My Ongoing Crusade Against The "Improper Photography" Statute Is Over

(Rest of that old post.)

The earliest one of my rants I can find is from 2007, but I know I did a couple a few years before that. And I sadly can't find the argument I had with then Williamson County DA John Bradley on a prosecutor message board about the constitutionality of the statute when it was first enacted. (I remember writing something along the lines, "I'm no constitutional scholar, but if exotic dancing and campaign contributions are considered 'speech', taking a photo in public should be protected speech as well.")

Today, the very conservative highest criminal court in Texas killed it for being unconstitutional.

In Idiocracy, It Was Called "The House of Representin'"

Seen on C-SPAN: @RepSpeier (D-CA) on House floor. Will share clip shortly. #NFL #BenchEm pic.twitter.com/rhqR0uZE3d
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 17, 2014

Random GIF

I have no idea what this is from, but I laughed every time I saw it last night. (That stop and zoom in editing was greatness.)

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• Even though we hear about Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, no one mentions former Kansas City Chief Jovan Belker who murdered his girlfriend and then killed himself only two years ago. 
• I also thought about former NFL player Rae Carruth who assisted in the murder of his pregnant girlfriend in 2001.  If Wikipedia is correct, he's scheduled to be released from prison in four years. 
• Burying the lead in Bridgeport: The Messenger has a story today on page 7 under a headline about a fundraiser for a JV football player after "he suffered a heat stroke because he was dehydrated and had to run extra sprints after practice . . . . " He ended up in ICU at Cook's Children Medical Center for four days -- three of which were in a medically induced coma! He was running as a punishment having something to do with a vaguely labeled "List of Pain". Varsity coach and athletic director Danny Henson said as to why he was punished was something "I can't and don't want to talk about." This story should be on the front page with a different headline. 
• How is former Decatur High coach Kyle Story doing at his new gig at Frisco Independance? They have started 1-2, but the two losses came with scores of 62-21 and 52-0.
• Fox News has been giving time to some redneck Texas sheriff named Gary Painter. He has hot opinions about ISIS crossing the border with no proof other than he's heard they have found "Muslim clothing" and discarded copies of the Quran. (Which is laughable since Muslims treat the Quran about 100% better than Christians treat the Bible.) And he also has such gems as: “If they show their ugly head in our area, we’ll send them to hell." Oh, did I mention he's the Sheriff of Midland County. 
• I thinks its idiotic to send 3,000 U.S. military personnel to Africa to help in the containment of the Ebola outbreak. What are they going to do, shoot it? (That's a joke.)  But if you believe that the President is sending the troops there with the intention of them becoming infected so they can bring the disease  back to the U.S. in order to enhance the popularity of Obamacare, you are a certifiable nutcase. 
• "I was whipped with a switch and I turned out OK." You sure about that, buddy? 
• Someone explain Fan Duel to me -- the web site that lets you play Fantasy Football and win money on a weekly basis. They advertise everywhere and come across as a sports book. Is this not illegal gambling? 
• A hurricane it Cabo this week, but I was taken aback by a Fox 4 story of a Dallas man who was there on his bachelor party with nineteen of his buddies. 
• I said last week that sponsor pressure would be what cost Roger Goodell his job. And Anheuser-Bush began to rattle its sword yesterday. (They are in a sneaky great position: They can get a ton of press (= ad time) by pulling out as the "Official Beer of the NFL" and still advertise on all the networks.) His days have to be numbered.

Above The Fold

Tuesday Morning Pick Me Up: Sarah Palin

Football Comedy

Arkansas State player plays dead. Or was hit by a sniper:

Hey Canada, move those goalposts!!!:

Odd Death From 1971

I could only think of Clerks when I read that.

Spot Cash was the biggest grocery store in town and it was right downtown. It's other claim to fame was that on a telephone pole behind it was the siren for the volunteer fire department. With no pager or beeper technology (or at least none that could anyone could afford), the fire department was summoned by a deafening blast from the siren that could be heard all over town.

The funny bit my dad (who had a clothing store across from Spot Case) and the owner of the grocery store had was that once the siren blasted, the owner of Spot Cash would hop in his car, pull up in front of dad's store, and dad would run out and jump in. And then off they would go to follow the fire truck.

Index Version of "Lost"

It's behind a paywall, but the Messenger reported the the pilot "turned up" in Oklahoma City later.   A paper in Brownwood said he "turned up" in Lubbock.  Anyone have the scoop on this story? I had never heard of it.

And look at all those boats with divers!  I'm dating myself, but Seahunt was in heavy syndication at the time. Looks like it provided lots of inspiration.

(And there's a note of a new judge and a new DA in a new judicial district that included Wise, Jack, and Cooke counties. It wouldn't last long since Jack and Wise would soon get there own combined 271st Judicial District.)

