Solar Study Shows Best Predictions for The Next Maunder Minimum

Probably the best argument I've seen for the view that our next Maunder or Dalton Minimum is coming soon comes from Nature Science Reports in October of 2015.   Researchers Simon J. Shepherd, Sergei I. Zharkov, and Valentina V. Zharkova (who are not strangers to these pages)  performed a new type of analysis of solar data.

In the abstract of the paper, the authors say they obtained full disk magnetograms of the sun and derived ways of describing the Principal Components (PCs) of two main, time-varying magnetic waves found in the magnetogram data.  They observed that these magnetic waves in the Solar Background Magnetic Fields have opposite polarity, i.e., originating in the northern and southern hemispheres, respectively.  Over a duration of one solar cycle, both waves are found to travel with an increasing phase shift toward the northern hemisphere in odd cycles (21 and 23) and to the southern hemisphere in an even cycle (22).  They were able to derive equations that described those waves, and see that at times the waves coincide well and the sun is more active, while at other times the waves partially cancel each other out producing a quieter sun.  Taking these equations they then extrapolate the PCs backward and find two 350 year long cycles superimposed on the 22 year sunspot cycles we're all familiar with.  The results show a remarkable resemblance to sunspot activity reported in the past including the Maunder and Dalton minima.  Cutting to the chase here, when they run these predictions into the future, they find the next grand minimum is coming soon in cycles 26-27 (we're currently in the end years of cycle 24).   That's around 2028 or 2030 and go forward 22 years. 

The fit of the Eureqa-distilled law (the solid curve) to the summary component in cycles 21–23 (dotted curve) and its expansion to cycles 24–26.  Dashed curves show the predicted summary curve compared to the real PCs derived from the SBMF in the cycle 24 with an accuracy better than 98%.

My standard disclaimer goes here:  I'm wary of predictions for another Maunder minimum, or another Carrington Event on general principles.  In the case of the Maunder minimum, it was severe and we simply don't have detailed data records of what the preceding cycles were like, to the level of detail we could produce in the last hundred years.  There was nothing like the solar instrumentation we had even 50 years ago, let alone now.  This study's predictions are based on analysis of only three cycles worth of data.  I don't know how long magnetograms have been available that show lines of magnetic force going back to the sun, but with 24 cycles, I'd like to see more than three.  Still, even a prolonged minimum that isn't as severe as the real Maunder minimum seems like it could be really bad.  It seems any deep sunspot minimum correlates with colder temperatures.  Despite what the alarmists say about Global Warmening,  mankind has done better in warm periods than in the cold periods in our history (huge pdf alert - but fascinating reading).  Of course the cool kids (or the kids who consider themselves cool) say not to be concerned about the Maunder Minimum because the warmening will wipe out any cooling and you skeptics are silly to trust these predictions - and a few other things that are demonstrably wrong, too.  

On the positive side, these researchers' main approach is similar to a signal processing approach I've seen used successfully many times.  The agreement of their predictions with measured data given their small study sample is impressive.  In fact, I think it's the most persuasive study I've seen that says a deep minimum is coming.  By this prediction curve, it will be much shorter than the Maunder minimum, and the next grand minimum, in about 2300 to 2400 looks more like the Maunder. 

Letting their prediction run 2000 years: from AD 1200 to 3200.  Text on the plot explains the markings.  From Nature. 

Our Little Tree is Up

Our little tree is up and I think we're fully settled into being ready for the holiday. 

It's a skinny tree, but we have a small place and not a ton of room.  From where I'm typing right now, the tree is just a little farther from my left shoulder than my keyboard.  (At the bottom left of the tree, you can see Aurora, the designated cat-in-charge of that part of the house)

Story time: we've been buying our trees from a local Boy Scouts troop for as long as I can recall.  Over the years, I've run into two different guys I worked with whose sons were selling those trees.  We got their annual email, printed out their coupon and took off about noon-thirty to go get a tree.  The boy scouts weren't there.  I have to assume they sold out and shut down, but that has never happened before.  That's a complication.  Since we knew where we were getting our tree, we both have a tendency to be blind to things we don't need.  "Where do we get a tree?"....  "I don't know". 

Within a few minutes we both remembered seeing another dealer about a mile south of where the Boy Scouts were.  We walked up and instantly saw this tree. 

We're going through a warm spell here and it was about 85 when we went out shopping so I was wearing my red Ruger "100% American Made" tee-shirt.   As we're paying for the tree, the girl says, "I like your shirt".  All I could think to say was "Ruger?  Good stuff".  She agreed.  Her partner, the guy who helped get the tree ready, said, "Her dog is named Kimber".  We all laughed, shared a few more gun jokes, wished each other Merry Christmas and then went on our way.  I wonder how many blue-city, trigglypuff snowflakes would go apoplectic over a Ruger tee-shirt or that whole exchange.  (seriously, don't go to that link  Especially guys)  If they understood it.  Gotta love small city Florida.

On Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Anthony Weiner

Yesterday, Borepatch did a piece on the Bureaucrats of the DOE vs. the Trump administration; in the larger sense, this is 18th century society vs. 21st century society.   What?  I get a laugh when I hear the term "progressive" for socialists and communists, as if handing more and more control over to a bigger and bigger government headed by a powerful central ruler is somehow a new idea, somehow moving to an ideal future.  That's the complete opposite of progress.  The Romans did that two thousand years ago and they weren't the first.  Same idea, different technology.  There's nothing futuristic about a centralized government controlling as much as they can and stealing everything that's not nailed down in the process.  The Romans did that, too.

The truly progressive system, is the free market, which spreads power over all consumers.  It adds self-correcting mechanisms that continually make things better - if it's left alone.  The removal of control by an elite few is the only really revolutionary change in governments in history.  Progressive government is a five thousand year old idea that gets disproved over and over and over. 

The money quote in Borepatch's piece is from Willis Eschenbach at Watts Up With That:

If you want to take over a bureaucracy, the key thing to know is that a single bureaucrat all alone is almost always a weak, pitiful creature for a simple reason.

He/she finds it very, very difficult to make a decision on his/her own.

And that's an undeniable truth of the universe and the human condition.  A bureaucrat's ideal condition would be to be invisible but still have power over us; to be able to wreak havoc on the lives of little people without being seen.  They must be in a job where they feel safe to bully people with no chance of being blamed.   

By contrast, the career politician may not necessarily be averse to making decisions.  They'll make a decision as long as it seems really safe and they have ample excuses for unpopular decisions but while the bureaucrat may want to be invisible, the career politician is more like Anthony Wiener.  He doesn't just want you to see him, he's going to force himself onto you and force you to look at it, no matter how much you don't want to.  The career politician is more like a perverted exhibitionist than they are like a bureaucrat. 

