April 2008 - Posts

• The "Honor" roll-out; plus, more research

  Candidates for high office typically emphasize their career achievements, and that counts for a lot. But it’s almost always the character of candidates that separates a winner from a runner-up. There’s probably some extra-human logic to that, like the Read More... Posted Sunday, April 27, 2008 9:34 PM by REB | 0 Comments

• Good news, bad trends

  Last week the American Foundry Society made an announcement that seemed to settle the whole declining-currency-rising-manufacturing-revenues conundrum. The question, to be brief, is this: can U.S. manufacturers succeed when the U.S. dollar falls in value? Read More... Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2008 9:36 PM by REB | 1 Comments

• The start of something small

  Exactly why I have always been skeptical about the industrial potential of nanotechnology, I cannot say. I heard the first serious discussions about it a decade or so ago – and at that time the emphasis seemed to be on “nanomanufacturing,” i.e., the idea Read More... Posted Thursday, April 17, 2008 8:19 AM by REB | 0 Comments

• Five-Ring Circus

  After all I’ve written about China and its human and civil rights violations, why shouldn’t I offer an opinion about the sudden Olympics controversy? To recap, this week’s Olympic torch relays across Europe and North and South America have been disrupted Read More... Posted Sunday, April 13, 2008 10:28 AM by REB | 0 Comments

• Going where the customers are

  The Society of Automotive Engineers will be meeting in Detroit this week and I won’t be there, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too quick to make the following criticism. But here goes: I got an announcement from Intermet Corp. , detailing the products they’ll Read More... Posted Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:26 PM by REB | 0 Comments

• No tolerance for failure

  Whether or not the Federal Reserve has done the right thing in fostering the sale of Bear Stearns is becoming a great debate of our times, a sort of template in which to measure one’s economic sensibilities. My opinion is that the Fed did the wrong thing, Read More... Posted Friday, April 04, 2008 6:11 AM by REB | 0 Comments