Limbo: A Movie Review

I rented a DVD from Netflix called "Limbo".

I don't usually review movies because everyone and their kid brother reviews movies and travel and blah, blah, blah, but, I write what I want to write so shoot me.  Just do it from a distance because up close I will take the gun and shoot back :-)

If you plan on watching the movie don't read this review because it will screw the movie for you.  If you want a reasonable review read Roger Ebert's, although we have totally different opinions.  We both agree that the acting was great.  He thinks the director was great, I think the director was a putz.

This movie sucked.  The movie drags like a turtle pulling a trailer.  Give it 2 out of 5 stars.

The acting was great.  The visuals were great.  The plot was ridiculous.  The back story leading up to the plot was okay and in some cases very good.

The movie starts out at a wedding where the leading lady is singing the worst possible wedding song.  This first scene sets the tone of the movie, totally unbelievable.  The brides father would have come over, or sent someone over, and told the band to play something else.  If it had been my daughters wedding I would have been kicking the band off the stage, physically, literally, kicking.  If you watch the movie you'll understand.  That said, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio has a good voice.

The leading man is David Strathairn and he was really believable in this movie.  Let me tell you how good he is.  Kris Kristofferson plays a bush pilot involved in the drug business.  David Strathairn is trapped on an island with a woman and a sick girl. Kristofferson lands.  Strathairn has a talk with Kris and finds out bad guys sent Kris to find Strathairn and the woman and girl so they can kill them.  David Strathairn makes letting Kris, the drug dealing bush pilot, fly off to go get the bad guys seem almost reasonable.

Not quite, but almost.

Any reasonable person trapped in that situation would have fought with Kristofferson to keep the plane there.  The radio might work, there might be things they can use.  So what if they can't take off the plane makes a crappy boat all by itself.  Think about it for a couple seconds and any reasonable person would have done anything they could to stop that plane from leaving them.  David Strathairn's acting is so good it makes letting Kristofferson leave seem almost reasonable.

The movie ends "cut to black".  I thought to myself, the director either couldn't figure out how to end the movie or they ran out of money.  I am leaning toward the director couldn't figure out how to end the story.

By the end of the movie the plot was so ridiculous the only possible ending that could have made sense would have been that Kristofferson was busted almost as soon as he landed and flipped on the bad guys, telling the cops where the people were trapped on the island to cut a deal.  That was the only reasonable ending I could come up with.

If it had been me, I would have ended the movie with watching the plane land, a boot very much like the killers stepping out of the plane, pan up to a very native looking cop-pilot.  The last scene would have been the plane flying away from camera while Vanessa Martinez (Mastrantonio's daughter) narrates about Kristofferson flipping and ends the story with something uplifting about how she wrote the story.

I have to say that Vanessa Martinez was very good in this movie.  I never noticed her before and watching her in this I will be keeping an eye out for her.  Anyone who can act as well as she can will accomplish something in Hollywood.

Overall the movie was a waste, but,  if you enjoy good acting and you can imagine a decent ending (or just imagine mine) the movie might be worth watching.

But, I wouldn't recommend it.

Proving Rick Unger is a moron and his followers are ignorant robots

Let us look at government spending in a context that makes some sense. The Obama admin likes to play music chairs with their data so don't be surprised if these links quit working. The Obama admin is not as transparent as they pretend to be.

Lets open up a document that gives us the GDP:

http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls

Save that document on your drive and save it as gdplev-JDAYER_is_FRICKING_AWESOM.xls or you can make up your own name. I actually used gdplev-a. (I think spelling awesome wrong plays well into the morons who think I am masturbating mentally to prove my own self worth, it would never occur to those idiots that I just want to share something that should be obvious).

Delete everything but column A and column B.

Now you have a list of the GDP for years 1929 to 2012.

Open up:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2014-TAB/xls/BUDGET-2014-TAB-1-1.xls

Save this on your hard drive and then save a copy we can mess with.

Delete everything but columns A, B and C in the copy.

Delete row 83.

Copy cell B35 to C118

Paste the data into the gdplev sheet we copied, select cell D9 (or whatever) and then paste. You should have GDP data (in billions) aligned with Tax Receipts and Outlays (spending) (in millions) from 1929 to 2012.

