Your Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, August 7, 2024

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Your Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, August 6, 2024

  • Something sports-related that didn’t get much attention because of the Olympics is Steve McMichael, who was diagnosed with ALS and inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame over the weekend. McMichael’s induction happened in his Illinois home, where his wife and teammates surrounded him, while festivities were happening in Canton, Ohio.

    Here’s the story behind the video:

    My Uncle John was one of the owners of the Washington Capitals at the time. We were at a Wizards game in the owner’s box. Michael Jordan was there, he was part of the Wizards organization back then, and I was eating my popcorn and Michael Jordan started playing peekaboo with me and I was totally unfazed, just kept eating my popcorn and he started covering my mouth to try to prevent me from getting the popcorn in my mouth. …

    I was definitely aware of how great he was, who he was, but totally unfazed by it. I do like to think that he inspired me and passed on a little bit of his greatness …

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Your Bag of Nothing for Monday, August 5, 2024

  • Man, NBC did a poor job of broadcasting the men’s 100-meter race. It came down to a photo finish, but the announcing team never mentioned what had to cross first. A foot, hand, or entire body? It wasn’t well until the race was over when Mike Tirico told the viewing audience from inside the studio it was the clavicle.

  • I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I know a world record wasn’t broken, but at some point, a human can only run so fast, and we’ll max out any technological advancement when it comes to shoes and apparel, so at some point, records will no longer be broken. I just wonder how close we are to that moment.
  • The story of Kristen Faulkner is amazing. She took up cycling only seven years ago and won gold over the weekend. She has another event to compete in tomorrow.
    • Faulkner is a relatively newcomer to the sport. She only started cycling in 2017. She lived in NYC and wanted an outdoor activity to balance out her full-time job and tried a free class in NYC’s central park. She told NBC Sports, “I showed up in running shorts and sneakers, and we learned how to clip in and ride around cones,” she wrote. “A few weeks later I won my first race, and that’s when I knew I wanted to see how far I could go in the sport.”
    • In case you are wondering, she went to Harvard but didn’t play any sport, but in high school, she participated in rowing, swimming, and running.
    • This isn’t her in this photo, but I just loved the photo and wanted to share it.
  • Philippines gold medal gymnast Carlos Yulo to receive house, cash, free ramen for life
  • Wow.

  • I recently learned of the world’s largest digital camera, the 3200-megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera. It is being installed in Chile at the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Unlike most cameras that take a single image, this one will scan a particular section of the sky 800 times.
    •  The Telescope’s compact shape allows it to move quickly from one point in the sky to the next. It will image the sky continuously each night, on an automated cadence, and over the course of the ten-year survey will collect about 800 images of each location in the sky. 
  • Louisiana becomes the first to legalize surgical castration for child rapists
    •  As of Thursday, August 1, for the first time in the country’s history, child rapists can now be ordered by a judge to have their testicles removed if the victim is under the age of 13 and if the offender is older than 17 years old. The law already allowed judges to issue an order of chemical castration.
    • The article mentions there are female child rapists, but it doesn’t state a punishment.
  • Cool moment.

  • RFK Jr. admits putting dead bear cub and old bicycle in New York City’s Central Park nearly 10 years ago
    • “So, I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear, and it was in very good condition, and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator,” Kennedy said. “And you can do that in New York state. You can get a bear tag for roadkill bear.”But the falconing day went longer than expected, and he had to go straight to a dinner in the city at Peter Luger Steakhouse, he recounted. That, too, ran late, and Kennedy said he realized he had to go to the airport and would not be able to go home to Westchester first.“And the bear was in my car, and I didn’t want to leave the bear in the car because that would have been bad,” he said.
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Your Bag of Nothing for Friday, Aug 2, 1924

