Bag of Randomness for Monday, December 4, 2017

  • Just a small piece of advice to our current president – end all tweets you personally make with your initials so we know it’s from you and a staffer or a lawyer.
  • There’s a new Apple holiday commercial which easily grabs your attention. It’s the one in which two strangers find each other and dance in the snow under moonlight. If you think they have great chemistry, it’s probably because in real life they are married. The New York-based couple actually met at a dance theater audition. You can also take dance lessons from them at the Broadway Dance Center.
  • Kate Winslet was on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ and they talked about Titanic. She revealed she auditioned with Matthew McConaughey.
  • Waffle House customer cooks his own meal after finding staff sleeping
  • Texas Tech Head Football Coach Kliff Kingsbury was nice enough to send a hand-written letter to a University of Texas player.
  • Christian Film Starring Kevin Sorbo Giving Away AR-15 Rifle as Christmas Promotion
  • What a fascinating piece of engineering –After 37 years, Voyager 1 has fired up its trajectory thrusters
    • This week, the scientists and engineers on the Voyager team did something very special. They commanded the spacecraft to fire a set of four trajectory thrusters for the first time in 37 years to determine their ability to orient the spacecraft using 10-millisecond pulses. After sending the commands on Tuesday, it took 19 hours and 35 minutes for the signal to reach Voyager. Then, the Earth-bound spacecraft team had to wait another 19 hours and 35 minutes to see if the spacecraft responded. It did. After nearly four decades of dormancy, the Aerojet Rocketdyne manufactured thrusters fired perfectly.
  • 2 men caught with heroin, weed after parking car in police chief’s spot
  • This story from China reminded me of the ‘Seinfeld’ episode where Kramer paints over the stripes on the highway – Man fined for painting road signs to aid his commute
    • He was captured on camera on 27 September with a can of white paint painting new arrows onto the road to redirect traffic, and told police it was the result of frustrations over the long delays on his daily bus journey to work.
  • BoyGeeding will sometimes surprise me with his observations. While listening to the new U2 album, he asked me if Adam was playing his guitar in a particular part because it sounded slow and the music was deep. About a week ago he asked what instrument each person plays and I tried to explain the sound of Adam’s bass guitar.
  • Here are the two U2 performances from SNL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efi4SCY0TA0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQceLMdrZpk

Posted in Goofy | 4 Comments

Bag of Randomness for the First Day of December 2017

  • That vanity plate reminds me of that George W. Bush commencement speech, “To those of you who are graduating this afternoon with high honors, awards, and distinctions, I say, ‘Well done.’ And as I like to tell the C students: You too, can be President of the United States.” It’s a good line he’s used more than once. At SMU he ends it with “president” but in this other clip, he ends it with “President of the United States.
  • I’ve been thinking a lot about my upcoming back surgery, which will probably happen sometime early next year. I’ll be honest, I’m scared, for all the reasons you can imagine. However, seeing Tiger Woods play professional competitive golf yesterday was encouraging. His surgery was performed on April 19 this year, that’s roughly 225 days ago. I’m basically having the same spinal fusion surgery. He had his L5/S1 fused and I’ll have my L4/L5 fused. He’s just four months younger than me and we are both half-Asian, so he’s the best thing I can compare myself to. Granted, I’m not a professional athlete nor do I have his competitive spirit or mental fortitude. I’m still surprised out of all the places he could have had his surgery, he had it here at the Texas Back Institute.
  • I feel like Jeff Heath is the modern day Bill Bates minus the aw-shucks.
  • I think it’s stupid that the Cowboys have to play a Thursday night game especially since they already have a Thursday game on their schedule (Thanksgiving). But then again, I think the NFL having games on a Thursday night is stupid in the first place.
  • Unconscious Patient With ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ Tattoo Causes Ethical Conundrum at Hospital
    • Typically, DNRs are formal, notarized documents that a patient gives to their doctor and family members. Tattoos, needless to say, are a highly unorthodox—but arguably direct—means of conveying one’s end-of-life wishes. That said, this patient’s tattoo presented some undeniable complications for the hospital staff. Is a tattoo a legal document? Was it a regretful thing the patient did while he was drunk or high? Did he get the tattoo, but later change his opinion? On this last point, a prior case does exist in which a patient’s DNR tattoo did not reflect their wishes (as the authors wrote in this 2012 report: “…he did not think anyone would take his tattoo seriously…”).
  • Walmart takes down T-shirt about killing journalists
  • This picture is a bit surreal. That really is Cowboys coach Tom Landry speaking to Redskins QB Joe Theismann at practice, the one before 1983 Pro Bowl.
  • Closed toilet seat alerts Michigan man to early-morning intruder
  • New York City Has Genetically Distinct ‘Uptown’ and ‘Downtown’ Rats
  • U2’s new album is available today and they are the musical guest on SNL.
  • Jimmy Kimmel and Judge Roy Moore got into a Twitter spat yesterday:
Posted in Personal | 3 Comments