There are several formulas we can use to derive the percentage of tax receipts and percentage of spending based on GDP.

My favorite equation, =((D9*100000)/((B9*100000000)/100))

Another slightly weird equation, but, usable, =(D9/B9)/10 (millions are 1,000th so if I divide by an extra 10 it gives me hundredths)

Another equation, ==(D9*1000000)/(B9*1000000000)

We have to remember that the GDP numbers are in billions and the tax receipt and outlays are in millions so we have to convert. You are welcome to use your own equation as long it represents an accurate ratio that we can compare to other years.

Put the equation in cell F9 and then double click on the lower right corner of cell F9 to auto fill. This gives us tax receipts as a percentage of GDP. Is the taxation ratio lower or higher than other years?

In cell G9 we need a similar equation, =((E9*100000)/((B9*100000000)/100)) where we use the outlays so we can compare the percentage of GDP spent by the government.

Lets look at Obama's spending.

Obama is collecting a lower percentage of GDP in taxes and is spending more of GDP. Obama is actually collecting a higher percentage of taxes from the middle class and has lowered the effective tax rate of those making in excess of $1,000,000.00 I'm not going to describe how to check that data here, but, I'll give you a clue how to do it. Download the data from the IRS website.

This is not rocket science people. It is really easy to figure out for yourselves. Quit being robots that believe what you want to.

Rick Unger, the perfect example of ignorance

There was this photo people were sharing on Facebook about an opinion Rick Unger wrote in Forbes about how Obama is the president who has increased government spending the least since Eisenhower.  Total Bull Shit and millions of ignorant morons all over the nation, if not the world, believe this tripe.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/24/who-is-the-smallest-government-spender-since-eisenhower-would-you-believe-its-barack-obama/

Education is always the key.  If someone gives you a fact, check it yourself, otherwise you are an ignorant robot.

This article is really stupid since we need to compare Budget Spending to the Gross Domestic Product and the Tax Receipts Collected to be incontext, but, for this blog we will just address the ignorance of the writer, Rick Unger and his ignorant followers.

This article is a pretty good trick since there isn't any real solid budget data on anything after 2011.  Everything after 2011 is estimated.  Lets look at 2009, 2010 and 2011.  The only real data that exists.  And lets look at Obama's ability to predict spending.  We will use two documents;

Why are we using 2009?

Because during Fiscal 2009 the Obama administration passed some really huge, off budget spending bills.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2009-TAB/xls/BUDGET-2009-TAB-3-1.xls
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2013-TAB/xls/BUDGET-2013-TAB-1-1.xls

These are documents that give us the most basic budget information.

First, lets look at the 2013 budget with hard data from 2009, 2010 and 2011.

(I have now checked the 2014 budget which includes hard data from 2012, the spending prediction increase was off, 2009 prediction for 2012 was 1.6% over 2011, 2011 prediction for 2012 was -2.06 and the 2013 prediction for 2012 spending was 5.34%, how are those for a range of predictions.  Actual was -1.75%.  Unger's reliance on Obama admin prediction accuracy is ridiculous)

In cell K8 write a formula that calculates the increase in spending over the previous year.  Make up your own formula it really doesn't matter what formula you use.

I use a little bit different of a formula, K8=((C8/(C7/100))-100).  I use C7 as my base, divide by 100 to give me a "per century) or "per 100" and then divide the cell I want to see the increase in by that number.  Then I subtract 100 to give me the percentage of increase only.

If you want to use a different formula be my guest, since we are doing a comparison between years it really doesn't matter what formula you use.  I will the results of my formula to discuss the results.

A more common formula would be ((Current Year-Previous Year)/Previous Year)*100 (or set cell format to percentage. The number is the same so whatever. If you don't come up with the same numbers I do, I don't care as long as your numbers represent and accurate ratio of spending increases that we can use for comparison. If you don't know what I mean, use one of the formulas above.

Obama takes over in 2009 and government spending rose 17.942% over 2008 in 2009.

Okay, so did anyone since Eisenhower increase spending more than Obama did?  Sure, Nixon did in 1975.

