Leaving Las Vegas

Weekend Edition.

The semi-annual trip to Vegas a couple of weeks back, a few observations.

One; the economy is in high gear. Plenty of building and growth in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, from Henderson to Summerlin, huge growth. Las Vegas home prices are growing fastest among major markets, topping long-reigning leader Seattle. Southern Nevada home prices rose 13 percent in August from a year earlier, compared with a 6.2 percent rise nationally.

Las Vegas is thriving under a population boom, 4.9 people on average have moved to Las Vegas every hour over the last year. The population expansion in Nevada over the last year was nearly three times the national average and placed the city at second for fastest-growing population rate in any state.

Of those new residents, 34 percent came from California  attracted to the neighboring state’s affordable homes, growing tech sector and reputation as a business-friendly state.

But, only 23.5 percent of Nevadans have a bachelor’s degree or higher, making it the 45th lowest state for this level of educational attainment. Companies are having a difficult time finding qualified labor.

Two; what is the deal with tattoos in Las Vegas? Not just arm tattoos, but full body tattoos. There are 625 tattoo parlors in Vegas, you can spend up to $1,000 on a quality tattoo.

Three; To my St. Lawrence friends – The four-team college hockey Las Vegas Invitational tournament, featuring UConn, Air Force, Western Michigan and St. Lawrence, will be played January 4-5, 2019 at T-Mobile Arena. My reservations have been made, perhaps a reunion golf tournament Friday morning January 4? Stay tuned.

Four; Blackjack – Do you hit when you have a two or three showing when the dealer has a anything but a four, five, six? One of the great mysteries of gaming. This ruined me at the Blackjack table.

HAPPY AUTUMN EQUINOX -

 39 days until Election Day

 55 days until Thanksgiving

 95 days until New Year’s

COLLEGE CHRONICLES – Colleges and universities are wrestling with a rise in sexual-assault claims, lawsuits brought by those accused of assault and conflicting directions from courts and the federal government on how to handle them.

Some schools have found the problem so vexing they have outsourced investigations and hearings. A small group of schools have also started experimenting with alternative dispute resolutions that avoid formal hearings.

#METOO - A record number of women running for office in America. The #MeToo movement taking down men worldwide. Ireland voting two-to-one to legalize abortion. Some Silicon Valley companies promising to make 50% of their workforce female. Young women increasingly dominating men in high school and college classrooms.

What's happening: Everywhere you look, women are rising and forcing results.

This is sparking debate about whether this is a landmark, '60s-style liberation and empowerment — but on a global stage.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who successfully pushed for legislation mandating sexual harassment training in the Senate: "There was bound to come a moment when the unfairness of it all bubbled over into electoral success. ... Why does it suddenly feel like a mass movement — a.k.a., a global juggernaut? I would say that a lot of women have been waiting in the wings wondering if they can do it, and suddenly they are."

Katie Couric, who recently examined gender equality in a National Geographic episode called "The Revolt," adds: "It feels like a historic, watershed moment. ... Think of what we can accomplish when more than half the population has a real seat at the table.”

It's not just politics. Tech companies are trying to improve their perpetual gender imbalance, the Financial Times reports, by "training staff in unconscious bias, ... insisting that shortlists include women, improving referral incentives, ... enhancing maternity rights and showcasing female role models on social media."

The data:

After upsetting headlines about harassment in Silicon Valley, women feel increasingly empowered and hopeful. Tech companies are taking steps to improve figures for women in their workforces, which range from 45% at Pinterest to 35% at Facebook to 26% at Microsoft, according to Recode.

Women will account for 55% of the full-time undergraduates in U.S. colleges this fall, according to a Department of Education projection,  men the "new minority on campus."

A record number of women are running for Congress this fall, and the N.Y. Times calculates that roughly half of the women running in primaries have won so far. This Democratic primary season "is defined by women trouncing men," with women winning in 69% (45 of 65) of races where they faced a male non-incumbent.

From the Senate, Klobuchar cites this stark statistic: More than 1,900 men have been U.S. senators. Only 52 women have been senators in the history of the country — and 23 are serving today.

The trend looks like a third spike in the century-long women's revolution:

The themes — the rise of women politicians, outrage against sex crimes, the secularization of Europe — aren't new. If you include Anita Hill's 1991 Senate appearance during the confirmation hearing for Justice Clarence Thomas, they go back decades. But they are a culmination.

Leandra Zarnow, a history professor at the University of Houston, traces it back four decades, "reflecting persistent activism by women to make inroads into politics and policy, before and ever since women leaned on the United Nations to declare 1975 International Women’s Year."

