Recently we've noted stories on robots running half marathons and then our reader Charles Hunsaker responded with his satire on a robot cross country race.   I decided to ask an AI source  called Gemini what it thought about the subject of robots on cross country courses and here is what it came back telling us.  Both Charles and I were duly impressed.  I also asked Gemini to create a painting of the race in the style of Michelangelo                                 The Silicon Stampede: NCAA Robotics Cross Country Championships The crisp autumn air, usually filled with the ragged breaths and strained grunts of collegiate athletes, hummed with the whirring of servos and the faint scent of WD-40. This was no ordinary NCAA Cross Country Championship; this was the inaugural Silicon Stampede, pitting the nation's top robotic running teams against each other in a grueling test of cir...

 Chuck Hunsaker was inspired by a recent report in The Guardian which we published last week to send this piece he wrote about the possible future of Cross Country due to the new rules applying to our sport in the NCAA domain.  Later this week I'll put up one completed created by an AI robot.  Thank you Chuck. TECH SCORES 15...DESTROY'S STATE CROSS COUNTRY  They said it was impossible.  No team could ever win Tech-State with a perfect score…but yesterday it happened. The team from Tech was almost machine-like.  In actuality, they were machines.  “They were simply invincible,” said the coach from State.  “We had the best team we’ve had for a number of years.  We’ve won every meet we’ve been in this year, and today we got destroyed.  I looked up as the runners came over the last hill and all I could see was black and gold and I could hear a faint hum.” The NCAA should have seen this coming, but they have been reluctant to change the rules....

 Here are those photos I know you have all been waiting for from our chief photographer Ned Price handily located in the western suburbs of Boston where he makes the annual trek down to the 7.8 mile mark.   Once again Thank you so much, Ned .  As Ned noted today he is older than Pope Francis was when he died yesterday.   Ned has been heading up our photo section originally with his Daguerreotype camera shot on wet plates and developed under the stadium at Stagg Field in Chicago next to the lab where the first nuclear fission reaction was carried out by some U. of Chicago undergrads.  For more of Ned's photos, see link at the bottom of this page. Lead Pack men  7.8 miles Sisay, last year's winner, Connor Mantz right behind Sisay   Lead pack one step later Linkletter (Canada)                                                 ...

  Robots Now Running the Half Marathon   link   I get my news these days from The Guardian, one of the few free news sources still available to us humans.  Yesterday the above piece was in The Guardian.   With 150% tariffs on Chinese imports, the Chinese have been able to look beyond the mundane world of international politics and  into the future more than any of us could have imagined even two or three years ago.  We got an inkling when there was talk about inviting gamers to the Olympics.   I don't think it happened but it can't be far away.  Now our Chinese friends, AI opponents, enemies, whatever you deem calling them have developed robots that can run a half marathon.   Before looking at the video think how you would deal with a robot lined up at the start of a road race doing stretches, making sure its batteries were fully charged and getting ready to go after a prize you thought was within your grasp against h...

  Some of you may remember the epic attempt by Terry Fox to run across Canada now forty-five years ago.  A challenge indeed even for a kid in his twenties, but Terry was carrying a bit more of a challenge as he had had a leg amputated due to cancer.   What started on a small basis on April 12, 1980, quickly grew to an incredible story that Canadians looked for every night for 145 days.  A Canadian hero was born well before that 145 days was over.  With that prosthesis he managed almost a marathon a day until the cancer recurred in his lungs, and he gave up the quest at Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Within  two years  Terry succumbed to the disease on June 28, 1981.   He was still only 22 years old.  He was a kiniseology student at Simon Fraser University near his hometown of Port Coquitlam, BC.  The following piece appeared on the CBC website this week commemorating Terry Fox. Terry Fox's Brother at this week's 45 anniversary ...

 The other night I was scrolling through a list of channels and noticed on Antiques Roadshow a description of what kind of 'antiques' would be displayed.   I saw that there would be Olympic the medals of Al Oerter whom you all know won the Discus at Melbourne, Rome, Tokyo, and Mexico City.  I immediately saved the show to view a few nights later, and sure enough there were Al's four medals on a felt board.  They were flanked by two ladies, one an evaluator and the other, one of Al's daughter who had brought them to the show.   A couple of interesting factoids.  Only the first three medals 56, 60, and 64 are originals.  The 68 medal according to his daughter was loaned out to a metal smith to make a mold of the medal to reproduce one for someone who had lost theirs.   The smith not realizing he had Al's original destroyed it.  So Al's fourth is also a reproduction.  The other three medals had become tarnished ( must not hav...

 In case you are confused by this slightly different name for the old blog "Once Upon a Time in the Vest" ,  so am I.   I encountered a problem getting into my old blog to create new entries, so instead I just created a new one and gave it a similar name.   You should still be able to find the old version and the over one thousand entries at the old address, the one you always used in the past.      onceuponatimeinthevest.blogspot.com   So if you wish to do any research on the old site, continue to use the old url.  That's the address highlighted  in the line just above this one. Now for the new blog  the url will be  thenewonceuponatimeinthevest.blogspot.com      Hope you all understand that.   - So since Boston is coming up next Monday, I happened to find an old link to a book called of all things "The Boston Marathon" .  It's a history of the race from its inception up to 2008.  T...