POTUS at RTP on STEM

Obama was at Research Triangle Park in Durham, NC yesterday to push for more engineering graduates.  He announced a plan to train 10,000 new math & science teachers as part of a $250 million effort to bolster STEM (science, technology, engineering, & math) education:

Today, only 14 percent of all undergraduate students enroll in what we call the STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and math...We can do better than that. We must do better than that. If we’re going to make sure the good jobs of tomorrow stay in America, stay here in North Carolina, we need to make sure all our companies have a steady stream of skilled workers to draw from.

Several points deserve to be made here.
Ihe initiative appears to focus largely on science & math.  While it's hard to argue against more science & math teachers, I keep wondering about the technology and engineering parts.


It's a question worth pondering: How do we get teenagers interested in pursuing engineering degrees, or better yet, in becoming full-fledged, awesome engineers?


The Dean of NC State's engineering school says only half the students who start an engineering degree actually graduate with one.  I'm part of the other half.  I got bored after a semester of engineering school and dropped out.


The problem was that engineering, which used to involve hands-on technical problem solving, has come to mean, basically, applied mathematics.  Engineering students, in my experience, are taught much more about how to calculate things than they are about how things are made.   (There are exceptions, I'm told, including Olin and WPI.)
For a couple semesters as an undergraduate, I worked in the machine shop of an engineering school.  It was a boring job — the shop sat unused virtually all the time.


As Matt Crawford explains in his book Shop Class as Soulcraft, shop classes started disappearing from U.S. high schools around the time computers started appearing.  Computers were the keys to the jobs of the future; shop class was the dirty, blue-collar past.  No one ever cut off a thumb typing on a keyboard.  Shop classes were easy targets for cuts.  Now shop classes survive in some schools, mostly in rural areas, and always under names like "Technology Ed" or "Career and Technical Ed."


I suspect the dropoff in post-secondary engineering enrollment correlates with the disappearance of high school shop classes.  A good shop teacher with a well-equipped shop can probably influence more students to go into engineering than any math or science teacher.  Math and science are great, but they never inspired me to learn the finer points of engineering the way my welding teacher has.


I'm an Obama fan, but, as with many public figures, it's hard to tell sometimes if he sees his forest for his own trees.  Here's a line from his inauguration address, which I blogged about two years ago:

[I]t has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

That sounds like someone who understands the boots-on-the-ground reality: that innovation usually involves getting your hands dirty.  Let's train engineers and innovators who know how to do that.

Recently read, currently reading, soon to read

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, by Daniel Pink, in which a career advice book a la "What Color is Your Parachute" is interpreted via manga as a 20-minute read.  How long until every other genre is converted into Japanese comics?  Seriously, let me know--this is awesome.

Eco Barons, which is at its best when it's about people who made it big, cashed out, and bought up land for conservation, almost obsessively.  The guy who helped start the super-80s clothing brand Esprit now owns a good chunk of Patagonia and plans to turn it into a Chilean national park.  A good read, if occasionally preachy or wordy.  I probably won't finish it for a while.  Seems like only half of the people profiled are/were businesspeople, the most interesting group.

Green to Gold, which is inspiring in showing how large corporations are seeing conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy as competitive benefits rather than liabilities.  I just hope the remainder focuses on smaller businesses than BP, Sony, Dupont, and Dow.
Fun fact from the book: The proportion of venture funding invested in cleantech (US and Canada) went from <1% in 1999 to 9% in 2005.
Twenty-five cents of every VC dollar invested in 2009 went to cleantech (though this includes other regions, notably Europe and Israel, where cleantech is an even bigger deal).
2009 cleantech venture funding increased $1.5 billion over 2007.  You remember '07.  It was that year before the financial collapse.

Free Agent Nation, by Daniel Pink (again) which will hopefully be as good as this.  This guy was Al Gore's speechwriter?  Only Al Gore could make this guy's writing sound dull.  Zing?


Getting Green Done is a 2009 book by a ski resort sustainability director who used to install home insulation for a living.
Hmm...American dream...hard work...saving the Earth.  It's kinda like Captain Planet wrote a book.  Plus there's skiing.







  















Just a little green hair dye and a bath in blueberry juice and we've got ourselves a live-action remake.
Plus there's blueberries.

A thought on safety

Tools
are like guns
and are ideally treated as such.

Now I'm talking about guns used in a certain way, like by a gun collector or a hunter. I'm not a big fan of guns, but if there must exist guns, I'd prefer they all get treated the way these guys treat their guns.
And I'm talking about tools like a plasma cutter, an oxy-acetylene torch, that kinda real powerful high-energy kinda tool. Well, all tools, but those especially.