Zarnow tells us that what we are watching is different, a long time coming, and around the world — "a global upsurge of outrage and engagement around women’s rights that feels different because of its hefty volume and tone."

The first wave, going back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, brought women the right to vote. After the suffragettes, the second acknowledged wave started in the 1960s and took up pay, sex, reproduction, abortion and general equality.

After that, gender historians divide, identifying third and even fourth waves. But we're clearly witnessing a distinct and powerful societal shift.

SMALL LIES MATTER - What a terrible day for the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. The confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh turned into a battle of raw partisan strength — and a repudiation of the idea that judges are independent from politics.

It’s true that there is no way to resolve this nomination without creating anger. The allegations against Kavanaugh are too grave, and his denial is categorical. One side will be left feeling embittered.

Choose your networks:

POTUS RULES OF LEADERSHIP – Leadership books are filled with calls for brutal candor, hiring people more talented than yourself, and collaboration as a force multiplier.

But President Trump’s lessons of leadership, like his approach to the presidency, are radically and ruthlessly different.

1). Your brand should piss someone off. The worst thing you can be is milquetoast, bland. He wants some people to have a viscerally negative response to him and what he’s doing, because he bets that’s going to harden support on the other side.

2). Crisis is a powerful weapon — fire it indiscriminately. "Forget planning," a source said. "Wake up every morning, survey the battlefield, let your gut instinct lead you to a crisis to exploit, bet that no one else can thrive in the chaos the way you can. Ratchet up the pressure until everyone else's pipes burst."

3). You can create your own truth. Just keep repeating it.

4). Accuse the accuser. A source who's spent hundreds of hours working with Trump puts it this way: "He has a history of accusing people of whatever he’s being accused of. Collusion? Democrats colluded on the dossier! Blue wave? Red wave coming!"

5). Fear trumps friendship. Trump wants his inferiors to fear him and hold him in awe. He likes watching them duke it out in front of him.

6). Loyalty trumps talent. Case in point: Michael Cohen. No serious person would employ Michael Cohen as their personal attorney — a point Trump has belatedly acknowledged himself. But as Cohen used to say, he'd "take a bullet" for Donald Trump. Oops.

7). Never admit you are — or did — wrong.  Trump’s #MeToo advice, per Bob Woodward's "Fear": "You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women. If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead."

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this week to Steve Lesniak …famous wine sommelier; Susan Sarandon (72) New York, NY; Bruce Springsteen (69) Wilton, CT.

SUMMER BOX OFFICE - Here's to summer movie revenue totaling $4.39 billion, up 14% from last year. ComScore says it'll be the fifth best summer on record. How 'bout that?

It definitely removes the bad taste from last year, which was the worst summer for movie revenue in more than a decade...

The industry is still worried about attendance. If you divide summer revenue by the average YTD ticket price of $9.27, we've seen about 473 million moviegoers. Sure, that's up 10% from last summer, but it's still the second-worst summer attendance since 1992.

Well, as long as Disney keeps churning out the hits it will be okay okay. It's got the top spots on domestic summer charts—Avengers: Infinity War raked in something like $679 million, plus Incredibles 2 snagged $597.1 million. Juggernaut.

MARKET WEEK – SiriusXM is acquiring Pandora (which is still around and still quite popular) for $3.5 billion. Remember, it's been a thinly-veiled courtship...SiriusXM invested $480 million in Pandora just 15 months ago.

Why it makes sense: The competition is ballooning (h/t Apple and Amazon). But Pandora's still kicking, even if Spotify's the name in the news more frequently.

FYI, Pandora has 70 million monthly active users in North America, while Spotify has 55.8 million. SiriusXM has 36 million.

China and the United States imposed new tariff hikes on each other’s goods and Beijing accused Washington of bullying, giving no sign of compromise in an intensifying battle over technology that is weighing on global economic growth.

U.S. regulators went ahead with a planned 10 percent tax on a $200 billion list of 5,745 Chinese imports including bicycles and furniture.

China’s customs agency said it responded at noon by beginning to collect taxes of 5 or 10 percent on a $60 billion list of 5,207 American goods, from honey to industrial chemical.

Welcome to the last trading day of the third quarter.

Tesla shares are slumping premarket on the news that the SEC is suing Elon Musk for securities fraud. The stock is already down 10% for the past three months.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is on pace for its best quarter in nearly five years, and the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note is heading for a fifth straight quarterly climb.

The S&P 500 has risen 7.2% so far this quarter and is on pace for its largest quarterly gain since the last quarter of 2013.