Unfortunately, it gets worse from here.  I often ponder how our society got where we are.  The glib answer is because we weren't hard enough on them, but I think there's a deeper view; there's something else under the surface.  Let's start here:  do you really enjoy politics?  I mean the day to day horse race, as they say.  The endless media coverage of "who said what"; did the Rs score some points over the Ds for something?  Did some big name D say something so remarkably stupid that media talks about for days?   I maintain that for most people, politics isn't something they enjoy.  They have a life, they have their kids to worry about, their careers to grow, the constant worries about job security.  Simply put: they have a life.

I think what's really the answer to how we got here has a lot to do with two things: because voters have a life and voters learned (or used to learn) that we elected the best people we could find to do that job for us, that the voters then left them alone to do their jobs.  And they left them alone because they have a life and can't constantly be monitoring the politicians.  But the politicians are all much more like Anthony Wiener than Winston Churchill (in about a million ways), and they kept doing things to make us look at them.  The career politician is incapable of going through life without attention; without being talked about all the time.   Once they realized they were being left alone to do their jobs, they skimmed money in any amount they could, from the limited graft of a local office to the unlimited insider trading that goes on in DC.  The kind of corruption that makes a douchebag like Harry Reid worth $10 Million on a salary of $193,400 per year (actually, that's only now, at his peak earning level).  Eventually, that proved to be "only money" and that inner exhibitionist that simply must be paid attention to did things to demand attention. 

 

Obviously, there's more to this story.  There are politicians who don't crave the attention so much as the money they can steal.  There are some so devoted to their progressive anti-progress ideas that they will do everything they can to "steal, kill and destroy".   Only some of the politicians are literally attention whores that have to be seen and paid attention to.  Between the attention whore politicians and their bureaucrat lackeys that want to be invisible, they create a lot of trouble. 

(One of my favorite pictures from the early days of this blog:  Harry Reid and a blobfish: separated at birth?  Reid's the one with the glasses.  Ethically, I'd feel better around the blobfish.  The blobfish didn't take $10 Million in kickbacks or bribes.)

Heads Up on a Good Deal

In today's emails I see that Midway USA is selling the Walker Razor X electronic hearing protectors for  $93.11. 

I wrote about these after we picked up our pair in early November.  Having used them a couple of times, including a good amount of "cheek time" on a .308 and .30-30, I have to say I really like these things.  Now that I figured out the "indoor/outdoor" option, the response is great.  And after a day on an outdoor range with people all around, shooting everything from .22 to "something loud", I have no complaints.

I really can't find faults with it, and think it's a great way to do hearing protection.  Mrs. Graybeard, who really wanted in-the-ear protection because she kept getting her electronic ear muffs knocked off during recoil is even happier with them than I am.  You can actually forget you're wearing them.

At some point during the Christmas sale emails, I think I saw these for $90.  I paid $99. 

For the Tool Addict On Your Shopping List

Yeah, a bit late, but if you're getting down to the last week and wondering what to get someone with an unnatural love for tools and gadgets, Machine Design comes to the rescue with a half dozen little tech toys.  I have to admit some of these seem like "why'd you put Bluetooth in that?"..."because we can".  But maybe that's just me.

SmarTech by Black & Decker

The big idea here is tracking your battery packs for your battery powered tools.  Not a big concern?  Not for me, but I can imagine it might be handy if you're on a jobsite and have tools wander off, or maybe have a few teenagers at home who might borrow a tool and never let you know where it is.  Smartech gives you the ability to pick up your phone and disable the batteries to all your tools.

Obvious disadvantage here: It's Bluetooth and that's designed to be useful over short ranges (a Personal Area Network).  Once the battery and phone are out of Bluetooth range, users aren't able to lock a battery or locate the Smartech battery by triggering it to emit a sound.

Now, I can see a design choice here that I'm frankly happy they didn't make: allow batteries to work only if they're in range of the App controller.  That way if someone walks off with your tool, it won't work.  On the other hand, that sounds annoying; what if I'm somewhere outside and need a tool?  Now I need two tools, my drill and my phone.

Tool Connect by DeWalt

Since DeWalt is owned by Stanley Black & Decker, you'd think they'd have a similar or identical tool connect system.  They seem to be holding to the distinction, though, that DeWalt tools are more aimed at "professionals" than B&D and added more features to their program.  DeWalt's monitor offers temperature notifications in case the battery gets too hot while charging. While both this tool and SmarTech enable and disable the battery pack, the DeWalt tool reportedly has a notification that can alarm the user if a battery goes outside of Bluetooth range.

One Key by Milwaukee

At first, this one sounded pretty dumb, but the more I thought of it, the more I thought there's a decent idea in here.  The Milwaukee One Key is connected to the drill, not the battery. As a result, users can (not must) control the speed and torque with their phones. At first, this sounded inconvenient.  Why would you reach for your phone when there's an adjustment right on the drill in your hand?  One reason is, “because it’s there.” Another reason is there is a preloaded library in the app that includes common fasteners. If you don’t know the torque or speed to use on a wood screw or a concrete anchor, the app will set the drill automatically.  Ever rip the head off a small screw driving it into oak?  DAMHIK.

Now personally, I usually leave mine set to maximum torque (which is a lower speed setting), but every rational brain cell I have tells me that's stupid.  I have turned many Phillips head screws into screws with an irregular cone bored into their heads (and turned a few screw driving bits into abstract art, too).  According to the company, the end result is reduced fastener stripping, breaking, and material damage. I believe it just might.

There are other tools coming that it will work with: they list a reciprocating saw, and a shop light.

Matrix by Black & Decker

Those of us older than about 40 (as a guess) will remember when we had one drill, usually 1/4" drive.  It was plugged into the wall, and we interchanged things that attached to the chuck - besides screwdrivers (which I don't recall at all).  The point is that motors were expensive and batteries that would drive them were so much more expensive that you didn't even have one.  I recall polishing pads and car wax buffers, but there must be some of you who remember more.  You put cheap attachments on the motor you had because a motor driven tool like a car buffer was outrageously expensive by comparison.

Today, motors and batteries are both cheap and Matrix takes this full circle. Batteries aren't very reliable, and that leaves the motor as the longest-lasting part of the tool. Matrix swaps out the front part of the tool and leaves you with the motor.  By having multiple tools fit onto a single motor, the Matrix Quick Connect System can reduce the cost of a new attachment. In addition, when the motor stops working, the user can simply replace it versus the entire product. Your replacement is a battery when it stops taking a charge, and your motor can drive a handful of different tools. 

Phone Works by Ryobi

Ryobi puts their twist on this "add apps to your phone for your tools" thing by making the phone the "tool" in the sense that you add something to the phone and the combination of the phone and "added on thing" turn into the tool.  There are add ons that make your phone a laser level, wood moisture meter, stud sensor, water level sensor, IR thermometer, and a few more.  Interesting, but (to me) a bit less practical than some of the others.

