10 thoughts for November 30, 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.

1. How does the #1 team in the nation -- Alabama -- allow a 109 yard run back of a failed field goal, to be run back for a touchdown to lose the game?  That was crazy.
2. USC lost to UCLA by three touchdowns, and just looked completely unorganized, uncoordinated and unprepared.  Ed Orgeron probably lost his opportunity to turn his tenure as head coach into a permanent gig, and that's too bad.  Normally, any coach who loses to both ND and UCLA, is on the hot seat, even if those were the only two losses of the season.
3. They looked sloppy from the start of the game to the end, with these little bursts of solid play in between that gave you false hope that they'd somehow settle down and play solid for the rest of the game.
4. Cody Kessler is a good quarterback, but doesn't seem to have any internal clock or the ability to see the whole field.  He doesn't find the wide open receiver and invites the sack.  Don't blame the offensive line, because you do with what you've got, not what you want.  Wittek throws a cannon but can't throw accurately when he's under pressure.  I think the future is in the freshman Gatorade Offensive Player of the Year, Max Browne.
5. Jim Mora has been a class act at UCLA all the way, and is a darn good head coach at the college level.  That's the only positive thing you'll get out of me about the Bruins.
6. You know who's beating China in the space race?  India.  Yes, India!  Ouch, right?
7. Speaking of China, do they really want to force a military confrontation with the US?  China could have been the bigger man and requested a pact to evenly split or equally develop any natural resources in the area surrounding the Senkaku islands.  Instead, they unilaterally declared the air space theirs.  Well, the Japanese can now unilaterally declare the mineral rights under that air space, theirs, right?  Any failure to properly contain this mess and the Chinese will find Republicans pushing for a military build up in the region -- a place that the Obama Administration is already trying to pivot towards, away from the Middle East.  Before you know it, one trigger-happy pilot and boom: we're trying to contain a war from breaking out beyond the thousands of people already dead from a confrontation.
8. Hey, if Afghanistan doesn't like the security pact being pushed by the US, we can't stop them from screwing themselves, now can we?  We're going to have to allow Afghan refugees, methinks.
9. An 85 year old Korean War veteran / retired Silicon Valley exec goes to North Korea to ask for help in locating missing South Korean comrades of his former unit.  I don't know who told him this was a good idea, but now he's in prison and has admitted to committing war crimes against North Korea.  Maybe it was a self-inflicted punishment resulting from guilt all these years of not knowing what happened to his comrades?
10. Paul Walker of Fast and Furious movies fame, died in a car accident involving a Porsche where he was the...passenger.  He wasn't the greatest of actors, but I did love the F&F movie series with him and Vin Diesel.  And Sung Kang.  And Eva Mendes.  And Michelle Rodriguez.  And...