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• Stephen Hawking has died. Most folks considered him the smartest or most intelligent human alive. Now, I wonder who the world will regard as the smartest or most intelligent person alive? Probably someone nonfamous.
• Hawking was on a recent episode of ‘Star Talk’. Both he and Neil deGrasse Tyson are huge admirers of Sir Isaac Newton. Tyson asked Hawking what would he ask Newton if given the chance. Hawking’s answer was most interesting because his question to Newton was one in which Hawking solved the problem to, something Newton was working on before he died. “Is the solar system stable? And what happens to a star that cannot support itself against its own gravity?”
• I can’t imagine living like he did with that disease, but for his profession he understood his unique advantage. Hawking wrote in a 1984 essay, saying that illness gave him the time to think through physics problems, rather than lecture or perform administrative duties.
• DuringRex Tillerson’s tenure as ExxonMobile’s CEO, the company at various times was the most valuable in the world and served as President of the Boy Scouts. Amazing a man like was notified of his firing via a tweet, and not even a direct tweet. I’ll give President Trump this, he’s legendary.
• This just may well sound like I don’t care for our first responders, but it irks me how much the local news covers any of their deaths. I have no issue with them informing us of their death and showing clips of their funerals, but it’s overboard and sensationalism when they have live coverage from a helicopter of the hearse transporting the body. I feel like they are playing with our emotions and using a death for ratings.
• On my “Ask Us Anything” post, someone asked if I had a guilty pleasure TV show. I mentioned the ‘Golden Girls’ but in retrospect, I should have answered ‘Hack My Life’ on truTV. It’s just a goofy show about solving a bunch of life little problems like how to get stains out of something and such.
• My mother would get angry if I left something in the pockets of my dirty clothes, more so if they happened to make it into the wash. She emphasized it was my job to empty out my pockets, especially if someone else was doing my laundry for me. Because of this, I’ve made it a habit to always check my pockets before throwing anything in the dirty clothes, and I passed this down to the children. WifeGeeding has never learned this habit. She often leaves tissues in her pockets and after a wash, shreds of tissue are everywhere.
• Elon Musk is poaching ‘The Onion’ staff for a comedy project
• YouTube limits moderators to viewing four hours of disturbing content per day
• California High school teacher accidentally fires gun in class, students injured
  • A teacher who also serves as a reserve police officer accidentally fired a gun inside a Seaside High School classroom Tuesday, police said, and three students were injured.
• Dallas Morning News – Texas Beach Watch has launched a map to track the presence of fecal bacteria along the coast, indicating the severity of the problem: green for OK, yellow for watch out and red for stay away. Actually, green stands for low levels of fecal bacteria, yellow means medium and red indicates high.
• Dallas Morning News – First Baptist Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress: Evangelicals don’t care if Trump had sex with porn star
  • “It’s absolutely ludicrous,” he said, adding that “evangelicals know that they’re not compromising their beliefs in order to support this great president.”
  • Jeffress said that he would never walk away from Trump and that it would take more than the current allegations for evangelical voters to do so.
  • Just not a fan how he thinks he speaks for all Evangelicals, but then again, a majority of them do love the POTUS and are very vocal about it.
• “Give a man a plane ticket and he’ll fly for a day. Push a man from a plane and he’ll fly for the rest of his life.“

Show your kids this picture. Ask them what type of life they think this man lived.

Then tell them he couldn't write, but wrote a New York Times best seller.

That he couldn't talk, but his voice was powerful.

That he refused to let his limitations limit him.

RIP, Stephen. pic.twitter.com/Isf7yA2fek

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) March 14, 2018

• Sometimes it’s just fun to go around the house and WD-40 things. You start with a door hinge or two and then rationalize since you have the WD-40, you might as well walk around and find stuff to un-squeak.
• You know you are making progress with your back recovery when you unwittingly walk over 8,000 steps. I was shocked and had to look at the 28-day history of my Fitbit app. Yesterday’s total was more than double my usual, which is closer to 3,500 steps since the surgery. I mean, some days I’m around the 4,000-4,500 range, so yesterday was a shocker.
• I visited my mother’s kidney doctor yesterday, it was the first time I saw him or been in his office in 11 years. I thought it would just be a typical trip to see the doctor for myself, but unexpectedly it was emotional as a lot of memories started to pour in. We spent a lot of time in that office, and it wasn’t all bad, there were some fun memories of inside jokes and such. It was one of those things which you forget a lot about but once you visit a place you start to remember the little things you haven’t thought about in eons, like the tile patterns, and that in itself will trigger other memories. The doctor still had not-so-great bedside manner, but still made up for it with how he explains things and goes into detail and you’re left comforted with his knowledge and expertise. He ordered a sonogram for my kidneys, blood and urinalysis, and a return visit in a month.
• We brought down Challenger space shuttle in 1986, claims Turkish sect leader
• Louisiana pastor who erected third-largest cross in US busted for possession of meth: report
• The Stormy Daniels/Trump story is interesting. It’s juicy, so it draws attention. She can certainly play it to her advantage by increasing her wealth and visibility, more valuable than what the alleged $130,000 or million she would be penalized. But it’s a valid issue and will stay around because of all things, it may have violated campaign finance laws. On top of that, the loan came from Trump’s attorney who financed it with a home equity loan. If it wasn’t for that, the story would have died long ago, and I expect nothing to really come from it. I only mention the story because there’s a local tie and the silliness of CBS11’s reporting. The NDA is being investigated whether a Forney, TX notary properly signed off on it, where Daniels owned a home. CBS11 had to make this stupid distinction about her house, “This house, with four “x”s above the garage is listed as the triple-x actress’ home.”  I thought that tie-in and forced connection was stupid, really stupid.
  
