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My fourth-grader, DaughterGeeding, and her class were given the assignment of memorizing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride. It’s a long poem, about 971 words (according to WordCounter.net), and the class was assigned to do this in six weeks. Recitation is a big thing at her school, she takes it seriously, and she likes to start on big projects early. She ended up memorizing it in five days and recited it to her teacher, who awarded her a single Skittle, though she didn’t get to choose the color. However, the teacher has a policy that there is no early grading, so she will have to recite it again on the due date. I don’t have a problem with it and neither does she. DaughterGeeding explained to me that she wanted first to memorize it, now she has an opportunity to “perform with inflection and volume”.

I got a kick out of using WordCounter.net because it breaks things down in numerous categories. For instance, for the above-referenced poem:

Both DaughterGeeding and BoyGeeding have been studying a lot about the American Revolution. If the weather is somewhat cooperative and I can find a decent price for airline tickets, I think it would be fun to take them to Boston during spring break and walk the Freedom Trail to experience the realness of what they are learning in class. Schools love to send kids to Washington D.C. during spring break, and I’m thinking nobody really plans on going to Boston for spring break, so maybe we’ll avoid any crowds. Part of me wants to buy tickets early, but I definitely don’t want to visit if a nor’easter decides to make an appearance.

Here’s a bit of American history I’ve been sitting on. Watch this very monotone yet concise and compelling piece about the Battle of Yorktown (at least watch the last 90-seconds of it). If you heard of Yorktown and know it’s part of American history but can’t quite recall why just know it’s where the British surrendered to Washington.

Now, watch this wonderfully detailed reenactment of the surrender from the former AMC television series Turn: Washington’s Spies which hits it out of the park. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, then at least watch the last half of it, which I qued up for you here.

I love how the first video details things I’ve forgotten:

• The single redcoat waving a white flag on a parapet.
• British General Conrwallis being so mortified by his defeat dispatched his second in command, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, to surrender his forces.
• The British trying to throw some shade by singing the pub song “The World Turns Upside Down” and looking away from the American troops as a final insult as they surrender, but then Lafayette commanding his troops to play “Yankee Doodle” to drown out the British and force them to look at the Americans.
• When O’Hara offered Cornwallis’s sword to George Washington, Washington, in keeping with the rigid hierarchies of military protocol, asked his second in command, Major General Benjamin Lincoln, to accept it.

Bonus – Here’s Hamilton‘s “The World Turned Upside Down”, which artistically reenacts the British surrender and gives you a chance to catch all the references and detail from the first two videos. If you are pressed for time, then just watch the last half of it.

Beaumont, TX restaurant opens early for 3-year-old customer with leukemia

The Guardian – A 101-year-old Italian man who has been in London since 1966 was asked to get his parents to confirm his identity by the Home Office after he applied to stay in the country post-Brexit.

Beer Waste Helps Montana Town Save Money On Water Treatment

In Bozeman, Mont., the Water Reclamation Facility treats more than 6 million gallons of water every day from sinks, showers, toilets — really anything that goes down a drain. That includes liquid waste from more than 10 breweries in this city of nearly 50,000. Because it’s rich in yeast, hops and sugar, brewery waste can throw off the microbes that wastewater treatment plants rely on to remove nitrogen and phosphorus.  “But if we can use [brewery waste] correctly and put it in the right spot, it’s very beneficial to the process,” engineering consultant Coralynn Revis says. Bozeman worked with a local brewery to feed its beer waste to the treatment plant’s bacteria at just the right time in just the right dosage.

Jeff Bezos bought the most expensive property in LA with an eighth of a percent of his net worth – If you make $60,000 a year, that’s like spending $75 on a house

The making of a rotary cellphone.

It’s an easy fix, but I always feel a bit defeated when I try to pull the trash bag from wastebin and suction occurs.

If had to set the radio dial to one singular music station it would be 91.7 KXT. It’s a wonderful mix of music from various genres and decades with no commercials.