CoolBox - isn't real yet; it's on Indiegogo

This one deserves to bring up the rear because it's not a real product, and it's not all that innovative either.   It's a 22-in. long, 12-in. deep, and 9 ½-in. tall toolbox that offers a built-in rechargeable battery to charge electronics. The battery is connected to a 11.1-V, 3-Ah plug, so it may not power anything serious.  It might keep your phone charged, or its own Bluetooth speakers, but that's all.  This just seems like a toolbox for hipsters who put together the occasional piece of Ikea furniture.  (Was that snarky enough?) 

There you have it.  I think it's an interesting collection of tools and accessories, for those of us who still make things.

Will The Next Battery Breakthroughs Be Capacitors?

Researchers at the University of Central Florida announced that they've developed a new type of supercapacitor that can substitute for a battery in consumer electronics.  As anyone who has had a rechargeable battery can tell you, they eventually fail to charge quickly and then discharge quickly.  

The novel method from the University of Central Florida’s NanoScience Technology Center could eventually revolutionize technology as varied as mobile phones and electric vehicles.

“If they were to replace the batteries with these supercapacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn’t need to charge it again for over a week,” said Nitin Choudhary, a postdoctoral associate who conducted much of the research published recently in the academic journal ACS Nano.

The key, of course, is the material they developed that allows the capacitor to be made much smaller than previous supercaps.  The team at UCF worked with newly discovered two-dimensional materials only a few atoms thick and made them to supercapacitors.  Other researchers have also tried formulations with graphene and other two-dimensional materials, but with limited success.

[principal investigator Yeonwoong “Eric”] Jung’s team has developed supercapacitors composed of millions of nanometer-thick wires coated with shells of two-dimensional materials. A highly conductive core facilitates fast electron transfer for fast charging and discharging. And uniformly coated shells of two-dimensional materials yield high energy and power densities.

A part I found particularly interesting was this:

[A] lithium-ion battery can be recharged fewer than 1,500 times without significant failure. Recent formulations of supercapacitors with two-dimensional materials can be recharged a few thousand times.

By comparison, the new process created at UCF yields a supercapacitor that doesn’t degrade even after it’s been recharged 30,000 times.

The part I didn't see them mention is how to get that much charge into the phone.  When everything is said, a capacitor is tank that holds electrons.  Those electrons are pumped into the storage tank and then drained out during use.  That means if "you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn’t need to charge it again for over a week" you need to put in the same number of electrons in those few seconds that the phone drains out for over a week.  It's only slightly imprecise to say another word for the number of electrons per second is the number of Amps of current flowing into and out of the capacitor.  As an example, my phone battery is about 1600 milliAmpHours, and remember one milliAmpHour is 1 milliamp times 1 hour.  To charge that, I put a smaller number of milliamps into the phone for more hours, say 400 mA for a bit under 4 hours.  To charge that in one hour, we're back at 1600 mA.  To shove in the same number of electrons in 10 seconds, 1/6 the time, that current becomes 6 times larger: 9.6Amps.  Now add in that my battery may last one day, and they're saying, "you wouldn’t need to charge it again for over a week" and the number of electrons gets even bigger; now maybe we're talking about 68 Amps. 

Think of a charger cord the thickness of car jumper cables rather than the skinny little USB charger cable you currently use.

There are other problems, but let's leave it here.

A sample of the nanomaterial they used. (UCF Photo)

Fake News and The Russians

Is there anything to this story?  Not to me; at least not yet.  You're reading a guy who's motto when confronted with wild claims is "In God we trust; everyone else bring data and keep your hands where I can see 'em".  (Advertising claims and global warming scare stories are the usual triggers for that response).

Has anybody seen any data?  Someone in the CIA says it, so it must be true?  Is that like when the Mainstream Media cites "unnamed sources" that just happen to really be another reporter?  The Office of the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) doesn't buy it.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to accept the CIA's analysis - a deductive assessment of the available intelligence - for the same basic reason, the three officials said: the CIA has not argued that they can know motives.  The FBI, of course, is concerned about having evidence which will stand up in court.  "The CIA dood said so" is not that kind of evidence. 

The CIA conclusion was a "judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked," one of the three officials said on Monday.

The fact is that since as far back as last summer, Julian Assange has been saying it was not Russia that provided the information they published.  It was a leak, not a hack.  Voluntarily provided, not stolen.  In an interview Sunday, Dec. 11th, that was repeated.

However on Sunday Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, acknowledged that he met the person who was responsible for publicly outing  the DNC emails, and it was not Russia.

Murray then went on to say in an interview that; “I know who leaked them, “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things”.

With no data published, who do you believe?  A British Ambassador or "someone at the CIA".  The guys in the CIA very likely have a dog in the fight.  It's entirely possible the Deep State is attacking Trump here, seeing if they can ruin his credibility before he even starts in office.  Of the two sides, Julian Assange and Craig Murray vs. the nameless "someone at the CIA", I think Assange and Murray are more likely to be telling the truth. 

Or you could go all in, like Keith Olbermann, here, from Twittererer.  (H/T to David Codrea's War On Guns).

I propose a new unit for stupidity, in which this is a standard.  Someone really, really stupid would be one Olbermann.  When you goof up and forget your car keys, that would like a milli-Olberman.  Something exceptionally stupid, like losing all your money to a Nigerian prince email scam would be a hecto-Olbermann (100 Olbermanns).  No one has ever lived through a kilo-Olbermann worth of stupidity. 

Just Between Us Folks

I see nothing in the Trumpening or anything else going on to make me think we're not headed for all out economic collapse.  While I'm really encouraged by information coming out like what Borepatch linked to today, I'm also concerned about the widespread mention of Too Big To Fail bankers (beyond Treasury Secretary nominee Mnuchin) being appointed into the administration. 

As usual, I can't say when because there are just so many variables here, the biggest being that the US isn't the only country in trouble.  If that was the case, it would be easier.  Instead we have the central banks in Japan, the EU, China and the BRICS all taking heroic measures to restore growth.  Simply, the world can't continue to grow at the rate we went through right after the decoupling of the dollar from a commodity standard.  Take a look at this plot from Chris Martenson at PeakProsperity.com.  Although this curve is now 6 years old, look at the amount of debt growth since 1989; not just federal spending but state spending, student loans, corporate spending and even consumer debt.  It's all debt we need to crank out of the system. Even if we returned it to about half of the growth since 1980, 260% of GDP, it's still a tremendous amount of debt to pay off. 

If countries aren't allowed to have infinite debt, they need to follow the same principle we all follow: at some point, the payments become uncomfortable and we stop spending as much.  Again, if we're not allowed infinite debt, it's simply not possible to grow your debts faster than your income forever.

Chris Martenson does a guest post a Glenn Beck's website, and explains the math.  It's absolutely essential we all understand.

