By a resounding 72-23 vote, the Senate this evening voted to invoke cloture on S. 3711, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act. (Results of Roll Call Vote No. 218 here.) Onward to a final Senate vote!

The Senate is scheduled to vote at 5:30 p.m. today on cloture for S. 3711, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act. If cloture is invoked — and indications are that it will be — up to 30 hours of debate will follow.

Gearing up for the vote, NAM President John Engler will be up on Capitol Hill at 1 p.m. when the bipartisan bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM, holds a news conference to urge its passage. (The Senator issued a news release last week emphasizing the legislation’s importance in increasing supply and stabilizing energy prices.)

The boss — that’s Engler — was also quoted in this Christian Science Monitor article today, noting that technological advances have made exploration and development of offshore energy sources environmentally safe.

The CSM story does a fair job of representing various points of view, including those of former EPA Director Carol Browner. A biofuels advocate, Browner hauls out the moldiest ol’ straw man argument we know to oppose the bill: “The idea that we are going to drill our way out of the problem is wrong.”

And who, precisely, is promoting that idea? Certainly not the NAM or its members, who include world leaders in energy conservation and efficiency. We support a reliable, affordable and diverse energy supply. That includes biofuels, absolutely, but also the abundant and accessible domestic supplies of oil and natural gas.

How are global companies protecting their supply chains from disruptions caused by terrorist acts, natural disasters and energy shortages? A new study by The Manufacturing Institute and Stanford University to be released Aug. 1 quantifies and confirms for the first time the substantial collateral benefits experienced by 14 major manufacturers and logistics providers that are considered innovators in supply chain security. The study was conducted for The Manufacturing Institute, the research and education arm of the National Association of Manufacturers, for its “Manufacturing Innovation” series of ground-breaking reports.

For more information on this survey-based report, check back here on August 1 for a summary and a link to the report. We’ll be interested in your comments and feedback on it, right here on the best business blog around.

Last week, we were invited by our good friends at SixApart, the makers of LiveJournal, TypePad and MovableType (the latter of which powers this humble blog) for a preview of a new product set to launch later this year.

It’s called Vox, which for those a little rusty on their Latin, means “voice.”

One of the biggest growth areas of the Internet over the last 18 months have been the social networks and social networking software (blogging is but one piece of that larger picture).

There’s an interesting book called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam who discusses the collapse and revival of the American community. Putnam’s thesis is that more American’s are doing more activities, but we’re not doing them in groups. We’re loners, in other words.

So, what is Vox and how is this all related? Vox may very well be a revival of the community bowling league, only online. Vox is like a blog software but a little more private, with some other cool features.

If you have ever thought about starting a blog, but don’t want creepy people you don’t know reading it, then Vox is for you. Its great if all you want to do is have a place to communicate with friends and family.

And Vox also plays well with others. For those who like video uploading services like YouTube and photo uploading services like Flickr, Vox will work with those tools and much more–all under one platform.

Vox is currently by invite only but set to debut to the world later this fall.

For more information on Vox, click here.

In anticipation of the Senate vote on S. 3711, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, we refer you to the experience of Jay Bender, an NAM board member and one of the owners of Falcon Manufacturing in Brookings, S.D.

For the first time in a decade, Bender says, he has been forced to raise the price of the plastic components his plant molds into parts for such things as electronic scoreboards, medical equipment and printer cartridges. The cost of the raw plastic pellets has doubled in the past two years because those pellets are made of natural gas and oil. Heating the warehouses by gas, Bender says, “costs two or three times what it did three years ago.”

Jay’s observations were included in this Associated Press story on legislation to open up 8.3 million acres of the Gulf to oil and natural gas exploration. For additional perspective, AP also turned to NAM board member Tony Raimondo, chairman and CEO of Behlen Mfg. Co., of Columbus, Neb. “At his four metal fabricating plants, Raimondo’s annual cost for natural gas has gone from $530,000 in 2000 to nearly $1.3 million – an expense that is hurting his business,” AP reported.

Jay and Tony’s stories are repeated thousands of times across the entire U.S. manufacturing economy, as higher energy prices discourage economic growth and investment. Kudos to the AP for offering readers a view into the serious real-world consequences of preventing Americans from accessing domestic supplies of oil and natural gas. As the chief sponsor of S. 3711, Sen. Pete Domenici, notes: “It is their property. We ought to develop it and do it now.”

