8.19.2021

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




I still think about this. At the bottom of the Update there would be an entry like: "Admitted to Decatur Community Hospital: Joe Blow, 67; Mary Decker, 23; James Bond, 80. Released: Jim Smith, 50; Janie Rubble, 18, and baby girl."  I think the practice ended sometime in the 1990s.   


  • Small increase from yesterday. At some point, it will abruptly do a U-turn and head back down, but we just don't know when that is. 

  • Vaccine "passport" developments:
    • San Antonio ISD has cancelled football scrimmages until its players show vaccination proof.
    • A federal judge requires a person released on bond to be vaccinated.
    • Fox News is requiring all employees to enter their "vaccination status" into a company database.
    • The federal government is requiring all nursing home employees to get the vaccine or lose Medicare and Medicaid funding.
  • Booster shots will be available on September 20th. Where do I get in line? 
  • President Biden's interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos which aired this morning didn't go well. And you can criticize the "liberal media" all you want, but George started with a haymaker.

    • Just own that it was a screw-up, but point out that now the airport is under control and we are getting people out there with flights every hour
  • The guy which allegedly shot a Clay County deputy in his bulletproof vest was arrested in Arlington. 

  • Lake Bridgeport is on the rise. It was about two feet low due to the Water Board opening up the spillway gates in mid-July to release water to Eagle Mountain Lake, but it's up a foot and a half and rising. Rain got dumped on the watershed above Jacksboro and is still pouring in. 

  • There was big news last year when an arrest was made in a murder case from 1977 of a girl who was abducted in a bowling alley parking near the Benbrook traffic circle. It was unique because the case was solved using familial DNA research. For some reason, the case is actually going to trial today. The defendant is 78 years old. You would have thought it could have been worked out. 

  • Facebook has a "major announcement" this morning. I don't know if Facebook will be the one to pull it off, but virtual reality will be the major technological advancement in the future. Our grandparents would have thought a crystal clear Facetime call on a handheld device from across the country was witchcraft. So what's life going to be like in 50 years? (Heck, how about just 10 or 20?)

    • Edit: This announcement turned out to be stupid. Facebook will use avatars instead of a life-like holograms of the users.  

  • Official traffic "stop" numbers for 2020 in Wise County:
    • Decatur PD 7,587
    • Bridgeport PD 5,272
    • Boyd PD 3,398
    • Rhome PD 2963
    • WCSO 2,501
  • That site didn't give me the number of traffic stops by DPS, but my own tracking shows DPS wrote 3,442 actual tickets in Wise County in 2021. That number is misleading low because it excludes "warning only" stops, stops which resulted in arrests but with no tickets/citations, and stops where the person was just let go
  • I'm insane now.

  • I was all set to make this a bullet point until the coach and a snarky AD showed up in the comments of this Twitter post and said it wasn't true.  (Runge ISD is between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.)

  • I finally finished Deadwood. Thumbs up. I think that Al Swearengen is one of TV's all-time great characters.
  • I've moved on to Billions. After two episodes, it's a little cliched and corny, but I'll give it a chance. 
  • I finished the book Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. The first half on Texas history should be required reading for every Texan.