Saturday Night -- Everything But The Bakken -- October 21, 2017

In a long note like this, there will be factual and typographical errors. But this post is complete. No new items will be added.

NFL-free Sunday. I didn't watch much college football these last several years, not sure why. Maybe like wine, too many mediocre franchises. But one game I never would have missed would have been the USC (my alma mater) and Notre Dame game. But with my NFL-free Sundays, I have now added college-free Saturdays. That's why you are seeing more music videos on the blog. I've gone back to what I really like: music. I say all that because I just googled tonight's USC-Notre Dame game. Wow, wow, wow, USC was walloped. It's my understanding that USC was supposed to have a good team this year, and a great quarterback. In both polls, USC was ranked three to six spots ahead of Notre Dame. Final score: 49 - 14, Notre Dame wins.

College football students writing the stories for NCAA.com? Wow, look at the writing in the NCAA story summarizing this game:

The first typographical error, "game" for "came" was easily deciphered, but the second one took me several tries before I finally translated it. That full sentence inside the oval should read:

"The home team has now won each of the last five match-ups in the rivalry." 

A reader suggests it was meant to be:

 "The home town has now won each of the last five match-ups in the rivalry."

At least the future football commentator correctly spelled rivalry.

Boring Company. Is this the big prize Elon Musk is counting on? When one starts to connect the various dots and read the tea leaves this suggests a marriage made in heaven. The article is over at the LA Times, the 13.5 mile tunnel that pretty much makes or breaks the California bullet train. Data points:

• a 13.5-mile tunnel through Pacheo pass
• apparently the need for this tunnel was only identified earlier this year (2017): how many years have folks been thinking about this project?
• massive scope and complexity of the project: threatens the very viability of the entire project
• this one tunnel could exhaust the $5.5-billion budget for the entire 54-mile segment from Gilroy to Chowchilla
• estimates range from $5.6 bill to $14.4 billion
• 3 years to bore; 3 additional years to electrify, finish
• skirts the huge San Luis Reservoir
• a "starter system" necessary; this segment is in the starter system, San Jose to the Central Valley
• the starter system alone has a $21-billion price tag, and funds are already based on somewhat sketchy projections (my hunch: six years from now, so much will have been spent on "starting," the project will become too big to fail and taxpayers will end up paying more and more as the project outruns cost projections)
• irony: the reason the "bullet train" failed its first start system was due to tunnels needed at the south end -- under the San Gabriel and Tehachapi mounts north of Los Angeles

Anyway: I expect to hear from Elon Musk and the Boring Company any day now. It fits everything:

• huge project
• huge publicity
• government payments
• the Boring Company is already in California, I believe; if not, talk of doing some California projects

Just plain nuts: the other day my wife was telling me Trump had put a travel ban on travelers coming out of Chad and was seeing if I knew why. I thought that was a trick question. I can't even begin to imagine why anyone in this country, or at least this household, would even care if the US placed a travel ban on travelers from Chad. Exactly how many folks might that affect anyway? Now I see where that conversation started. My wife's #1 news source is Rachel. Yes, it's going to be a long seven years.

Morphed? It appears that BloombergBusinessWeek has morphed into The Rolling Stone. I continue to get mailers from BloombergBusinessWeek to re-subscribe. I'm impressed they have my current address. We've moved at least once since I last subscribed to BBW. But I digress. This time they also me a copy of their current issue; it's Rolling Stone with a new cover:

• the BBW "footprint" is the same size as RS now that the latter has shrunk to a fourth its original size
• it's as thin as RS; blindfolded, one could not tell the difference between BBW and RS
• the feature articles are the same ones I would expect in RS; e.g., "Don't Frack on Me," an article about fracking near Denver, CO -- exactly what I would expect from RS.

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Idle Rambling

An extended family member has decades of experience working for a company transferring North Dakota wheat from elevators in Oregon to ocean-going ships headed for Asia. 

I did not know it but for years (maybe decades) his company has been doing the same thing -- but with different (?) agricultural products -- on the Mississippi River in Mississippi, during the "harvest season" which lasts about one to two months. He and his fellow workers from Oregon rotate 2-week tours to Mississippi during the harvest season. He flies from Portland, OR, to Memphis, TN, where he rents a car and travels to Cleveland, MS, about a 2.5 hour drive according to Google. 

He says he really, really enjoys working with the young folks there who feel truly blessed to get seasonal jobs for $14/hour. They do not take those jobs for granted. They are some of the highest paying jobs they will ever see. 

He is very, very upbeat when discussing his time in Mississippi but when I hear those stories, I count my blessings. 

I know nothing more about what he does in Mississippi than what I wrote above, but a little internet sleuthing, I think, has provided the full story. A screen-shot of part of a PDF from one source:

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Fruit Loop Road

Earlier in the month, I spent a few days in Portland, OR (the city I fly into where I rent a car to drive to Flathead Lake, MT). I always spend a few days in Portland on either side of the trip to Flathead Lake.

This time, as luck would have it, a farmer's market of sorts popped up in one of the neighborhoods. I did not get the name of the farm but it came from Hood River. They had about six varieties of pears and about six varieties of apples. My daughter was very familiar with the company; normally she and her husband drive to Hood River every autumn to buy their fruit, but was excited to stumble across this pop-up farmer's market. Apples and pears were sold in bulk -- pick, mix whatever one wanted, 75 cents/pound. 

I had forgotten but on our trip back from Flathead Lake, we stopped for gasoline in Hood River,. It was well after dark but we noted a huge parking lot that was filled. We thought it might be related to Hood River kiteboarding but when we inquired, it was all about the autumn harvest, a two-day farmer's market. The individual who pumped our gasoline (another story for another time) told us that we had to come back some day and take the Hood River County Fruit Loop. 

I was unaware that this area is the nation's largest pear-growing region. And wow, their pears are delicious. I was introduced to the "Gem", a new pear, previously identified as US 71655-014, that has been tested in Hood River, Oregon, for ten years (as of 2012) and was recently released.

The selection, known as 014 for short, came from a cross of Sheldon and selection US 62563-004. It is a European pear but can be consumed fresh at harvest. It has a crisp, juicy texture and sweet, but mild flavor more similar to an Asian pear than a European pear. Following cold storage and ripening at room temperature, however, the fruit ­softens to about three pounds firmness and develops typical pear flavors, though it is not a melting, dessert-type pear. It has a five- to six-month storage life under regular ­atmosphere storage.

The "Gem" was incredibly good. I would argue that it is the best pear I have ever tasted, and as noted, it is ready to eat at time of harvest. More on the "Gem" here. Its pedigree:

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Happy Halloween