Message Forum

Outlaws' version of "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et2OCCGj8mI&list=RDMM-fa2ZKzfIP0&index=36

07/21/21 05:53 PM

#22956

Wayne Gary

All of you T-sips and Sooners

I saw on WFAA ch 8 that according to the Houston Chronicle and other news outlets UT and OU are wanting to join the SEC.

07/21/21 07:52 PM

#22957

My thoughts on that league shakeup is it sucks.

Nothing wrong with the Big 12. Need to Add UH. Possiby BYU.

Texas has a hard enough time keeping their donors happy. (in football)

Friend of mine has pretty good season seats. She pays a "license fee/donation" of 5,000 to get the tickets. And that was four years ago. Husband is ignorant of that. He's from USC.

07/21/21 09:58 PM

#22958

David Cordell

Lance, I deleted you previous post because it was snarky toward someone I regard highly. If you want to submit it in a form that is not insulting, be my guest.

07/22/21 08:53 AM

#22959

Lawrence (Lance) Cantor

OL' BEN LUCAS

David, Since i have no way of knowing in advance who your freinds are...or whether my comments and opinions may have offended you...please forgive my post regarding our classmate Phil Dyer.

Admittedly, I don't know Phil very well, but as our Class President...I've been puzzled while noticing his absence from these Forums. Perhaps as a friend, you will encourage him to make himself more familiar. In any case, please forgive my post. It was not intended as an insult. Just ask Wayne...who is a better judge of my snarky insults....and knows BS when he sees it!

Wayne, thank you for the invite to rejoin you down by the riverside to shoot guns and stuff. Since we have 2 upcoming August invitations to attend parties at ranches in Canton and Lindale, TX...let's await the fall when it will be cooler and more enjoyable. Although Steve has avoided your invite to share your Sparkling Grape juice, Christopher and I will happily accept your offer soon. Thank you!

Sandra, Steve, Jerry,

Sandra you mentioned yesterday that you useta live in the wide open spaces of Lucas, TX several years before moving to the promised land in Weatherford.

By coincidence, I was in Lucas yesterday as well...serving and grillin' burgers, brats, and chikn for 25 parents from my son's Middle School. The 8000 sq. ft. McMansion sits on two or 3 acres, with a backyard as long as a football field that backs to a creek...replete with treehouses in tall trees. It took 45 minutes in traffic to get there from my home in Lake Highlands.

Back in the days of RHS, Jim Mulvihill and i drove our motorcycles to Lucas...which seemed like an all-day trip from Richardson!

Also at RHS, Jerry May remember our Gang theme song as Ol' Ben Lucas...which I've included below.
It's a bit Kinky...but the video and lyrics will undoubtedly help you connect the dots to us as emerging teenage deplorables!

https://youtu.be/9JRmKaGP9xc

Kinky Friedman – Ol' Ben Lucas Lyrics
(kinky friedman)

Ol' ben lucas had a lot of mucus
Comin' right out of his nose.
He picked and picked till it made you sick
But back again it grows.

Well, ol' ben lucas had a lot of mucus
Comin' right out of his nose.
He picked and picked till it made you sick,
But back again it grows.

When it's cotton picking time in texas,
Boys, it's booger picking time for ben.
He'd raise that finger mean and hostile
Stick it in that waitin' nostril,
Here he comes with a green one once again.

All right, pick it, eric!

07/22/21 09:20 AM

#22960

Lawrence (Lance) Cantor

PROVERBS 22
Thirty Sayings of the Wise

4 Humility is the fear of the Lord;
its wages are riches and honor and life.

6 Start children off on the way they should go,
and even when they are old they will not turn from it.

10 Drive out the mocker, and out goes strife;
quarrels and insults are ended.

11 One who loves a pure heart and who speaks with grace
will have the king for a friend.

17 Pay attention and turn your ear to the sayings of the wise;

apply your heart to what I teach,

18 for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart
and have all of them ready on your lips.
19 So that your trust may be in the Lord,
I teach you today, even you.
21 teaching you to be honest and to speak the truth,
so that you bring back truthful reports
to those you serve?

24 Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person,

do not associate with one easily angered,
25 or you may learn their ways
and get yourself ensnared.

Amen.

07/22/21 01:11 PM

#22961

Wayne Gary

Lowell and other longhorns,

According to Channel 8 the main reason UT & OU are wanting to join the SEC is more money. Yesterday they told the Big 12 they would not renew their media contracts when they expire in 2025. They now can publicly say they want to join the SEC. It will take a majority of the SEC schools to approve an expansion. A&M said yesterday they want to be the only Texas school in the SEC. Un-said at this point is that 11 of the 14 schools in the SEC are Land Grant Universities. TU and OU are not Land Grant.