Let’s start in 1980, when credit growth really took off. This period also happens to be the happy time that the Fed is trying to (desperately) recreate.

Between 1980 and 2013, total credit grew by an astonishing 8% per year, compounded. I say ‘astonishing’ because anything growing by 8% per year will fully double every 9 years.

So let’s run the math experiment as ask what will happen if the Fed is successful and total credit grows for the next 30 years at exactly the same rate it did over the prior 30. That’s all. Nothing fancy, simply the same rate of growth that everybody got accustomed to while they were figuring out ‘how the world works.’

What happens to the current $57 trillion in TCMD as it advances by 8% per year for 30 years? It mushrooms into a silly number: $573 trillion. That is, an 8% growth paradigm gives us a tenfold increase in total credit in just thirty years

For perspective, the GDP of the entire globe was just $85 trillion in 2012. Even if we advance global GDP by some hefty number, like 4% per year for the next 30 years, under an 8% growth regime, U.S. credit would be twice as large as global GDP in 2043 (!)

If that comparison didn’t do it for you, then just ask yourself: Why, exactly, would U.S. corporations, households, and government borrow more than $500 trillion over the next 30 years? The total mortgage market is currently $10 trillion, so might the plan include developing an additional 50 more U.S. residential real estate markets?

The next 30 years simply can't look like the last 30, not because "everything has already been invented", like socialist darlings Thomas Pikkety and Paul Krugman say (and let me remind you Krugman is the guy who thought an alien invasion would be a good economic stimulus).  Where do you get 50 US housing markets to build in 30 years?  As I've said before, if you're going to sell bonds to borrow a large number, say $10Trillion, you can only sell those bonds to someone who has $10T lying around and can buy your bonds.  There are very, very few places to sell that amount of debt, and those places all have their own problems.  Growth can't continue at the 8% compound rate because the world has borrowed ahead so much that spending has to slow down to pay off the debt.  The only thing that borrowing can do is move future growth (purchases) forward in time.  As is the case with credit card debt, at some point, the consumer has to pay the debt down. 

It's my belief that the trigger for this isn't going to be something like a routine act that one of the countries goes through: something like the Fed raising interest rates or Italy leaving the EU.  There's enough warning for the systems to adapt, and develop ways around.  Rather it will be an accident: something like a major financial house going broke (cough.. AIG) or perhaps some posturing between countries that leads to shots being fired.  Perhaps even metaphorical shots, like a trade war.  On that front, I tend to agree with the idea that Trump can't start a trade war with China: it's already going on. 

Other Projects

In addition to the major things I write about here, my Grizzly G0704 CNC conversion and all the things that entails, I also work on some other things.  As a side or back burner project for a while, I wanted to make another one of those tools frequently used by guitar technicians.  This is called a fret rocker, and the big store of special tools for guitar-tech tool-addicts carries them.

The hardest part of this was coming up with the dimensions for the four sides, which I eventually found in a description someone had posted.  Once I had the dimensions, I drew it in CAD making the shortest side and longest side perpendicular to each other, then swinging the other lines until they intersected.  It was a simple task to program where the end of tool paths should be, and program the Sherline to cut four lines.  This was before the Sherline broke, back in mid November.

Fret rockers are used to find the source of buzzing sounds while playing, and they're used by placing three frets in contact with an edge on the tool and seeing if the tool rocks.  If the tool rocks, the middle fret is high.  At the low pitch end of the neck, the long edge is needed; at the highest pitch end, it's the shortest edge and in between, you use the edge that fits.  High frets are generally tapped down with a brass or hard plastic hammer, but sometimes the frets will need some filing or sanding.    

Another side project involved a little addition to my project guitar.  The guitar had been stripped of all its hardware at some point in its past, and I wanted a simple set of strap pins for it.  It ended up being a bit involved.  The bottom of the lower bout is where those pins are usually found, and I found a large hole there, around 5/8" diameter, with holes from three mounting screws.  Since this had been an acoustic electric at one time, and most of those that I've seen have the strap pin built into a 1/4" jack, the web searching began.  A bit later I determined I needed something like this.   Since there wasn't a handful of options, I figured they had to be a common size, and ordered one.  Hah!  The diameter of the hole circle on the jack I bought didn't match the hole circle on the guitar. 

What to do, what to do?  Especially since the new screw holes would probably cut into old screw holes and jeopardize the fix.  Seems like a hole relocation fix is called for, one of those things you've just got to know how to do.  A conversation with my friend the luthier confirmed that in my mind and got me to think I should plug the holes with wood and redrill the holes, like the Z-axis fix I did in aluminum.  What do I plug these tiny screw holes with?  How about a hardwood toothpick?  Glue them in with Titebond and trim back flush with the surrounding wood.  Drill the now solid wood for the wood screw and assemble as usual.  Mission finally accomplished today. 

I keep pondering what to do with the missing side on this guitar.  Single sides, called orphaned sides or just practice sides, are tough to find and tend to be offered as "whatever we have on hand", the buyer has no choice of color or anything.  I kind of like the suggestion from last time of making the side a contrasting wood, a nicely figured maple would be ideal, but that appears to be just about impossible to find.  Thanks to consultations with some other folks, I've thought about replacing that side with plexiglass, but I haven't really figured out how I'd do that, so I haven't gone looking for any pieces of plastic, yet. 

I Can't Answer This

This year's Talent Suomi - Finland's Got Talent - winner, Antton Puonti, won by using simulated farting sounds from his hands to play this modern Christmas classic. 



I would have said I'm speechless, but speaking isn't really how one would answer this, if you get my drift, and I think you do. 

Cutting Metal Again

The continuing story of the problems with my small milling machine losing motion came to a happy conclusion this afternoon, and I was able to complete the cuts for oil grooves that I was setting up to make when I discovered the problem.

This is the last pass on the last oil groove.  Groovy, huh?

So what was the fix?  Did you think I'd let you get away without telling you?  First off, let me just show you the parts cross section again. 

As I said in the most recent piece, I just wanted to replace the coupler, pre-load nut and 5-40 screw.  That's basically everything except the leadscrew and the Sherline motor mount with its two sets of ball bearings.  I rebuilt this on Tuesday using blue LocTite on the taper of the leadscrew and set it aside for a few hours (which ended up being Wednesday morning).  On Wednesday, I started slowly moving the X-axis and all was fine.  I had written a simple G-code file to exercise the X-axis, moving it from -4.0 inches to +4.0 inches and back several times.  The table stopped moving in less than five minutes.  

