This week we reach back into the archives again, to an episode of Industry on Parade, a weekly TV show sponsored by the NAM that ran from 1950-1960. As the narrator says in the beginning, “Industry on Parade: A pictorial review of events in business and industry.”

There are some classics here. In this reel, you’ll see wheat germ (“a veritable storehouse of vitamins and minerals”) being made at a Kretchmer plant in Carrolton, Michigan. It’s funny, knowing the state of modern technology, to hear them boast of machinery that can fill 12 jars at a time. They can do many multiples of that today.

The end of the reel turns to an innovation of the age, the gyro skid control. You’ll see film of “hijinx” on the road, but the car is immune to skidding, thanks to this new technology.

So let us take you back in time here as we near the end of summer. See how things were made. Click here to watch this week’s video and feel the (vintage) manufacturing vibe.

From Coos Bay to Carthage, from Kosciusko to St. Albans, America’s Business expands its broadcasts this weekend, reaching 51 stations coast to coast.

Including the Gulf Coast, where a year ago Tuesday, Hurricane Katrina wreaked destruction and death. In this week’s program, host Mike Hambrick talks to the president of one regional power company about its efforts to help victims of Katrina. In an emotional interview Katrina victim Dorman Davis recalls what it’s like to lose everything in an instant, and our media roundtable take a look at news coverage of the disaster.

Meanwhile, Mike and Renee Giachino of the American Justice Partnership continue the battle for tort reform in America. Topics this week include obesity lawsuits and some of the more ridiculous cases that clog up court systems all across America.

For more on America’s Business, please go here.

Click here to listen to the show.

Oh, this is just perfect. Remember while back when the Blogger-in-Chief talked about exporting our lawyers to China?

Well, it looks like they listened to us (who knew we were that influential?).

Here’s an article from China Daily that talks about how a primary school student fell sleep in class and sued his teacher.

As the article notes,

About four months ago, Xiaodong fell asleep during class and was awakened by the teacher, Wang. Several minutes later, however, the pupil went to sleep again. Wang was enraged, and demanded he stand in a corner of the classroom for punishment. Xiaodong refused to follow Wang’s demand and went home directly…At the court, Xiaodong asked for Wang’s public apology in front of his schoolmates as well as over 1,500 yuan (US$185) in compensation for mental damages he has suffered.

Priceless.

This is great-America finally found a way to export our biggest liability! With any luck soon they’ll make doing business in China just as uncompetitive as America.

Remember, we spend more on legal costs in this country than the entire Gross Domestic Product of some 200 countries.

Way to go trial lawyers! Thank you. You made my day.

Palos, Spain, August 25, 1492 — In a new poll announced by Their Royal Highnesses King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, a majority of Spaniards polled said they believe that the world is flat. The survey — sponsored by the Flat Earth Society — found that a full 70% of our countrymen believe that famed sailor Christopher Columbus is destined to sail off the edge of the earth. By a margin of 2 to 1, Spaniards believe Columbus is foolhardy to undertake this venture.

It appears that some Spaniards were swayed in their opinion by “Una Verdad Inoportuna” (loosely translated: “An Inconvenient Truth”) a new play by Alfonso V, a political rival of King Ferdinand. The play — which has been performed throughout the kingdom — proves conclusively that all 15th century scientists have reached consensus on the fact that the world is indeed flat, even though some skeptics remain. Most skeptics are funded by the shipbuilding industry, and thus their conclusions are viewed with disdain by the Flat Earth Scientific community.

Of late, town criers and leafleteers have been touting the flat earth theory. “It’s dangerous to take a poll on scientific matters” said seaman Columbus. “After all, they are relying on the opinion of a few people, fanned by the frenzy of the theater and the leafleteers.” Concluded Columbus, “We should leave the matters of opinion to the pollsters and matters of science to the scientists”, adding, “There is real evidence that the world is indeed round.”

For more on the topic, click here.

Yup, you read that right. It’s August, things are a little slow. Maybe you’re feeling a little guilty sitting around doing nothing, collecting a paycheck, staring out the window, watching Friday Follies, reading the blog all day.

Not to worry. Help is on the way — from Il Papa, the Holy Father himself. As noted in this story from The Catholic News (now they’ve gotta tell the truth, right?), reflecting on the teachings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux — the vacationing Pope “warned against ‘the dangers of excessive activity, whatever the condition or office held, because many occupations lead to a ‘hardening of the heart’ and suffering of the spirit.”

You don’t ‘spose he meant blogging, do you….?

Anyhoo, there you have it, a Papal dispensation from work. As they say in the beer commercials, it don’t get no better than that.

Giving credit where it’s due, thanks to RealClimate.org for the link to this site, called, “No Se Nada.” As we near the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, there will be lots of finger-pointing and opportunism from the left. (Isn’t it funny that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour isn’t whining, as he got his house in order…?). There will be carping about the Bush Administration (we’ll write more about that this weekend) and there will be the global warming Gore-ist opportunists.