07/22/21 03:33 PM

#22962

Why was the circle round-about removed at the intersection of Belt Line Rd. and Coit Rd.? I thought it was a good way to keep the flow of traffice flowing. Was it removed because of volume of traffice increasing?

Even with volume increasing, wouldn't the round-about still work just as well as it always did? Wasn't the idea of the circle be that a car would yield, then proceed with only a slight delay of speed.....so even if traffic backed up a little behind a yielding car, the yield would only cause a slight delay of the flow, while a full stop at a stop sign would cause cars to stop for a minute or two, which would be more of a hold up than a momentary pause.

How was it proved that a full stop was better than a momentary pause?

Math whizzes will probably enjoy tackling this challenge, which is why I'm bowing out.. If I thought about it for a while, I think I could figure it out, but that's asking too much of a Senior citizen who has other more pleasant tasks at hand, gobbling up my time and interest.

07/22/21 04:23 PM

#22963

Lady Lanajuju of Parchman's Farm & Country Estate,

They replaced several traffic lights with roundabouts/circles in Anchorage, Alaska starting in the late 90's or early 00's, and it GREATLY improved traffic flow wherever they did that, especially at the "rush hour" there - actually it is crowded going home, depending on time of day. Britain had a good idea putting in all their roundabouts as well - now if they'd just drive on the RIGHT side of the road (revamping their dental public service announcements/info & dental schools might help also - hahahahahaha!!!).

Also I was in my credit union yesterday and I quoted Mark Twain to the young, pretty girl helping me. But she didn't know who Mark Twain was!!!! And I SWEAR TO GOD, she asked me, "Is he related to Shania Twain?" I replied, "Ne'er the twain shall meet!" Actually I saw a GREAT show here by Shania Twain - really entertaining to watch plus the great voice & songs - my 1/2 11th cousin, once removed - I'm cousin to just about anybody descended from French Canadian pioneers - the only exceptions I can think of being actors Jon Favreau & Dax Shepard (saw "Let's Go To Prison" (2004) the other night - panned & lost money but I thought it was hilarious - with Dax Shepard) - I have a celebrity-cousin spreadsheet with over 130 French-Canadian cousins.

Chief Jimi Bob Bedpost

07/22/21 05:08 PM

#22964

I came across this trivia today which caught my attention.

Approximate IQ scores of some notable people:

George W. Bush---124

George HW Bush-----135

Abraham Lincoln-----140

J. Madison-----141.3

Chester A. Arthur----141.5

Garfield-----141.5

Theo. Roosevelt---142.3

John Adams-----142.5

B. Hussein Obama---145

Jimmy Carter---145.8

Woodrow Wilson----145.1

Bill Clinton-----148.8

FDR----150

JFK-------150

Thomas Jefferson----153.8

J. Biden-----119

John Quincy Adams-----168.8

Leonardo DaVinci-----200 (suspected)

Einstein-----165

07/22/21 06:34 PM

#22965

janalu.

What was Reagan's?

07/22/21 06:38 PM

#22966

Bob Davidson

Jim -- some of those IQ scores are close to reality, but most are garbage. If you look, you can find the military general intelligence scores of some of the Presidents and candidates who released their military records. I remember a few: JFK -- 117, W Bush high 120s, Nixon high 140s, Kerry low 120s. There was a typical Demonrat (I'll use your spelling -- sometimes a little malice is quite pleasant for the soul) hoax when Bush ran against Kerry citing a fake something like "the Lowenstein Insitute" that had their guys as near-geniuses and Republicans as slightly below average. Every lilterate liberal I knew at the time fell for the hoax since it fit the narrative in their minds. There are all kinds of listings of IQ scores for Presidents and other famous people, but they are almost all just someone's fantasies or projections.

People love numbers, whether they are real or not. They totally forget that IQs are a bell curve placement measure. People also don't realize that the basic breakdown is that 50% of the population will by definition be between 85 and 115, with 25% above and 25% below. The number shows where an individual compares with everyone else quantified by the measurement tool. (If you are our age you can take 10% of your SAT score and have a rough IQ score -- after us they started dumbing the test down and it doesn't quite work.)

One of our classmates told me, back in the early 70s, that there is no real fundamental difference in ability between people who score in the top 5% or so in those tests (an IQ of 125 or higher, again by definition) but the higher the IQ number, in general the lower the motivation and focus. She was studying psychology and seemed to know something about those tests. [I should add that several of us had taken one of those tests, and she was really pissed about scoring a little lower than the rest of us.]

