Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• The resiliency of the Leaning Tower of Dallas is great entertainment. But of all the questions (i.e. The size of the wrecking ball, hitting at the top instead of the bottom, etc.), I'm most intrigued that the company uses the high tech equipment of a tire to connect the wrecking ball to the crane.
  
  
• Kind of fun facts: I kept hearing that building was the former Affiliated Computer Services building so I wondered what that company did. It got started in the late 1980s and hit the big time by providing "data services" to 7-11 stores.  It then looks like the company became the pioneers in creating electronic tolls for tollways. Xerox bought the company for $6.4 billion in 2010.
• A better fun fact: Here's the guy who founded it, Darwin Deason.
  
• Guy in the courthouse hallway yesterday: "Could you get me a cup of water from that room over there? I'm sick." Me: "Sure." (I'm probably going to get the Medal of Freedom based upon my many years of public acts of kindness I've done in that place.) Same guy to me a few minutes later: "I've got the flu and quarantined out here. You might not want to stand by me." At least he warned me. 
• I might need to rethink my position that the coronavirus is no big deal. I'm now uncomfortable with people on my side of the room. 
  
• Trump on the Harvey Weinstein verdict this morning: 
  
• I said yesterday the Messenger should check to see if they had any history on the building of the Wise County courthouse. And now someone has put it on a T-shirt. (Or, maybe, just maybe, the T-shirt came first.)
  
• I've heard a lot about Tyson Fury, the "Gypsy King" and the winner of the heavyweight boxing match on Saturday, coming from a family of Irish Travelers who had a lineage of bare knuckle boxing. Man, this is right out of one of my favorite movies, Snatch, and one of Brad Pitt's greatest (and under-appreciated) characters.
  
• Trump, while in India, watched a Laura Ingraham segment on Fox News and then went on a rant about Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg. That's how this works. This is the new normal.
  
  
  
  
• Outside of basketball, Kobe Bryant wasn't an exceptionally better human than millions of Americans, right? I mean, every eulogy is pretty much what you would hear at any funeral in America.
• I was reading this story about a Dallas case and was thinking, "I bet this guy is going to be found 'not guilty'" -- that is, right up until the point I got to the "tearful confession" part. 
  
• I don't know who she is, but I'm sure this is big news to some. I'll be honest, I didn't think that show would survive after Kraddick's death in 2013.
  
• "Christian Nationalism" is a term that I really wasn't all that familiar with. But it explains a lot. 
• The Decatur Lady Eagles and Bridgeport Sissies meeting in the basketball playoffs is delicious. But can we find somewhere closer than Chisholm Trail High School? It's not that far, but it's a pain to get to.