10 thoughts for November 24, 2013

I have a lot of thoughts going through my head, all the time.  Here's my way of getting a bunch of them out of my head, without taking the whole day to write long form.

-- I skipped Sunday --

1. Even the Oregon news media is punishing the Oregon Ducks team for their lackadaisical attitude last week that came back to bite them in the butt.  Take heart, Ducks, that you're not a Beaver.  Although I might have to change that after this week's Civil War game.
2. USC might whip UCLA convincingly this year.  Last year Max Wittek started for Matt Barkley who was out for the rest of the season with his collar bone injury.  Today, we have Cody Kessler playing, and while not perfect, he does not throw the ball 3 feet over and behind a receiver at 150 mph as Wittek did in his three starts last season.  Half the battle is not defeating yourself.  Today, we also have the emergence of a solid defense and a running game.
3. UCLA is consistent.  They've won all the games against equal or lesser competition but stalled against the top competition (Stanford, Oregon, ASU).  That makes them predictable: Needs better talent to win against the top teams.
4. Oil prices were already headed downward.  With the Iran deal announced, prices look to drop even further as oil sanctions are temporarily halted and the markets flood with Iranian oil.  Good news for...January (futures) at the earliest.  That is, unless the pro-Israel lobby stirs up trouble and finds a way to hijack the agreement.
5. The first day of Hanukkah falls on (American) Thanksgiving.  Latkes or kosher turkey or both?
6. Speaking of Thanksgiving, if you love football, you'll have a ton of games to choose from: Texas Tech at Texas, Ole Miss at Mississippi State, Packers at Lions, Raiders at Cowboys, and Steelers at Ravens.  Thanksgiving is a lot like New Years Day, isn't it?
7. If you read everyone's opinions from Iran to US to Israel, it's the hard-right of all sides that are completely against diplomatic solutions.  The ultra-conservative mullahs in Iran are against it; the staunch Jews are against it; the Christian Conservatives are against it.  In other words, the religious right of every country is against diplomacy.
8. I had wondered why the pages of Design Boom and others were filled with so much residential architecture from Japan.  Now I know why.  Kind of makes me want to move to Japan.  Maybe I can convince a friend to do all the communication and we can build homes in Japan from Hawai'i?
9. 3D printing is creeping into the mainstream, slowly but surely.  We're talking nascent steps, because the real progress comes in a year or two when several patents expire making stereolithography a potent mainstream technology that is affordable.
10. Laugh at this cultofmac quote: "If you criticize Apple harshly, they will never so much as return your emails for the rest of your career. But if you criticize Google harshly, and the next day request a Nexus 5 review unit, they’ll cheerfully overnight it to you like you never said anything." -- I'm telling you, you're cheering for the wrong team, if you're a fan of Apple.