I took it apart, of course, and found that the LocTite had sheared.  All I did was just reassemble it with LocTite on everything.  I put a light smear on the taper, a small drop on the 5-40 screw and another drop on the 1/4-20 threaded lead-in threads on the leadscrew.  Then I went to LocTite's website to look up just how long it should take to cure, and found a data sheet.  The answer was that it really takes 24 hours to get to full strength.  So I said I'll leave it until 24 hours is up, Thursday around noon.  Again, I started slowly and moved the X-axis back and forth for a while, then ran my short exercise file.  This time it worked.  Then I ran an extended version, which took about 45 minutes.  All in all, I ran it for over an hour with no issues.   After an hour of doing things it wasn't capable of doing at all a few days ago, how long does it take to get confidence it can keep moving?  Put it this way: if one of those parts had snapped in two, would this even be a question?  There would be a broken part and a new, unbroken part, and the only question would be whether it was put back together properly.  

Thursday night and Friday featured Christmas parties, so I didn't get back to it until today.  This time, instead of my X-axis torture test, I wrote a little exercise routine for the mill to run all three axes simultaneously for a half hour.  Everything held together just fine, so I moved the Grizzly's cross slide back onto the little mill's table, zeroed the coordinates to match the drawing, and then proceeded to cut the slide.   It did hiccup, the table started shaking too much.  It turned out that when I put the X-axis gib strip back in, I didn't seat it properly.  That didn't show up with the X-axis not carrying the 10 pounds of cast iron.  Once I shut everything down and reassembled that last detail properly, everything was fine. 

Now it's on to drilling the 1/8" diameter, 4" deep hole. 

Creating DNA That Assembles Wires for Microcircuits

While the electronics trade press generally focuses on the "glamor" side of the industry: the continually shrinking device geometries, we've already talked about how the majority of integrated devices use older larger processes.  Working with those smaller geometries is simply much harder than working with geometries that are bigger than 50 nm.  

[We present data] showing that 43% of worldwide semiconductor production is in the five largest geometries: from 65nm up to the largest sizes used.  Further, the graph on the right shows that 85% of new designs are 65nm and larger, up to even 500 nanometer geometries.   

The difficulties with the single-digit nanometer geometries don't stop with simply producing them photographically via the still exotic and expensive extreme ultraviolet lithography. The difficulties include connecting the transistors to the outside world.

In November, Design News highlighted the use of DNA molecules to self-assemble wires for this use.

Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and Paderborn University have conducted a current through gold-plated nanowires that independently assembled themselves from single DNA strands.

The research paves the way for new methods to devise even smaller wires, circuits, and other electronic components, which traditionally have led to innovation in technology design and development, said Artur Erbe, research leaders at HZDR’s Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research. [Note: all the universities in this article are from Germany -  SiG]

In order to produce the nanowires, the team combined a long single strand of genetic material with shorter DNA segments through the base pairs to form a stable double strand. The DNA had gold-plated nanoparticles bonded to the individual nucleic acids in the strand, so that when the DNA assembled itself as it was programmed to do, the gold particles formed a continuous string of gold - a gold wire.  Using this method, the structures independently took on the form desired by researchers, Erbe said.

“With the help of this approach, which resembles the Japanese paper folding technique origami and is therefore referred to as ‘DNA origami,’ we can create tiny patterns," he said. “Extremely small circuits made of molecules and atoms are also conceivable here.”

I want to caution you that the extremely highly magnified images of this assembly don't look pretty, but the results function well as wires.  Have a look:

The wire looks more like a string of beads than a wire.  This is preliminary work, but these researchers are developing almost everything they do.  The paper focuses on exactly how they prove that these things are really wires; that there's really continuity and electron conduction through the obviously lumpy structures.  The authors say the structures they've created act like wires at room temperatures, but at low temperatures they can behave differently:

The room temperature charge transport measurements exhibit ohmic behavior, whereas at lower temperatures, multiple charge transport mechanisms such as tunneling and thermally assisted transport start to dominate. Our results confirm that charge transport along metallized DNA origami nanostructures may deviate from pure metallic behavior due to several factors including partial metallization, seed inhomogeneities, impurities, and weak electronic coupling among AuNPs.  [Note: AuNP = Gold NanoParticles  - SiG]

Again, this is preliminary work, but it's pretty interesting.  DNA is unique in its ability to self-assemble, and researchers have developed ways of getting DNA to produce the shapes they want through this so-called DNA origami.   It seems natural to combine them into folded structures that do the things we want them to do, and not just make cool pictures.  Making faster/better processors and digital circuits seems like a good use.

DNA Origami: from the plans to electron microscope photos, top to bottom.  (Source)

Exclusive Photo

Amy Schumer (left) and Lena Dunham (right) preparing for their move to Canada after the Trumpening.

from the emails...

Looks Like The Russians Are Back

Привет  I was taking a look at my blog stats today for a totally unrelated reason and noticed a large spike in visitors from Russia, similar to what a few of us saw when I wrote about this last August.  The #2 country visiting my blog is Russia this week.  It's not as big as that week, when Russia actually took the #1 spot, but check this from about two hours ago:

If I look at the numbers for last month, that number of Russian visits go up only by about 60, so all of those 5294 are within the last week.  I can tell from Blogger that they're all not today but no more details.

The makeup of page views is unremarkable in that the most viewed post is last week's post on Employment vs. Robots, which didn't mention Russia in any way.  It's hard for me to see anything unusual here, and I have to wonder if it's a Google artifact.  If any visitors from Russia would care to leave a comment on what they came to read about, I'd appreciate it.  Or, as the translator in the Bing search engine says:

Если посетителей из России позаботили бы оставить комментарий на то, что они пришли, чтобы прочитать о, я ценю это.

Last August, both Sense of Events and Abode of McThag reported the same thing, then several people said they were seeing a spike from Russia in the comments.

Pearl Harbor Day - 75th Anniversary

Steven Breen at Townhall.com.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest telling WWII survivors to "get over" being bombed at Pearl Harbor may be more than the Obama's typical tone deafness.  It may be the typical Obama administration response that America must have deserved to be bombed.  It was said in the context of some Americans saying that since Obama apologized for Hiroshima, Shinzo Abe should apologize for Pearl Harbor, which he refuses to do. 

Abe announced Monday that he would become the first Japanese leader to visit the Hawaiian naval station since it was bombed by Imperial Japan on Dec. 7, 1941. The visit is in response to Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bomb drop.

Personally, I'm more OK with Abe not apologizing than Earnest telling people to "get over it".  I don't care if Abe is visiting Pearl Harbor and I didn't care when Obama was visiting Hiroshima, although his apologizing for the bombing irked me.  "Symbolic visits" mean nothing to me.  Shinzo Abe is no more responsible for bombing Pearl Harbor than Obama is responsible for nuking Hiroshima.  I believe in individual action, individual freedom and its concomitant responsibility.  Neither of these guys was alive in those days and played no part.

It's the same logic that says there's not a single person alive today that owned slaves in 1860s or that was a slave in the 1860s so no one deserves reparations and no one is responsible for providing them.

