Podcast #30 – Sharing is Caring!

Weekly Flavor

• Mario : Long Trail, Unfiltered Pumpkin Ale, 5.5%
• Brian : Ballast Point, Pumpkin Down, Scottish Ale with Pumpkin 5.8%

Quick Follow Ups

• Tesla Mode X – Forgot to Mention it’s Bioweapon Defense Mode (techradar.com)

  After launching the Model X, Elon Musk has been busy retweeting articles about the new Tesla car, which comes with falcon wing doors and a ‘bio-weapon defense’ system. This bio-hazard button activates an advanced air filtration system in the Model X, which Tesla says can filter out bacteria, viruses, smog and allergen, filling the car’s cabin with “medical-grade” air.

  Gizmodo, however, spoke to a couple of “bioweapons expert,” who have questioned the capabilities of the Model X’s bio-weapon defense system, in particular the filtration system being able to capture viruses, which are typically much smaller and more difficult to filter. In what we presume to be a response to this, Elon Musk tweeted, “Model X Bioweapon Defense Mode definitely filters viruses btw, even the small ones.”

  “Has hospital operating room level filtering,” he added. Of course, we don’t actually think (and also hope) we’ll find ourselves in a situation any time soon that will require us to filter out dangerous viruses, but it’s good to know that Tesla wants us breathing nice, clean air.

Ski News

• Copper Mountain Started Making Snow (ski.curbed.com)

  Copper Mountain, always one to get the jump on winter, started snowmaking this weekend. When temps dropped to 27 degrees early Sunday morning, the guns started blowing on the Andy’s Encore trail. As the Summit Daily reminds us, A-Basin and Loveland started snowmaking soon after Copper last year. Copper Mountain’s opening day is scheduled Nov. 6.

   

• Vail Resorts Made $1.4 Billion Last Year (ski.curbed.com)

  Riding increases in ticket prices and visitation, Vail Resorts logged about $1.4 billion in revenue for the 2015 fiscal year. The bulk of that revenue came from the operation of its 11 mountains, which accounted for more than a billion on their own. The rest of the publicly-traded company’s revenue came from lodging and real estate. That Vail Resorts was able to reach its highest revenue mark in a decade despite a miserable winter for its three Tahoe resorts speaks to just how well positioned the company is in Colorado and now Utah.

  In its public filings, Vail attributed the strong performance of its mountain operations to increases in season pass sales and how well its four Colorado mountains did last year. The company’s Colorado resorts saw increases in visitation, spending, ski school revenue and retail operations. And, of course, adding Park City and Australia’s Perisher helped the bottom line. In contrast, Vail’s Tahoe resorts saw a 16 percent decline in skiers for the second year running. Overall, Vail’s lift revenue was up about 20 percent, with increases in sales and pricing of season passes and lift tickets. Season pass holders actually skied a little bit less last season,
  which means they were paying a little more per day skied. That factors into what resort operators call the “effective ticket price” — everything they made from passes and tickets divided by all the skiers visits. Higher prices and fewer pass holders on the hill means Vail comes out ahead.

  Vail’s public filing also states that, in addition to the $110 to $115 million it’s spending in 2015, it has plans to spend $17 million on its summer projects at Vail, Breckenridge and Heavenly. And Vail plans to keep investing $100 million per year in capital improvements, which includes maintenance but doesn’t count money spent on summer projects.

  Vail Mountain Resorts:
  Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone in Colorado; Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood in the Lake Tahoe area of California and Nevada; Park City Mountain Resort and Canyons in Park City, Utah; Afton Alps in Minnesota Mt. Brighton in Michigan

   

• Killington to host world cup event in 2016 (powder.com)

  This week FIS officially shook up the World Cup calendar, announcing Vermont’s Killington Resort will host the East Coast’s first World Cup events in 25 years. On November 26 and 27 of next year, the best women skiers in the world will descend on the Beast of the East for the mountain’s inaugural women’s World Cup slalom and giant slalom events.

  “We are on the [FIS] calendar now,” said Killington Communications Director Michael Joseph in a VPR interview. “It went from being proposed and heavily lobbied…to now we are on the FIS calendar. So we’re going to host a Women’s World Cup race and we couldn’t be more excited about it.”

  The events are the first of their caliber in New England since Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, hosted races back in 1991. The Vermont World Cup will also be a homecoming for several members of the U.S. Team, including reigning three-time World Cup slalom champion Mikaela Shiffrin, who rose up through the Burke Mountain Academy System. Races will take place on Killington’s famed Superstar trail, winding underneath the Superstar Express Quad and finishing in the K-1 base area. Killington’s snowmaking reputation precedes it, and no trail receives more attention than Superstar, which traditionally skis well into May every season. According to Joseph, FIS likely factored this in when considering the mountain for the November time slot.

  Killington takes over the late November event from Aspen, who will host the 2017 FIS World Championships later in the season.

   

• The Perfect Entry-Level GoPro + Wi-Fi.