That kinda tool can mess you up right good and real quick, if you don't handle it right. You could die because of being just a little bit wrong.
On the other hand, you treat the tool with respect, you take care of it, you can go your life using it every day and be just fine. In fact, there's lots of people doing it.

And--big bonus compared to guns--it's a lot less likely someone is going to pick up a plasma cutter and threaten your life with it. You control these tools your own damn self. Any problems, you usually got just yourself to blame.

This is scary to a lot of people. It's a big responsibility. It takes courage to know that this thing in your hand could hurt you real bad, and then to go ahead and use it anyways.

Why Bikes are a Great Way to Learn About Technology

It goes like this. Someone finds out that I'm a "bike guy". They learn that I build up bikes for friends, or they see bike tools in my apartment, or they read this blog.

Sometimes they figure that bikes are all I want to work with, all I'm interested in, just bikes.
The reality is almost exactly the opposite. In learning about bikes, I've learned a lot about other things. Because of what I know about bikes, I know a little about a lot of other related things.

Bikes are a great way to learn about technology. They're accessible, but they're challenging enough to be interesting. Getting started is easy, but learning the finer points of bikes means learning about all kinds of technology.

- Industry standards for bicycle parts are a mixed bag, to put it mildly. Pick up a random bike part, and its threads might be based on a metric, an imperial (SAE), or a totally bike-specific standard. Some parts are ISO, some JIS; Raleigh even had its own threading standards. Then there's the Italian, French, and Swiss standards. A few parts are left-hand threaded. People who know bikes are comfortable switching between all these crazy standards. Inch vs. metric? Try Italian vs. Swiss. Pop quiz: What's the difference between ISO and JIS bottom bracket axle tapers? Ask Sheldon

- Many of the essential technologies of modern life are present in every bike. Bearings, chain drive, brakes, control cables, and spoked wheels, to name a few. People who know bikes are familiar with all these subsidiary techs that drive so many other things. They've taken apart bearings, regreased, and reassembled.

- For under $300, you can buy a set of tools that will allow you to maintain damn near any bike. That kit doesn't have everything (notably a truing stand and workstand). But good luck overhauling your motorcycle with $300 in tools.

- Similarly, information about bike repair is easy to find. http://www.sheldonbrown.com/ is 90% of what you need.

- Steel bike frames are pretty unique in the realm of steel fabrication. The tubes are thin-wall--down to .3 mm in some cases. They can be joined in a lot of different ways, each requiring advanced skills. A frame needs to be straight, so low-distortion joining is key. The frame has to interface with all those funky bike part standards mentioned above. And the frame has to fit the rider, so there's a big human-machine-interface problem to be solved. Building bike frames is challenging, but part of the reward is that most other fabrication jobs are straightforward in comparison.

- Weight is always a factor with bikes. As Keith Bontrager said:

Strong. Light. Cheap. Pick two.

This isn't just true for bikes, though. As designers and fabricators, bike people are acutely aware of the trade-offs inherent in working within these constraints.

- There are bike parts made from a wide variety of materials, from brass to carbon fiber. Bike people have experience with the interactions between these materials. They know that aluminum seatposts tend to get stuck in steel frames because of galvanic corrosion.  They know that blue Loctite or beeswax can keep a threaded part from coming loose.

Why else?

Been Standing on the Corner of 5th and Vermouth

I went down to the local watering hole in the wee hours to get quarters for laundry.
I saw police lights outside while waiting at the bar, so when I walked out I looked around and saw a cop pulling over either:

A) Chrysler's last-ditch effort at the electric car

or

B) a golf cart with weather flaps

Upon closer inspection it turned out to be B. Three young men were crammed inside. From the way they were pulled over it was clear they'd been "driving" on Harrison St. As I walked by, the cop and the guy in the driver's seat were going around and around:

cop: I can tell you've been drinking. Don't lie to me now.

"driver": Naw, man, c'mon, I'm telling you, I ain't been drinkin, man...listen, I had A drink, but I'm good man, I'm tellin' you, I'm good, listen!

cop: Look, I know you've been drinking.

et cetera

His two buddies in the back seat were looking around like, "Oh. Shit. This was a really bad idea."



So, you decided to go joy-riding on city streets in a golf cart with weather flaps at 1 am. And you probably stole the golf cart.
Fine. Everyone's been there at some point. Sucks you got caught.

But now you claim you were not drunk when you hatched this plan?
Good day, sir. Good day.

