On this week’s show, you’ll hear from a controversial author who argues that political correctness can be harmful to businesses. Imagine that. Then, the president of the National Academy of Engineering joins us to discuss a new report that urges remedies for our educational and research deficiencies, what NAM President John Engler calls “the innovation deficiency”. (Remember this chart?) We also talk with the Discovery Channel’s Executive Vice President on its annual science contest and the winner, a 14-year old girl. With Halloween right around the corner, we also chat with a spokeswoman from the National Confectioners’ Association and welcome the on-air debuts of Manufacturing America’s Future producers Kat Snodgrass and Marissa Gandelman. We do all this along with music from Sam Cooke, Thomas Dolby and the Strangeloves.

Click here to listen to the show.

We got a bunch of comments here and over on RedState about yesterday’s post on the ANWR map. Some folks got out their magnifying glasses and micrometers and cried “foul!”, claiming that the area in question was actually larger than Dulles Airport after all. Wow, people have gobs of time on their hands these days, it seems.

In the interest of science, here’s a better map — this from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, a pretty good source for all things ANWR, we’d guess. You’ll see that the drilling footprint is even smaller than that shown on the Washington Post map.

So to all the naysayers, we say, “Sorry — you were right. The map was wrong”. In fact the drilling will happen in even a smaller footprint than shown. Thanks for pointing that out.

Click on the image to enlarge it, or you can go to this link to see it on the ANWR.org website.

Today found the Blogger-in-Chief and the Blogger’s Apprentice along with Eric McErlain of NEI Nuclear Notes speaking to a group of trade associations which are part of the NAM’s Council of Manufacturing Associations.

The following Groups attended:

Adhesive and Sealant Council
Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association
Fabricators & Manufacturers Association
Flexible Packaging Association
International Sign Association
National Electrical Manufacturers Association
National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association
The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies (NPES)
Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute
Plastic Pipe and Fittings Association
Plumbing Manufacturers Institute
Salt Institute
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association

They heard us wax rhapsodic about the joys of blogging. Of course we have the smartest damned blog readers on the planet, something we don’t think the rest can aspire to, but hey — they can dream, can’t they? We told of our odyssey over the last year, from John Engler’s initial OK to traffic numbers today that we only dreamed about then. We also promised tons of consulting time to the folks from the Chocolate Manufacturers Association in return for some of that sweet stuff. We were pretty shameless, actually.

Thanks to Stephen Gold and Noah Cohrssen of the Council of Manufacturing Associations, both visionaries in their own right, who see this coming trend and wanted to be of service to their members. All in all, it was a good session and we think a bunch of them will dip their toe into the blogosphere as a result. At least we hope so.

Today, we continue with part two of our look at the manufacturers who make Halloween possible. We’re also using this space to double as our Saturday Video on Coolstuffbeingmade.com

What would Halloween be without candy? More importantly, what kind of manufacturers blog would we be if we didn’t tell you how candy is made just a few days before Halloween?

Well, we found just the company in Just Born, Inc.

Just Born is a family-owned candy manufacturer that has been in business for more than seven decades and three generations. They are the manufacturers of Mike and Ike®, Hot Tamales®, ZOURS®, Teenee Beanee® Gourmet Jelly Beans, and MARSHMALLOW PEEPS®

The company was founded by Sam Born in 1910 who, as a child and young adult grew up in Russia, immigrated to the United States from France. The company’s namesake was derived from the fact that Sam liked to display his new confections in his Brooklyn, New York shop window with a sign announcing they were so fresh, they were "just born." Speaking of New York, if you’re ever up in the big apple and happen to buy some French chocolates, you can thank Mr. Born for first introducing them to New York City.

Unlike most businesses, Sam’s thrived during the difficult years that ensued after the Great Depression. In 1932, the company relocated to its present city of operations, Bethlehem, Pa. Over the years, they have acquired several companies and developed (or should we say gave birth to?) several new popular candy lines including Mike and Ike® (1940), Hot Tamales® (1950) and Teenee Beanee® Gourmet Jelly Beans (1977). Today, the company has around 530 associates and a 500,000 square foot factory which uses some 42 million pounds of sugar per year.

Our personal favorite is the ever popular MARSHMALLOW PEEPS®, which are produced year around for all the major holidays including Valentines Day, Christmas, Easter and, of course, Halloween. In fact, some 1.2 billion MARSHMALLOW PEEPS® are born year-that’s enough PEEPS® to circle the earth twice. With all these PEEPS® born, you have to wonder what people do with all of them. Well, turns out that people like to do curious things with PEEPS®- eat them stale, freeze them, and use them as a pizza topping.

Hungry yet? OK, its time for the tour! Click here to see a neat Macromedia Flash animation (OK, so we lied–its not a video, but it’s Halloween-related) of Just Born’s Peeps or Bean Factory Tour. If you don’t have Macromedia Flash you can always view a Adobe PDF copy of the PEEPS® tour by clicking here or for the PDF copy of the Bean Tour, click here.

