OT disgusted with all presidential candidates

Carrying >>all that water is tiring! It must prevent synapses from firing.

but look how far this approach took him in life.

It is not the same, but has some similarities to, say, a hypothetical threat from me to put a "curse" on you. It is only a threat, if you think that the "curse" would actually damage you.

Same with "dirty bomb". If it was not feared so much, no one would want to smuggle detectable, dangerous, radioactive substances that require enormous shielding, and yet are only bound to take a few actual lives, at most.

I have a CDV-700 and a few hot samples (uranium ore rocks). It is awesome. It detects radiation in ambient air, granite, etc.

It isn't clear how you mean that, so, barring further explanation, I will leave it alone. d8-)

I like Tom in many ways. He is great with metal, is nice to talk to, has great stories to share, and so on.

But look what happened. He inherited a family business and essentially ran it into the ground, over many agonizing years. Of course, it did not help that the business was facing the usual headwinds, and changing economy, but still, I would not call that a staggering success.

There are always many reasons why small businesses fail. As a student of failure and a professional buyer of failed business assets, the reasons are numerous and fascinate me. One of them, usually, is lack of realism and honest self assessment and refusing to face the reality.

I meet a lot of owners of failed businesses. In most cases, I deal with people with various neuroses, pathologies and emotional issues. Dealing "with issues" usually continues throughout the process of removal and scrapping, and could take a while and is very taxing. I do not like that, but it comes with the job. One guy accosted me with complains about his small dick for many days.

On the first meeting, I have to hypnotize them in 5-10 minutes to convince them t odeal with me and to sell their equipment to me at advantageous prices. One sentence that usually puts them at ease and makes them work with me is "it was not your fault".

This often times makes them very happy, and gets the negotiating process going from the right foot.

The truth is, though, that for a business owner everything is "their fault", and while it is more burdensome to feel this way, it leads to better business results.

As a side observer, I formed an opinion, long ago, that Tom is not used to trying to be realistic. That never leads to good outcomes.

I live in Southern Oregon, Grants Pass. I've only seen two sets of teen boys who did yard work. One pair were neighbor's boys, the others are the sons of one of my temp workers, who are now working with him. I never see "work wanted" by teens in the paper, either, and those are -free- to kids 18 and younger! I ask parents if their kids do yard work for their spending money and every single one I have asked has looked at me like I have 3 eyes. Either the kids won't be caught dead doing it, or the parents don't think their kids should be doing it. I seldom get an answer as to which it is. Very odd.

Garrett, when were your kids teens? 20+ years ago? I think work was still acceptable to teens back then. I have no idea what's going on in their minds now.

We may have trouble at the Old Folk's Home, though. No workers, "uneddicated" doctors and nurses and program directors, etc.

Why bring up 'dirty bomb' again? The thread morphed away from that days and days ago.

But, yeah, I catch your drift.

Some can take more rads than humans, but if we eat those animals, we'll die.

If we can trust the people writing books about the area, the animals can sense radioactivity and they stay away from tainted plants.

Agreed.

Whoa. As I understand it, he didn't "inherit" it. He paid his family for it.

I don't know the brush business, but it looked to me as if modern technology and markets just outran him. I've seen that happen to a lot of shops. Unless you're willing to make a big investment leap, and revolutionize a business, you aren't going to get anywhere in that circumstance. Maybe if he was ten years younger it would have been different.

Right, but not many businesses are. There are many more things working against you than for you.

That's a good point. I'm not disagreeing with you, but consider this: There is a very fine line between refusing to face reality and a stubborn determination to make it work your way, regardless of the naysayers. And there's a fine line between stubborness and perseverance or determination. It's a tightrope, and it's easy to fall on either side of that wire.

I watched my father take three businesses that I wouldn't have given a chance, and make a success of all three. But he came up through the Sears organization, back when it was the best retailer in the world, and he learned things I'll never know. He had a very broad and deep view of retail.

Ha-ha! Maybe you can hang out a pysch consultant when you retire.

Well, I've never met Tom, although I've talked to him on the phone. You, I've met in person. And, for what little it's worth, here's my opinion: Tom is indeed stubborn, mostly in a good way. You are among the coolest-headed rationalists I've known. There are only one or two people I've known who, with advanced degrees and a successful career in IT, like you, would see a business opportunity in scrap metal and make it work.

So viewing it through your telescope may be perfectly rational, but it's a degree of rationality that's very rare. Most of us aren't so rational. And if doing well in a business required that kind of leap, from IT to scrap metal, for example, most would crash and burn.

Don't be too hard on him.

But I didn't say that labour cost was what drives the change over merely that labour cost may well influence it. And I think that I am probably correct that cost is a large factor that is taken into consideration.

