5 Thoughts for November 29, 2016

1. Sling TV DVR Functionality: Sling TV is going to put a cloud-based DVR into beta in December, for people with Roku devices and request an invite to participate. The only thing is, Disney's properties (ABC, ESPN, Disney) won't be participating. Still, having cloud-based DVR will further erode cable TV's advantages.
2. Useful Idiot: It is possible that in the future, historians will look back upon the 2016 election and balance the lack of useful information that was leaked from Wikileaks to the misleading stories that capitalized on these leaks by creating supportive innuendo. I'd argued that, if you were going to use the material, first you must carefully scrutinize it for its value and its veracity; if it has no inherent smoking gun, is only contributes to the innuendo of wrong-doing or impropriety, and as anyone who has paid enough attention to politics would know, behind closed doors it is often ugly or unseemly, but rarely illegal or improper.
3. Climate Something: It's nearly December and there are 18 active, uncontained wildfires in Southeastern US / Smoky Mountains area. I'm just saying if it's burning in late fall, the nation's got a serious problem on its hands and it just might be climate something. There's also the growing frequency of coral die-offs in Australia that is disconcerting.
4. US Healthcare: The impending repeal of the ACA -- Obamacare -- which will scale back Medicaid, combined with the privatization of Medicare, will devastate those very people who voted for Donodus -- the less-educated. And as far as the desire of having a good paying job over a federal guarantee and subsidy perfectly fits the American mythology of self-sufficiency, what these people may be unaware of, is that when the total cost of healthcare goes up, regardless of whether they had a good paying job with health insurance benefits or not, their personal costs will also go up. Losing government-run Medicare means no one will have the heft to control prices, thus leaving consumers to pay more.
5. CFP Committee: A few days ago I wrote about the legitimacy of the conference title games at stake with the CFP's actions to pass over the title winner; now it's even worse. You might have seen the CFP talk about how the separation between Washington and Michigan is "very, very small". It matters little if UW wins, but if they lose, then the CFP may end up putting Michigan into the 4th slot of the CFP, and that would be very ugly. Why? Because neither Ohio State nor Michigan will be playing in the B1G conference title game. Conference title games were meant to boost their conference winners into the national title game, so it's ironic that the CFP is effectively overruling their outcomes by choosing to simply mirror the polls. Since conference title games are money makers for the conferences, and if the CFP committee is merely going to mirror the polls, eventually, the CFP committee will either be eliminated or new rules will be written to require them to effectively select conference champions first. In wanting chaos to reign over the CFP, I now feel compelled to root for Colorado, even though I expect them to be blown out.