On Obscurity

I was at a vintage bike show last year, chatting with a talented framebuilder whose star is rising. I had bought a t-shirt from him earlier, so I mentioned before we parted ways that I was glad to have expanded my collection of obscure frame company t-shirts*.
From the look on his face it was clear he took my comment a little differently than I'd intended it. Perhaps it wasn't the best choice of words. But he was off with his family by the time I realized my fumble.

I wish I could have explained myself as well as Obama did in today's inauguration address:

Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

He described better than I can most framebuilders I've come to know. They are doers, makers of things, uninterested in riches and fame. They are obscure but they are kick-ass. Their obscurity is not a liability.  I meant it as a compliment.

This is the kind of person that I strive to be: someone who goes out and gets stuff done and doesn't make a whole lot of noise about it.

*which includes, among others:
Signal
Rebolledo
Courage
Bilenky
Pereira

How Not to Sell Wine

Girl at the Whole Foods wine desk last night:
"This is really good--it got, like, 90 points!"

Oh! Wow! 90 points! I like how you didn't even tell me who gave it 90 points.
Cuz that's what I was worried about--the number. I dragged my ass out here to Glen Allen so I could buy pricey organic sulfite-free wine based on what some magazine thinks of it. Y'know, cuz wine is purely a status symbol, not something I'd drink to enjoy. I'm sniffing, sipping, and scrutinizing the tastes you're pouring out of that $20,000 machine--but it's all for show. Thank you for finally telling me the damn number so I can get out of here. I hate wine.

Buying wine based on a number is like dating a girl with a big chest based on her bra size. It's a number just for show. The wine thing is actually worse--it's subjective.

Consumers Are Consuming Raw Materials

Then in the middle of a "Manufacturing Processes" lecture, the prof said something about how, as opposed to manufacturers, consumers don't consume raw materials.

I perked right up. I'm a consumer, I thought to myself, and I consume raw materials all the time.

Moreover, the resurgence of craft in the US* has redefined what it means to be a consumer.

* cf. MAKE magazine, steampunk, TechShop & The Crucible, hobbyist/amateur frame builders, this WIRED article mentioned previously, and even The Whole Earth Catalog

These "crafters 2.0" are consuming raw and semi-raw materials (as well as scrap materials, even better). They're a different kind of consumer.

It's a niche, but thanks to The Long Tail, it's a valuable niche.

--

This way of consuming smacks of a bygone age, when a family used what nature provided to produce what they needed to survive.

The settlers who populated the American frontier didn't head to Wal-Mart to stock the wagon on their way out of town. There was no all-inclusive, Chinese-made, Frontier-Settling Kit.

They processed the raw resources around them, and they used those resources completely, wasting little.

They manufactured on-site a lot of what they needed: a house, a plow, leather goods, clothing, food. Manufactured goods were expensive before mass production, so it was cheaper to make rather than buy.

Perhaps I'm being sentimental.

But I wonder what can be learned from these frontier ancestors. The best of them were tough, innovative, self-sufficient, and hard-working.

How to be an Academic in Five Easy Steps

1. At every opportunity, impress upon others the importance and relevance of your field of study. All other fields are inferior.

2. Remember that your field is connected to everything. It is a lens through which everything is to be viewed. Continuously look for ways in which you can connect your field to disparate events and ideas. (The conflict in Georgia? Caused by poor financial planning. Or a grave ethical problem. Whatever you're studying.)

3. Emphasize that your field is infinitely complex and far beyond the grasp of the average person. Practice saying this in the most condescending way possible: "I'd love to explain XYZ Theory, but the differential equations are a little over your head...I better not get into it."

4. Obviously, a PhD is necessary to even begin to understand. After all, if any schmuck could learn this stuff in a few minutes, then your PhD would be useless.

5. "It depends..." is the best answer to every question. The good academics stopped really answering questions many years ago.

On Making Pasta

I cook pasta rarely, because I try to limit the amount of starch I eat.

I cook pasta like I braze (or rather like I try to braze). Get it hot, get it done, and get out. Don't cook it any longer than necessary.

Salt the water before you even start it boiling. Use plenty of coarse salt. Helps it boil faster. [Maybe. See below.]

Taste the pasta while it's cooking. I do this about three times. Ignore the clock and timer. Take into account that you want it have a little bite when you eat it, and that it will keep cooking a little after you drain it. You want pasta to be about medium-rare when you eat it, so cook it to rare.

Drain the pasta well when you're done, and do it quickly. You want all that hot water out of there so it cools down and stops cooking ASAP. Shaking the colander can help.

