My Blog

Category: Business

  • Rise of Titan the World’s Fastest Supercomputer

    After falling behind Asia and Europe in the great race, where success is measured in FLOPS floating-point operations per second, the US has struck back at the new high-tech Olympians with Titan: quite possibly the fastest supercomputer in the world.  …

    All of that might now change, as a new supercomputing giant hailing from the Smokey Mountains was unveiled by the US Department of Energy’s DOE on Monday.  More than 10 times faster and five times more energy efficient than its predecessor Jaguar, Titan is the brainchild of the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory ORNL, nestled in the Tennessee highlands.  Titan’s theoretical peak is 20 petaflops – 20 quadrillion calculations per second – with 299,008 CPUs central processing units and 18,688 graphics processing units GPUs spinning at breakneck speeds to make to make scientific breakthroughs in record times.

    Titan’s blistering computation speed will be the equivalent of “the world’s 7 billion people being able to carry out 3 million calculations per second,” ORNL says.

    via RT.

    Hell Yeah!!

    You all realize this is the Super Bowl of computers right?

  • New Star Wars Film Coming In 2015

    Uh, Star Wars geeks enthusiasts? Brace yourselves for a double whammy.

    One: Disney has purchased Lucasfilm for a whopping $4.05 billion (yes, with a “b”). Which brings us to two: Stars Wars Episode VII is not only happening, but it has a release date for sometime in 2015.

    via E! Online.

    Excellent news.

     

  • Obama a Real Contributor to Subprime Loan Failures

    President Barack Obama was a pioneering contributor to the national subprime real estate bubble, and roughly half of the 186 African-American clients in his landmark 1995 mortgage discrimination lawsuit against Citibank have since gone bankrupt or received foreclosure notices.

    As few as 19 of those 186 clients still own homes with clean credit ratings, following a decade in which Obama and other progressives pushed banks to provide mortgages to poor African Americans.

    via The Daily Caller.

    Kudos to The Daily Caller for putting together this incredibly well researched piece about Obama being one of the lawyers who sued Citibank to make sub-prime loans.

    That this story is being written in 2012 and not 2008, and by a small independent website and not by any of the major media outlets is a complete indictment of our entire media system.

    I can remember when I stopped watching The Daily Show.  It was shortly before the 2008 election and Michelle Obama was the guest.  After she comes out, the first question John Stewart asks is something like, “Tell us something we don’t know about you?” and the crowed goes wild.  It was an sardonic arrow aimed at those who were screaming to anyone who would listen, ‘What do we really know about these people?’

    The truth Mr. Stewart, is we knew very little about these people.  We still know very little about these people.  It’s a same that the media didn’t do its job 4 years ago and any time since.  So because you ignored your responsibilities for the last 4 years someone has now produced some facts showing how:

    • Obama sued Citibank forcing it to make bad, sub-prime loans;
    • Many of those loans failed, including nearly half of those plaintiffs in the Obama case;
    • The sub-prime loan failures led to the collapse of the entire mortgage system causing the greatest economic crisis since the great depression.

    Mr. Obama help create the problem he inherited.

    That is what the press should be reporting.

  • Pension’s Rate of Return Plummets to 0.76%

    This sounds like a problem:

    The pension fund for most public school teachers in Illinois generated just 0.76 percent in fiscal 2012, a big drop from the 23.6 percent rate of return in the previous fiscal year, the Teachers’ Retirement System reported on Thursday.  …

    It is the long-term results that matter and the system’s 20-year investment return at the end of June was 7.73 percent.”  …

    Last month, the pension fund for teachers in all Illinois school districts with the exception of the Chicago Public Schools, lowered its long-term assumed investment rate of return to 8 percent from 8.5 percent.The move will depress TRS’ funded ratio to 42.5 percent and increase Illinois’ fiscal 2014 payment to the fund to $3.36 billion instead of $3.07 billion under the previous return rate.

    via Crain’s Chicago Business.

    Indeed a problem.  Consider …

    A drop in the assumed rate of return from 8.5% to 8.0% meant that the state (that’s you and me, a/k/a the taxpayers) owed an extra $300,000,000.  Hummm….

    TRS’s board members, appointed by The Machine, like to quote the 20-year ROR because it’s a respectable 7.73%.  That’s true.  But as I wrote about this before, the 10-year ROR is a pathetic 5.7%.

    The fact remains that TRS is in some real trouble.  Everyone knows it.  And the longer we keep our head in the sand the more painful it’s going to be to fix.

  • Illinois Tollway Netting $Billion per Year

    To help pay for these projects, the tollway anticipates raking in $977 million from tolls in 2013 – thanks to the 87.5 percent increase that went into effect Jan. 1.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Doh!

     

  • 30,000 Unfilled Jobs in Illinois

    Say “skills gap” to any manufacturer, and invariably they’ll respond with the number 600,000. That’s the gaping hole of unfilled jobs at U.S. manufacturers — for Illinois, estimates point to 30,000 unfilled jobs. The talent shortfall carries serious consequences. In a Manufacturing Institute 2011 skills gap report surveying more than 1,100 U.S. manufacturers, 74 percent of respondents said a lack of skilled production workers was harming productivity or hindering their ability to expand operations.

    That skills gap will widen. The Society of Manufacturing Engineers, based in Dearborn, Mich., predicts the number of unfilled manufacturing jobs will reach 3 million by 2015.

    via Crain’s Chicago Business.

    Holy Cow!!