I often hear our country would be a bit kinder if we befriended someone from another political party. The problem I have, I can’t find a friend in my political party (online friendships don’t count).

The Guardian: Tampon wars: the battle to overthrow the Tampax empire – For decades, one company has ruled the world of tampons. But a new wave of brands has emerged, selling themselves as more ethical, more feminist and more ecological.

How Many Corn Cobs is in a Corn Can? – Sweet Corn Kernels on the Cob / CANNED CORN EXPERIMENT

I’m not comfortable with The TICKET breaking up Bob and Dan, but I like the idea both are staying at the station, so that’s me looking at the bright side of things. Bob and Dan developed great chemistry, a whole opposites attract sort of thing and it was fun watching the whole chemical reaction thing work out –  a bit weird and heated at first and then stable, even with producers coming and going. I really didn’t think the change in hosts was going to surprise me, but it did. I don’t think it’s a bad thing (no pun intended), just surprising. As Craig said, Jake is already a familiar voice in that time slot. Speaking of growing in adulthood with him, it’s been fun hearing Jake over the years. As someone who’s a bit older, it’s neat hearing him go through different life stages and remembering what that was like and then being able to predict how he’s gonna be changed. Best of luck to him and Dan. Of all The TICKET folk, Dan is my leader, by far.

I’ve been seeing a lot of electronic billboards advertising Sarah Huckabee Sanders being interviewed during Sunday worship services at First Baptist Dallas on the first of March.  On the church’s webpage, her biography mentions her work with Bono and the ONE campaign. I’m surprised they included that little nugget, I get the impression that Bono and the ONE campaign isn’t held in high regard in the Baptist community, that he’s too much of a universalist and his Irish and rock star ways are hypocritical of the Christian faith.

I was a bit surprised to learn in Peter King’s latest article that the NFL has been using footballs with embedded computer chips (RFID) in them since 2017. A cursory search shows they are only being used for statistical gathering, nothing relating to officiating, though I expect that to change within the next five years (actually, even sooner). A company called Zebra Technologies is behind it. My initial impression was that this was probably some sort of small startup and maybe I should look into investing in it, but it turns out the company is trading around $247 a share. According to Wikipedia, in 2018, the company had sales of $4.218 billion and had a market capitalization of $12.55 billion

Not only are the footballs embedded with chips, but so are the players’ pads.

Every stadium venue is outfitted with the receivers and antennas, and those are all aimed appropriately to have every inch of the field covered. The players wear RFID tags embedded into their shoulder pads, located just underneath the epaulets — every player has them.

The software is unique in the sense that every tag that’s located on a player is assigned to that player. Each player wears two tags: a left and a right. The down linemen wear a third tag just because they go down into a stance.

If you’re curious if the weight of the ball is affected by this chip about the size of a nickel –

We worked with Wilson in Ada, Ohio to implant a tracking device inside the football.  Even with our chips, the football still weighs the same as it did ten years ago, Wilson did a great job of being able to reduce a minor bit of the bladder and incorporate our tag. We can collect statistics to compare a Tom Brady throw to an Aaron Rodgers throw, you can see the difference in spin, number of evolutions, and even the force on a similar type of pass.

Big Ten football ref Dan Capron is retiring and had some interesting things to say about some famous coaches in a recent interview.

• On Bo Polini: “The worst coach I’ve ever worked for, ever, not even close, no one within 10 miles, is Bo Pelini.”
• On Urban Meyer: “He is unlike any other Big Ten coach. He is distant, uncommunicative. He had a staff member whose job it was to communicate with the officials. Any time I would approach his sideline, he would turn and go the other direction.:
• The time Joe Paterno almost ran him over:
  • We’re in Columbus and it’s late in the first half, our final TV timeout. Penn State is pinned back and punting. I raise my hand to signal ready for play. All of a sudden I see Coach Paterno running onto the field and right at me. He has his head down and he is running at me. The stadium almost went silent. What’s going to happen next? He’s coming and coming and gets within five yards and runs right past me. A less experienced referee might have thrown a flag, but I’m like: Let’s not make trouble out of nothing. I blow the ball ready for play, they punt the ball and the half ends uneventfully. (Penn State defensive coordinator) Tom Bradley is now running off the field for halftime. I say, “Coach, what was that about?” He says: “Joe’s got a touch of the flu; he had a little diarrhea. He had to go.”

