Happy Halloween

Boston - Wins Yes, Respect No

Yes, the Patriots whipped the Redskins. But I have no respect for their coach anymore.

New England Patriot's coach Bill Belichick had little response to the comments of Washington Redskins linebacker Randall Godfrey , who criticized the coach for going for it on fourth down twice in the fourth quarter of New England's 52-7 victory.

Godfrey told NBCSports.com that he approached Belichick after the game and told him he needed to "show some respect for the game."

"You look at all the great head coaches . . . I'm just disappointed," Godfrey told NBCSports.com. "You got to show some class, show some respect. Joe Gibbs? We wouldn't have done that. Bill Walsh? You wouldn't see those types of guys doing that stuff. I've never seen nothing like that. Most teams, you get up like that you sit on the ball and try to run the time out. They're up 30-some points and they're throwing deep. That was blatant disrespect. . . . This isn't like college going for power rankings. This is the pros, you show some respect, show some class."

Yes, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series(again), but I lost respect for the organization in it's cockiness. Very easily could have lost to the Cleveland Indians and never made it to the World Series. And all this talk of "building a team within" - the Red Sox payroll was $147 million this year!!!

Because the plan called for it, and to the Red Sox, baseball is just that: a task, a philosophy, a process – and one they seem close to perfecting. For the second time in four years, the Red Sox hoisted the World Series trophy, sprayed champagne and kissed their wives with the passion they haven't since their wedding day. Joy abounded at Coors Field, where the Rockies slinked off the field embarrassed by a Red Sox team that, like the group that assembled it, went about its business ruthlessly.

The Red Sox throttled the Los Angeles Angels in the first round and overwhelmed the Indians, outscoring them 30-5 in the final three games of the series. And the World Series was even more lopsided: a combined 29-10 score that, even in its disparity, does not illustrate the difference between the teams.

Personally, I will take the class acts of the Redskins and Rockies over the two Boston teams.

DC Baseball Stadium Getting There

A current picture of the new Washington DC baseball stadium, which will open next April 2008.

Beta Bridge's Colorful History

It was a slab of used paint – coats and coats and coats of it.

Oft-painted Beta Bridge, next to the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville, Virginia, lost some of its latex armor recently as a sheet of paint about 4 feet high, 10 feet long and three inches thick, separated from one side of the bridge and peeled off.

The paint seemed to separate along a green layer of paint, which landscape superintendent Richard Hopkins thinks was either a base coat of paint or a layer to cover up another message. There were about six to 12 layers of paint left on the bridge, though Hopkins said one small corner of the original bridge was exposed briefly. It was soon painted over.

Alexander Gilliam, secretary for the Board of Visitors and unofficial University historian, said painting messages on the bridge began "in earnest" (meaning several times a week) around 1978. The tradition of bridge painting started with students painting messages, particularly sports scores and exhortations to athletes, on the metal railroad bridge that passes over University Avenue at the Corner. Gilliam said the liablity-conscious railroad tried to discourage that practice. The messages then migrated to Beta Bridge, named for the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house, then located at the intersection of Chancellor Street and Rugby Road. That fraternity location was closed in 1971; later, Delta Upsilon fraternity took over the house and unofficial monitoring of the bridge — thus explaining the "THX DU" ("thanks Delta Upsilon") message appended to most paintings, believed to ensure that each masterpiece will not be painted over by the fraternity brothers.

The current bridge, which is owned by CSX railroad, was built in 1923, replacing two smaller wooden bridges, one for horses and one for pedestrians, that spanned the tracks.

Where Have All the Honeybees Gone?

Now I know where all the honeybees have gone - drafted into the Army!!!

Sniffer bees with a nose for explosives are set to make a major breakthrough in the war on terror. An extraordinary invention by a small British company is being praised by American scientists who have been testing it.

Researchers at Inscentinel Ltd, which has just three employees at its Harpenden, Herts, HQ, have developed an amazing "sniffer box" to harness the bees' incredible sense of smell. Now Inscentinel is set to cash in when its box full of computer technology that turns honeybees into bomb detectors goes into mass production.

They trained the bees to only extend the proboscis when smelling a particular explosive, conditioning them by giving them a reward of sugared water when they responded correctly.

DARPA has a billion dollar a year budget and hands out millions for 'off-the-wall' ideas that could turn into major defence projects. They asked the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has 9,000 employees and an annual budget of $2.2 billion, to test Inscentinel's ideas. And Los Alamos thinks the sniffer bees are one of DARPA's most successful investments.

Like all the best projects at the New Mexico lab where the first A-bomb was developed, the bee squad has a code-name - SISP, for Stealthy Insect Sensor Project. Inscentinel showed the Los Alamos scientists that the bees can be trained to sniff out anything from home-made fertilizer bombs, through demolition dynamite to C-4 plastic explosives.

Unlike sniffer dogs which require three months training, it takes 10 minutes to train the bees. ...Read more here...