    To be fair, the rest of the article talks about how wages for machinist have not kept pace with inflation; that may be true.  But isn’t taking a job at $13 or $14 an hour better than sitting home watching Judge Judy and playing xbox all day?

    These jobs are fun too.  In a former life I used to work with a lot of machinist and injection molding operators and tool & die guys, and other people who I think had cool jobs.  You get to build things.  You get to play with equipment that costs more than your house.  At the end of the day you can go home and tell your family that you did something with your day.  You didn’t just move paper from one side of the desk to the other (like I do now.)

    What we have here is evidence of the complete failing of our educational system.  Children not only don’t have the most rudimentary math skills necessary to become a machinist or CNC operator but they don’t have the intellectual curiosity and patience to solve complicated puzzles.  That’s what these jobs really are… puzzle solvers.  Figure our how to make something better than it’s being made today, faster, cheaper.

    We have to turn this around.  Show kids that learning is fun and that building (and breaking) stuff can lead to a rewarding job that might not get you a house in Lake Forest but will certainly allow you to put food on the table, gas in the car, and take a decent vacation every year.

    We will not survive as a nation if people will stay home rather than work for a living.

  • What Kid’s Need in Schools (that they’re not getting)

    Every person in any career should spend 90 minutes in a classroom at least one time in a school year, sharing their stories and setting an example for the students,” he said. “It’s part of giving back. These kids generally don’t see enough examples of why education is important or who they could be or what they could do.
    — Brad Keywell, Groupon co-founder

    via Sun-Times.

    This is a brilliant idea.

    Kudos to Mr. Keywell for putting this together.

  • IL Finances Heading to Social Unrest

    “I think it’s going to reach a point where there’s either social disorder or bankruptcy before people will act,” he said.

    via Crain’s Chicago Business.

    Ya, that sounds about right.

    But let’s back-up a little.  This is a quote from a story about how back the finances are in Illinois.

    A Blue Ribbon Panel put together a report which was released this morning.  It’s damning in the extreme.  The whole report can be found here.

    I’ll write more about this later… I have to catch a plane.

  • Alderman Flip-Flops Again on Chick-fil-A

    A Chicago alderman once again is threatening to block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in his Northwest Side ward because of the owner’s stance against gay marriage — after saying earlier that he had dropped his opposition to the fast-food outlet.

    Ald. Proco “Joe” Moreno, 1st, accused Dan Cathy, president of the family-owned restaurant chain, of reneging on his company’s apparent promises to issue a statement vowing to treat people of all sexual orientations with respect and no longer allow the company to contribute to groups that oppose gay marriage.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    In the words of Joe Biden:  Ald. Moreno was against Chick-fil-A before he was for it.

    What an idiot.  All you had to do Alderman was keep your mouth shut and you wouldn’t have any of these issues.  You wouldn’t look like a fool changing your mind every two minutes and trying to blame someone for lying to you.  Stop it.  It makes you look clueless and weak.  What are you eleven years old?

     

  • Airlines Fees vs. Fares: Impacting Taxes

    The liberal Washington Post complains:

    There’s a 7.5 percent federal tax on every airline ticket. The money goes into a fund that pays for the air transportation system: airports, capital improvements and the operation of the Federal Aviation Administration.  …

    When the airlines kept ticket prices down by shifting $12.8 billion to baggage fees, they also saved almost $964 million in federal taxes they would have owed if they had hiked ticket prices by that amount.

    via The Washington Post.

    What crap.

    First let’s take a look at the real story when it comes to airline taxes:

    – September 11 Security Fee: A September 11 Security Fee of $2.50 USD applies per flight segment (maximum charge per trip — $5.00 USD one-way, $10.00 USD round-trip). A flight segment is defined as one takeoff and one landing.

    – Passenger Facility Charges: Passenger Facility Charges (PFCs) of up to $18.00 USD may apply, depending upon the itinerary chosen.

    – Federal Excise Tax: A 7.5% domestic tax is applied to the airline base fare. The tax may be pro-rated for flights to/from the 48 contiguous U.S. states and Alaska and Hawaii, and some international destinations. A Travel Facilities Tax of $8.40 USD per direction also applies to flights to/from Alaska and Hawaii and the 48 contiguous U.S. states or between Alaska and Hawaii.

    – Federal Domestic Flight Segment Fee: A federal domestic flight segment fee of $3.80 USD applies per flight segment. A flight segment is defined as one takeoff and one landing.

    Looks like the G is getting more than it’s fair share of the airline travelers’ dollar.  The money collected — and wasted — by the TSA and FAA is staggering.  It’s no wonder that back in March the Orlando Sanford Intl. Airport was choosing to opt-out of using the TSA for security screenings.  Regardless of how they spend it, the government is taking plenty of money from the airline traveler.

    Also, let’s take a look at the wording of the story.  The newspaper writes, “When the airlines kept ticket prices down by shifting $12.8 billion to baggage fees, they also saved almost $964 million in federal taxes….”  Wrong!  The airlines didn’t save anything; the consumer saved.  This sentence should be written, “By shifting $12.8 billion to baggage fees airline passengers saved nearly $1 billion in taxes that the federal government would have otherwise imposed.

    The headline of this story should be, “Shifting fares to fees permitted $1 billion in extra air travel last year.”  Air traveler the big winner.

    Further, the baggage fees were NOT paid by everyone.  If you travel light and didn’t check a bag you paid nothing.  If you needed to check a bag, then you paid for the service you received.

    The whole situation seems very fair to me.  That the government is out the money is just icing on the cake.