Advanced Micro Devices shares have added 117% in the third quarter, on track for their best period since 1975. The semiconductor firm is up 217% for the year and is the S&P 500's best performer in 2018.

 A fifth straight quarterly advance for the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield would be its longest such streak since 2013.

Market Week Quiz - This week, several companies changed or added new names. Which of the following did not happen?

a) Weight Watchers will now go by "WW"

b) Alibaba shortened its name to just "Baba"

c) Dunkin' Donuts will remove the word "Donuts" from its logo and branding

d) AT&T will call its new ad and analytics unit "Xandr"

 Answer: below

HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA - Summer's over. Let's talk ice stuff. With the NHL season begins next week (10/3: Capitals-Bruins), let's review what's gone down in the three months since Ovi and Co.'s celebration circuit.

Our picks: Red Wings, another non-playoff year ahead, the same fate for the Anaheim Ducks.

Toronto Maple Leafs in the East, San Jose Sharks in the West – The Cup goes to San Jose.

Major offseason stories:

Barry Trotz heads to Long Island: Trotz coached the Caps to their first-ever Stanley Cup, asked for a pay raise, and quit when management wouldn't budge. Just two weeks later, Trotz was named head coach of the New York "Brooklyn Is So Over" Islanders.

Speaking of the Islanders: In the biggest move of the offseason, 27-year-old center John Tavares left to sign with his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs, who instantly became betting favorites to win the cup. They're stacked.

All the Erik Karlsson drama: An Ottawa Citizen report last week details the sad and sordid off-ice drama involving the Senators defenseman, his former teammate Mike Hoffman, and their respective partners. It involves allegations of an extended campaign of cyberbullying and the shipping off of Hoffman in June — to two teams in the same day. Karlsson has been traded to San Jose.

PEDs? PEDs. The NHL doled out a 20-game suspension to lovable Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Nate Schmidt for violating the league's performance-enhancing drug policy. Schmidt, who vehemently denied any wrongdoing, is just the sixth player since 2007 to run afoul of the NHL's PED policy, which has faced its fair share of criticism in the past.

HAT TRICK - A hat trick is one of the NHL’s rarest achievements with only 81 during the 2017-18 season, or roughly one in 6.4 percent of games. That’s more rare than a shutout, with 144 in 2017-18, or one in 11.3 percent of games, or a shorthanded goal, of which there were 211 last season, or one in 16.6 percent of games. Of the 7,552 goals scored last season, 250, or 3.3 percent, were scored in a hat trick.

The greatest player of all-time, Wayne Gretzky, had 50 regular season hat tricks in his career, or one in 3.4 percent of his games. Active players Brian Gionta, Paul Stastny, Claude Giroux, and Nicklas Backstrom, all with over 200 career goals, each have one regular season hat trick. The point is that hat tricks are rare because they’re difficult.

The NHL started off with a bang from a hat trick perspective in 1917-18, the league’s inaugural season, as Hall of Famers Cy Denneny and Joe Malone both tallied seven that season. Denneny finished with 25 hat tricks while Malone retired with 18. Denneny was the league’s sole career leader in hat tricks from the second season, in 1918-19, until the 1955-56 season when Maurice “Rocket” Richard tied him with 25.

Richard took the lead two seasons later, in 1957-58, and remained the all-time leader until the 1970-71 season when Bobby Hull surpassed him with 27 tricks. Hull’s 28 career hat tricks were tops until Phil Esposito took over during the 1977-78 season and he led until Gretzky passed him during the 1984-85 season with 34 and has held the lead since.

By individual seasons, Denneny and Malone’s seven hat tricks in 1917-18 remained the most in a single season until the 1980-81 season when Bossy surpassed them with nine. That record lasted less than a season when Gretzky had 10, a record that remains.

NHL ON NBC - The NHL's history with broadcast TV hasn't exactly been sparkling. The league regularly schedules playoff games that overlap; Wednesday Night Rivalry games are often between, well, not rivals; and it feels like the same five teams get all the nationally-televised games.

NBC and the league are finally making changes this season.

NBC's family of networks will broadcast more games than ever this year. They're also going to feature more Western Conference teams and do away with the silly faux rivalry stuff. Two matchups that will delight the entire nation:

An intrastate showdown between Sean Couturier's Flyers and Sidney Crosby's Penguins.

The perennial one-playoff-series-and-out St. Louis Blues against the Nashville "Yes, we're a hockey town" Predators' absurd blueline.

Progress! But there are, naturally, still plenty of head-scratchers.

