10 Thoughts for February 11, 2015

1. Football: The Seattle Seahawks' 2015 season is the most critical of the franchise's recent change-around. Last year's losses of Red Bryant, Golden Tate and Brandon Browner hurt. This year, it's almost a guarantee that a couple of other LOB defensive players will leave. They still suffer from a lack of speed on offense, exposing their passing game. They must draft extremely well (not at the top of the draft, but at the bottom) or else they will have a collapse this season.
2. Politics: People need to call out the GOP's recent comments about their concern over wage growth stagnation, because it's all bullshit. It's bullshit because they've long complained about higher labor costs to employers (recently via the ACA or increased minimum wage rates) as an obstacle towards business growth. You can't complain about wage stagnation if you support policies to keep wages low.
3. Education: You often hear about the size of endowments at universities. Private universities must have large endowments, since they do not receive public funds, other than research grants. For instance, USC has an endowment of $4.6B, with an annual operating budget of $3.9B. A few bad years, not offset with rising tuition or cuts, means that endowment is gone. But then there are universities like Harvard, with a $43B endowment and $4.4B annual expenses. Notre Dame has a $8.9B endowment, but with just $1B in operating expenses.
4. Internet: So, I've been clearing out stuff that I haven't used in over 5 years, and posted ads on CL, hoping to sell them, or else donating them and benefiting the tax breaks. It turns out, people who answer ads on CL, often are completely clueless. Seriously. A guy wanted to buy my netbook, but after telling him the specs, decided that it was too slow. It's a freaking 5 year old netbook and you thought it was going to be fast? And then there's the guy who asked me if my tower speakers could be hooked up to his TV. Or the guy who asked me if the tweeters on my speaker worked fine, despite my ad stating clearly that the tweeters should be replaced. Then there was the poor woman who'd switched from Verizon to T-Mo, but her phone had only intermittently worked until it stopped -- I didn't have enough heart to explain what was going on with her phone, because it meant having to hand hold her through the process. I have lost some hope in humanity.
5. Environment: Would you drink waste water that was treated? I would. In fact, I'd rather drink water from a stream or lake that was treated with my UV pen, than straight from the stream or lake. The benefit of intensively treated water, is that it is cleaner than what you could possibly get from anywhere else.
6. Technology: Many people have made a big deal of Apple's market cap record. Don't get me wrong, it's a big deal, but if you compare their P/E ratio to others, there's an incredible room to grow, so don't expect that to stop at $700B. I don't particularly subscribe to Apple's closed ecosystem, nor do I buy into the "ease" of their UI arguments. But, from a bottom line analysis, their stock price is probably undervalued to their profit per share and P/E ratio.
7. Oregon Politics: Apparently last night Kitz had met with leaders in Salem, leading many to believe that he was about to resign. But then this morning he may have had a change of mind with his public announcement that he was not resigning. No one is saying it, but he basically has this choice to make: Quit his job for love or call his relationship off for his job. In either case, I laugh at the counterfactual suggestion that the Republican nominee would have won were all these facts known ahead of time; if we had known ahead of time, Kitz may have also quit his job pushing Kate Brown into his role, and becoming the de facto nominee via write-ins.
8. Politics: While in the UK, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said, "I’d rather be bland than stupid or moronic." I don't think he understands what the meaning is, between the lines: "I'd rather be bland, so that you won't be able discern my stupidity." As a result, he exposed his stupidity.
9. Climate: IDK if this is a sign of climate change, but this year, Portland will surely have flowers blooming before the end of February. Wherever I walk, I can see plants readying their blossoms, and with the recent warm-up, we're definitely going to see flowers in two weeks or less. Two decades ago when I moved here, February was cold. This hasn't been the case for most of the last decade.
10. Climate: Furthering this issue of warmer temperatures in Oregon, compare the snow water equivalent (SWE) to actual precipitation in Oregon's watersheds, for this current water season. To date, the Willamette basin is at 103% of precipitation, but just 10% of SNE average. In many areas measured, there is no snow on the ground. So while Boston is deep in record snowfall, some of Oregon's mountains are completely bare.