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• John Wiley Price applied for a court appointed lawyer in his federal prosecution case? That seems from unlike JWP.
• The children of the gun instructor killed by the 12 year old with an Uzi released a video providing encouragement for the girl. Anyone else have a problem with this? Their words are fantastic but couldn't this be communicated privately? Did it really have to be in a public video that oozes "look at me"? 
• Holy cow: When I went to link to above video and to watch it in its entirety, I learned it was released on the family's personal injury lawyer's website (who just happens to appear at the beginning and end of the video.) Now I'm disgusted. On Mark Davis' radio show this morning, he was almost in tears as he said the video is proof those kids were "well raised." No, it's proof they are being exploited by a lawyer (and a mom who just happens to be in the background of the video.)
• Adrian Peterson may have hurt a second child. 
• Mark Cuban's goofy brother, Brian,  tweeted yesterday: "I absolutely believe that Adrian Peterson never intended to harm his son but Child abuse can be negligent as well." So profound. Uh, that's why he was indicted for "Negligent Injury to a Child". Even the prosecutor's don't believe he intended the resulting injuries of his conduct. (I guess that's why he promotes himself as a "non-practicing lawyer" who now focuses on "Body Dysmorphic Disorder-Eating Disorders-Addiction-Depression-Courage-Recovery.")
• "NFL hiring female advisers to shape domestic violence policies." No, the NFL is pandering to females again because it has no respect for the intelligence of its fans.
• At 6:50 a.m. on Saturday, the Sixth Grader In The House was in her softball gear, and I was in my jogging gear. I felt like I was in a Nike inspirational commercial. 
• Four Atlantic City casinos have gone belly up this year. The latest is Trump Plaza. (Unfortunately, Donald Trump no longer has ties to it.) 
• Here's the video of UT screwing up the coin toss on Saturday. Man, that ref basically tried to talk the captains out of it. 
• Our district judge, after most every heated custody hearings, will urge the parents to get along and say something along the lines of, "You're going to turn around twice and they'll be grown one day."  It's amazing to see the head nods from the audience every single time. 
• I had to do some sheetrock repair which involved spackling, sanding, and texturing. Verdict: Not bad. (Although I did cheat with the spray on texturing from a can.)

Man, Tough Crowd

Hey, once the guy took his shirt off I was rooting for failure.  But he dang near broke his neck.

(I guess the crowd was laughing since he popped up pretty quickly, but that laughing seemed to start once the body hit the floor.)

Dad Shaves Off Beard In Middle Of Peek-A-Boo

Hey, dad, you better be on the lookout for the rest of your life. That little girl will remember that moment in the deep recesses of her mind.  You don't look like that chick in The Blair Witch Project without being scarred for life . . .

What Is That?

Bush Turnpike WB closed; construction equipment flipped & now dangling off Tollway ramp http://t.co/Ke6w8053Al pic.twitter.com/vhn2lzlziy
— FOX 4 NEWS (@FOX4) September 15, 2014

Edit: Different angle. Looks like one of those trench digging machines.

A Guy Who Isn't White Watching White Guys Fight. Funny.

From Redditt:

“This is on the parade grounds at LSU at a tailgate before the ULM game this weekend. The parade grounds are the spot where all the fraternities set up their tailgates and it appears one house’s pledges (the kids dressed nicely) had a problem with someone.

"I don’t know how drunk or naive the guy in purple was to think he could pick a fight with one pledge in front of all his brothers and not expect it to turn out that way…This looks to be facing toward memorial tower so my guess would be Pi Kapp, Pike, or Phi Psi maybe?”

Repost Of A Weird Topic

I thought about this when the play clock went down to 0:00 in the Florida/Kentucky game ion overtime but the refs didn't blow the whistle.

This is a repost of an old post (which is now screwed up by formatting): 

I think about this every time during March Madness, but I've never posted it because it qualifies as Crazy Talk. Several years ago, someone with a big brain figured out that when the scoreboard clock rolled down from "0:01" to "0.00" there was actually still a second left on the clock. So they added tenths of seconds to the game clock. 