Coat the pasta with a little olive oil when it's still in the colander. Keeps it from sticking. Use a light olive oil of the finest quality you can get. Imported from Spain or Italy and Extra virgin for sure. First cold press if possible.

Use the right materials. Good, fresh pasta is great, though usually too rich for my budget. Good olive oil is relatively cheap, and necessary for so many other things. Salt in the water is essential. Likewise a good pot of the right size, depending on how much is being cooked. And plenty of water.

Bad pasta was cooked in too small a pan, with too little water, for too long, then sat in the waer for a few minutes before it was drained, and not coated in oil afterward. It tastes so bad. It tastes like the worst airline food on the worst airline.

Dave Moulton explains retro-love

Dave Moulton is a retired framebuilder who now writes (quite well), and has caught the blog bug.
His post explains why old stuff (most of the time) just plain works better, dammit. It's almost a manifesto for retro-grouchiness.

I just started driving a red Toyota pickup with a stick-shift, manual windows/locks, no built-in clock, no tachometer, no extended cab, and no 4WD. Just a simple, small truck, 3 years old. I thought for a while I'd miss things like keyless entry, power windows, and a clock, but I've adapted (and bought a stick-on clock) and now the truck seems totally complete. I wouldn't change a thing.

One rainy day a couple weeks ago, a guy came running into class about 20 minutes late, soaking wet. His power windows, he explained, had quit working as he was driving to school. He had to stop under an overpass and use some garbage bags to seal the windows as best he could. One of the other guys in class said, "That's why I stick with the roll-ups."

Don't get me wrong: I love technology, and an electronically-shifted bike would be a cool gizmo and I'd like to ride one for a few miles. But after that I'd hop back on my single-speed and remember that I only service my bike a few times a year, and, aside from the little light on the front, none of its components need batteries.

Thankful, or: Diamond in the Back, Sunroof Top, Diggin' the Scene

I recently moved to Richmond, VA from the DC suburbs to pursue an interdisciplinary degree at Virginia Commonwealth University, combining studies in their Craft and Business schools as well as in the Precision Machining program at John Tyler Community College in nearby Chester.

Today has been interesting. It's the day before VCU classes start, so more errand-running in preparation for the semester.

Last night I discovered the rear hub on my bike was locked up, and fixing that is one of those repairs I can't do at home. So I set out today looking for a shop; the first was closed, so I tried a newish-looking one in Carytown. Turned out to be a very cool, relaxed shop, similar to one that just opened in DC that my buddy works at.

I got the hub temporarily fixed up, ordered new bearings for it, slapped on a new cog for lower gearing, and placed an order for a red-and-white Chrome Citizen to replace my aging Timbuk2. I hope it'll be very visible and sufficiently color-coordinated with existing cycling apparel.

As I was about to leave, I asked about the unpainted fork they had mounted in a cool velvet-lined box frame. That led to some framebuilding talk with one of the sales people. Turns out he's a recent VCU Craft grad, he built a lugged frame in the Craft shop, and we know some of the same people in the framebuilding universe. He's interested in doing custom bike part manufacture, but lacks access to suitable machine tools, as well as technical know-how to run the machines. Funny, I say, because I have (or will soon have) access to such tools and know-how to use them, but I lack sweet designs and ideas. Each of us realized pretty quickly we needed to stay in touch with the other. Fortunately, I'll be back to pick up my new bag in a week.

Did 45 minutes at one of VCU's two gyms, which are as nice as any I've been in (though that's not saying much, I'm new to the gym thing).

Wandered around later near the gym and art school, stopped into Pibby's, a tiny one-room bike shop that I'd bought parts from at a swap meet in Maryland earlier this year. The guy (the sole proprietor) gave me some valuable names and numbers: the guy I'd met earlier in the day in Carytown, a semi-local framebuilder, a powdercoater down the street. Just because I seemed like I might benefit from the info, I guess.

Drove to Chester, bought cheap gas and the rest of my John Tyler books. Class tonight was all shop safety, pretty boring, though by now we've started to loosen up and crack more jokes.

Then I went to the Lowe's (I know, I know) across the street from JT to get some carpet. I want to convert half of the spare room in my new apt. into a bike shop, but I need to protect the hardwood floor from the grease and stand and bikes. I picked out some perfectly grease-colored, dirt-cheap stuff and went to find a guy to cut it for me. Turns out he's a retired advertising photographer and used to be an avid cyclist. And he's got a machinist buddy with a shop way out in Oilville who's looking for shop help. He comps me a couple feet of carpet and gives me his buddy's numbers. At a Lowe's?!

