Bag of Randomness for Friday, March 2, 2018

  • Yup, that’s my back. I had my six-week followup with my neurologist yesterday. So far, so good. I got the clear to return to work on a part-time basis next week as well as to start rehab.
  • WifeGeeding and I are getting texts from people running in local campaigns asking us for their vote and to participate in early voting. I’m not happy that they somehow have our mobile phone numbers, but at least they are sending texts instead of calling us.
  • Florida news – Judge to lawyer: ‘I am very concerned that you have conducted this trial high’
  • South Carolina news – Man reportedly kicked out of McDonald’s after buying homeless man food
  • What the world’s largest family tree tells us about marriage and death in the West
    • The largest family tree to date — which includes 13 million people going back 11 generations and 500 years — provides new insights about marriage and death, and it all comes from public data.
    • By measuring the birth location between husbands and wives and tracking that over time, they found that, unsurprisingly, before the Industrial Revolution most Americans married someone within six miles of where they were born. This person was also likely to be a relative — a fourth cousin on average, says Erlich. After the Industrial Revolution, when transportation became more common, people started to marry those who were born farther away and were more distantly related. (By 1950, people were finding their spouses within 60 miles of where they were born.)
    • Man, I really wanted to work on genealogy stuff during my time away from work but couldn’t get to it for various factors I’ve stated recently.
  • Texas Monthly – Talk Like a Texan: The Pronunciation of Bowie Knife, Jim Bowie, and David Bowie
    • I’d think most North Texans are going to refer to the version that rhymes with “Louie” since there’s a city pronounced that way in the area.
      • How do you, as a Texan, say the name Bowie? Does it rhyme with Louie, or snowy? Or do you say it differently depending on if you are talking about the Alamo hero, or the British rock star? According to a dialect survey from Joshua Katz’s North Carolina State University, Texans are among the only Americans to still rhyme Bowie with gooey, though the portion of us who do appears to be shrinking as Ziggy Stardust’s fame eclipses that of Texas’s own James.
  • Putin unveiled a new array of nuclear-capable weapons (including an intercontinental ballistic missile that renders defense systems “useless”) and some sort of silent drone submarine. As I read and watched news reports of these weapons, I was expecting to some expert to chime in if Russia was actually capable of having such weapons. I didn’t read or see one that doubted Putin. I’m left to wonder what the U.S. has but hasn’t unveiled or if anyone in the government or military feels panicked.
  • Trump’s Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize Was Apparently Forged. Twice.
Posted in Goofy | 4 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Thursday, March 1, 2018

  • Happy March, y’all.
  • That photo was taken by an actual Reuters photographer. When I first saw it, I thought it was photoshopped or some sort of manipulated imaged. Hope Hicks is only 29 and just resigned as the White House communications director. There’s a good chance that her career has peaked before she even turned thirty. Not in terms of money, but of status and prestige.
  • Anytime I eat at Denny’s, it’s Moons Over My Hammy for me.
  • I’ve never considered a tattoo, but sometimes I see people will tattoo over a scar and think it’s neat and imaginative with what they can come up with. The idea briefly entered my mind since I will now have a scar from my back surgery. However, after a second or two I realized it I would look nothing more than a chubby guy with a tramp stamp.
  • I’m not a fan of President Trump, but I do like it when he allows cameras in the Roosevelt Room when he’s meeting with both parties and the House and Senate. The public gets to observe our elected representatives talk face-to-face on the record. It’s a tiny bit like Parliament, direct conversation instead of speaking to one another through the media.
  • The White House chief calligrapher has a higher clearance than Jared Kushner – Despite the catchy headline, an interesting history of the White House calligrapher is provided.
  • How Beto O’Rourke Explains America – Most voters have never heard of him. He’s running against Ted Cruz. And a Texas Democrat hasn’t won a statewide election in nearly 25 years. So why the hell does the El Paso congressman think he has a shot to win a Senate seat?
  • If you often work with PDFs and wonder about it’s past or future, this may be a read for you. – The story of the PDF, the portable document format that’s become one of the internet’s defining information formats. It’ll be with us after we’re long gone.
  • There have been six in Oscar history. Here’s what they were, and how PricewaterhouseCoopers plans for the drama.
  • D Magazine – Dallas’ Vanishing Middle Class, Mapped
  • I loved last night’s ‘X-Files’. The subject matter was very timely with the release of ‘Black Mirror’s “Metal Head” and the Boston Dynamics robot dog which can open a door.
    • Like ‘Black Mirror’s “Metal Head”, this episode had a very limited cast of humans and dialogue. I don’t think Mulder or Scully said a single word to each other for the first 25-minutes of the show, and they were the only two humans you saw until the end. “Metal Head”, if memory serves, only used three human actors.
    • I loved that Scully had a personal massager. It added something to the character and was a nice moment of comic relief.
    • The episode focused on the future of AI and our current reliance on technology. That said, it was funny to see Mulder have to rely on a Mapsco at one point.
  • For Asian Americans, the 2018 Winter Olympics brought unexpected joy and familiar anger
  • I thought this was a great image of Dirk, comparing his signature shot from today to his youth.
Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Thursday, March 1, 2018

Bag of Randomness For The Last Day Of February 2018

  • When it comes to removing dog poop from the bottom of your shoes, a good way doesn’t exist.
  • I know a handful of you are great meat smokers and barbequers, so I wanted y’all two give me your two cents on this offset smoker/pizza oven /grill contraption this guy made. After clicking the link, be sure to scroll down for more pics.
  • How Has Stephen Hawking Beat the Odds Against ALS? – ‘The honest answer is, we don’t have a clue.’
  • The Cowboys donated some cheerleading stuff to the Smithsonian. The most interesting thing to me was the original sketch of the uniform.
  • In other Cowboys news, they decided to opt-out of the NFL ticketing deal with Ticketmaster and agreed to terms with SeatGeek to be their box office partner, and will take 15% of the company.
  • Kiefer Sutherland
    • He was on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” last night and stated his full name, and this isn’t a joke, is Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland. He also said he has a twin sister.
    • I’ve been binge-watching HBO’s ‘Veep’ with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and discovered the daughter in the show is a bit of Hollywood royalty. She is played by Kiefer’s daughter. That makes three generations of Sutherlands I’ve watched over the years – Donald, Kiefer, and now Sarah Sutherland. Donald (82 years old) and Kiefer (51) have been in three films together, it would be neat if they could get on screen with Sarah (30) on day.
  • I caught a ‘Nightline’ segment about a fashion social media personality who gets paid to post. To my surprise, they are required to disclose if what they are posting is a paid ad:
    • “Last year the Federal Trade Commission stepped in to control transparency, reminding social influencers they’re required to disclose paid posts.”
  • The Toughest Oscar Vote of All: Deciding Who Gets into “In Memoriam”
  • My Taper’s Keeper: Inside the World of NBA Barbers
  • This is cool. Here’s (YouTube) the backstory.
Posted in Personal | 5 Comments