Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, September 21, 2016

2016-09-20

  • That’s a picture of WifeGeeding’s grandmother at her birthday party yesterday, she turned 100. She’s not the one on the left, she’s the one in the middle. The gal on the left is WifeGeeding, the one on the right is one of her older sisters.
    • As I’ve stated earlier, she’s got dementia. WifeGeeding said she spent a lot of time just spitting on the floor, and no one really knew why. But she enjoyed the cake, eating more than she’s had in a very long time. She was known for being a very neat and tidy person and keeping a clean house. Part of that is still with her, as she wanted to help clean and put away things during the party.
    • She is one of eight children. Three of her siblings are still alive, she’s the oldest of the surviving children.
    • On the way home, WifeGeeding visited her grandmother’s birthplace. She was born inside her family’s house, and the house and land had since been sold and is now a cemetery. The family’s plot is where the house once stood. When she dies, she will be buried basically in the spot she was born. I’ll call that the East Texas Circle of Life.
    • Our kids have only referred to her as “Old Grandmother”.
    • I wonder how often a birthday for a 100-year-old is canceled because the honoree didn’t live long enough to make it to the party.
  • The upstairs AC is just blowing hot air, time to call another repairman. Please don’t let it be the coils.
  • How a Texas man was killed by quicksand on the San Antonio River last year – Out of 580 deaths in Texas rivers and lakes in the last 5 years, this case is the only one involving quicksand.
  • How AT&T plans to deliver cheap, high-speed internet over power lines
    • Called Project AirGig, the experimental system places low-cost plastic antennas along existing power grids to deliver low-cost, multi-gigabyte internet.
    • “You don’t have to lay any fiber, you don’t have to touch anything, other than get some of these devices up on the wires,” said AT&T chief Strategy Officer John Donovan.
  • KWTX is a mid/small market television station serving the areas around Waco and Killeen, Texas. Yesterday, one of their evening anchors made a Facebook post, but it was quickly deleted after people were questioning how a mid/small market television station could afford a private/luxury jet, and poking fun at her sporting her shades trying to ham it up. Rumors (so who knows if there’s an ounce of validity) say her reporting is being funded by wealthy Baylor alums to expose faults in the sexual assault investigations and Briles’ firing. For what it’s worth, she’s a co-host of the Baylor Gameday show. But then again, she was the one in that awkward Ken Starr interview.
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  • 3% of American adults own half of guns in the US
    • But the new survey estimates that 133m of these guns are concentrated in the hands of just 3% of American adults – a group of super owners who have amassed an average of 17 guns each.
    • While there are an estimated 55 million American gun owners, most own an average of just three firearms, and nearly half own just one or two, according to the survey results. Then there are America’s gun super-owners – an estimated 7.7 million Americans who own between eight and 140 guns.
    • This kind of concentrated ownership isn’t unique to guns, firearms researchers noted. Marketing experts suggest that the most devoted 20% consumers will typically account for 80% of a product’s sales.
    • Overall, the survey found, gun owners tended to be white, male, conservative, and live in rural areas. Thirty per cent of conservatives said they were gun owners, compared with 19% of moderates and only 14% of liberals. The strongest predictor of gun ownership was military service. 44% of veterans said they owned a firearm.
    • Clear racial disparities in overall gun ownership remained, with 25% of white and multi-racial Americans saying they personally owned a gun, compared with 16% of Hispanics and 14% of African Americans.
    • But there was essentially no disparity in gun ownership based on income level for Americans who make between $25,000 and more than $100,000 a year. Americans who made less than $25,000 a year were less likely to own guns.
  • Japan’s Newest Technology Innovation: Priest Delivery
  • North Korea Has Accidentally Leaked its Propaganda Websites
  • The Battle of Marignano: The Reason for (Almost) 500 Years of Swiss Neutrality
  • Why A 70-Year-Old Retiree Went Back To WorkAs An Intern
    Remember that movie where De Niro plays an intern? Paul Critchlow decided to try it

    • This makes me think of people like Michael Jordan or when Roger Clemons (at age 50) did minor league stints and baseball fans complaining these gimmicks are taking the spots of deserving players trying to earn a roster spot.
  • We Gave Four Good Pollsters the Same Raw Data. They Had Four Different Results.
  • The Bombings of America That We Forgot – In the 1970s and 1980s, small-scale attacks were nearly commonplace in America. So why doesn’t that period freeze in our collective memory?
    • It may be hard to recall now, but there was a time when most Americans were decidedly more blasé about bombing attacks. This was during the 1970s, when protest bombings in America were commonplace, especially in hard-hit cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Nearly a dozen radical underground groups, dimly remembered outfits such as the Weather Underground, the New World Liberation Front and the Symbionese Liberation Army, set off hundreds of bombs during that tumultuous decade—so many, in fact, that many people all but accepted them as a part of daily life.
  • A lot of folks think Anthony Bourdain is cool, he did a Reddit Ask Me Anything yesterday.
  • The Complete List of Lewd-Sounding Town Names in America
    • Don’t read any further if you are easily offended…
      • TEXAS: Bangs, Bleakwood, Camp Wood, Cumby, Cumings, Comstock, Dickens, Ding Dong, Friendswood, Glaze City, Greatwood, Jean-Loving, Kinkler, Latex, Leakey, Lovelady, Rockwood, Snook, Spearman, Tool
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5 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, September 21, 2016

  1. John Mackovic says:

    – No mention of how the Puerto Rican bombers that killed a half dozen people(including a few police) were later pardoned by Bill Clinton? Or the Weather Underground's Bill Ayers' relationship with our current president?

    – It may just be the capacitor in your outside unit. Is the fan no spinning out there while the compressor is on? It's a cheap fix you can do yourself. You can pick up a new capacitor from Amazon for about $20 or pay a little more and get it today from a local HVAC supply shop. The Internet can help you do it. Just be careful and don't shock yourself.

    – I did enjoy Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential, especially all the little tips about which restaurants to avoid. (One hint – if the bathroom is not clean, the kitchen isn't likely to be clean either)

  2. Ben W. says:

    I remember watching the CNN miniseries "The '70s" and really learning about the frequent bombings for the first time. (I have a history degree, and somehow this escaped me – I guess you can only cover so much ground in four years.) It boggles the mind that it was such a commonplace occurrence. It also makes me question: why aren't the Baby Boomers more resilient to terror attacks?? I mean, they grew up or entered early adulthood with thousands of bombings a year, but now they want to close the borders to an entire religion.

    So the New York Times' shocking discovery about polls is that the margin of error exists for a reason?

    • Mr. Mike Honcho says:

      I'll second that regarding the miniseries "The '70s." I was shocked at how common bombings were across the country. And domestic terrorists at that.

      Also during that episode, plane hijackings. I didn't realize they were that common until the sky marshal became a regular pax.

  3. RPM says:

    I'm a huge Bourdain fan. Went to his gig at Bass Hall a few years ago when he was between networks.

    Hope the AT&T service hits the rural areas. There is a huge market for high speed internet in the boonies.

  4. DF of LL says:

    RE: Town names.

    Too bad they didn't include county names, because then they could have slid Glasscock into the list.

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