As I write this, it's about 12:30 PM, EST.  75 years ago at this time, 7:30 AM Honolulu time, the radar operators outside Pearl Harbor were seeing the first returns of the massive air invasion about to happen.  The first wave of the attack hit at 7:55 AM. 

I find it interesting that the current search radar there is still one of the most powerful search radars in the world. 

Do It Yourself Extortion - BLM Activists Setup Monthly Payments for Whites to Pay Blacks

Back in the first season of Saturday Night Live, '75, they did a parody piece where Garrett Morris had a charity called the White Guilt Relief Fund which really asked for money to be sent directly to him.  Life imitates art, as they say.  Today, the Daily Caller's DC Morning carried the story,

Liberal black activists have launched a monthly “subscription box” designed for white people “to not only financially support Black femme freedom fighters, but also complete measurable tasks in the fight against white supremacy.”

The subscription service is called Safety Pin Box and was launched last week.
...
The group is headed by Leslie Mac and Marissa Jenae Johnson. Johnson is one of the Black Lives Matter protesters who interrupted Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during a speech in Seattle last year.

Safety pins, or if you'll permit me to say diaper pins, have become the symbol of the butthurt Social Justice Worker in the aftermath of the Trumpening, supposedly to show solidarity with other Clinton supporters aggrieved minorities.

How it works is simple: it's a subscription service.  No, really. White people send in a set amount of money every month, and in reply are sent a series of tasks to perform as penance for their sin of being born white. 

There are four different types of subscriptions offered by the group. The “e-ally box” is $25 a month and is “an electronic form of solidarity.” It comes with “exclusive ‘calls to action’ when urgent ally services are needed in times of crisis.” Ally is a term used by Black Lives Matter activists to describe white comrades.

There is then the “pin pals box” which is a box shared by two white people for $100 total. Lucky subscribers get a “physical ‘safety pin’ box shipped to one address with guided two-person tasks for the month.”

There is then the “premiere” box subscription which costs $100 a month. This includes a “physical ‘safety pin’ box shipped to you with guided ally tasks for the month. Tasks will vary in scope from individual to group assignments, and task categories include data collection, personal development, influencing your networks, and showing radical compassion.”

41 Years ago, Garrett Morris put it this way:

Hi. I'm Garrett Morris, talkin' to all you white Americans about the way black people have been treated in America. Now, I know a lot of you feel guilty -- and you should. My great-great-grandmother was brought over here on a slave ship and was raped by her white master. And my grandfather was lynched by a mob for not tippin' his hat to a white lady. Now, they're dead now and there's nothing you can do to erase their suffering. However, if you would like to relieve your guilt, I am willing to accept money as a representative victim of four hundred years of repression. Send your check or money order to White Guilt Relief Fund, care of Garrett Morris, 870 West 127th Street, New York, New York 10089

Self-service extortion by mail.  The remarkable part, though, is that it's not the first time something like this has been tried.  In August, Natasha Marin (a black woman) started a website for voluntary reparations payments.  Reparations.me has a Craigslist-like layout where non-white people post their requests for reparations from white people. White people can fulfill requests as well as post their own offers of reparations.  Requests run from specific amounts of money to things like cars or to help with various things. 

There's no word on how well that worked out for them, but the website seems to alive and in use.  

 

From the SNL website, just enlarged.

They say that PT Barnum didn't really say, "there's a sucker born every minute", but somebody did.  That quote fits well right about here.

Movie Time

On a completely different note, we took a few hours Monday afternoon and went to see the big budget sci-fi movie Arrival.  Longtime readers probably know that my preference in movies is the Marvel Cinematic Universe: the Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, Ant Man, the whole bunch.  Yeah, we caught Dr. Strange on the first weekend, too.  I will go to see occasional others, but they are largely comic book movies, or action movies like the Bond universe, Mission Impossible, and that sort.   

Arrival is not that kind of movie.  It's definitely not your typical alien or first contact movie; there were giant spaceships, but there were no explosions.  New York City wasn't pulverized, nor was Tokyo, London or other world capitals.  Instead, it ends up being well done sci fi that gives you something to think about.  It goes after some traditional sci fi questions like the nature of time and reality, but looks at the role of language in how we experience those.  After we left, Mrs. Graybeard and I both said it wasn't what we were expecting, but it also wasn't what we were afraid it might be.  We had heard that the main message of the movie was communications and how if we could communicate better, we'd all get along, and have world peace because kumbaya or something.  That message was sort of in there, but so was the message that, historically speaking, primitive societies meeting much more advanced ones don't do very well.  Neither was a hyped, main message.

The movie stars Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, but it really is the Amy Adams show.  I only know her from playing Lois Lane in the latest re-telling of Superman, "Man of Steel", but she does well.  I like Jeremy Renner, but his character is supporting to hers and Forest Whitaker is almost non-existent as a character.

In the interest of not doing spoilers, I'll leave it there.  On 1-10 scale, I'd give it an 8 to 9.  There were some things that seemed out of place or silly, but not much.  

Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams, as they're trying to understand the symbols the aliens use to communicate.

Monday, Monday

Not so much a bad Monday, but an unusual Monday.  Let me recap a little. 

I wrote last Tuesday about finding issues with my Sherline CNC system losing motion on its X-axis.  I ordered replacement parts from an online seller I've bought from in the past: two of the couplers, two of the preload nuts, and two packs of two of the 5-40 screws, on Wednesday.  Those parts arrived on Friday and the company royally screwed up the order.  I received four of the couplers instead of two, none of the preload nuts, and one of the packets of 5-40 screws instead of two.  Contacted the company.  "No problem, we'll fix it".  The replacement parts arrived today, and once again, they completely screwed up the order.  This time I received another two couplers, none of the preload nuts, and one single 5-40 screw.  I'm at a loss for what to do here.  I have six couplers (I needed one, but ordered two), no pre-load nuts and three 5-40 screws. 

Before that, I took some photos of the way the leadscrew and 5-40 screws appeared damaged.  The leadscrew's end, before:

and the 5-40:

I ran a die over the 1/4-20 threads and they look much better.  A new nut from the hardware parts box fits much better than before.  I don't have a die for the 5-40 threads, and the screws are cheap enough that I figured I could buy some easily enough, since I needed to order those other parts. 

Meanwhile, over the weekend, I broke out my Hornady ultrasonic cleaner to clean both the existing pre-load nut and the end of the leadscrew.  It was sounding like things were rattling too much, so I put in a bag of .223 brass that needed cleaning.  After a couple of long soaks, I took them both out.  The pre-load nut was clean even in the tight internal corners.  I ran a toothpick into the leadscrew and pulled out some black goop - probably old grease.  Did that a few times.

I received the 5-40 tap I ordered last weekend on Saturday and immediately put it to use.  It only had to cut a little at the very start of the threads, but then screwed in easily over the full length.  It also pulled out some more grease with metal flakes when I removed it, so I did that a few more times until it came out clean.  Now, one of the two new 5-40 screws fits like it should. 

