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My dad is a mechanic specializing in Porsches, and I grew up hearing him rave about the German car maker's fine craftsmanship and engineering. Could that be part of why I liked brooklynbadboy's Daily Kos post "America needs an industrial policy" so much? After a brief...
The April 19th issue of The New Yorker features a story about tugboats and tugboaters called "Towheads: The far-flung adventures of a tugboating family" by Burkhard Bilger. It's a great read. But I have to admit I had a little mamma-bear moment when I...
I wrote about the SS United States in a post a few months back. Today the stakes are higher than ever before. At this moment, scrappers are bidding for a chance to cut up the 1952 ocean liner. A decision may be handed down before the end of the month. ...
This just in: My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America on the Hudson is the winner of the 2010 ASJA Outstanding Book Award in Memoir/Autobiography. This seems like the perfect time to say thank you to all the amazing people who made this book possible!...
The intro and the music might be a little cheesy, but I do love this video, Elements in Action, about the uses of iron, carbon, nickel, and aluminum that was produced by the Metals Service Center Institute, a 100 year-old trade association supporting the North...
For an engineer on an old fireboat that came back to life after being sold for scrap, this Boston Globe story by David Filipov, about an aging fireboat that "has responded to thousands of distress calls in its half-century of service" and is now poised...
"He who is aching in every limb, worn out by the effort of a day of work, that is to say a day when he has been subject to matter, bears the reality of the universe in his flesh like a thorn. The difficulty for him is to look and to love. If he succeeds, he...
Check out this Yahoo! story about highly-paid blue-collar positions with openings in 2010: "Ready for a career change but dread getting another desk job? Then how about trying your hand at, well, working with your hands? 'There is a blue-collar...
I just discovered Project H Design, a nonprofit team of designers and builders "engaging locally to improve the quality of life for the socially overlooked," whose "long-term initiatives focus on using design to improve public education experiences, spaces, and...
The bucket of water I left in the engine room of Fireboat John J. Harvey to gauge real temperatures in the oldest, most rudimentary way known to man has an inch of water at the top. Can't imagine what's happening in the 78-year-old pipes that we can't drain...