  • Today is my late father’s 101st birthday.
  • Gig ’em? I guess no woman or non-white person deserves the honor of being in this class. I’m not saying they should make a diverse class just to make a diverse class, it’s just interesting from a statistical standpoint that a woman or non-white person would not be included. Also, with an even number of alumni, why didn’t KBTX’s graphic department not divide the two rows equally, six-by-six?
  • Being born in 1975, I obviously wasn’t around for the JFK assassination in 1963. But I think one thing that’s hard for a lot of people, especially young people, to understand today is there was no real footage of the assassination shown until the Zapruder film was released. So many things are recorded today and available online in an instant. But the Zapruder film didn’t air on U.S. network television until 1975 when a young Geraldo Rivera debuted the footage on ABC’s Good Night America. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to be alive during the assassination and then only be able to watch what actually happened almost 12 years later. People were rightfully shocked, and Geraldo rightfully cautioned viewers. You hear the audience or whoever off camera gasp as he warns viewers of the headshot we’ve seen thousands of times. Here is the show segment where he introduces and narrates the film.

    Personally, I remember how shocked I was the first time I saw his autopsy photos, some of which you can find on a Wikipedia page and first published in Life magazine in 1972. His open eyes haunted me. At first, people think the hole at the bottom of this throat is an exit wound, but it’s from a tracheotomy and the wound is obscured. But the color photo of the exit wound on the back of his head is grotesque. It’s a 13 centemeter wound. If you read the article, you find that Kennedy was buried without his brain, which mysteriously went missing in 1966 from the National Archives. My bet is RFK had it secretly destroyed.
  • Suri Cruise sure looks a lot like her mother, as one would expect.
  • Mercury could have an 11-mile underground layer of diamonds, researchers say
    • This reminded me of a woman I heard on the radio complain about her fiance giving her an engagement ring made of a lab-grown diamond instead of a natural one because it’s believed the latter will appreciate in value more. I’m sure one day in the future, diamonds will be mined from another planet. I can only imagine how expensive an engagement ring would be with an interplanetary diamond.
    • Of course, this talk reminded me of the engagement ring I bought. Growing up, one qualification I had in a bride was that she wouldn’t care about a ring, that what’s important is marrying me. The person I proposed to made it clear she preferred one to be at least a carrot. Smitten, I gave in. She never knew this, but I’d often look at it, even towards the unexpected end of our marriage (and especially when we were intimate), and have this immense sense of pride at how hard I worked to save and buy it and the honor of her accepting and wearing it. There was one unique feature of the diamond that stood out and made it even more sentimental. I sometimes wonder whatever happened with that ring. One day, and without my prodding or inquiry, DaughterGeeding mentioned she overheard her mother talking to her grandmother about how pleased they were with what they did with it. In a way, I wish I could get it returned, just because of what I recently wrote above. But there’s no good reason for me to have it, and I’m not sure what I’d do with other than stash it away somewhere.
  • Olympic shooting has been highlighted at this year’s games, Especially these two for their demeanor and shooting style. For instance, Turkey’s gold medalist shoots with his left hand in his pocket with no specialized lenses. The South Korean champion looks nonchalant and fashionable.
    • While his opponents took to the competition with specialized equipment – custom glasses to obscure vision in one eye, large ear protection and tinted lenses – Dikeç managed to claim Turkey’s first ever Olympic medal in shooting with teammate Sevval Ilayda Tarhan in what looked to be his everyday glasses and one hand in his pocket. 
      • “I shoot with both eyes, most shooters do it with one. So I didn’t want that all that equipment. Shooting with two eyes — I believe that it’s better. I’ve done a lot of research on it, so I didn’t need the equipment,” Dikeç told Turkish radio station Radyo Gol. “Shooting with my hand in my pocket has nothing to do with artistry. I am more motivated and feel more comfortable while shooting,” he said, adding that this stance “is actually about bringing the body to equilibrium and focusing and concentrating.”
    • Photos of the casual 51 year-old went viral – not least because of the stark comparison to pictures of Olympic shooting superstar Kim Ye-ji, whose cap, futuristic glasses and calm composure wouldn’t look out of place on a street style-inspired runway. Kim won silver at the 10-meter air pistol event on Sunday, with her 19-year-old teammate Oh Ye Jin taking the gold.

    • And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Guatemala’s Adriana Ruano won Guatelama’s first gold medal in history.
    • And like many others have mentioned, with America’s love of gun culture, it’s surprising we don’t medal at these shooting events.
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