10 Thoughts for March 23, 2014

1. Conservatives have warned that the US debt will result in lower credit rating, yet Fitch just removed its downgrade warning, specifically because the US did not have another debt ceiling fight.  But I'm sure conservatives will still point to the US debt as reason enough to slash our wrists and let some blood drain.
2. You can cut off social network media, but that won't block people out from it.
3. Android is on the verge of conquering Blackberry and beating iOS into the White House.  Interesting. 
4. The future of the New York Jets, is in a quarterback whose rookie season record included 12 touchdowns and 21 interceptions.  Backed up, of course, by a quarterback whose age and health increasingly meant that he'd spent an equal amount of time off the field as he did on it, once he got out of prison.  Indeed, the future is exceedingly bright for the Jets. 
5. Conservatives have apparently gotten behind the BS argument that "bandwidth is constricted"...you know, the one that the cable companies have been spreading.  For several years I've been explaining that, once you get to the fiber optic level, bandwidth is only constricted by technical limitations of separating bands of light carrying data.  As it is, there remains an abundance of dark fiber to this day, following the overbuild of the late 20th century.  That's how Google Fiber got started.  But you know, the BS goes even deeper.  Comcast already gets paid by customers to access high speed internet; now they're looking to get paid by the companies whose services you're paying for; you're paying twice to jerks such as Comcast.  If Google Fiber goes nationwide, we won't have network neutrality disputes because Comcast will no longer have monopoly powers over the last mile.
6. I haven't watched a single March Madness game, but we all know now that not a single person remained with a perfect bracket in Warren Buffet  / Intuit's bracket challenge.  We also know that there are approximately 11M American fools who had willingly given up a bunch of information about themselves for an imperceptible possibility of winning $1B.  The remaining prize -- $100K for the top 20 brackets -- is roughly in line with PowerBall odds for winning $10K, except of course you don't have to relinquish any personal information unless you win, and the lottery only collects your personal information to pay out.  Intuit's going to have a field day with this long list of names.
7. I hadn't watched KOIN News in a while apparently.  The other night I saw Ken Bodie sitting in front of a brick wall and a 42" screen mounted on it.  I know times are tough for some folks, but a brick wall backdrop, really?  Just go with the green screen and show us puppies in the background, in that case.  ;)
8. I read a most interesting bit about how Russia tried to encourage China to participate in a coordinated effort to sell off Fannie and Freddie securities at the time that Treasury Sec Hank Paulson was trying to save both institutions and banks from collapsing.  China wasn't stupid as to slash its own wrists.  But even so, everything you need to know about Putin's motivations in Ukraine are explained right there: He'd sacrifice his own economy for the sake of restoring the Cold War.
9. Russian nationalists might think that Russia serves as a counter balance to the US; think again.  The US spends about 7x more, nominally, on the military than Russia.  Combine China and Russia and you're still talking less than a third of what the US spends.  And that's just at the Pentagon.  Add in Homeland Security ($60B) and black budget ($100B) spending on top of the Pentagon's bill ($700B) and you've got nearly $900B spent in the US on intelligence and military.  Russia just doesn't have the GDP to match that of the US.  I'm not saying that the US should be spending this much, but that it is what it is, and it'd take a very long time for anyone to match that of the US' capabilities.
10. Make no mistake: China does not support Russia's actions in Crimea.  On an UN Security Council vote criticizing the Crimea referendum, China abstained.  The Russian media played it as Chinese support for Russia's intervention in Crimea, which again goes to show just how deep the propaganda goes in Russia.  If China actually supported Russia, they would have voted against the resolution rather than abstain from voting.  China rather chose to avoid voting against its own interest as doing so would dilute its claim on Taiwan and Tibet.  In this way, Russia was humiliated at the UN, but was played down by the west and outright reversed by Russian media.