So instead of seeing the old countdown in seconds of

00:02 
00:01 
00:00 <----horn nbsp="" sounds="" span="">

We now see this: 

00:02.0 
00:01.9 
00:01.8 
00:01.7 
00:01.6 
00:01.5 
00:01.4 
00:01.3 
00:01.2 
00:01.1 
00:01.0 
00:00.9 <-- and="" assumed="" four="" game="" is="" nbsp="" over="" see="" span="" the="" this="" to="" used="" was="" we="" where="" zeros="">
00:00.8 
00:00.7 
00:00.6 
00:00.5 
00:00.4 
00:00.3 
00:00.2 
00:00.1 
00:00.0 <---horn nbsp="" now="" sounds="" span="">

But here's my crazy issue: Once the tenth of a second goes to 0, isn't there a hundredth of a second that needs to be counted off as well? If we added another digit to the clock, and continued the countdown from the last example, we'd see this: 

00.00.10 
00:00.09 <---where horn="" nbsp="" now="" sounds="" span="" the="">
00:00.08 
00:00.07 
00:00.06 
00:00.05 
00:00.04 
00:00.03 
00:00.02 
00:00.01 
00:00.00 

But here's where I really lose my mind. Can't we continue to add a digit every time our clock goes down to all zeros? For example, once the clock reaches 00:00.00, can't we now divide the last unit of time into thousands of a second starting with 00:00.009. And once we get down to 00:00.000 can't we start all over again with 00:00.0009? Does that make sense? It seems like that last second, if we continue to divide it up by adding an extra digit, would never end. My brain tells me that once a second passes a second passes, but it seems like we could always divide the last portion of it up just a little bit more. And, I'll admit, this is my nuttiest post ever. 

Edit: And this post is about time and the concept of slicing up time. Not about whether anything can possible be done on a basketball court within a fraction of a second. Edit: 

Thanks for (some of) the helpful comments. This really is akin to Zeno's Paradoxes -- something, I'll admit, I had never heard of.  The best example is this: If a runner is 10 yards ahead of you but you cut the distance between you and him in half every ten seconds, how can you ever catch him?

Index

• Noteworthy because of a rare picture of Masons. (Uh, Worshipful Master?)
• Cop took a vacation. Chaos ensues. 
• Did that kid get killed?

And in the same issue, Random Thought girls:

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Had my oil changed and also washed and vacuumed the car this weekend. Something oddly satisfying about that. 
• I also was able to match the wall paint in the house and was able to do some touching up. Also oddly satisfying.
• I found this old five gallon bucket of wall paint in the garage, opened it, and it was liquidy. Yeah!!  So I then went high tech and bought a paint drill mixer and went to town on it.  I was doing great until I noticed that I had turned the bucket of paint into clay. Weirdest thing ever. (But I was smart enough to get a paint sample before I ruined it. I used that to purchase new paint later.) 
• Dallas County jurors awarded $73 million in a vaginal mesh lawsuit.  I went to law school with and was friends with the Plaintiff's attorney, Tim Goss. Haven't spoken to him in 25 years, but that's about as close to $73 million as I'll ever get. 
• I remember my neighbor friend being punished with a switch one time. I think it was only two minor whacks and probably more for the dramatic visual of the dad telling the kid he was about to get it and then reaching up in a tree. 
• Sports: (1) ESPN has recently unveiled a betting information page on its website. Then during the Baylor game on Friday, the announcers were constantly referring to the line and the over/under. That's a pretty shocking change. (2) His stats aren't bad, by Tyrone Swoopes is not the answer at QB for UT. He can't throw down the field. And isn't this shocking: While as a senior at 2A Whitewright, his team only won one game. How does that guy at a 2A school not win five on his own? (3) As a Baylor fan, I'm beginning to fear TCU and West Virginia. (4) That Icky Shuffle commercial is funny. (4) The Tennessee Titans are awful. (5) Love this hug by a huge Vanderbilt lineman of a tiny UMass kicker after he misses a critical field goal. (6) I used  to laugh about Mark Cuban's comment that the NFL would collapse under its own weight within 10 years. He might be right. What a horrible week for a horrible tax-exempt non-profit corporation.  (7) I love RG3, but he's not worth anything if he can't stay healthy. But would Jerry sign him as a free agent after next season? I could see it. (8) Five of the top ten teams in the AP Poll are from the SEC West. (8) DeMarco Murray has 285 yards through the first two games -- something that Tony Dorsett and Emmitt Smith never accomplished. (9) Couple making out at LSU game tumble over. 
• "Iran won't cooperate with U.S. to combat ISIS in Iraq, country's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei said on Twitter." I'm insane now. 
• In 2013, 460 motorcycle drivers were killed in the state and another 35 passengers died, according to department statistics. Those numbers were up from 446 drivers and 24 passengers in 2012. Fort Worth has seen 14 deaths so far this year. There were 11 last years. Story.
• Being a political nerd, I watched a little bit of Hillary and Bill's trip to the Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa yesterday on CSPAN. It's part of their "Campaign Trail 2016" series where the station just puts a camera at a campaign event with no commercials and no commentary.  When the Clintons arrived they immediately walked over to a cooker and picked up some meat for the cameras which went crazy. They did that for two minutes, smiling, and then walked elsewhere. 
• I love brussel sprouts in melted fake butter. Oddly, I bought some fresh ones from Whole Foods the other day and was stunned to find I liked the frozen grocery store kind better.

Above The Fold