10 Thoughts for January 26, 2015

1. Football: I must be excited about Super Bowl 49 -- I actually had a dream last night about getting ready for the SB and openly predicting that the Seahawks were going to win big.
2. Football: Speaking of predictions, if I'm right, then Seattle's top scoring defense is the deciding factor that gives the Seahawks their second-straight Super Bowl win over a more powerful scoring offense. Seattle 31 - New England 17.
3. Football: The reason why people remain skeptical of New England's explanations and comments over Deflategate, can be boiled down to Spygate. I have a longish write up on the experiments by Belichick and SmartHead Labs, here.
4. Football: The NFL has warned Seattle that a Marshawn Lynch crotch grab at the end of a touchdown will result in a 15 yard penalty. I wonder, did they warn Michael Jackson against the crotch grab, too? They certainly didn't censor it out, the hundred or so crotch grabs during the 1993 SB halftime show.
5. Football: This is the way-too-early draft conversion. Paul Richardson, drafted by the Seahawks in the second round last year, is considered a speedster. This year, the Seahawks could possibly get a bargain in the late rounds in George Farmer, a former teammate of Richardson who was even faster than DeAnthony Thomas. Give him a chance.
6. Geopolitics: Greece effectively voted to stop austerity by voting in the Syriza party into a controlling share of Greek Parliament. It shouldn't be a surprise given that unemployment remains at around 25%, and extrapolated out, would take another 4 years to settle back down to pre-2008 recession levels -- assuming of course, that there wasn't another recession. A Greek exit remains a potential leverage to renegotiate ECB loan terms, in order to allow Greece to increase spending.
7. Internet:The usage of social media to issue bomb threats yesterday, made me wonder if this was a form of swatting. Were there people on board those planes with a connection of sorts to someone who felt wronged? The dumb people who do these types of things, imperil our civil rights; there should be harsher penalties for those whose actions might encourage the curtailing of civil rights.
8. Internet: It looks like the Portland Metro area won't be getting in on the Google Fiber bandwagon in this go-around. In Oregon, the reason might be a weird property tax rule, and it's been known for some time, now. If you read the very bottom of the WSJ article, it specifically cites this as to why Portland has not been included, yet: "In the Portland area, Oregon tax-assessment rules are delaying a decision by Google to expand its Fiber service there, according to a person familiar with the situation." I've already written an email to my state senator.
9. Space: If you have not seen this, you must definitely check it out and play with it. It is the highest resolution image, ever, of the Andromeda Galaxy. It contains 1.6B pixels, and the full size image takes up 4.3GB! Fortunately, they have an interactive, zoomable tool to view the high res image, without having to download the 4.3GB file. Man oh man, this would make for an awesome image to show on an 8K TV.
10. TV: Netflix is starting to fall back on my shit list. Two weekends in a row, they've said that they're sending out my discs on Friday, but the discs do not arrive until Monday or Tuesday. Usually they'd arrive one day later, and during the weekday that's still the case. So, not only is Netflix no longer open on Saturdays, but they're delaying disc shipments on Friday. Netflix has become too powerful, methinks.