At this point, I'd think I could assemble the whole thing and try to find if I fixed my X-axis, but I'd still like those pre-load nuts.  The difference between a pre-load nut and a standard issue 1/4-20 hardware store nut is that one face is milled flat and then recessed for the diameter of the end of the coupler to fit into the nut, to maybe 0.1" deep.   

Watching Italy

Today's the day to be watching Italy for the next major populist vote.  Polls are still open in Italy as I write this, and we may know the outcome by evening east coast time.  If everything goes according to the prevailing opinion, Italy will vote it's own Brexit or Trumpening, and that will lead to the end of the European Union.  A little refresher from my October 9th piece. 

Like most of the Western world, Italy is going through a period of anger with their elected leaders, thinking them a corrupt, venal, criminal ruling class interested only in their own betterment at the expense of taxpayers.  In 2007, Beppe Grillo, an Italian actor and comedian, launched Vaffanculo Day to register that disgust with politics.  Those of us not from areas where Italian is spoken every day are probably not aware that “vaffanculo” is Italian for “f*** you” (you'll also see that interpreted as “f*** off”).

What began as a joke morphed into a political party which took the more publicly acceptable name of the 5 Star Movement or M5S.  M5S then morphed into one of the most popular parties in Italy, winning mayoral elections in Rome and Turin earlier this year.  Italy has had virtually no productive growth since it joined the euro in 1999.  M5S blames Italy’s chronic lack of growth on the euro and it appears a large plurality of Italians agree.

M5S has promised to hold a vote to leave the euro and return to Italy’s old currency, the lira, as soon as they’re in power. Under these circumstances it would probably pass.

Meanwhile, the current pro-EU Italian government of Matteo Renzi is holding a referendum on changing the Italian constitution later this year.

Remember Brexit?  How about calling this iExit?  Leaving the EU and government reform have become the central theme of a referendum coming on December 4th, which CITI bank is calling a bigger risk to the EU than Brexit.  Renzi has offered to take power from the senate because Italians think the senate is a useless, obstructionist debating club.  (Sound familiar?)  Renzi's proposal doesn't seem to be widely popular because Italians also don't seem to trust transferring the power to the Prime Minister.  They have a well-kept memory of a too-powerful executive (can you say Benito Mussolini?). 

Zerohedge is predicting a Vaffanculo Day, and the M5S sweeping into control and the beginning of the end for the European Union. 

In a possibly unrelated story, they also report on Non Governmental Organizations smuggling "immigrants" into Europe on an industrial scale.  Directly into Italy.  If there's going to be one thing that increases the chances of the population giving the elitists the finger, this is could do it.  If not, it will add more pressure to split the EU as the "African immigrants" spread their campaign of rape and murder across the continent. 

Beppe Grillo, who started it going.

It's The Time of Year To Talk About the C Word

I love Christmas.  I mean, I've run across people in my life who decorate for Christmas way more than I do, and I've known people who plan their Christmas six months in advance, way before I do.  I know a guy whose house decorations for Christmas put the local shopping centers to shame, and focused his whole year around Christmas.  Maybe if you saw me, or saw my barely decorated little house, you wouldn't think so, but I do love Christmas.

Christmas is unique among holidays in America.  It has a very strong Christian tradition (well, duh!) as well as very strong secular traditions, and I love them both.  I love giving gifts to loved ones - and even total strangers.  I love the old favorite songs and the whole feeling of this time.  People in retail will tell you that Christmas often determines whether or not they stay in business.  I'm sure you've noticed that news outlets report sales from the Friday after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) as if they're reporting scores from a bowl game.  Another part of the holiday is the annual struggle to "keep Christ in Christmas" and not overlook the spiritual side of the holiday.  Did you know there is actually a court ruling that tells you how many reindeer (three) a holiday display must have to remain "sufficiently secular" to be legal to display on public property?  If I'm putting on a public display and among all other other Winter Holiday symbols I have three reindeer on display, it's secular; if everything else is the same but it's only two reindeer and package of reindeer sausage, I'm obviously trying to convert you!  Does it get more stupid than that?  On second thought, don't answer that.   

A 2006 Zogby poll showed that 95 percent of folks are NOT offended when they hear the words “Merry Christmas.”  The real kicker is that 1 in 3 are actually very offended when the words “Happy Holidays” push out the phrase “Merry Christmas.”  This should not come as a big surprise because another poll by Fox News/Opinion Dynamics showed that 95 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. 

Other than the perpetually aggrieved people who protest everything, who's offended by someone wishing them happiness?  For years, I used to run this video by Jackie Mason saying as "The Ultimate Jew" he wasn't remotely offended by people wishing him a Merry Christmas.

Some time ago, I must have filled out a survey or signed some stupid online petition or something, because I get junk mail from the American Family Association.  A few years ago, I got an email asking me to boycott Dick's Sporting Goods because they won't prominently display "Merry Christmas".  I'm not really offended by a store not having prominent "Merry Christmas" displays.  People shouldn't go to stores for spiritual displays. 

See, the reason I would go to Dick's is if they happen to have something I'm looking for as a gift and it's a great price.  This is purely the secular celebration of Christmas; I'm not going there for spiritual reasons.  I would prefer they used the phrase Merry Christmas, but I'm not offended if they don't.  If they told me to "eat sh*t and die", they'd offend me and you can bet I wouldn't go back, but if they're neutral about "Merry Christmas", I don't really care that much. 

Here's where it gets a little dicey.  We have a Bass Pro in town (who got an "A+" rating from the AFA for saying Merry Christmas a lot) and a Dick's Sporting Goods.  I would go to Bass Pro because I'd prefer to go to someone with comparable merchandise and comparable price that was friendlier to my spiritual side.  It creates a more cozy environment and a smart retailer doesn't run off customers.  But life in 21st century America is plenty hostile to Christianity and a "happy holidays" from a store just isn't worth getting all worked up over.

By the way, a mere five hours after the AFA email asking me to boycott Dick's, I got a second email canceling the boycott.  They swear they're going to say Merry Christmas all the time. 

As we plunge further into the Christmas season, take time to enjoy it and your loved ones.  If you feel a need to get some perfunctory gift for someone you'd really rather not give to, I say don't.  That's some sort of bizarre social ritual, not Christmas.  Don't put yourself in debt for Christmas; even if it means the kids get a "meager" holiday.  It won't hurt them and may just help them.  If you're one of the 45% who recently said they'd just as soon skip the whole thing - I say skip it.  It's still a federal holiday, so you have that going for you.