Driving home tonight I was reflecting on the day and on how thankful I am:
• To live in this exciting new city, where people are interested in making things in the same way I am, and where there's resources available for folks like us.
• To not have to pay tuition out-of-pocket, or have it paid by my employer, as my classmates at John Tyler do, and to be able to go to school far from home.
• To have access to these new textbooks, which, while maybe not enthralling, will answer a lot of the most basic questions I'd had on my mind.
• To have free, convenient access to the best-equipped gym I've ever used.
• To live in this great new house, where I have room for a dedicated bike work space, and to be able to furnish it with carpet and tools and parts.

cooking vs. brazing [rant]

besides working with metal and wood to make stuff, my passion is cooking.
i learned to cook the only way i can imagine: from watching and cooking with my mom. then i started to experiment on my own when i got my first real apartment a couple years ago. and i worked as a waiter before that, which taught me about how to combine ingredients like a good restaurant does.
a mistake a lot of people make when cooking is that they're scared of undercooking meat, especially chicken. i make chicken so it's undercooked when i take it out of the pan. there's two factors in play: the chicken continues to cook after the heat is turned off (not a lot, but enough that it's noticeable) and chicken tastes best when it's just barely cooked all the way--a little overcooked and it can get tough. so a little pink in the pan is a good thing. it takes a few tries to see how much pink is just enough.
the best way to get a well-cooked thick slab of meat is to brown the outside with high heat (like on a grill) for a just a couple minutes, then turn the heat down to about a medium-low (like in an oven) to fully cook the insides while keeping it tender and juicy. this is how restaurants do it, the good ones at least. i used to always wonder why the cooks always ran between the grill and the oven until i figured this out.

in the same way that a brazed joint can be cut open to reveal how complete the braze was, food can always be tasted or cut open a little to determine both how completely it's cooked and how it tastes. i taste constantly while i'm cooking, and i've learned to associate specific tastes with the way the food looks and cooks. this verifiability is important to me; it makes both processes less daunting.
learning to cook is mostly developing a sense of what's going on inside the food, by extensive trial and error. i sense that the same thing is going on while i practice brazing. i'm at a gross disadvantage because i have nobody to watch and take mental notes from; i would have taken many more years learning to cook without having my mom to emulate. i still call her up for advice sometimes. she's cooked everything, and she gave me a Joy of Cooking so i can look things up on my own. the framebuilding equivalent is the Paterek Manual, although even that doesn't come close to the exhaustiveness of the JoC. here's a blog about a woman cooking every recipe in the JoC

my favorite thing to do is to bring one cuisine in and incorporate it into an unrelated cuisine. this weekend i tried blackened salmon sushi rolls, which was pretty successful. sorta like a cajun version of spicy tuna roll.
i'm very much influenced by other cooks. my grandparents' friend Jimmy Chu used to be a cook at a nice restaurant in Taiwan. he went with me to buy my wok. he showed me how to slice meat thinly, marinade in special soy sauce with sugar and black pepper, then throw it in the wok with garlic, ginger, and spring onion, all sliced super thin. cook on high for about 3 minutes, then throw in some chopped vegetables, and serve over rice. i've been riffing on this structure for a couple years now. i've tried every kind of meat i can get, changed the marinade, used other vegetables, etc.
i still come back to the original quite often. it's an artful way to cook and eat--simple, healthy, pretty cheap, delicious, with plenty of room for variation. and the wok is an incredible tool to use. it requires great care in storage and use, because it's very thin non-stainless steel. a properly heated wok comes to cooking temperature in about 15 seconds. removing it from the heat for 10 seconds to flip things around causes the heat inside to drop significantly--the polar opposite of another of my favorite pans, the cast iron skillet.

anyways, this kind of riffing and influencing is what i find myself doing when i work in the shop as well. a big part is learning the technical side of things, how to use each tool well, learning to cook. but there's always the question of _what_ to make, and for that i always try to pick up ideas from where i work and live, from what surrounds me, or from what i wish surrounded me.

i discovered about a year ago what an amazing culture Ethiopians share. we have a lot of Ethiopians and Ethiopian restaurants here in the Shaw neighborhood in DC. i've asked friends for recipes, figured out the staples of Ethiopian cuisine. it actually has several European influences, Italian and Portugese among them. i've found the markets near me that cater to local Ethiopians. i come in and ask for berbere, the orange-red spice mix, and kibbeh, the flavored butter. i always get funny looks because i'm white but i know a few Ethiopian words, and because i'm usually dressed like a biker.