BagOfNothing.com

• I wrote a “Bag of Randomness” for yesterday but forgot to post it. It’s posted at the bottom of this post. Sorry about that.
• Ten years ago today I landed in Vietnam and returned my mother’s ashes back to her homeland and got to visit family I was only told stories about. I bet there’s only a handful of you who followed this blog back then. If for some reason you are interested in reading about that journey, follow that link and at the end of each post is an right-pointing arrow to go to the next entry.
• When concentrating I grind my teeth, which gives me headaches. I have lots of headaches. When I’m aware of it, I place my tongue between my teeth, which somewhat helps. I also grind my teeth at night but wear a chew or a night guard for that.
• Yesterday was the first time I had to fill the SUV up all year.
• Fallon forced to change ‘Tonight Show’ amid Colbert ratings wins
  • “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon watched his show’s ratings take a hit yet again on Tuesday as competitor “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” won its fifth straight week in overall viewers — and sources say Fallon’s being forced to change his strategy to win back eyeballs.
• ‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 7 will air on July 16 of this year but will have only eight episodes in the season instead of the usual ten. And then the next season, the final, will have eight. WifeGeeding has about sixteen episodes to watch to get caught up before new episodes air. It’s been great watching them with her and seeing it a second time, picking up on things I missed and making sense of the complex plots.
• The Atlantic – Why Dentistry Is Separate From Medicine
  • Specializing in one part of the body isn’t what’s weird—it would be one thing if dentists were like dermatologists or cardiologists. The weird thing is that oral care is divorced from medicine’s education system, physician networks, medical records, and payment systems, so that a dentist is not just a special kind of doctor, but another profession entirely.
• The New York Times – The Rise, Then Shame, of Baylor Nation
  •  There’s not a lot of new stuff, though there are some details about Kendal Briles and the hostess program I wasn’t aware of and found disturbing. I love the people of Baylor, it’s the leadership I have trouble with and worried how they are continually enabled.
    • In a statement to The New York Times on Monday, Baylor officials said the university was committed to “doing the right thing” — through self-examination, repeated apologies and implementing 105 recommended changes to its policies and structure. “Our mission statement calls for a caring community based on Christian principles, and any act of sexual violence is inimical to these standards,” the statement said.
    • In its statement to The Times, Baylor said: “There should be no doubt that, rather than worrying about its ‘brand,’ Baylor leadership has been focused on doing the right thing.” The university went on to say that its efforts to address and repair the damage done far surpass those taken by any other educational institution. “No other college or university has, at its own initiative, undergone such a thorough self-examination,” it said. “No other college or university has made such wholesale leadership changes based on that self-examination. No other college or university has eagerly embraced an ambitious slate of 105 recommended changes. And, despite the accusations of some, no other university has been as transparent about its failings.”
    • According to the lawsuit filed by Mr. Clune, the lawyer from Colorado, the football staff at the Baptist institution employed a “‘Show em a good time’ policy,” in which current players offered alcohol and drugs to high school prospects visiting the campus and introduced them to female students. The lawsuit also alleged that the university unofficially used its hostess program, the Baylor Bruins, to further entice recruits. It said that “attractive female students” in the Bruins were expected to ensure that recruits had a good time on campus by, for example, engaging “in sexual acts with the recruits to help secure the recruits’ commitment to Baylor.”
    • A particularly notorious allegation in the lawsuit is that Kendal Briles, a former assistant coach and Art Briles’s son, enticed one recruit by saying: “Do you like white women? Because we have a lot of them at Baylor and they LOVE football players.”
    • Last month, the reform group called on the university to reveal how much it was paying in legal fees to have recommendations from the Pepper Hamilton report carried out. The group estimated that the scandal had cost Baylor $223 million in expenses such as legal fees and settlements as well as in lost revenue from projected contributions.