Murray and Herrnstein wrote a fascinating book, The Bell Curve, in the mid 90s about intelligence and testing and what it all means and its effects. It made liberals absolutely furious -- or even more furious than they normally are -- and they announced, without actual evidence, that the ideas were debunked and the authors were wrong. I thought the authors pulled their punches way too much because there are some truths that we aren't allowed to talk about in our society and they had to muddy the waters. Aside from facts people don't like, essentially, there is something called a q factor that is reasonably consistent with different kinds of cognative testing and that measures something that has huge impact on people's lives. The book is easy to read and worth your time. It's full of the sort of thing that makes seemingly random events connect in a way that makes sense.

If you look, you can pretty quickly figure out how "smart" someone is in relation to other people. One easy was of telling crudely is how they deal with simple thinking -- abstract ideas just aren't for everyone nor is analysis. Look at whether people repeat what someone else said, like a book report, or look at situations and figure out what they mean -- you have the difference between above average and smart. Actual dummies just insult people they disagree with. To me, it's why someone like Lowell is interesting, even though he's, sigh, a liberal and Tommy isn't.

We have had some brilliant Presidents -- Jefferson, Madison, both Adamses, TR, Hoover, and Nixon come to mind. Others were dynamic leaders -- say, Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy. We've also had real dumbasses -- Andrew Johnson, Harding, and Biden are pretty obvious. Woodrow Wilson is my personal bete noir among Presidents -- he was a philosophy professor and president at Princeton, but the evil fucker laid the foundation for a hundred years of racial animosity with his anti-black racism and segregation of the federal government -- that's still tearing the country apart, not to mention insituting his "progressive" expansion of the federal government's powers -- that's also destroying us. He had a huge IQ.

07/22/21 07:39 PM

#22967

Lowell,

R. Reagan's was 130 and George Washington's was 132.5, supposedly.

Like Bob said, IQ determination is a Bell Curve measurement, and Woodrow Wilson was truly a nasty cuss, in spite of his debonaire looks!

Wilson's wife governed for him on the QT after a stroke left him severely handicapped. I'm not sure why the vice president didn't take over, except that the information was kept very close to the vest, as is common with Democrats.

07/22/21 08:25 PM

#22968

Marty Fulton

Janalu, there may be more than the two reasons that the roundabout at Belt Line / Coit was replaced recently.

First, there are SO many drivers that DON'T KNOW how to navigate a roundabout. The secret is being in the correct lane BEFORE entering. Trying to change lanes IN the roundabout leads to problems.... Increased traffic is also a reason - we all have noticed more & more folks moving to N Texas. Maybe they missed the revenue from the 'red-light' cameras, (where you get a ticket in the mail).

When I get bored, I watch 'traffic' videos on You-Tube (road rage, idiots in cars, Trucker close-calls). I highly recommend installing a Dash Cam in your vehicle. The lions share of car accidents in these videos are 1) people not checking surrounding traffic when changing lanes or turning at an intersection. 2) Over-correcting to avoid hitting someone failing #1. 3) Distracted driving resulting in rear-end collisions. As a result of viewing these, I have begun checking traffic to my left when the light goes green. Getting T-Boned on the drivers side could be fatal.... and it only takes a couple seconds.... I'm using a VIOFO A129 dashcam with a 128GB microSD card (which is sold separately - get the heavy duty variety that withstands high temperatures).

Lowell, can't believe you pay so much for tap water. Guess that's the price you pay for living 'out in the country' without a well. In Sherman, the water/sewer/trash residential rate minimum is $46, which usually covers two people's usage (but no lawn watering). Add another $10 for summer watering.... They also have street sweeping (weekly) and heavy trash pickup at your curb AT NO EXTRA CHARGE! AND, in my part of town, we get well water, which is great for cleaning up with a minimum of soap. I never used to buy bottled water, but then I discovered OZARKA on a hot summer day......

07/22/21 08:48 PM

#22969

Bob D,

That was Janalu, not I who was posting the IQ scores. Though, yes, those numbers you have agree with what I've heard - the Kennedy's weren't/aren't that smart, 117 is about right, no way 150 for JFK. Garfield was also another brilliant President. US Grant was NO SLOUCH either. His memoirs are pretty much acclaimed as the very best of any American military leader. He only read his studies once generally at West Point and spent most of his time reading fiction - still finished in the middle of his class. Also he was the best horseman of anybody at West Point at the time. He could read a map or a battlefield VERY WELL And he was EXCELLENT strategically (his relentlessness vs. Lee at the end plus his deploying Sherman & Sheridan elsewhere as overall General replacing Halleck from 1864 won the war), tactically & operationally (logistics - his experience in the Mexican War in the quartermaster's corps was invaluable later, especially in the Vicksburg campaign) as a military leader, the first Union general that could really match Lee and win.