• A girl on last night’s ‘American Idol’ decided to cover an Adele song and I thought that was a horrible choice, there’s no measuring up to Adele. But to my surprise, she’s going to Hollywood.
• I hope I’m not the only person in the country who first read this headline thinking it was ‘Friends’ actress Lisa Kudrow – Trump tells people he is selecting Larry Kudlow to replace economic advisor Gary Cohn
• Hey, it’s Super Mario Hampster:

• Insert generic time change joke about losing an hour of sleep [here].
• The kids are on spring break. They are starting it off by visiting a children’s museum in Waco with a cousin and then traveling to East Texas to visit grandparents.
• This week I start rehab. I probably should have referenced it as physical therapy but “rehab” is more eye-catching.
• On my first day back at work last week, my back started to hurt a bit more than I’d like so I took a pain pill. About a half hour later I received a company-wide email addressing the opioid crisis and what to look for, which made me laugh. However, I did read the email and while I don’t have any concerns about an addiction, I could relate to a lot of the signs mentioned and it led to a self-evaluation. Here’s a section of the email:
  • However, taking these drugs for long periods of time slows down the body’s production of natural painkillers. The body then shifts to depend on these drugs as a replacement for regulating pain and keep it in balance.  In short, people shift from taking the medication to assist, to taking the medication because they need it to feel regular.  Since the body is balancing back to zero, it builds a “new normal” for the body, and the person then needs to take more drugs to feel the “giddiness” again or stop the pain. 
• Tiger Woods’ second-place finish yesterday gives hope to all 42-year-old half-Asians with a history of spinal fusion surgery.
• The local news showed the moment when the TCU mens basketball team learned they were included in the tournament. It looked like every one of them was holding their phones in front of them either recording the moment or streaming it on Facebook live. If I was their coach, I’d like to think I would tell them to put those phones away, the moment is being recorded by the local news and the school, and let’s just enjoy the moment together as a team.
• I really don’t know a lot about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos but she was on ’60 Minutes’ last night. She creeped me out a bit because at the end of every answer, even ones about campus rape, you could tell she was forcing herself to smile. I felt she came across as very insincere. She also stated she hasn’t visited any under-performing school, only well-performing schools.
• I watched some of the reboot of ‘American Idol’. For the reboot of the first episode, I was curious about the first contestant the producers decided to showcase. She was a quirky and interesting soul. One of last night’s female contestants was a student in the school WifeGeeding used to teach at. Her parents would often send her to school wearing makeup which resulted in some confrontation with her teacher and principal.
• Mascara seems to be quite popular with the ladies, that is, applying or wearing a lot at one time. Personally, I’m not a fan, less is more.
• WifeGeeding cut off a lot of her hair, no buzz cut or anything but somewhere to her neckline. I gave her a complex about women and short hair in our early years telling her when women chop off their hair after having children it’s the first step of them giving up on their looks and nailing it in, that men will say they like the short hair, but inside, they really miss and prefer the long hair. She chickened out on coloring it gray, which bummed me out, I wanted her to do something bold and brave. But for her, short hair is brave.
• For years I’ve been saying we are moving to a cashless society, yet every Friday evening when I drive by the bank, there’s a line of cars at the ATM and I can’t figure out why. What are those folks using cash for that they can’t use a debit card for? Even if they are going to a gentleman’s club, wouldn’t they need singles? All of those folks at Lewisville ATMs can’t be driving to Oklahoma to the casinos.
• The local news had a story about a vigil being held outside of a gentleman’s club. Apparently, two managers of Kings Cabaret were shot and killed outside of it.
• This Vox interactive is pretty interesting – Your state’s teachers are underpaid. Find out by how much.
• Utah woman found guilty of trying to hire hit man charged with same crime for third time
• I wonder if the Catholic church would ever do an online confessional, maybe they already do.
• How Dirk goes through airport security for an away game.

https://twitter.com/dallasmavs/status/972932102416191488?s=09

• LeBron had a beautiful no-look pass.

This is absurd… pic.twitter.com/7pEuWKnztR

— Andy Bailey (@AndrewDBailey) March 12, 2018