Some years ago I did some research on materials moving (conveyer belts mostly) methods here in Thailand and in the process came across some companies that were making "robots" for some of the car plants here. Labour costs would have been in the 100 - 150 baht/day range then and in every case the robots" were designed to do a single job more consistently than doing it by hand. One I remember was a robot to weld the axle tubes into a differential housing. It was faster than a human but, according to the robot maker, the importance was that it didn't make any bad welds :-)

Again, I didn't say that. However, unless the U.S. is different from the rest of the world, the cost of making the product is a very important factor in whether the company is viable, or not, and almost without exception labour costs are the first item looked at when a company is feeling a money crunch.

NC with this attitude. Neither of my sons had such either.

elper. Then, there's the other side of the coin. When I was 14, I started working for brick layers as a hod carrier. It was very hard manual labor wo rking with heavy loads that a 14 yr. old had no business doing. It did dama ge. I'm convinced it's what has caused many of the problems with worn out s houlders and other joint problems now at 65. The teenagers in this area app ear to me to be willing to do just about any type of work. Hopefully, OSHA has put a stop to what I was stupid enough to take on. I made sure the son in construction wasn't carrying hod.

One of my sons is 31, the other 30. So, ~11-15 yrs. ago. I just had my kit chen remodeled by the son of the contractor. He was 20, and the 3 others wo rking for him were teens. They all did a fine job of it. Sober, on time and good work. It might have something to do with disposable income of the par ents in OR versus NC. I'm sure there's a fair number of deadbeat useless te ens here too, but I honestly haven't seen it much.

First, yes, quality is a major reason for automating in advanced manufacturing countries. Speaking just of manufacturing, it's far ahead of direct-labor savings.

In the US, as in the rest of the developed world, direct labor is roughly 10% of the cost of producing a car. It's been that way for decades. It was 12% when I started in this business, in the mid-'70s.

So direct labor savings is not a big issue. Any single step of automating can save only a trivial amount of direct labor. The big motivations are quality, squeezing more out of existing resources (such as eliminating a branched assembly line, with spot-welders), expanding without the need for a third shift (always expensive and defect-prone with humans), avoiding outsourcing, avoiing hiring additional people, and so on. Direct labor savings in *existing production* is 'way down the list.

It gets complicated these days because most of the part-making and subassembly is pushed down to the Tiers of the supply chain. But the same motivators apply there, as well as at the OEMs.

These facts are widely misunderstood.

You have it figured it would be a ground level bomb. How about at 5000 feet in a Cessna ? And having the wind blow the radiation all around.

Chernobyl didn't explode. It burned. The carbon core over heated. The coolant was lost - and the frames holding the fuel melted and jammed so extraction could not be done. They were doomed early on.

One doesn't need much to do a great amount of long term damage.

Mart> >> Ig - I don't mean black grime dirty bomb.

We have drugs smuggled in all of the time. Get real. It might come across the lake or across the river or up a river.

Mart> >> Depends on the composition and the delivery system. But

How cute!

Between that and his later stages of dementia, I'm surprised he can even find the computer or lift a finger to type.

Gee, and I thought I was the Lone Ranger.

I never "gave" my three kids anything. they all had "jobs" around the house and got paid on Friday night. Interestingly my daughter, the youngest, was the most frugal. She worried about her brothers stealing her salary and I suggested that she let her mother hold it and she wondered if her mother might spend it so I suggested that she have a notebook to keep track of what she "had in the bank" and she complained that she couldn't add and subtract and I said, "learn how". I had the only 5 year old accountant on the street :-)

Yes. I went to an auto exposition, or some such name, in Bangkok a few years ago and discovered that there are Thai companies that are making such things as complete front suspension modules for export. apparently to "foreign" car makers.

Re labour costs.

Direct labor costs in manufacturing, may well be 10% of total cost but that is only one side of the coin.

What is the labour cost factor in running a Macdonald's? Or a factory making shirts. Or an airline? Recently Thai International, who have been a drag on the government for years, got called on the carpet by the new government. Apparently told that they had to start pulling their own weight the first thing that they did was announce that there would be a reduction in manpower. 5,000 job cuts.

Malaysian Airline who have apparently been factually bankrupt for years now and supported by government "loans" have seemingly been kicked out of the nest and now have to fly by themselves,. They have hired some hot-shot European Manager to save them and the first move.... cut personnel. "the carrier slashed 6,000 jobs as part of plans to recover from deadly disasters and a long run of red ink".

Considering that they are the largest non-governmental employer in the US that really isn't a surprise. And that the income levels needed for assistance have steadily risen to inflate the numbers it isn't surprising.

As I said the local warehouses do have the automation, they just don't use it a lot.

Robotic "health care" is a deductible business expense: Maintenance. "Turnover" would be "Depreciation"?

As for complaining, voice synthesis is already out there, so it's just a matter of time before the the AI level of some of those robots gets them noticed by the ACLU and PETA. First it'll be a 50msec "coffee break", then "free networking with the local ATMs"...

Frank McKenney