Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, November 14, 2017

  • The above image has 16 circles. If you are having trouble spotting them, a hint is provided in the last bullet point.
  • ABC News – Some churches putting faith in their guns to fend off mass shootings

    • But Worley himself, who is licensed to carry a concealed weapon, refuses to wear his weapon while preaching. 

      “I’ve told my safety team, ‘Listen, I can’t be up there teaching and preaching and also carrying. So I’m going to trust in the Lord and trust you guys that if something happens, you will act,’” he said.

    • At the kickoff of each training seminar, Copley said, he recites the same directive. “I say, ‘I pray for them, I pray for myself that, whenever I put my gun on, my prayer is I will never have to use it,” he said. “So far, that’s been an answered prayer.”

  • Dallas Mornings News video: What the church pastor preached a week after Texas church massacre – “I choose life.”
  • Ohio inmate getting pillow to help him breathe during execution
    • Ohio will provide a wedge-shaped pillow to help a condemned inmate breathe as he’s being executed this week, among other accommodations the state is considering. Death row prisoner Alva Campbell, who has said he is too ill for lethal injection, became mildly agitated when officials tried lowering him to a normal execution position, according to a medical review by a physician contractor for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The same exam failed to find veins suitable for inserting an IV on either of Campbell’s arms.
  • The vertical lines are inside the circles. If you are really having trouble seeing the circles, here you go.
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Bag of Randomness for Monday, November 13, 2017

  • Man, I’m snakebit. Not literally, but it feels that way when it comes to my health.
    • About a month ago I felt a small lump on the back of my neck thinking it was an ingrown hair. It wasn’t painful, but just sort of there. This week, all of a sudden, it just started to swell up but a whitehead never appeared, and it was warm to the touch.
    • I had a doctor look at it on Thursday. She injected anesthesia and lanced the abscess, did a bunch of squeezing, but didn’t find evidence of an infection. She sent me home and asked me to return the next day for a bandage change.
    • On Friday, the abscess grew much larger and the area was very red. The doctor once again injected anesthesia and this time a bunch of infected pus came out. It was painful but I felt some relief since some pressure was released. I was sent home with antibiotics.
    • I woke on Saturday morning with the abscess much larger, redder, and extremely sensitive to the touch. I visited the doctor and she told me to go to the ER.
    • The ER doctor gave me antibiotics through an IV and performed an ultrasound so he could identify areas to lance. He said the abscess was about the size of a baseball. Once again, I had an injection of anesthesia and he enlarged the lanced area. I was provided a prescription for antibiotics to take every six hours in addition to the antibiotics I was already prescribed. He was nice enough to also prescribe some pain medication. The redness is visible to the mid-cheek area of my face, and he said if he goes any further I need to return to be admitted. Here’s a gruesome pic of me leaving the hospital.
  • Alice Cooper: ‘Larry Mullen is the only drummer to ask me for my lyrics’
    – The self-proclaimed executioner of the last taboos of the Western world on his Irish blood, not drinking – and finding religion

    • “Larry is the only drummer to ask me for my lyrics. I’ve never, ever had a drummer ask for the lyrics. Usually they couldn’t care less about the lyrics. Larry said that when he drums, he interprets the lyrics.”
    • Bono has said the first single he bought was Cooper’s Hello Hooray, the opening track from his 1973 album Billion Dollar Babies. 
  • Why Vietnam Loves Trump – It’s one of the only countries in the world where the president is popular. Will Trump return the love?
  • Final thoughts and tidbits from my book about the relationships amongst presidents:
    • With about 20 pages remaining I lost the book. I think I left at DaughterGeeding’s Taekwondo practice but the owner said it wasn’t to be found. Luckily I was able to find it at a bookstore.
    • Former presidents seem to lean more to preserving the power and influence of the office anything party related. They also acknowledge promising great change and delivering it are two entirely great things
    • When it came to fundraising efforts for Katrina and Haiti, the book provided interesting details on how fundraising is done how funds are distributed.
    • Remember when Obama became president-elect and had lunch with the current and all living former presidents? Their lunch was nothing more than a sandwich. The conversation was less on policy and politics and simply on the difficulty of making a home in Washington, about how they dealt with the White House staff, living accommodations, putting your kids in school in Washington, and a little bit of Congress in foreign policy.
    • When Obama ask Clinton to speak in the White House briefing room, Clinton said he was a little out of practice and Obama round replied, “You’ll be fine, it’s like riding a bicycle.”
    • George H.W. and Barbara Bush’s daughter, Robin, is already been reinterred at Texas A&M where they will be buried.
    • President Hoover wrote a book about Woodrow Wilson.
    • While in office, Eisenhower painted a portrait of Lincoln and gave prints of it to White House staff for Christmas.
    • George W. Bush read 17 different biographies of Lincoln while he was in office.
    • There was a good story of Churchhill having dinner with Truman sometime after WWII with other important people. They played a mock trial on whether Churchill would get into heaven who asked to judged by a jury of his peers and each pretended to be a historic figure.  General Bradly decided to be Alexander the Great and others cast themselves as Julias Ceasar, Aristotle, and George Washington.
    • During that dinner, Churchill confessed to Truman he was discouraged when Truman got the job and didn’t think he was up to the task and told him, “I misjudged you badly. Since that time, you, more than any other man, have saved Western Civilization.”
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