Blog returns next week

My posting has been sporadic lately due to grad school, but winter break is here, so I've got some posts coming your way over the next few weeks, 2 posts a week through my winter break. Hopefully I'll have some time to write a bunch of posts in advance over winter break so that I can schedule automatic updates and won't have to go on full hiatus next semester also. But in the meantime, thanks for your patience! Check back 12/16/13 for a new post!

PCP in Theaters - Ender's Game

My wife and I are good friends with another couple, Ryan and Amber, and they reached out to us about going to see Ender's Game in theaters. They are both big sci-fi and fantasy fans (and Ryan has a similar but geekier blog called Skillpoint Station which I encourage you to check out) and had bonded over their enjoyment of the book. Meanwhile, my wife and I hadn't read the book, but we were always up for a fun night out, so we agreed. I read the book rapidly in the week before we saw the film, so I could judge the film while having the book fresh in my mind. I wonder if that made it better or worse?

Ender's Game - 2013, rated PG-13. My rating: 7 out of 10.

Ender's Game is set in the future, on an Earth different from ours. Humanity has defeated an alien invasion, and are working towards preparing for round two of the war versus the alien invaders, the bug-like Formics. Humanity has started a program of testing of their children to find those that have tactical & strategic genius, and then shipping them off to a special school called Battle School to hone their combat abilities. Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is our protagonist, a super-genius that the leaders of the school Col. Graff (Harrison Ford) and Major Anderson (Viola Davis) believe may hold the key to humanity's survival versus the Formics, a species that vastly outnumbers humanity.

Ender's studies in the school consist of tactical games in the zero-g battle room, which was pretty nifty to see on the big screen. He learns to deal with frustration, learns even more brilliant tactics, makes friends with most of his peers, and learns to lead on the battlefield. Before long he is graduated to the Command School, where he now commands fleets of ships in a virtual reality simulation against the Formics. As he faces ever more insurmountable odds, he has to find more ways to win, lest he flunk out and fail his teachers. In terms of the plot, I'm going to stop there until later in this post in the spoilers section, so as not to give anything away now.

Having the book fresh in my mind, I was slightly disappointed in the film, but I also had low expectations. I knew that there was no way the film would be able to show all of the battles that the book contained, without being significantly longer than its two hour running time. In the book, Ender went through some 50 odd battles, but in the film he has only a handful, which really doesn't give the audience the chance to see just how outside the box his ideas were and how much more advanced than his peers he really was. I think if the film was maybe about 20 minutes longer and had a few more battles then it would've been better. Also, I didn't like that the film (or the book for that matter) didn't really comment on the idea of training children for war or have anything to say about just how awful of a thing that is.

Visually, the film was pretty well done, with great visual effects including the zero-g combat of Battle School, and the immersive virtual reality of the massive battles of Command School. The effects were better than I expected them to be, with the film only having a budget of $110 million. Overall though, the film is a lot of flash and not a lot of substance, and I thought it was good but disappointing. I think I would've liked it better had I not read the book. Of the four of us that saw the movie that day, my wife was the only one that hadn't read the book and she liked the film the best. So, when this film comes out on blu-ray, rent it from your local library or Redbox now that Blockbuster is toast, or stream it. It's still worth seeing, but you don't need to rush out and see it while it's still in theaters.

Ok if you don't want spoilers, stop here. After the jump I'm going to be talking about changes from the book to the film and discussing some of my beefs with the plot of the film in greater details. So again, from here on out, SPOILERS AHEAD after the jump! --->

POS - What People Just Aren't Getting About the Debt Fight

Ok so as we all know, the government just went through a messy hissy fit fight over the debt ceiling and spending levels, which was only ended thanks to a temporary solution that likely guarantees we’ll be having the exact same fight again in early 2014. I just wanted to weigh in on a few things that get lost in the shuffle on the fight over spending, some hard truths that either people don’t understand or are willfully ignoring. Too often people just say the soundbite “we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” Unfortunately, that soundbite is wrong; we do have a revenue problem. And until the folks in D.C. on both sides of the aisle (this is a problem facing both Democrats and Republicans, and both parties aren't facing up to these facts) are willing to face that truth, nothing is ever going to change.

What are we spending our money on?

Yes, we currently have been operating without a budget in Washington for some time now, because both sides cannot come to an agreement on a long term budget. Instead, we get these piecemeal continuing resolutions that agree to fund the government at a set amount for a short period of time. Right now, that funding amount is at the levels set forth in the sequester, for a budget on discretionary spending by the government of $988 billion, if the budget were extended out to a twelve month period. What people don’t realize is what that means. Discretionary spending is money the government is choosing to spend, so that covers the following: our military, education, veterans’ benefits, health (the Centers for Disease Control & National Institute of Health), the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, NOAA, and many more. This slice of our budget is approximately 30% of what the government spends, and these were many of the services that were halted by the government shutdown. But all the focus is on this 30% instead of on the other 70% of where the government spending goes.

So what is the other 70%? 6% of it is paying the interest on our national debt (currently ~17 trillion dollars), and the other 64% is on mandatory spending programs. The lion’s share of that 64% is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which combined are 87% of the mandatory spending. In other words, about 55% of the total federal budget goes strictly to those three programs. So, unless changes are made to those three programs, all the other cuts in the world aren’t going to amount for squat, really.

Keep reading after the jump, there's more! --->