Sharks, lawyers, fear of being sued, ah…the jokes are too easy. From Hawaii, comes the following:

The nation’s lawyers are coming to Hawaii, and some of them apparently have no fear of sharks — unless they’re the kind that file lawsuits. About 40 lawyers have signed up so far for the National Lawyers on Longboards Surfing Contest scheduled during the Aug. 3-8 American Bar Association convention in Honolulu.

But the ABA has pulled out of sponsoring the surfing competition. The event organizer says the lawyers are afraid of being sued. “It’s really funny — the ABA won’t officially sponsor it for liability reasons,” said Lea Hong, a Honolulu environmental lawyer and surfer.

The Washington Post continues its uncritical reporting, read advocacy, on global climate issues on the front page today in “On the Roof of Peru, Omens in the Ice.” Short version: Global warming is causing glaciers to melt and woe to all. In today’s report, Andean woe!

Nowhere in this piece is there an attempt at context or balance. Glaciers are melting worldwide and it’s due to a man-made increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, period. The glacier on Mount Kilimanjaro subsides, global warming is to blame.

That’s good for advocacy, not so good for accuracy. As shopfloor.org has noted in previous posts, while some glaciers are thinning, others are thickening (New Zealand, Norway). And local conditions may play a role, just conceivably.

Take Kilimanjaro, for example, also cited in former Vice President Al Gore’s flick. In a pithy debunking of the Gore envirodocudrama, Joseph Bast of The Heartland Institute notes factors other than global warming may be involved at the African peak: “Scientists know temperatures at the top of Kilimanjaro have been falling, not rising, and the disappearing snow is due to changes in land use at the bottom of the mountain, causing drier air to rise up the mountain’s side.”

These are notable points for any major newspaper piece that seeks to inform, not inculcate. Beause, you see, scientific debate does continue, as seen in this AP piece on the difficulty involved in measuring the historical strengths of hurricanes. They may not be getting worse because of global warming, after all. Imagine.

P.S. Today’s otherwise familiar Washington Post story features one unusual element, or rather, omission. Search through the entire 1,800 word piece and nowhere will you find the specific phrase, “global warming.” Curious.

I posted an entry this morning on The Hill’s Blog site. Check it out by clicking here.

For this week’s video (8 minutes in length), we dove into the world of the performing arts to show you the very interesting process of how marionettes are made. Did you know that there are between ten and fifteen strings for each marionette? The entire process really is a work of art and takes several weeks just to create one puppet.

As you’ll see in the video, the first step to creating a puppet is sketching out a drawing. Then, they sculpt the head out of clay. But that’s too heavy for a puppet so they create a plaster cast and let it harden. Later, they break open the cast and pour neoprene liquid which, when dried, turns into a light weight plastic. With the head complete, they proceed to glue on the hair or fur.

Following that, they create the body out of wood pieces and Styrofoam. Wooden dowels are used for the arms and legs and are cut precisely for the joints for added movement.

With the puppet nearly done, it’s then sent off to a costume designer where the clothes are sewn on. Finally, the strings are attached and a “control box” is set up to make the marionette move.

While this may not exactly seem like manufacturing to you – truth is, someone’s gotta make ‘em – these things don’t just fall out of the sky. If you’ve got a creative spark in you and like the performing arts, maybe a future in costume design or set building is for you?

Thanks once again to South Carolina Educational Television for providing us this video.

Click here to watch this week’s video: how marionette’s are made.

Today we’ve begun a new occasional series on shopfloor.org called, simply, innovation.

As the President reminded us on Thursday in his speech, manufacturers are responsible for nearly three-fifths of all private sector research and development.

So, it seems fitting that with all that R&D we do, we should know a thing or two about innovation.

Our new series will focus on the products and inventions that are making the world a better place to live, work and play.

Today’s installent is about Google.

We just heard that Google has begun offering mobile phone users in more than 30 major U.S. cities the capacity to view highway maps with “live” traffic data.

Users can now chose a destination within Google Maps and select “show traffic” and Google will calculate the route to the location. The user will also receive information on road conditions highlighted in three colors: — red for congested, yellow or orange for slowdowns, and green for smooth sailing.

You can learn more about this new service at: http://google.com/gmm