As for his most embarrassing moment:

Referee Dan Capron once announced, “Timeout, Wisconsin.” The crowd erupted in laughter. Why? The teams on the field were Nebraska and Miami.

I’m just about finished with preparing my taxes and was surprised that one could be taxed on virtual currency such as Bitcoin. As far as I know, Schrute Bucks are still untaxable.

Baylor Scott & White has fewer people in its hospitals — and much higher profits

“You wouldn’t think you’d go to jail over medical bills”: County in rural Kansas is jailing people over unpaid medical debt

• Tres and Heather Biggs’ son Lane was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 5 years old. At the same time, Heather suffered seizures from Lyme disease. “We had so many — multiple health issues in our family at the same time, it put us in a bracket that made insurance unattainable,” Heather Biggs said. “It would have made no sense. We would have had to have not eaten, not had a home.”
• Tres Biggs went to jail for failing to appear in court for unpaid medical bills. He described it as “scary.” “I was scared to death,” Tres Biggs said. “I’m a country kid — I had to strip down, get hosed and put a jumpsuit on.”
• The attorney uses that law by asking the court to direct people with unpaid medical bills to appear in court every three months and state they are too poor to pay in what is called a “debtors exam. “If two hearings are missed, the judge issues an arrest warrant for contempt of court. Bail is set at $500.

What does a 9 inch ice core sound like when dropped down a 450 foot hole? Like this! Credit to @peter_neff for the idea and @Scripps_Polar, @sciencejenna, @GeosciencesPU, @US_IceDrilling, and @paleosurface for the execution! pic.twitter.com/pW7LxKdbUB

— John Andrew Higgins (@blueicehiggins) February 7, 2020

https://twitter.com/pj_hawx/status/1226659937599868928

DaughterGeeding published the second edition of her class newspaper and now she’s got three classmates to serve as reporters and writers for future editions.

I bet when Kirk Douglas died all the news organizations had to scramble to put together a life retrospective segment unlike they had to do with Kobe Bryant. The man was only 103 years old and lived 24 years after a major stroke.

After 2,000 Years, These Seeds Have Finally Sprouted – Six date seeds as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls are now flourishing as trees on a kibbutz.

I saw this clip on the news last night and my jaw dropped more than Rush Limbaugh’s at the SOTU. It reminded me of times I was in school and was told to “go back to China”. I dreaded going to school every morning for a while and could never work up the courage to tell my parents.

At least the man’s son wasn’t supportive of his father’s outburst.

After Monday’s meeting, Matt Burtell, an alumnus of Saline High School, called out his father on Facebook.

“Today my father asked a deliberately racist question at the Saline Area Schools diversity and inclusion meeting,” Burtell wrote. “His views of hate in no way represent my own.”

He added, “I stand in solidarity with the refugees and immigrants of the world.”

San Antonio Zoo will name a cockroach after your ex and feed it to the animals on Valentine’s Day

How dare a recent college graduate move back home and park in the driveway of her childhood home and go on vacation with her parents. Did they really need to double-boot the car?

Woman’s car booted after parking in her own driveway – HOA promises to refund residents whose vehicles were booted in their driveways

Man’s rapid heartbeat returns to normal when ambulance hits pothole

I was suddenly reminded of this old Geico spot.

GPS Soles Now Available for Seniors with Dementia and Alzheimer’s

In case you were confused about the top picture I posted yesterday – It happens a lot:’ Tennessee lawmaker sipping chocolate syrup bottle makes waves

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