Bag of Randomness for Thursday, March 9, 2017

• After we read bedtime stories to the kids, they will sometimes ask us how many steps WifeGeeding and I have on our fitness trackers to see who’s the winner of the day. Last night, we both had the exact same number of steps, 6,394. I don’t know how to do probability equations, but that’s got to be a pretty darn high number.
• This summer will mark the nineteenth anniversary of my father’s death and I still have the rubber tree plant a close friend gave to the family. That thing has been with me everywhere I lived since college. It’s not a pet or anything, but I’ve grown attached to it, even having a sense of pride as it grew about seven feet tall despite hardly caring for it. WifeGeeding recently asked if she could trim and repot it and I saw no harm in her doing so. However… the plant now is roughly just a foot tall. It’s been struggling for the last week, and now I know why. WifeGeeding read something and confused replotting with propagation. So the plant I now have has no roots, she actually threw the roots away. I’d rather have WifeGeeding in my life than that plant, but considering how she’s a country girl, I’m surprised at her lack of understanding basic horticulture – plants need roots.
• Last night I received an email which concerns my father and it caused me to tear up. I’m trying to process the content as my emotions are getting the best of me, but it’s a big Alex Haley moment and overall a good thing. It’s something that made me feel significant again, in a weird good kinda way, and it’s all because someone took time out of his day and extend me grace. More to follow once I’m my brain catches up with my emotions.
• A Visual Guide to the Fake Fleets and Inflatable Armies of World War II –
  Military units in both the Allied and Axis powers used air-filled tanks and straw airplanes to deceive enemies.
• A good question I found on Reddit last week – Has any one individual ever saved the “world” so to speak
  • This was the top answer:
    • Vasili Arkhipov. He was a soviet naval officer, second in command on a submarine during the Cuban missile crisis. The captain of the sub wanted to launch nuclear weapons, the third senior officer agreed. But the order required authorization from all three senior officers, and Vasili refused. Prevented world war 3.
  • Here was another one which caught my attention:
    • Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov – On September 26, 1983, just three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm, and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.

• Regarding that picture, I wonder if the majority of Texas evangelicals…
  • (A.) Offended by the commercialism of their Christian faith.
  • (B.) Offended Mr. Pibb was used instead of Dr. Pepper.
  • (C.) Doesn’t notice the soda display but offended by the women’s undergarment display in the background.
  • (D.) Simply find it funny.
• The last handful of ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ had Janet Jackson starring as Willis’ girlfriend, Charlene. Last night was the one in which Arnold joined the ballet much to Willis’ chagrin.
• This exchange on last night’s ‘American Housewife’ (which I’ve never watched before) gave me a good laugh:
  • What’s the difference between 1% and 2% milk?
  • 1%?
• Not that I’ve been keeping track of her, but Sarah Palin seems to pretty quiet these days, and I’m surprised she doesn’t have at least some role in the Trump administration.
• WFAA had a story about an SMU rape case last night and rightfully didn’t show the victim’s face, but instead showed a lot of profiles of her backside and oddly, focused on her big toe for several seconds. I understand not showing anything to identify the victim, but why do I need to see a close up of a toe in HD?
  
• The one news personality that gets on my nerves is most is WFAA’s Cynthia Izaguirre. She talks to the viewer like she’s breaking news to a child their pet hampster died with the most grandiose of false sincerity in both tone and reflection. Her small talk between segments is the highest level of idocracy.
• I’m trying to give the Trump administration a chance and look past partisan politics and focus on substantive stuff, but, yo, it’s hard.
• Last night was the season premiere of FX’s ‘The Americans’. Not to spoil anything, but they dug a huge hole. As someone who’s lived in North Texas for almost all of my life, I wonder how hard it is to dig holes in other places of the country since all the clay in our soil makes digging literal back-breaking work.
• Dirk now has over 30,000 points for his career. When he first came to town I was so disappointed thinking the Mavs were addicted to yet another pathetic white player like Uwe Blab, Cherokee Parks, Kelvin Cato, Bill Garnett, Steve Alford, Mike Iuzzolino, and Tim Legler.  Mavs fans don’t know how lucky they are to have him, and sadly, we’ll find out in a year or two. Thank you, Don and Donny Nelson for bringing him to town.
  • LiberallyLean readers, be prepared for a bullet point about how he doesn’t watch or care for NBA basketball and how Mark Cuban lucked into NBA success because Dirk was there when he bought the team and how he’ll totally fail in the future without him. And don’t be surprised if he thinks the picture on top of this post is a disguised ad for Coca-Cola because he’s at the point now in which he thinks everything is a disguised ad.
    • Sidenote: I once thought a lot of segments on The TICKET were nothing but a disguised ad, and many of them may be, but they once reviewed “The Book of Mormon” a week or two after the show left town, so they earned a little bit of cred with me.
• Steve Nash, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Ben Stiller react to Dirk Nowitzki reaching 30,000 points
• Dirk is my favorite German ever, even more than my ancestors. More on that later in the week, or the next week, or the next.
• ‘Dancing With the Stars’ is the modern day equivalent of ‘Battle of the Network Stars’
• NPR – Georgetown, Texas, an exurb of Austin, is one of the first cities in the country to be 100 percent powered by renewable energy.
• Gwen Stafani has a very thick layer of makeup on in this picture.
• Buzzfeed – 18 Undeniable Signs You Went To High School In A Small Town
  • I thought all coaches doubled as teachers.
  • It’s not common to get stuck behind a tractor while driving?
• This ain’t gonna make loyal reader RPM happy – Trump’s draft budget proposes billion dollar cut to Coast Guard
• Texas A&M puts on worst recruiting visit, anonymous survey says