The Blackhawks, a team that has been in clear decline the past few years, will host the Winter Classic. Again. (2) The rebuilding Rangers will play five nationally televised games. (3) Three of the best Western Conference teams (Vegas, San Jose, Winnipeg) have a grand total of zero games on NBC.

TIGER 1.0 vs. 2.0 - When Tiger 1.0 was winning, he was a cold-blooded assassin. All business. Cut out your heart, show it to you pumping, and that was it ... Fans really never got a chance to know the guy, and when we found out stuff about his personal life, we were like, "who the hell are we even rooting for?"

This Tiger 2.0 guy — I mean, that shot of him and Rory McIlroy walking up 18 and the gallery just streaming in behind them ... that visual of the golf fans surrounding Tiger Woods and him being in the middle of the fandom and feeling comfortable about it ... That's a visual that I think nails down what we're loving about Tiger 2.0. He’s a dad ... he's showing actual human emotion. But, he is still weird.

GOLF’S SUPER BOWL - The end of the golf season has taken a few unexpected turns. Tiger Woods won a tournament for the first time in more than five years. Tiger and longtime frenemy Phil Mickelson are now apparently buddies. And heading into this weekend, the U.S. is seen by many as the favorite in the Ryder Cup, a competition in which it has long been a doormat for Team Europe.

Wood's win at the Tour Championship--the huge crowds surging toward him on the course, and the TV ratings that challenged the NFL--was a reminder that, in golf, there's Tiger and then there's everyone else. It was also a reminder that, while golf has a whole new generation of stars, it has not figured out the post-Tiger future.

The Ryder Cup is underway this morning at Le Golf National in France. There is little doubt that this is a strong, unified, well-organized U.S. team.  But the U.S.'s problem may be how physically strong it is. Its top players hit the ball a long way--but not necessarily that straight. Le Golf National, however, is a shortish course with narrow fairways and long rough. If you turn on the TV this morning and see the American players wandering around in the tall grass, it may bode ill for the U.S. team's hopes of repeating its 2016 win at Hazeltine.

The Swami Says: Euros will win again on their turf, 15 ½ to 12 ½.

SWAMI’S WEEK TOP PICKS –

NFL Football Pick of the Week – Sunday 9/30, 8:20 PM ET, NBC: Time for Carrie Underwood to get a better NBC Sunday Night Football theme song. Also, we have the Baltimore Ravens (2-1) at Pittsburgh Steelers (1-1-1). A HUGE game for Big Ben they must win or the season is in trouble, they do Steelers 20 Ravens 17. (Season to date 1-2)

College Football Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/29, 7:30 PM ET, ABC: #4 Urban Liars (4-0) at #9 Penn State University (4-0), The Nittany Lions are favored by 3.5 in Happy Valley, the Liars will cover the spread and win this key Weak Ten East matchup; Liars 50 Lions 45. (Season to date 2-2)

D-III Football Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/29, 2:00 PM ET, HGTV:  #10 UW-Whitewater Warhawks (2-0) at #23 UW-La Crosse Eagles (2-1). A battle of the D-III Wisconsin powerhouses, Warhawks all the way, Warhawks 37 Eagles 28.  (Season to date 2-2)

SCIAC Game of the Week (football) – Saturday 9/29, 1:00 PM PT:  University of La Verne Leopards (0-2, 0-0) at Claremont-Mudd Republicans (1-2, 0-0).  The SCIAC season begins at David Drier Field, we like the Leopards in an upset, ULV 28 Republicans 24. (Season to date 2-1)

MLB Game of the Week – Saturday 9/29; Los Angeles Dodgers (88-71) at San Francisco Giants (73-86), it is down to the rivalry to see if the Dodgers play in October, not this time, Giants 4 Dodgers 2.

Season to Date (42 -28)

ON THIS DATE - Today also marks 476 years since an explorer named Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo — who, incidentally, might be either Spanish or Portuguese — became a hero to all sorts of people who have to attend work conferences, by coming up on the San Diego Bay while looking for a mythical passage across North America called the Strait of Anián.

Next Blog:  October 8 - The Young and Not Restless

Until next time, Adios

Claremont, California

September 28, 2018

#IX-11-379

CARTOON OF THE WEEK – Mike Kuckovich

RINK RATS POLL –

What do these letters mean?  PMP, CSM, CISM, CRISC, ITILv3F, MCSE, CGEIT

____  The genetic code of the common cold

____  An individual who has too many higher education degrees

____  A new gambling game in Las Vegas

____  A lousy manager

QUOTE OF THE MONTH – "Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all." – Aristotle

Market Week Quiz -
Answer: Alibaba isn't changing its name