Actually from what I know, Andrew Johnson was not stupid. He was poorly educated, and he did improve himself in that regard later. He was a Southern Demonrat though and yes, he royally messed up any chance we had at constructive Reconstruction following the War. He thought the slaves, though free, and the Southerners should just go back to the way things were pretty much before the conflict - no reconstruction urgency from him!

And Woodrow Wilson is truly one of the very worst Presidents ever. In fact the only Dem Presidents I have much positive to say anything about would be Truman and JFK.

07/22/21 09:15 PM

#22970

Bob Davidson

Sorry Jim and Janalu -- I didn't mean to confuse the two of you. I do like what both of you post and you both have my admiration for perspicacity.

My beef with IQ scores is the margin of error, which is usually considered to be 4 to 5 points either way. If people take their results to mean that they have a set number of points, it is misleading and inaccurate.

If David and I are both of exactly average intelligence, even though we are extraordinarily handsome, attractive to women, and charming, we should both have IQs of 100. With the margin of error, say I have a bad day when we took the tests and guess wrong on a couple of questions I'm not sure of; he has a good day and guesses right. The results show me with an IQ of 96 and him of 104 -- which is within the margin of error. I go through life thinking I'm below average and he thinks he's above average when we both are average.

07/23/21 10:01 AM

#22971

To my knowledge, I never had an IQ test. But, somewhere in my memory I have an IQ score from some test done back when I was in school at Fairfax Elemtary in VA. I did not know how to read and write when I entered 1st grade that I can remember. There was no kindergarden, so I started at age 5. I think my score was determined before I could read or write, so there's that. Have never paid attention to IQ. When I googled Reagan's IQ, there was a wide swath of what it was.

About the number one most repeated issue on my Nextdoor platform is the water bill. Each month when it comes some Neighbor on Nextdoor goes berserk and the responses resonate.

As far as interesting or being interesting goes, I would guess if I am interesting it would be from having a closeness to thousands and thousands of personal interviews with persons of different circumstances all surrounding their cars, insurance, and driver license issues, and doing it without being "jaded" in the job. I think that happens so many times with people and their jobs.

Getting a quote on insurance now is just the facts mam. Before web quoting and direct selling by large carriers who have hired agents on salary instead of agents on commission, the process was interview in person or over the phone, sometimes in personal visits.

I did not just talk with severe circumstances either. Occasionally a severe case (losses, suspended licenses, lawsuit type claims issues, and the like,) would come up, but mostly phone calls and visits were just typical auto insurance processes. Regardless of the sedate issue, inflicting personality into the conversation or getting a personality out of the client was or is essential to the process. That's what's missing these days. Interaction both as being an interested in the other guy's circumstances, and trying to get them to open up to the process as well as developing a relationship in just a 5-10 minute consultation.

I think the different layers of insurance, higher up, company claims adjusters and attorney's both defense and plaintiff, only are seeing the extreme side of the issues. Probably this circsumstance exists in other legal processes too.

I did just have a lovely conversation with a customer service rep at BCBS this morning re handling the co pays and deductibles on my brother in law's (what, million dollar) claim from the freeze. I had tried over and over again to get a form processed allowing me to be the rep for questions on his claims. I interjected a question of just "from where are you working? (it was Chicago) and we talked about the Astros and the White Sox. That seemed to be such a nice exchange. After we finished, since I had made an error on the cease date of my reping him on the claims to cut off on 7 1, she called me back and said she was sending me another form so I didn't have to look up the old e mail for when it was sent originally.

People get so frustrated by having to call, get put on hold, leave a message, verification of the person calling for securing reasons, and all that crap. It takes patience.

I know and empathize what Sandra has been going through lately on her mom.

And now, golf. Friday dog fight. Fivesome. We play wolf. 6 per man per hole on the three man team and 9 per man on the two man team. Two man team is the tee off guy picking one other to go with him against the other three. There is a hammer option which a team can accept of surrender. We also put in 20 a man to be in a stableford scoring. 1 for bogey, 2 for par,, 3 for birdie, -1 for tripe or worse. Quota for points is determined by your handicap subtracted from 36. Usually about 30 guys in the dogfight, so nice pot. Plus 5 or 6 points on the quota is always in the money.