Tune in tomorrow for our third installment of Manufacturers & Halloween.

As if the benefits of ANWR exploration aren’t already obvious, we have one more: deficit reduction. Yup, yesterday, there were two key ANWR votes, both of which turned out favorably for anyone who wants to see our energy independence increase. The House Resources Committee and the Senate Budget Committee both passed measures that would open ANWR to exploration. Why does this have federal budget implications? Well, opening ANWR would generate $2.4 billion in lease sales. That ain’t exactly chump change, even in Washington. What’s more, royalties payable to the federal government are expected to exceed $1 billion per year for some 30 years once production begins. In fact, for you Fourth Estate blog readers out there, you should know there’s a press event in the Senate this morning at 11:30 in S-211 to continue pushing ahead on ANWR.

For the rest of you, there are still some key votes left, so please do click here to let your Member of Congress and Senators know you’re tired of high energy prices, tired of 30 years of moratorium and let them know it’s time to open up the supply a bit in the hopes that prices may actually start to ease.

As the days get shorter, darkness falls like a heavy curtain on that spooky night of Halloween. Parents can rest assured, however, that their little ghosts and goblins (and an occasional ballerina) will find their way home with the guidance of their trusty flashlights. NAM member company Energizer will see to that.

Starting as the National Carbon Company in 1896, Energizer marketed the very first battery for consumer use called the “Columbia,” a six-inch tall battery used to power home telephones. Two years later, Conrad Hubert founded the American Electrical Novelty and Manufacturing Company to market battery-powered novelties. Hubert filed two patents in 1899 for his “Electric Hand Torch,” a dry-cell battery within a paper tube, with a bulb inside a rough brass reflector on one end of the tube. This was the world’s first flashlight.

Today, Energizer is the world’s largest manufacturer of batteries and flashlights. Headquartered in St. Louis, the company employs more than 10,000 people in 140 countries.

tune in tomorrow for part two of our series: Manufacturers & Halloween

This one really deserves its own entry, since we talk about it all the time here on the blog. And, it’s a gift from an unlikely source: The Washington Post.

In their article from yesterday which we wrote about below, they included a map of ANWR. To hear the enviros tell it, Alaska would be just paved over and all sorts of damage would be done to the environment if you allowed exploration in ANWR. But in fact, when you look at this map, it really tells the tale. You see Alaska in all it’s vastness, then you see a small green area up north. That’s the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Within the green area is a pretty small red area — the size of Dulles Airport, to be exact. That’s where the drilling would occur.

So feast your eyes and hoist a glass to the Washington Post for putting this dispute in its rightful context. Oh, and did we forget to mention? The drilling would only take place during the time of year when the ground is frozen.

Sure puts it in context, doesn’t it? Have you dropped a note to your Member of Congress or Senators yet? What are you waiting for?

Thanks once again to all of you who weighed in for the third and last vote of “Lawsuit Abuse Week”, that actually stretched over two weeks. Sometimes it takes a little longer to get stuff done here in Washington. In any event, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act passed the House today by a rather comfortable margin of 228-184. The effort of manufacturers here was once again tremendous and helped put this one in the barn. Here’s a link to the Roll Call vote. Don’t forget to thank your Member of Congress if they voted for it and if they didn’t, don’t forget to say, “Thanks for nothin””. Here’s a linkto the memo that went out from NAM President John Engler today on the victory. Our work isn’t finished, not by a long shot, but these were three very important victories in the battle for common sense.

The BIC allowed his humble Apprentice out of his cage again and so we’re posting a special Halloween-related Friday Follies.

If you thought videos were only shown on the blog on Saturday, well, today you are in for a treat. We think this is a real keeper. Here’s a link to a video that is about two minutes long. It is a series of hilarious home movies that were taken with a hidden camera and show just how easily people can be frightened when you really spook them.

Enjoy!

These are not good days to be an environmental activist. The enviros are clearly on the run as public ire rises and people get wise to the fact that we are all literally paying the price for 30 years of bad decisions on energy in this country. If President Clinton hadn’t vetoed the bill allowing exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (a place the size of South Carolina with a drilling footprint the size of Dulles Airport), we’d be getting our first oil from there these days. Oh, well, chalk it up to another bad decision for which we pay, and pay, and pay. (In fact, the Washington Post has an article today entitled, “Environmentalists Make Last Stand on Alaska Drilling.” Let’s hope it’s the last stand and this part of the common-sense solution finally happens.)

Here’s a link to a Knight-Ridder article by Kevin Hall from yesterday entitled, “Record Energy Prices Breathe New Life Into Push for Offshore Drilling“. It quotes our boss, Gov. Engler, as saying that the environment (no pun intended) is right for action here, to expand exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf. It’s environmentally safe and will help all American lower their heating bills.

Says the article simply, “Environmentalists oppose expanding offshore exploration.” Of course they do. They’re solution? Energy efficiency. It’s fair to ask, isn’t it, “How’s that going….?” Click here to let your Member of Congress and Senators know you want them to do something about energy prices.