Bag of Randomness for Monday, March 25, 2024

  • I spotted a white Tesla Cybertruck on my way to Whataburger in Lewisville. The public was told they would only be available in stainless steel, so they have either changed their minds or people are buying a new vehicle and then having it painted. I guess if you have the money, you can do whatever you want. I’m guessing this fella was pulled over for having no plates.
    Update: I should get with the times. A friend told me that they are more than likely wrapped. Now, I need to research the benefits of wrapping a car vs. painting one. At one time I thought the wrapping material was easy to remove, but I think some research led me to believe it’s tougher than one would imagine.
  • I saw this tidbit on CBS Sunday Morning:
    • In 1948, President Harry Truman complained about a “Do-Nothing” Congress. Still, in two years, that Congress passed more than 900 pieces of legislation. 
    • The nation’s current 118th Congress passed only 27 bills in its first year, making it on track to be the least productive Congress since the Great Depression.
  • These talkshow hosts once called Trump a bully and an idiot. Now, they’re his biggest defenders
  • Yes, the Texas power grid will be impacted by the April 8 eclipse – ERCOT managers have an 11-day plan to get the state ready for the eclipse on April 8.

  • https://twitter.com/tiff4mahogany/status/1771537913353818427
Posted in Interesting | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Monday, March 25, 2024

Bag of Randomness for Thursday, March 21, 2024

  • A funny bit of parenting advice from a listener to the Ticket when trying to decide what a child can keep when it comes to spring cleaning – if you can tell me what is missing from your room, you can keep it.
  • My streak of never filling out a March Madness bracket continues. But I do get a kick when Obama releases his every year. But have you ever wondered when filling out a bracket started or became popular? I guess it depends on how you look at the question. When was the first time a sports or competition bracket came to be, and when did the NCAA March Madness bracket become popular?
    • According to Slate, the very first bracket in a sports tournament came in 1851 at a chess tournament in London.
      • With the city hosting the Great Exhibition for British technology, English chess master Howard Staunton set out to organize the world’s first international chess tournament. In order to whittle the 16-player field down to one winner, Staunton decided to make eight pairs, with the losers of each being eliminated from contention. Instead of seeding players to decide pairings (like the modern NCAA tournament), Staunton had each draw a random lot. After the first round, the eight winners drew tickets again for fresh adversaries, all the way to the championship match.
    • As for NCAA March Madness, here’s a ten-year-old Smithsonian article about it:
      • The first NCAA bracket pool—putting some money where your bracket is—is thought to have started in 1977 in a Staten Island bar. 88 people filled out brackets in the pool that year, and paid $10 in a winner-take-all format. At the same bar, in 2006, 150,000 entered, and prize money exceeded $1.5 million. So much money was exchanged that the federal government took notice, and the bar’s pool went on a hiatus*. But its history serves as a concrete example of the metoric rise in the NCAA bracket’s popularity from the mid-70s to today.
      • Have you ever wondered why the idea of filling out a bracket didn’t start until the late 1970s? Basically, there are two reasons: UCLA’s John Wooden and the structure of the tournament’s complexity.
        • By the 1950s, the tournament included 23 teams and nine byes, making the prospect of filling out a bracket even more confusing than it is today.
        • Through the 1960s and the 1970s, anyone with cursory knowledge of college basketball could predict the tournament’s winner. The UCLA Bruins were the tournament’s masters, winning 10 championships in 12 years, with their first coming in 1964. “The dominance of the Bruins was so powerful that no one was talking about seeding or anything because UCLA always won the tournament, so it didn’t matter where other teams were seeded,” explains Ken Rappoport, co-author of The Big Dance: The Story of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. With the tournament a virtual cinch for UCLA, people weren’t interested in trying to predict how the tournament would go.
        • “It changed for UCLA when John Wooden retired.” In 1975, Wooden hung up his clipboard, but that wasn’t the only major change to the NCAA tournament. The tournament expanded that year to 32 teams, creating a much more user friendly, symmetrical bracket.
  • Regarding what I just wrote about bracketology, I wonder if stuff like this is why you choose to keep up with this blog. Basically, something piqued my interest, so I researched it and wrote what I found most interesting. It’s a peak inside my brain and how I think. Some people are interested in that. Subconsciously, I think one major reason I created and keep updating this blog is I wish I had someone in my everyday life who cared about what I thought, and was interested enough in me that they look forward to me sharing my thoughts with them. I guess it boils down to loneliness, and this blog is my imaginary friend. Upon more reflection, I may have created this blog because it filled a need I thought others would have helped with. The blog’s name came about because when I opened up and shared with a person or two, interest in what I had to say was a little more than nothing. And thus the tagline that’s been with the blog from the start, “Because this is all I have to offer…………a whole bag of nothing.” I remember asking these people if they had ever read my blog, and they said no, which hurt my feelings because it felt like what I had to say was of no value to these particular people I sought value from. I finally asked that they keep up with it, and they did, but begrudgingly. At least I know what I now want from someone who values me.
  • Ohio congressional candidate accidentally concedes race hours before the polls closed
    • The campaign for Derek Myers, a MAGA-loving House candidate in Ohio, accidentally issued a concession statement four hours before polls closed in the state on Tuesday. “Tonight did not go as we had hoped, but as we know, this race is decided in the primary,” the email read. “I want to give my congratulations to the Congressman-elect. I’m looking forward to uniting behind him and working with him to get President Trump re-elected to the White House and evicting Joe Biden.” The statement was also accompanied by a pre-recorded concession speech in which Myers declares, “As I’ve told everyone on the campaign trail, ‘I’m in my 30s and if I don’t win this race, that’s OK—because I’ve got 30 or 50 more years left.’” The Myers campaign retracted the premature announcement about 10 minutes later, subject line: “DISREGARD CONCESSION EMAIL.” In a followup state
  • This is one of the major reasons why I left the Baptist, Bible, and other Evangelical churches. A few times, it cut like a knife. This one time I was visiting a very close friend and his wife at the parsonage they lived in. My friend mentioned something about my left-leaning politics and his wife gave me this confused look and said, “I didn’t think you could be a Christian and be a Democrat?” I gave her my usual response when things like this happen: a half-smile, head nod, and a silent prayer that the subject of conversation will change quickly.
    https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1770160218975949123
Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Thursday, March 21, 2024

Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, March 20, 2024

  • The April 8, 2024 Total Solar Eclipse will be here in 19 days. This is a reminder for all of you who want to view it safely using the proper eyewear to order them now before they are sold out and you are being price gouged. I ordered mine last week and received them yesterday. Make sure to get them from a reliable source like EclipseGlasses.com. If you prefer to find some on Amazon, here is a long list of Amazon Approved Vendors. No matter where you buy them, at a minimum, make sure you see “ISO 12312-2” on them.Destin from SmarterEveryDay has a great video to get you prepared. If you are interested in some science experiments, check out this part of the video. What I like is that he doesn’t just focus on the moment of totality of the eclipse but the partial phase phenomena, the time leading up to the eclipse and immediately after. For instance, you’ll learn due to air circulation why the ground temperature will decrease before the temperature 20 feet in the air. You’ll feel an “eclipse breeze.” As the cooler air is more dense, it will roll down hills.

    I’m going to be interested in animal behavior. I hear stories of the sounds of locusts or cicadas dying off and about ten or fifteen minutes before totality, the crickets will start, their sound will die off, and then you’ll hear the locusts or cicadas again. If you see a group of birds flying in the 15 minutes before totality, like they look like they’re going somewhere, that’s a behavior. They’re going to their nighttime resting spot.

    There’s a great app to help you experience the event, especially if you plan on taking pictures or recording it. Basically, you go to a location, pull out your phone, and hit your GPS location. The app does all the math for you and talks you through the experience. There’s even a practice video for all of you who really like to be prepared.

    Solar Eclipse Timer App iOS | Solar Eclipse Timer App Android

    This is probably the best review since it compares viewing the 2017 Eclipse without the app and then experiencing the 2019 Eclipse with the app.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, March 19, 2024

  • Yesterday, I wrote about the PV-1 Ventura plane my father flew when he served in the Navy. I mentioned that Dad had a story about his plane being shot down, the pilot landing on the water, and knowing from training he only had x-amount of seconds to get the life raft out before the plane submerged. Last night, I watched a video about the aircraft, and at this point in the video, it states, “The plane had poor buoyancy, and when forced to land on the water, it did not stay on the surface for more than 30 to 40 seconds.”
  • The image at the top of today’s post is a painting of the PV-1 in action bombing a sub, which I mentioned was a mission of my father and his crew. I think I will purchase a print or canvas copy of it, but I can’t decide which one and what size.
  • Years ago I had trouble finding any good information or pictures about the PV-1 Ventura. It’s still a little challenging, but one surprising source was Twitter. I found all sort of neat stuff about the aircraft on there.
  • Today’s short dog-related Rumble video
  • I saw a local story on one of the Regal Cinemas in the area in which the side walls of the theater also serve as a movie screen, but I can’t find it. But here’s stuff on it from Regal’s website what they call ScreenX. You can currently watch Dune 2 on it. This technology provides moviegoers with a 270-degree panoramic viewing experience by expanding the screen onto the side walls of the auditorium.
Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, March 19, 2024