  HERO+ captures immersive 1080p60 video and 8MP photos and features Wi-Fi and Bluetooth®, which provide access to the GoPro App and Smart Remote.1 The GoPro App lets you control your camera remotely, preview your shots, play back content and create short highlight clips on your phone or tablet for easy sharing to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and more.2 Waterproof to 131’ (40m) and packed with user-friendly camera modes, HERO+ is the entry-level GoPro for those who want high-quality capture and on-the-go connectivity.

Topic: Sharing is Caring

• 6 Reasons Why Your Kids Should Learn to Ski

  • Great activity option in the winter.
  • Kids are the perfect age to learn new skills.
  • Active kids keep you young.
  • Family bonding.
  • More couples or ‘me’ time
  • Discounts on lessons and tickets

• Dolomiti Ski Together

• Ski Party App

Around the Horn

• IPAs Are Giving You Man Boobs

  Not many people know this, but those hops in your favorite IPA are actually wonderful medicine for insomnia and menopause, thanks to their high phytoestrogen content. These same phytoestrogens, however, might be less desirable for men, as indicated by the common condition known among brewers as Brewer’s Droop.

  Yes, you read that right: Hops are giving men man boobs.

  In the book Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, herbalist Stephen Herrod Buhner describes the three standard uses of hops in herbal medicine: as a sleep inducer; as a diuretic that successfully promotes urine flow; and finally, as a natural source of phytoestrogen to treat menopause and endometriosis. The herbalist Susan Weed also refers to hops as a nutritive painkiller, a sleep-inducing herb, and as an effective supplement to boost milk production in lactating women.

   

• Putin is the King of the Ice on His Birthday

  Russian President Vladimir Putin spent his 63rd birthday playing an exhibition hockey game in Sochi. Unsurprisingly, Putin was the main draw, and scored seven points for his team. Putin played alongside international hockey legends like Pavel Bure and Vladimir Lutchenko. His team won, beating their opponents 15 to 10. The Russian president left with a trophy for his team’s win and a medal for his contribution to hockey in Russia.

   

• Is SpaceX about to reveal a mission to MARS? Cryptic tweet suggests company is to announce the most ‘exciting thing ever’

  SpaceX, the private space company set up by Elon Musk is said, by a space news journalist, to be on the verge of announcing the ‘most exciting thing ever’.

  The news has given rise to internet speculation about whether the firm is about to announce its plans to build a colony on Mars.

  Out of several projects they are connected with, SpaceX is said to be working on a project known as the Mars Colonial Transport, which will use a system of reusable rockets and capsules to transport humans to Mars. Elon Musk has said the transporter will be ‘100 times the size of an SUV’ and be capable of carrying 100 people to Mars at a time.

  No telling what the announcement could be, but many people are awaiting the news.

   

• Inside the World of AOL Disc Collecting

  The discs came like a swarm of locusts, burrowing into post boxes and sliding through mail slots. They popped out of cereal boxes and appeared on meal trays during airline flights. They fell out of magazines and Happy Meals. They were stocked at the checkout counters of Best Buy, near the popcorn at Blockbuster, on bookshelves at Barnes & Noble. The ubiquity of AOL discs—those free marketing materials sent by American Online in the 90s to entice people to sign up for internet service—could be likened to world domination.

  It bothered Brian Larkin, then a 20-something in Los Angeles, to see his roommates repeatedly throwing the CDs into the garbage. So he started collecting them in a bin to recycle later. But he never got around to it, and when he moved, he found the bin, now piled high with the shiny discs, and had a revelation: They were beautiful. Larkin, who now has well over 2,000 AOL discs in his possession, thought he was the only one collecting these things. Soon, he realized there was a small, but tenacious, community of AOL disc collectors.

   

• Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo Has His Next Gig: Writing for HBO’s Silicon Valley

  The former chief executive officer of the beleaguered social network Twitter has a new job that some might view as a promotion—contributor to the writers room on HBO’s hit show Silicon Valley.

  Dick Costolo, a onetime stand-up comedian, says he’s spending a couple of days a week working in the writers room for the third season of the tech-industry parody show.

   

• China’s Terrifying Glass Bridge Just Cracked

  How do you make the world’s longest glass bridge, suspended 180 meters above a valley, even scarier? How about by dropping a stainless steel mug on it, causing the first of three layers of glass to crack? That’s what happened on Monday afternoon, prompting tourists to shove each other as they ran to safety.

  The bridge is now closed until further notice. Sounds like a fun bridge.

   

• Regional Fighter Has Accident, Poops on Canvas After Being Submitted

  This past Saturday, heavyweights Daniel Cooper and Travis Wolford collided at a “Ruckus in the Cage” show in West Virginia. Cooper ultimately won the fight via guillotine, but what happened afterward became a story unto itself.

  Before the fights started he went to Chili Night and ate some hot chili. During his bout he had a colossal explosion where chili beans and everything he ate landed all over the mat. Says he instantly lost 15 pounds…. Plans on fighting November 13 in Summersville to prove that it was just an accident. Any takers???