5 Thoughts for November 23, 2016

1. In Donodus We Trust: Long before the election, I had complained that the biggest problem with Donodus was that you couldn't trust whatever he said because he was a slick salesman who would say one thing to one group and the complete opposite to another group. You couldn't discern if he was a conservative, a liberal, or something else altogether. He hadn't even assumed office before he began backtracking on his promises, and now some of his supporters are outraged. Ha! The other major problem with Donodus is that he is less interested in doing the work needed to run the country as the CIC, and more interested in looking good and showing his face everywhere he can. The combination of low knowledge and weak interest in the details will be fateful, very quickly, and when things go wrong he'll be pointing the finger at everyone around him.
2. CFP and the Legitimacy of Conference Titles: The still fairly new move from the BCS to CFP in Division I-A football could face a question of legitimacy in a couple of weeks: Can a team that does not win its conference's title get into the 4-team playoff? If the answer is "yes", then there is no reason to have conference title games as the CFP would have signaled that a conference title has no weight -- all they're doing is applying teams' strength of schedules against the polls -- and we might see this take its toll in subsequent years in ticket sales and viewership numbers of the title games -- why tune in, when you know the outcome has no bearing on who gets invited into the CFP?
3. Pokemon Go: 9 days ago I decided to install the app. The last two days, it won't let me log in -- apparently, Niantic / Pokemon has had a long history of user authentication problems with the most convoluted solutions. I'm not sure why I've suddenly run into this problem, but one reason is getting banned, and to test it I used completely fake credentials through the Pokemon Trainer's Club and it shot back a quick message that I had used incorrect credentials, so it's definitely getting into contact with Pokemon's servers, meaning that it's probable that I was banned. That would be sort of funny if I got banned because of my prolific use of the game. In the 7 days I had been playing the game, I was easily able to jump up to level 15 -- a result of using the app every time I walked the dog and the fact that living in downtown means I'm constantly running into monsters and pokestops (places where you fill up on stuff you need to capture monsters). Because I already walk the dog more than a mile a day, it was very easy to hatch several eggs. IDK what's going on, but the app already had a ton of issues with it, so, no loss if I got banned, I suppose, even if I was on a fast track towards dominating the game locally. I only wish that I had screen captured my level and the monster I had whose power level was up to 1000. The point is, lacking a true addiction, the path of least resistance always wins out and that path of least resistance is to quit the game.
4. Recount? Voting Irregularities?: So, you probably heard about how a bunch of computer scientists believe that they have circumstantial evidence pointing to possible ballot counting irregularities stemming from potential electronic hacking. What it comes down to is whether or not the polls were badly off this year or not, because if they weren't, then there could have been widespread hacking across the country, seeing as Florida and many other states rely on electronic voting (DREs). So you wouldn't believe who just crowdfunded the money needed to ask and pay for recounts / audits: Jill Stein. Seriously, she deserves a lot of respect for doing this because Hillary's campaign is struggling on whether or not asking for a recount would make them look like sore losers. Would I hang my hopes on election results being flipped upside-down? No. Do I think people are actively trying to hack the elections? Yes. Did I donate money to get to that $2.5M needed to pay for recounts? You bet I did.
5. Seattle Seahawks: If you're a fan of Seahawks, then you already know about last week's decision to axe Christine Michael. Because of all the injuries from this past Sunday's game with Philadelphia, today the Seahawks promoted former USC wide receiver from the practice squad to the 53-man roster for Sunday's game against Tampa Bay. The guy is an all-around athlete. Undrafted (because he rarely got to play due to two injuries, but nonetheless left for the NFL early) he moved from wide receiver to cornerback, and this past off-season, moved to running back. That he's been kept by Seattle for two years, along with his ability to make multiple position switches, says something about Farmer and his character. Now, if only they'd use him to catch out of the backfield and show off his top-level speed.