[The posts for this month are reposts from the site www.honotogroabemo.org, on which a host of hirsute individuals including yours truly would grow beards to raise money for breast cancer research. The site is defunct, but I thought I’d resurrect the game-related posts. This was originally posed on 2011-11-06.]

(I seem to be ready for my trip to Chicago)

I’m not sure of the efficacy of commodity grains in producing beard hair, but with the application of sausage and bacon, you certainly can produce a manly breakfast. But I suppose the application of sausage and bacon makes just about any meal more manly. A shame they don’t trade pork belly futures any more.

The game for Day Five was Missile Command, released by Atari in 1980 and designed and programmed by a team led by Dave Theurer. In the original plan for the game you had to defend the California coast from nuclear attack — so the six cities are meant to be Eureka, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego. There were also plans for a scanning radar, and for railroads to carry missiles to the defending batteries. However players got too confused with those features, and so Atari simplified and simplified to produce the classic game we have now. An excellent example of how less can be more.

I found no evidence that Ronald Reagan came up with the idea for the Strategic Defense Initiative after a 25-hour Missile Command marathon, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.