Olympian sells silver medal to help pay for child’s cancer treatment

Polish discus thrower Piotr Malachowski found something more important than the silver medal he won in Rio.

Malachowski returned to his home country and immediately put his medal up for auction in an effort to raise money for Olek Szymanski, a 3-year-old boy suffering from a rare form of eye cancer called retinoblastoma.

Through the online auction, Malachowski attempted to raise roughly $84,000 to go towards the $126,000 cost of a surgery that could possibly save the boy’s life. A third of the money had already been raised by the Polish foundation Siepomaga.

According to ESPN, the price for the medal had reached $19,000 on Tuesday when Malachowski prematurely pulled it down. He took to Facebook and announced that Polish billionaires Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk had agreed to purchase the medal for the remaining cost of the surgery.

Malachoswksi has another silver medal from the 2008 Beijing Games, and his Rio medal has already done much more good than it would have done sitting in his trophy case.

CBS Sports

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For those that love Jesus and Taylor Swift

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There aren’t many voices in our culture that are more influential than Taylor Swift. Love her or hate her, her music is catchy and her lyrics captivating. In fact, we could argue that she is communicating with culture far more effectively than most preachers, which leads us to ask the following question:

What would happen if the church used the message of culture to communicate a greater message to culture?

Come find out how Taylor Swift can actually help you point others to the gospel of Jesus.

From The Gathering, a church in North Carolina.

Posted in Goofy | 1 Comment

Bag of Randomness for Friday, August 26, 2016

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  • No question I wore it better than Deion.
  • In reference to the football picture of myself I posted the other day, someone asked what position I played. It reminded me of something that happened that season. It was pee-wee ball or whatever you called it before you could play in junior high, and during the game, I was in my usual spot, the sideline. The coach calls me over and tells me to go in and play tackle. I was excited at the opportunity to get on the field and ran out there for the next play, but I didn’t know where the tackle was supposed to line up. I tried to find the position before the snap and the coach was yelling at me, which only made it more stressful and confusing for me. He ended up calling a timeout and yelling at me for not knowing any positions in football. I wasn’t so much upset as myself as I was for feeling like I embarrassed my mom, dad, and brother in the crowd. The moment I got home I opened up an encyclopedia and memorized all football positions.
  • My brother was a great football player, and when it came time for me to play in pee wee, I was one of the first drafted because of his reputation. I was not a great football player or athlete. I always felt bad being drafted so high and not meeting the expectations of my coaches.
  • That story above reminds me of another ignorant sports moment. It was my first junior high basketball game and I was in my usual spot, the bench, four spots down from the coach. He calls me over and tells me to go in for someone, and again, being excited at the opportunity to just play, I ran onto the court after a basket was made and didn’t check in at the scorer’s table. In little dribblers, you didn’t have to check in, the rules were lax and kids were switching in and out all the time during play. Again, I wasn’t so embarrassed or mad at myself, I was just worried I embarrassed my father. He never did anything to make me feel that way, but he was so proud of my brother’s athletic accomplishments I just felt I let him down.
  • I think it was Billy Madison that also had daddy issues.
  • The football fields we played on were unlevel, full of weeds and stickers, and the dirt was hard like a rock with holes and cracks all around. Looking back at it, it was an awesome experience. Ah, the Optimus Field, how I miss thee.
  • I really like Tony Romo. I really want him and Jason Witten to win a Super Bowl together. But all feelings aside, Nate Silver would give a 98% probability saying Romo will not make it through the season injury-free. That means, like it or not, for better or worst, the Dak Prescott era will begin this season.
    • But let’s just try to find a silver lining and say Romo’s injury scare was nothing more than a wake-up call for him and that makes him really excel this year.
    • Seattle is just bad luck for Romo.
  • Just an observation, but I think 90% of political bumper stickers are “against” something and not “for” something.
  • Eleven from ‘Stranger Things’ will be at the Dallas Fan Days convention.
  • Our bedtime reading is The Mouse and the Motorcycle by the great Beverly Cleary. It’s one of the few stories in with a person named Keith is actually viewed in a positive light. In last night’s reading, Ralph S. Mouse talks about his uncle who got trapped in a waste basket and was assumed to have been thrown in the incinerator with the rest of the trash. Obviously, unmistakably, this was Beverly Clearly using a Christian witness metaphor of not living for Christ and wasting one’s life on the trash of “the world” and burning in Hell. No doubt about that, I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on this when I first read it. (written in sarcastica)
  • Even their mistakes are a great success – MIT accidentally discovered a cleaner smelting process
  • What Happens If You Put the Wrong Octane of Gas In Your Car
Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Thursday, August 25, 2016

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  • DaughterGeeding was walking on the living room floor, shrieked, and said she had a thorn in her foot. I got some tweezers and removed it, and told her that as flimsy as the thorn was, she shouldn’t be in so much pain. Later in the evening when I was about to go to bed, I noticed a dead bee on the floor. Yup, you guessed it, she got stung by a bee and the thorn was the stinger. Proof: WifeGeeding verified the “thorn” came from the bee.
  • I caught the first episode of NBC’s ‘Better Late Than Never’ with William Shatner, Henry Winkler, George Foreman and Terry Bradshaw. I saw a few commercials but knew nothing about it other than it had those four guys going to Asia, and since I like the personalities of all those guys, I figured why not. I mean, it has Captain Kirk and the Fonz, that in itself is funny. To my surprise, it’s more like a reality series. All of them don’t play characters, but just themselves and a film crew is following them around. Granted, some of it is scripted, but it was pretty enjoyable.
    • William Shatner looks great for an 85-year-old man. The show stated he was born before the “Star Spangled Banner” became our national anthem.
    • To my surprise, and I’m surprised and I never noticed it before, but Winkler actually changes his voice when he plays the Fonz.
  • WifeGeeding took one of the cast members of the show ‘Fixer Upper’ to a formal when she was at Baylor. I think it was the carpenter. When she drops this tidbit on friends when the show becomes a topic of conversation, they all respond in a way as if she settled for me or could have had things so much better.
  • Baylor coach Jim Grobe briefly addresses dog video incident, then says the dreaded words of Waco: ‘Let’s talk football a little bit’ 
    • Former head coach Art Briles almost said that exact phrase when asked about Sam Ukwuachu’s sexual-assault case. The Boise State transfer was found guilty and sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years of probation.
  • The Zip N Store seems like a good idea as long as you don’t have a hole or tear in your bag.
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  • Google is using AI to compress photos, just like on HBO’s Silicon Valley
  • Last week, Barry over at LiberallyLean.com posted this image and it really got me thinking about my driving habits.
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    • Personally, if there is no stripe in the middle I will hug the curb. If there is a stripe, I’d follow the rule in the image.
    • The image makes a good point about the advantage of driving to the far curb stating both drivers can see oncoming traffic better. But I had some reservations:
      • If there were a queue of vehicles, depending on how they follow this rule, it could block the opposite driver from turning.
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      • It doesn’t really work if you have a trailer attached.
    • After about a week of observing what others do, I finally decided to do some research (Ticket listeners, insert George Digiani drop here).
Posted in Personal | 9 Comments