Employment vs. Robots - It's Not as Straightforward as You Think

When the story broke early this week that McDonald's was planning on more automation in their restaurants nationwide, the inevitable response was "when people are demanding $15 an hour to flip burgers, what do they expect McDonald's to do?"  The story was reported almost exclusively as robots, but the story concerned self-service kiosks where customers could order and pay for their meals.  While it certainly looks like it will replace some of the kids taking orders at the front counter, it's not the hamburger making robots reported on here since 2012.  These Mickey Ds' will still need workers to deliver the food to the tables, but that's already happening in China, where supposedly every one goes for the low-wage workers.  It's only a matter of time before the robots will do the cooking in McDonald's, as they do in that restaurant in China.

Pretty straightforward, right?  Robots displace workers.  I bet if you plotted the number of robots vs the number of workers, you'd see the curves going in opposite directions; the more robots, the fewer workers.  Machine Design has done the work for us, and this is the plot you get for Robot Shipments vs. Non-farm employment for the last 20 years, (well, 1996-2014).  

Wait... whut?   Although it's a busy plot, the most important parts are the two lines: linearized (smoothed) trends in both US nonfarm employment  (orange) and robot shipments (green).  They're not crossing at all; in fact, they're almost parallel, with a weak tendency to converge.  As employment goes up, robot sales go up.  The irregular red curve and the gray bars represent the raw data series, without smoothing.  When looked at that way, there only seems to be only one period when employment behaved the way we thought, robot sales went up as jobs went down, (2003) but the rest of the time, robot sales go up as employment goes up. 

So what's going on here?

“The real threat to jobs is the inability to remain competitive.” Jeff Burnstein, President of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) explains, “If you can’t compete, you only have a few choices—you send it overseas, you shut down, or layoff.” Automation can keep jobs from ever moving overseas, and often, new technology wins new business, too. 

In the McDonald's, they have to stay competitive, and since the other options aren't available, they have to automate.  Not only can automation streamline production to help companies stay in business and even expand, but for manufacturers it can bring new talent to the table as well.  Robot designers are concentrating on developing user-friendly robots that are less hazardous to work around, and that can help the human operators with, for example, lifting heavy or fragile (or both) parts.  The buzzword is collaborative robots, which we reported on a year ago. 

According to Deloitte—the audit, consulting, and financial advisory company—there will be 3.5 million available manufacturing jobs from 2015 to 2025, and about 2 million of them will go unfilled due to a skills gap.  In 2011, 600,000 jobs went unfilled due to the skills gap.  Faced with a shortfall of almost 60% of the amount of workers they need, manufacturers will have to automate.  They need to use robots and automation to survive. 

The Machine Design article continues:

Much of our [the US'] competitive advantage comes from the technicians and engineers who have years of experience. However, economicmodeling.com wrote in 2014: “Yet if demand for workers [engineers] continues and if a good-sized segment of that workforce is poised to retire, skills gaps are likely to become a real issue—especially at senior- or management-level positions that are hard to recruit for.” If engineers are retiring faster than students are entering the field, and potentially missing the opportunity to learn from them, we might lose valuable knowledge as time progresses.

The issue then becomes that if we need robotics and automation to make up for the lack of skilled workers, and the most skilled workers are retiring, then who programs the robotics and automation? 

To me that says the real issue that infographic relays is that there is a burning shortage of skilled workers.  It seems that probably that means we have too many unskilled workers.

If our world’s population continues to grow, and overall world jobs shrink, how much longer can reshoring sustain a world economy? Manufacturing can reshore by replacing 10,000 workers overseas with 1,500 workers in the U.S., but this seems to all lean toward one direction—the end of unskilled labor while the unskilled laborer workforce grows worldwide.

The unskilled worker is where we started, and that's where the coming crunch is going to be.  The next wave of manufacturing revolution that's growing now has the potential to remove many of the outsourced jobs in the third world.

A study conducted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) found that 88% of Cambodia’s textile, clothing, and footwear workers were at a high risk of being replaced with automated machinery. In addition, some countries, like Cambodia, will feel a stronger impact where textile, clothing, and footwear production dominates an undiversified manufacturing sector and makes up around 60% of manufacturing employment.

In the end, we see a picture that's more complex than the first impression.  For the skilled worker and the fast learner, there's no reason to fear anything we see coming.  That robot is more likely to help you in your job than replace you.  For the unskilled worker who can't - or won't - learn the necessary skills, the future does look bleaker.  Just as the industrialized world started depending on them for "cheap labor", the industrialized world started to figure out how to get by with its own labor costs.    It's easy to say we need to convey more skills, but there are always some people on the margin.  These are the people that are most likely to be replaced by some sort of technology.

William Bossert, legendary Harvard professor, summed it up by saying, “If you’re afraid that you might be replaced by a computer, you probably can be—and probably should be.” While it may not be comforting, it could be a wakeup call for continued education.

A Little Encouraging News

Ever get tired of hearing of our "throwaway society", where everything is "use until it breaks" then throw it away?  I've seen it said that one of the problems with modern electronics is that it's too reliable; that it works long after a new, better version is out.  Enter the Repair Café:

Repair Café is a non-profit organization that aims to inspire sustainability at the local level by encouraging people to organize Repair Café events in their area. In more than 29 countries, over 1,150 cafes offer free services to residents that want to fix their broken belongings, including electronics, bicycles, clothing, and housekeeping devices. This not only reduces waste in landfills, but builds a healthy sense of community that allows participants to learn new skills, build their resourcefulness, and make new friends.

The name is the property of a seven year old European company headquartered in Amsterdam, but they're pushing the idea as something akin to Makerspaces.  A Makerspace is a place where people gather to share tools, teach each other, learn from each other, and generally learn how to build things as their hobby.  Sometimes, it's to start a business.  In a repair cafe', people get together with folks who help them repair things; sew clothes, fix electronics, make jewelry, a whole host of things.  Unlike the Makerspace, the Repair Café emphasis is for specialists and resident repair experts to volunteer their time and skills so they can fix things that fit their skill sets and available resources.  It seems to be all about getting things fixed more than learning how to fix things, but it seems that the nature of fixing things is that they break unexpectedly and when you need it, you need it.  You don't think very much about your coffee maker when it's working, but when it stops, you want coffee.  Perhaps that's the reasonable way to approach this.

To encourage new launches across the world, Repair Café offers a starter pack, which includes a manual with the plans for organizing Repair Cafés from the ground up. The content is based on tactics used by Café founders in the past, and discusses ways to find local repair experts, book locations for events, determine which tools to supply, and find funding. The starter pack also guarantees that the organization will contact other interested parties in the area so that communities can work together to curate events. It will also advertise the initiative through the Repair Café network. Donations to support local groups and to fund missions abroad can be submitted through the Repair Café’s website for any specified area.

Scene from a Repair Café in Charlotteville, Virginia, from Machine Design. 

In places as different as Portland, Oregon, the Netherlands, Ghana, Belgium, and more these Repair Cafes are starting up.   An interesting development.