Author: Noah Graff

By Lloyd Graff Jim Chanos is famous for identifying the Enron scam, shorting the company’s stock and making a fortune. He runs a hedge fund named Kynikos Associates, which means cynic in Greek. He specializes in spotting emperors without clothes and is currently betting big that the Empire of China is a naked power. He compares China to Miami and Dubai of recent memory. The common thread is runaway condominium and office construction, huge real estate inflation and a shortage of able buyers. He says that today, all over China, high-rise buildings are rising, fueled by aggressive bank lending to…

Read More

By Noah Graff Great news for people with broken legs, but perhaps terrible news for the guys manufacturing titanium and stainless steel bone screws on CNC Swiss. According to an article this week on CNET.com, “This month, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Applied Materials Research (IFAM) in Bremen, Germany, are unveiling a new type of screw that not only biodegrades within two years but actually encourages bone growth into the implant itself so as not to leave gaping holes where the screws used to be. (This has been one goal of fracture putty as well.)” This…

Read More

By Noah Graff My boss, one of my favorite free thinkers in the world, asked me the other day whether Toyota is today’s Microsoft of the car industry. It felt like a ludicrous question. I hate Microsoft products (I’m a Mac guy all the way), and I’ve always enjoyed driving Toyotas. Well, at least my parents’ Avalons and my 1997 Lexus ES 300, which has 175,000 miles on it. So what was the thinking behind this analogy? Toyota like Microsoft has become the largest seller of products in its sector in the U.S. market. It appears as though Toyotas have…

Read More

By Lloyd Graff Toyota, the icon of lean manufacturing, now has a big fat problem that could devalue the brands which vaulted it to the top selling car company in the world. The sticky gas pedal that has prompted the recall of Toyotas and Lexus going back to 2005 has been traced back to a bad design in a component made by CTS, an Indiana auto parts supplier. Because Toyota was so committed to lean manufacturing, which translated into common components across platforms and models, the company has to callback the RAV4 SUV, Avalon, Corolla, the top of the line…

Read More

By Noah Graff One American is doing a full court press to balance the U.S. trade deficit with China. Stephon Marbury, one of the NBA’s all time greatest bums and wastes of talent has gone to play in China. He’s not playing for a thriving cosmopolitan city such as Beijing or Shanghai, he’s playing for the Taiyuan Shanxi Zhongyu Professional Basketball Club, one of the worst teams in the league, in the podunk, coal mining city of Taiyuan. The entire city is covered by a thin layer of coal dust, including Zhongyu’s Binhe Sports Stadium, which holds around 4,500 people.…

Read More

Jim Rowe, one of Today’s Machining World’s past “Shop Doc” columnists, recently invented two iPhone Apps to deal with everyday math problems confronting machinists, programmers and engineers. Presently at the iPhone APP store the “Machinist APPrentice 2010” is available for $2.99. It gives you 4 sections to choose from: Milling, Turning, References and Math / Conversions. “The Journeymen,” soon to be released sells for $9.99, and has a much more expanded platform with a variety of Chip Thinning Factors being calculated for Radial Width of Cut, Ballnose Depth of Cut, Torodial Depth of Cut and 45 Degree Lead Angles. Rowe…

Read More

By Lloyd Graff Food selling businesses can tell us a lot about best and worst practices in the unending search for elusive success as an entrepreneur. I spent the holidays in the Bay Area (new granddaughter) and indulged my happy obsession of searching markets for the best and freshest produce, breads and cheeses. Farmers’ Markets are reduced in midwinter, but I indulged my passion at a semi-outdoor market open seven days a week called Milk Pail Market, in Mountain View, Cal., home of Google. The store was started 36 years ago by Steve Rasmussen and his father when they bought…

Read More

By Noah Graff A recent video from the online Wall Street Journal discusses a survey ranking the “best and worst jobs” of the 2010 economy. On the list, actuary ranked as the best occupation and roustabout ranked the worst. The study, published by a site called Careercast.com, is based on five criteria: work environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands, and level of stress. Feeling good at the end of the day from helping society, and plain old fun were not criteria. So the best job is actuary—the person who interprets statistics to determine probabilities of accidents, sickness, and death, and…

Read More

By Noah Graff In order to make it professionally next year more people than ever in this world are going to have reeducate themselves, whether they’re learning CNC programming, switching professions after being laid off or starting their own businesses. Lately I’ve been learning to administer a certain magazine’s Web site and taking salsa lessons. I’ve noticed that since I’ve gotten older (I’m almost 30) I’ve been listening to my teachers better. They say kids soak up knowledge much faster than adults. That may be true, but unlike when I was a kid, today I’m more aware of the learning…

Read More

Dear Oprah, I am a fan of yours. I’ve been watching your show since before you were the Color Purple. You’ve had Nobel Prize winners, cancer doctors, dessert chefs and exercise mavens, but you’ve never had anybody remotely like me tell their story. Perhaps after you read my take you will invite me to be a guest. My name is Arby Eight. I am a National Acme screw machine and damn proud of it—for the last 51 years! My story is the story of North American industry and today I’m feeling !@$#%# unappreciated. I started my productive life in 1968…

Read More