College football kicks off today. I’m sorry. I don’t know where these predictions come from but, yeah, this all seems legit. The big news is that the college football playoffs are expanding to 12 teams. Sometimes four doesn’t seem like enough but the current CFP (College Football Playoff) series has been in place since 2014. The 12 teams will consist of the six highest-ranked conference champions and six at-large teams, similar to other NCAA tournaments. 2026 is when the expanded format might begin, after the CFP contract expires. But the powers that be would like to it start as early as 2024.
Mikhail Gorbachev has passed at the age of 91. If you lived through the 80’s you know that Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev changed the course of the cold war and de-escalated tensions that could have led to World War III. If you were born after 1990, you grew up in a world without a Soviet Union, Berlin Wall, and have never known Russia to be anything more than mildly annoying. Google Cuban Missile Crisis and realize that real people had real fears about the threat of nuclear war. Vladimir Putin may be on the only person alive that would like to see that return and has denied Gorbachev a state funeral.
Remember that time the Air Force dropped a nuclear bomb on the state of North Carolina? Yes, that really happened not once but twice in 1958 (once in North Carolina and before that at Tybee Island, Georgia). Yes they accidentally dropped a bomb and yes it exploded. The nuclear core, however, was not in the bomb at the time. The explosion designed to push the nuclear material to critical mass was enough to leave a 40 ft. wide crater, level a row of pine trees and destroy a farm house and damage 12 others. Miraculously no one was killed. Click here for this week’s history lesson courtesy of The History Guy.
In all seriousness we accidentally did something similar to our dog. My wife bought a subscription to BarkBox and made a big deal out of opening the box each time it came. BarkBox ships on the 15th of each month and contains dog treats and a few chew toys, with a theme of course. Now every time a box comes from Amazon or anywhere for that matter our black and tan hound mix expects treats and chew toys. Like so much Pavlov, Luna believes that every brown cardboard box that comes into the house is full of fun stuff just for her.
This week in 2013 I washed my truck. This is the 1985 Ford Ranger that I started driving when my father passed in 2010. ’85 was the first year Ford added fuel injection to the 4 cylinder Ranger. Believe it or not this little truck made the trip from Georgia to Kentucky, then came back when we “came home” two years later. The engine ticked the whole time I had this and eventually a slipping transmission caused me to let it go, if for no other reason than saving the money it cost to insure. This isn’t the only vehicle I later wished I had back, but it is on the list.
Wow! I totally thought it was butter. This was Walmart’s I can’t believe it’s not butter counterpart that must have been test marketed but never made it to every store. A few years ago the closest location to me was in Soddy Daisy, TN. A picture and description is still on walmart.com even though it is unavailable for purchase.
Mike Rowe shared this Babylon Bee headline from two years ago. He laughed at the time because it was satire. He says he isn’t laughing anymore. He feels sad for taxpayers, he feels sad for the plumber… and he feels sad for the neighbor with the gender studies degree that can’t find a job. I need to shorten it up here and write a full post on this topic. If nothing else I need to respond to Jimmy’s Table podcast.
Opposites do not necessarily attract. The dog on the right is male, on the left female. She has not been fixed but even when she’s in heat old Spencer there is not interested. He is old, possibly 18 years old, and is mostly deaf and nearly blind. His favorite pastime is sleeping, and I mean like 90% of the time. Luna will turn two in November. She is larger, faster, full of youth and vitality… and sometimes makes our home a living nightmare for our senior dogs. Were it not for Luna we would be the human caretakers in an old dog’s retirement village.
The Master's Table 