Now what kind of an increase in spending did Obama predict for 2009, lets look at the 2009 budget document.  Do the same percentage calculations on this sheet. Put a formula in cell K8 and then double click on the lower right corner to fill down.

Obama predicted a 6% increase in spending and spent 18% more. Good prediction there!

How about 2010? In 2009 Obama predicted a 0.5% drop in spending (-0.5% increase) and what do you know, spending went.....Negative (so Obama got the direction right) -1.75%. Again, Obama's prediction was way fricking off, although, in this case spending went down more than predicted. Good job.  Not really since we are making an assessment of the Obama administrations ability to accurate project spending, which is what Unger based his article on.  This prediction pretty much sucks.

How about 2011? In 2009 the spending prediction for 2011 was up 2.6% and spending went up 4.25% in the 2013 budget document.

So what have we learned? That Obama's predictions about the budget pretty much suck. Not even within 50% margin of error and 2 of the three predictions we can test are off 300% or more.

If we open the 2011 budget from GPO (just change the year if you have not figured that out) and we look at the predictions and actual spendings in the 2013 the numbers are a little closer. In 2011 the percentage increase in 2011 is predicted to be 3%.  A little better, still wrong though.

Okay, so we know the Obama admin budget predictions suck for the most part.

Rick Unger actually mentions in the article that he uses the spending predictions made by the Obama administration to arrive at his conclusions. So the guy used really sucky predictions to assess future spending.

How did Bush 2 do between 2001 and 2008. Obama took over in 2009 and we have real data for 3 years. Bush 2 increased spending an average of 6.6% over 8 years. The total increase in spending, percentage, from 2001 to 2008 is 60%. From 2009 to 2011 Obama increased spending an average of 6.8% and in three years has increased spending 2.4% from 2009 to 2011. In 2003 Bush 2 had increased spending 15%, of course Bush 2 was dealing with government spending after 9-11 also, but, that isn't relative since we are not looking at what the government did, just how much they increased spending.

Those numbers sound kind of weird...to weird for a writer to write about so Unger wrote an article about predictions, not reality

It wouldn't do to say “Obama increases spending more per year on average than Bush 2 did, but, has increased spending less in total” Telling the truth confuses people because so often reality is not the nice neat package we want it to be.

In reality these numbers don't mean a lot because we didn't look them in context, In relation to how much we actually made. The spending has to be looked at in the context of Gross Domestic product and Tax Receipts.

Unger's article is Bull Shit.  Reality is messier than the crap Unger wrote and we shall really see how poorly Obama has done around 2018-2019.  Claiming Obama is increasing government spending at the lowest rate since Eisenhower based on predictions as accurate as these are is total B.S. that only someone as ignorant as Unger could believe.

Obama, Alinsky, Conflict Politics and ignorant authors

I'm reading a book about popular psychology and while there is some good stuff in the book this author is oblivious.

The author is enchanted by the propaganda around Brarrak Obama. So far Obama has done nothing but refuse responsibility, spend money and engage in conflict politics.

I know some people, like the author of this book I am reading, think Obama is a “community organizer”, someone who brings people together for social justice. A “community organizer” is nothing of the sort.

The guy who started the concept of community organization is a guy named Saul Alinsky and he wrote a bunch of rules for community organization and called them....wait for this...Rule for Radicals.

Sounds a little strange, it isn't like bringing people together is a radical idea. Lets look at a couple of Alinsky's “rules” .

3) “Wherever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.”

4) “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”

5) “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”

Now maybe I am a little weird, but, those don't sound like rules designed for bringing people with different ideas together, those sound like rules of engagement for conflict.

Conflict, not bringing people together but how to engage in conflict. Community Organizers are people who fight with others on behalf of some group with a purpose. Think “Lobbyist”.

So...look at the stuff Obama did during his first term, created conflict making the other side look “wrong”. Think about the current IRS scandal. People Obama managed committed illegal acts targeting opposing political groups. Conflict Politics. Obama denies responsibility, the way Alinsky tells people to.

“The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as the “dangerous enemy.” The word “enemy” is sufficient to put the organizer on the side of the people . . .”

