Youngest son dragged me over to the Colonial to see this flick last night. Frank, retired old codger, has grown children who worry about his health. Frank has been letting things go, like the dishes, hair cuts, picking up, housework in general. It's unattractive.
So the children buy Frank a household robot. It cleans and cooks and sweeps and urges Frank to eat healthy and go on low sodium diets and yadda yadda. Somehow Frank, wily old codger who used to be a cat burglar, talks the gullible robot into becoming his assistant on a few burglary jobs around the town. "Just to keep his hand in".
It's cute, and there are some good lines, but speaking as a guy approaching old codgerhood, I found it depressing. Frank is at end of life, alone, with nothing to do. His children are unattractive, deeply into trendy unproductivenesses, and no grandchildren. It's so bad that Frank develops a father-son relationship with the robot.
Depressing movie.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
What is it with Democrats and Tax Hikes?
Democrats want tax hikes. It's their holy grail. Obama keeps talking about the need for more taxes. ("a balanced approach") So do Anne Kuster, Maggie Hassan, NHPR, and Carol Shea Porter. David Gregory offered a 10 for one deal, "For each dollar of tax hike you Republicans give us, we will give you 9 dollars of spending cuts." Real bipartisan that is.
As far as Democrats are concerned, original sin is refusal to hike taxes. They beat on Republicans about this all the time.
And the electorate must have some kinda death wish, they keep on electing democrats.
As far as Democrats are concerned, original sin is refusal to hike taxes. They beat on Republicans about this all the time.
And the electorate must have some kinda death wish, they keep on electing democrats.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Refrigerator patents
According to the Wall St Journal, Whirlpool and LG settled their patent suits over household refrigerators yesterday. Wow. The household refrigerator was invented a hundred years ago. You would think the patents had expired by now. Ingenious lawyers, aided and abetted by the ever helpful US Patent Office, have managed to bill yet more hours over trivia.
The last go round was over "the concept of a refrigerator dispenser with an extendable tray and water spigot". And that idea really really deserved a patent because it was not obvious to any housewife, let alone someone "skilled in the art".
We could get the economy moving again except every time someone puts a product on the market they get sued by patent trolls. There is nothing new about refrigerators.
The last go round was over "the concept of a refrigerator dispenser with an extendable tray and water spigot". And that idea really really deserved a patent because it was not obvious to any housewife, let alone someone "skilled in the art".
We could get the economy moving again except every time someone puts a product on the market they get sued by patent trolls. There is nothing new about refrigerators.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Leaf Season
Overtaxed by Polls
Just finished watching Meet the Press, with David Gregory. He and his guests talked about little else than polls. Polls that say Obama is winning. Depressing stuff, except that the good polls, Rasmussen and Gallup, say it's a tie.
Thing about polls, is that you gotta weight them. If you do telephone polling (and all of 'em do) you quickly find out that people who answer their home phones in daytime are mostly retired elderly. Every one else is at work. And everyone knows that the retired elderly are conservative and vote Republican. So they weight the results by what they think the population truly is. If the pollster thinks the population is 41% Democratic to 34% Republican, he throws out excess Republican polls until he gets down to 41% Democrat and 34% Republican. And so on for what ever other categories ( age, income, whatever) that the pollster wants to correct for.
The better pollsters, the ones with a reputation for accuracy that they want to protect, are pretty good at weighting. Rasmussen brags that his polls came out within 1% of the actual election results in 2010. On the other hand, plenty of polls commissioned by politicians and newspapers come out the way the politician or newspaper wants them to. Pollsters who merely want to get paid, will produce the results their customer wants. The customer is always right.
When I see a headline "Some and so is ahead in the polls by 1%" I know the newsie is flimflamming me. The polls ain't that good. When it's within 1%, it's a dead heat, no matter what David Gregory calls it. It's gotta be more like 5 %, and it's gotta stay there for more than a day before I'm gonna believe it's in the bag for anyone.
So I look at the Rasmussen and Gallup websites from time to time, and ignore the newsie's poll chatter.
Thing about polls, is that you gotta weight them. If you do telephone polling (and all of 'em do) you quickly find out that people who answer their home phones in daytime are mostly retired elderly. Every one else is at work. And everyone knows that the retired elderly are conservative and vote Republican. So they weight the results by what they think the population truly is. If the pollster thinks the population is 41% Democratic to 34% Republican, he throws out excess Republican polls until he gets down to 41% Democrat and 34% Republican. And so on for what ever other categories ( age, income, whatever) that the pollster wants to correct for.
The better pollsters, the ones with a reputation for accuracy that they want to protect, are pretty good at weighting. Rasmussen brags that his polls came out within 1% of the actual election results in 2010. On the other hand, plenty of polls commissioned by politicians and newspapers come out the way the politician or newspaper wants them to. Pollsters who merely want to get paid, will produce the results their customer wants. The customer is always right.
When I see a headline "Some and so is ahead in the polls by 1%" I know the newsie is flimflamming me. The polls ain't that good. When it's within 1%, it's a dead heat, no matter what David Gregory calls it. It's gotta be more like 5 %, and it's gotta stay there for more than a day before I'm gonna believe it's in the bag for anyone.
So I look at the Rasmussen and Gallup websites from time to time, and ignore the newsie's poll chatter.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Peak Leaf Season
It's coming. Drove over Crawford Notch the other day and a lot of trees have turned. I still have some green left around the house, and I am pretty high up, so my trees turn a bit earlier than most. It's pretty colorful already. I figure by next weekend it will be slightly past peak.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Who makes the most airliners?
Answer, the US and Europe. The Russians are just about out of the business. Aeroflot buys western aircraft now. From Aviation Week we have a few projections of production thru 2021.
Boeing 787 1300 units
Boeing 737 4799 units
Boeing 777 917 units
Airbus 320 5346 units
Airbus 350 817 units
Antonov An148 143 units
Ilyushin IL-96 12 units
Irkut MS-21 123 units
Boeing and Airbus plan to crank out thousands of aircraft, where as the Russians are looking at a few hundred aircraft, barely enough to keep their companies alive.
Boeing 787 1300 units
Boeing 737 4799 units
Boeing 777 917 units
Airbus 320 5346 units
Airbus 350 817 units
Antonov An148 143 units
Ilyushin IL-96 12 units
Irkut MS-21 123 units
Boeing and Airbus plan to crank out thousands of aircraft, where as the Russians are looking at a few hundred aircraft, barely enough to keep their companies alive.
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