I am guessing Don Chester would a quote of 32 or 33 at our course. My quota is 18. The triple's are what always hurt me -0- for double also if I get to many doubles.

07/23/21 12:10 PM

#22972

Bob Davidson

JIm -- I enjoyed Grant's autobiography a great deal. The man who came through was someone I admired. Unlike our other two won-the-big-war presidents (Washington and Ike) he was a pretty poor president.

I'm also a fan of Garfield. When he was shot, the country replaced a brilliant man who rose from poverty to being a teacher, preacher, lawyer, and general in the Civil War with Chet Arthur, a gladhanding machine politician from New York.

I thought Johnson was a bit of a dolt because he was so far over his head as president, like Truman. There is a lot I admire about both of them as human beings, but they weren't good presidents. (If you haven't read it, the book based on Truman's interviews with Merle Miller gives you a really good idea of the guy and his limitations.)

07/23/21 01:33 PM

#22973

Kurt Fischer

Well, I officially joined the Gerry and the Pacemakers fan club on Wednesday. The procedure was late in the day, so I got to stay overnight at the hospital. While 90% of patients go home the same day, I think I had to stay because they knocked me out completely. Unfortunately, my cardiologist "forgot" me the next day and I wasn't sent home until 7 at night. (How does that happen?)

Overall I have to be thankful for one doctor spotting my problem (low pulse rate (35-45) and bradycardia) and for the successful pacemaker implantation. It probably saved my life.

Unfortunately, just like the crocodile in Peter Pan, I think I'll go through the rest of my life not being able to sneak up on people. The tell tale "lub dub" will give me away.

07/23/21 03:10 PM

#22974

Kurt,

My Dad remarried after my Mom passed away, so I had a stepsister named Jan for many years. She had a rare condition which caused her to need an artificial aortic valve implanted. She had a young daughter who was about four years old at the time, who used to sometimes lean on her mother's chest and say, "Mom! I can hear your valve clicking!" She told her Mom that she didn't like to hear that; it was a little upsetting to her. But Jan would just say, "Be glad that you can hear it! If it ever stops clicking, I'll be fading fast!"

Her valve worked just fine for many, many years, but we lost her not long ago at 62 years of age. She donated her body to a medical school hoping that doctors could learn more about her condition to help others in the future. She was a fine lady indeed, who enjoyed her life immensely!

07/23/21 03:33 PM

#22975

Bob D,

Don't worry about confusing Janalu and me; people have been doing that for decades, even at RHS although she told me that doesn't remember me from high school. Maybe it was all that time I spent at Parchman's Farm.

Yes, Chester A. Arthur was a New York machine politician but he actually didn't perform badly as President. That surprised everybody since his being the VP was a result of political maneuverings, not because of any great things his contemporaries thought of him at the election of 1880.

There were specific things I LOVED about Truman: 1) the buck stops here (the Anti-Obama), 2) dropping the nukes on Japan - I think that actually resulted in a net gain of Japanese lives since the number of military & civiliian Japanese deaths in our planned invasion of Japan would have been (likely much?) more than those Japanese killed then or later by the bomb effects, 3) honest, non-elitist person. Also while I know a TON more about WWII and the Civil War, I think from the little I know that he did the right thing in firing MacArthur.

Kurt,

Heal quickly!! Thanks for the alert about we elderly's needing to be alert to our body's signals! God is GOOD!!

07/23/21 03:49 PM

#22976

Steve Keene

Chief,

Old classmates sometimes die, but they just won't fade away.

07/23/21 04:03 PM

#22977

Chief Toenails,

But those Eagles sometimes fly, after we failed to trade them away...

Chief Bedpost

P.S. We may need a pow-wow concerning how to accelerate ALL that!

P.P.S. Hunter Biden has made MILLIONS with his HUGELY-IN-DEMAND consulting skills with foreign nations and companies. Now he's a renowned artist selling his paintings for half a mil apiece. My doctor just told me that I have to see a brain specialist due to abnormalities he noticed in a routine scan (ordered obviously for the psychosis). But the way that everything Hunter touches turns to gold (as opposed to EVERYTHING else ANY Dem EVER touches, which turns to road apples automagically), I'm at the point now where I'm going to insist that Hunter perform any necessary surgery. Ben Carson, Ben Schmarson.....I just hope that any surgery that takes place is BEFORE our beloved President, his father were to die - since somebody told me that if Joe does pass away, then NONE of Hunter's services in ANY way would be worth a plug nickel after that.

07/23/21 06:41 PM

#22978

IQ testing amongst our 20th Century enemies?

07/24/21 02:03 AM

#22979