Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, February 22, 2017

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Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, February 21, 2017

  • Every child is unique, has different maturity levels, and processes information differently. With that disclaimer, and the potential to be judged as bad parents, WifeGeeding and I talked to six-and-a-half-year-old DaughterGeeding about the bird and the bees. Well, maybe not exactly the birds and the bees, but how is a baby born. She’s been asking some well-reasoned questions as of late and we aren’t the type to hide the truth (John 8:32).  “It’s great to learn, knowledge is power.”
    • I started things off by asking her what she’s working on in math, and she stated multiplication and division. I then asked to first learn that, what did she first need to learn, and she responded with learning numbers and counting. I told her with that in mind, what we are about to talk about is just recognizing numbers and it gets a lot more complex than multiplication and division. That this is just a starting point, and she will continue to have questions and a lot of things aren’t going to make sense as of right now, and that’s okay. But she’ll need to understand there are some questions we choose not to fully answer as of yet because she’s just now in the number recognition phase.
    • We also started with a lot of disclaimers, like she’s not to talk to any of her friends or even her brother about any of this. We told her we knew she was mature enough to handle what we were about to tell her and informing her in a way that’s suitable for her, and parents have to have this talk with their own children and they know what’s best for and suitable for them. She’s been tested with other information in the past and she’s proven to use she’s capable of being informed now.
      • Sidenote: We’ve always used technical or medical terms for body parts and not the childish names. In short, for us, we think it’s important to set a precedent.
    • Nothing about what we discussed was graphic, but we used this book (PDF) as our guide. A reader emailed that book to me some time after DaughterGeeding was born and stated how well it worked for her and her children and it’s something I should stash away for later. It’s a bit dated and there are numerous misspellings, but I thought it was a great tool to help a parent guide such a discussion.
    • Overall, the talk went extremely well.
  • When I saw President Trump select Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his new national security adviser, my first thought was of H.R. Pufnstuf.
  • One annoyance I have of local televised news is when they air a story about something expensive or luxurious and the anchors act as if they aren’t wealthy.
  • I’m surprised the classic Cadbury Easter egg commercial still airs, the one with all the animals auditioning. I saw it on ‘Wheel of Fortune’ last night.
  • Reminiscent of the Generra Hypercolor shirts – FIRE Dye – The world’s first colour changing hair dye.
  • C-SPAN – Presidential Historian Survey 2017
  • ABC News – Many universities are using private planes
    • The Associated Press requested documents from dozens of public universities and found that at least 20 own or share ownership of planes for school business, often employing a few full-time pilots to fly them. Many others charter private flights through outside companies. Flight logs show that, at times, the aircraft are used for purposes unrelated to university business.
  • The Guardian – ‘The wild west of wind’: Republicans push Texas as unlikely green energy leader – The most oil-rich and fracking-friendly of states has found itself with the improbable status of being a national leader in a wind energy boom
  • Not really a surprise, but the Houston Chronicle states that every Texas representative in Congress has voted for each and every Trump position.
  • The Dallas Morning News – ‘Texans don’t care about politics’ Texas Monthly editor says, announcing plans to shift magazine’s focus
    • After telling the Columbia Journalism Review that “Texans don’t care about politics,” the editor in chief of Texas Monthly got an earful from Twitter users who say otherwise. In the story published online Monday about his vision for the magazine, which has a history of in-depth political coverage and longform journalism, Tim Taliaferro announced plans to boost the publication’s lifestyle coverage.
  • The ‘CBS Evening News’ had a disturbing story last night on how ISIS is using drones to drop bombs in Mosul. The drones actually film the bombings and have been used in propaganda videos.
  • ‘Huge misunderstanding’: Contractor guts wrong Fort Worth house
  • Trump has 3,643 websites that range from TrumpEmpire.com to TrumpFraud.org
    • The buying spree continued as he ran for president. Trump bought 93 of them after he launched his presidential campaign. One was TrumpEmpire.com. That domain had belonged to a Mexican cybersquatter. Luis Jorge O’Brien Covarrubias is a civil engineer in Guadalajara, Mexico. He bought TrumpEmpire for $10 in April 2015 hoping that someday he’d be able to cash in on the property. When no deal came around, he didn’t bother to renew it.
  • It’s been more than a century since a US president had facial hair
    • The last time facial hair graced the face of a US president was March 4, 1913. This was the day William Howard Taft and his voluminous mustache were replaced by the clean-shaven Woodrow Wilson in the nation’s highest office. The American Mustache Institute suggests March 4th be known as “Taft Day” in remembrance.
  • GIF – Hungry Hungry Humans – I’d like to play.
  • Something Andy might enjoy – A Day in North Korean Airspace
    • While looking for some North Korean flight data, I stumbled upon this visualization of the isolated country’s national airspace. It shows hundreds of flights in and around South Korea and Japan — but only a handful traveling to or through North Korea. Fascinating.
  • You gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking
    Scream without raising your voice.
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