What's New?

Hello friends!
I know you come to this space to enjoy regular updates on moderately interesting topics. I haven't done many updates lately because I haven't done anything moderately interesting. Work is work. Sometimes I get on planes and do work at other places besides my local spot. What is there to say about that? Not much. I haven't finished any books in the past week, mainly because I'm lazy. Made some cookies - is that interesting? Not really.

More trips are on the horizon so that's... something. I'll share more on those after they are over.

The olympics were on, and now they're over. They are a scam but it's still great to see the athletes get emotional after they win. That never gets old, even for a cynic like me.

Why do they hold the olympics in a city in a third-world country renowned for corruption? The Sochi  (sp?) winter olympics in Russia were bad, and the Rio summer games were worse. How is that even possible? We know the reason that those cities were awarded hosting rights: it starts with big bags of money and ends with big bags of money. You would think that at some point the people collecting all that money would feel somewhat ashamed and maybe try harder to make the graft less obvious. Maybe someday. It's not like we do that sort of thing in the United States. Oh, wait. Never mind.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2015/01/31/publicly-financed-sports-stadiums-are-a-game-that-taxpayers-lose/#715b30f56183

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/a-better-kind-of-stadium-deal/486596/

http://deadspin.com/tag/stadium-financing

http://deadspin.com/no-one-wants-publicly-financed-stadiums-except-the-peop-1748487455