Here, in one of Alisky's most famous directives for community “organization” we discover that the job of a community organizer is to engage in conflict with an enemy. A community organizer has no other purpose except to engage the enemy.

There has to be an enemy to engage one.

Barrack Obama specializes in conflict politics and the actions of his administration, such as the current IRS scandal, are the result of Barrack Obama's focus on conflict politics. It doesn't matter if Obama knew about everything the soldiers he placed in the field did since they followed his leadership style, a leadership style whose foundation is in conflict politics.

This idiot writing this book “throughly” studied Barrack Obama and didn't realize the guy focuses on conflict politics.

The IRS scandal, or at least one like it is predictable. The IRS scandal is the result of conflict politics. The idiot who wrote this book will never admit that any more than Obama will stand up and say “As a community organizer I engaged in conflict politics to further the ideology of the communities I represented. I brought those politics to Washington and while I had no personal part in the actions of those I managed, my leadership and focus on conflict politics undoubtedly influenced their actions.”

Instead both the author and Obama will go to their grave defending their assessments and behaviors.

Psychology is a subjective science. While statistics can give us information on behaviors it is the subjective application of that data which makes or breaks the psychologist. In addition it is the subjective assessment of peers which drive the evaluation of psychological assessments. That kind of subjective assessment driving subjective assessments leads to the kind of group psychosis which resulted in the Salem Witch Hunts and a presidental administration specializing in conflict politics.

As long as psychology is practiced as a subjective science it will continue to be mis-used. The guy who wrote this book I'm reading made an irrational assessment of an individual based on his own prejudices.

No rational person can look at the conflicts which have pervaded the Obama Administration and claim this President has brought people together. Reagan, whom I thought of as a pussy, was an expert at bringing people together and engaging in cooperative, bi-partisan legislation. Bush 2 really tried, Clinton did better than either Bush 1 or Obama. Out of the last 5 presidents, Reagan has been the president who brought people together and Obama has been the president pushing them apart.

Its sad.

I have seen changes in the way Obama behaves. I think he has realized that conflict politics are detrimental and he is now working hard to bring people together. I think it is too late though. The legacy of his first four years will define him, scandals of opposition, conflict politics, will define the Obama Presidency.

I'll pray for him though. I think the guy bit off way more than he could chew and the job has chewed him up. I feel bad for him, but, not to bad since being Pres and being an ex-Pres has a lot of perks.

When Obama first took office I knew he would fail miserably because of his focus on conflict politics. I wish he had turned it down, but, I have come to understand that few men could turn down this kind of opportunity to try and create change. He failed to change anything for the better, the conflict politics have made many things worse and will continue to make things worse until around 2020. I just hope that people don't blame the failure on Obama's skin color.

I'm sure some people will. We should be able to tell by the number of blacks in office. About 1 out of 10 should be black. If there are fewer than 10 black senators or fewer than about 50 black congress people then racism is still a huge factor in politics. 12% of the population of the United States is black so about 12% of politicians should be black.

Eventually this will just happen because people won't see skin color. How do we know when it has happened? Skin color won't be an issue AND there will be a common distribution of people in politics.

In the meantime I'll read crap like this book and learn something since I can learn from anyone, and I will continue to be amazed at the ignorance some people flaunt as if it is intelligence.

Manufacturing today

I wrote this for an assignment in a class and I liked it so I am posting it here.

I chose manufacturing because it is an industry that I was, and still am in a very peripheral basis, involved in.

Manufacturing is an industry based on consistency.  Consistency is a synonym for stagnation.  When something stays the same too long, it stagnates and becomes rotten.  The most useful skill in manufacturing is knowing when to change and adopt new technology.

The last question, "which businesses did you focus on in your industry choice that have used the collection of information in a strategic manner--how did it contribute to their success?" is a little more complicated and requires an understanding of the path the development and implementation of manufacturing technology typically takes.

In the 1950s the Air Force funded the development of a new technology called Numerical Control that they used to create consistent profiles for the wing struts of super-sonic aircraft.  This technology advanced into what is now called Computer Numerical Control.  The mainstream manufacturing industry was slow to adopt CNC machines.  When I started in manufacturing in the mid 1970s we used what was called "Hard Tooling", giant machines that were specially built to manufacture a particular type of component or perform a specific operation.

