post, but at the behest of some blogging peer-pressure, I’m back.

As some of you may know, I’m a math major here at SDSU with aspirations to go on and get my PhD in Mathematics and eventually teach college, so hopefully that will explain some of my excitement for the following discoveries.

I try to browse Snorg Tees whenever I think of it because they have some pretty awesome shirts, but today when I went there, I was surprised to see not one, but two! math centered shirts near the top of the front page.  This website is by no means a math and science based humor site (but if you’re looking for one, I would highly advise ThinkGeek), so the only conclusion I can draw is that math, or more accurately obscure math humor, is hitting the mainstream!

So dear readers, when you’re suffering through some math class trying to find meaning and usefullness in it; remember that search is probably futile, and instead search for a clever pun.

My favorite line: “I didn’t mean to take the piss out of a town that had no piss to spare.”

Link to Hulu Video

“Announced on the Mozilla Labs blog, the company presents Snowl with a simple question: “Could the web browser help you follow and participate in online discussions?”

I don’t know about you, but I find that more and more of my time in internet browsers is spent following and participating in online discussions.  Right now Google Reader functions as my base of operations for most of the online content I pay attention to, however it is ill-equipped to handle serious Twitter use and though it is great for reading blogs, it takes out a huge chunk of the interaction and communal feel gained from the actual site.

I really see a niche where Snowl could find a home providing a home-base for all sorts of online communications (including e-mail!).

Damn you Mozilla for feeding my incessant desire to waste time online!

I had heard that there was another Bond movie with Daniel Craig in the works (if you haven’t seen Casino Royale, I would highly recommend checking it out), but I didn’t know any details. The trailer seems to hint towards a healthy dose of James Bond character development. My favorite part of the first one was seeing the transformation into the suave Bond that we’ve grown to love. This one seems to promise more of that and, unless my eyes deceive me, more of the beautiful Aston Martin DBS that we saw destroyed in Casino Royale.

On a weird side note: This is one of the only titles I can find on IMDB that uses ‘quantum’ as a noun.