In the mid 1980s, between 25 and 30 years after NC technology was developed, the expense of the machines, the expansion of their capabilities and the ease of changing machine set-ups and programming made it possible for main stream manufacturers to invest in CNC technology and remain profitable.

While the adoption of new technology will reduce operational costs the expense of purchasing the technology and the expense of implementing the technology must be less than the reduction of costs.  Typically the reduction in costs must pay for the implementation within a maximum of 5 years and preferably sooner.

Recently, as a favor, I worked out a very conservative, one page, return on investment for the implementation of an EOS direct manufacturing system to be used in the manufacturing of firearms components.  I was able to prove that IF the company was willing to produce titanium components for popular firearms and they maintained labor and infrastructure costs within a specific, typical range for the region they were in, that they could return their investment within 2 years and probably less.

I also suggested that they indemnify themselves using typical industry methods since direct manufacturing of firearms components for the retail market would probably be subject to liability challenges, some real and more that were politically based frivolous lawsuits.
Profitability is very important since the firearms industry is a highly profitable section of the manufacturing industry and the more profitable a business is the more easily it can absorb the hidden costs of the implementation of new technologies.

However, since the firearms industry is also very political the implementation of new technology can be retarded based on potential political liabilities.  In other words, because some people hate guns they will grab at any straw to destroy the industry.

This is extremely dangerous to manufacturing in general and the United States in specific.  Weapons have driven development of manufacturing technology for centuries.  Usually high end retail consumers or special government orders pay for the implementation of new technology in very limited lots.  CNC technology and super-sonic aircraft or corporate and private jets for example.  Once these high end retail and special purpose government contracts have established the viability of the technology, the technology is implemented on a trend which usually follows the industry profitability and ROI.  Business which can expect the lowest return on investment, usually the least profitable, being the last to implement new technology.

The added expense of politically based liability reduces the ROI of the implementation of new manufacturing technologies in weapons production, limiting that technology to major weapons manufacturers like Raytheon or General Electric and slowing the implementation of new technologies in mainstream applications.

Fused Deposition Modeling, FDM, was developed in the 1990s, and now, 20 years later politicians in the United States are trying to legislate the implementation of the technology, especially as it pertains to weapons manufacturing.

This creates the potential for other nations which are not concerned with the issues surrounding political liabilities, and so do not require capital investment to deal with political liabilities, advancing into new manufacturing technologies faster than the United States and other industrialized nations.

Fortunately, India and China, the two nations poised to take advantage of this weakness, do not have high end retail consumers in weapons that can drive investment in the development of these technologies.  It remains to be seen if these nations will take advantage of the political issues to develop government investment in direct manufacturing technologies that would replace the high end consumer market.

Prior to reductions in funding by the Obama administration, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, developed plans to stimulate investment in direct manufacturing technology.  My understanding is that this directive is under funded and with the current political climate concerning direct manufacturing of weapons it is probably unlikely to be funded.  DARPA, the organization that developed CNC technology and the Internet, is politically out of favor.

The next ten years will be interesting years in manufacturing.  There is some hope that the medical industry will take the place of the weapons industry in driving investment in manufacturing technology.  Currently military spending runs around 5% of GDP, consumer firearms manufacturing runs about 1% of the GDP, about 25% or 1.5% total (estimated) of that being devoted to manufacturing.  Health Care spending runs around 16% total, with a relatively small percentage (maybe 2-5% or about half of weapons) of that devoted to manufacturing.

In all the collection of historical information on the Internet related to the implementation of manufacturing technologies has made understanding the implementation of new manufacturing technologies and the typical historical path this implementation takes much easier than at any other time in the history of the world.  Yet, people ignore or inhibit this path.  Very interesting.

In my opinion the current controversy over the implementation of new weapons manufacturing technology specifically, and new manufacturing technology in general, proves two very old axioms, that "History repeats" and "People are their own worst enemies" are both true and are probably not going to change soon.