But on this site, where he labels the hysterical WaPo op-ed from this weekend as “ridiculous” (we agree), the writer goes on to talk about Katrina as an engineering failure, not evidence of any wacky climate change theory, to wit:

“To continue to use Event Katrina as a global warming prop is to continue to diminish the relative roles between nature and man in making Catastrophe Katrina. And the longer we confuse the issue, the longer we avoid making the hard choices about engineering and land-use planning (about, for instance, allowing people to live well below sea level in flood-prone areas).”

We pass it along FYI — an interesting site, an interesting discussion.

We’ve discovered that the key to ensuring good quality Friday Follies fodder is to ingratiate yourself with the neighborhood 15-17 year-old set. And so this week we give a shout-out to our friend Erin Nolan for coming up with this gem from the Swedish band OK GO.

It is a music video of a pretty good rock song called, “Here It Goes Again”. However, it is performed by the four guys in the band completely on treadmills. We must admit, it is both entertaining and mesmerizing. We’re not sure how many takes it took to get it right, but watching them zoom back and forth on 8 symmetrically-arranged treadmills is just unbelievable and beats anything we’ve ever done at the gym.

So kick back, relax, get off the treadmill of life and click here to watch this week’s Friday Follies.

The International Astronomical Union has just ruled that Pluto, the most distant planet in our solar system, is in fact not a planet but a large rock floating through space. I’m not an astronomer, so I leave this to the experts to hash out. But it’s reassuring to know that Pluto is still out there, regardless of its status, in the same position it’s been in for milennia. NASA even has a deep probe on its way out there to find out more about the planet….er, ex-planet.

Then there’s Pluto the Pup, who was born in the same year that the now ex-planet was discovered. I guess you could say he is the planet’s mascot since they have been cobranded for a generation. This Pluto is part of the Mickey Mouse universe. We can thank Disney for this Pluto, who has been Mickey’s best friend for decades and presumably will remain so, regardless of what today’s astronomers do. Pluto the Pup first appeared in The Chain Gang in 1930. This Disney character has always been one of the most endearing cartoon figures and there’s no doubt that Americans interest in the ex-planet over the years has had something to do with this little dog.

What does Pluto have to do with manufacturing? Well, you hear from some experts and men and women on the sidewalk that manufacturing is sort of like that ex-planet. It used to be important, but now it is not really a central part of the US economy. Fortunately, manufacturing hasn’t lost its punch and is still very much a part of the US economy, with more produced in the United States last year than at any time in US history. Manufacturing employs 14 million men and women and at least another 6 million indirectly. What’s more, it accounts for over 60 percent of private sector R&D, giving this country the innovation edge in global competition. If you want to know more about today’s manufacturing, just click on The Manufacturing Institute.

Thanks to Dan Gainor of the Business and Media Institute for catching what we missed in last Sunday’s WaPo. We got so busy gushing over the unexpected balance in Juliette Eilperin’s story that we never made it to one by global warming Gore-ist Mike Tidwell in the Outlook (Opinion) section. You’ll recall that Eilperin’s story noted that there was nothing approaching consensus on the issue of whether (alleged) climate change causes hurricanes. (Of course the head of the hurricane center has said there’s no causation, but no matter.)

But in the Outlook section, Mike Tidwell has a nice bit of hysteria about how we’re all going to be Katrina’d because of global warming. Glug, glug. It really is quite literally hysterical — and apparently, bunk. Still, it makes for a good read, sells newspapers.

Tidwell is king of some group called the US Climate Emergency Council. The name implies government imprimatur, but ti’s not a government agency at all, just a chowder and marching club for a bunch of bunch of like-minded Gore-ists. God bless ‘em, they’re entitled, but just let’s not pass this off as gospel. It’s opinion, and it’s theory. Wonder when the WaPo will afford the same real estate to a dissenting view? Not likely.

Maybe if they start reading their own newspaper….

Professor Mark J. Perry of the University of Michigan at Flint writes a thorough column in the Detroit News about innovation in exploring for energy supplies in the Outer Continental Shelf.

The article notes that in the 1970s, drilling drilling more than 500 feet below sea level was difficult and expensive. Today, we are able to drill 15,000 feet below the surface — 15 times the size of the Empire State Building!

This is all been possible through innovation. One way has been through four-dimensional seismic imaging of underwater fields.

Another innovation has been horizontal and directional drilling which can reach oil and gas deposits as far as 10 miles away.

Technology has also improved the environmental impact of oil and gas development. The article also points out that between 1980 and 1999, some 7.4 billion barrels of oil were produced in federal offshore waters with less than a thousandth of 1 percent spilled. To give you an idea of how little that is, its less even than the natural seepage of oil from the sea floor.

Additional facts to consider are that the Energy Information Administration projects that by 2025 oil demand will increase by about 40 percent and natural gas by 34 percent and that two out of every three gallons of oil we use in the United States is imported from abroad.

By the way, remember, we are the only country that limits access to its own natural resources. If we were able to just use the resources we have, that would help solve our energy problems too.

UPDATE (by Carter Wood): Not only is new technology opening up new areas to exploration and drilling, it’s solving the mysteries of Atlantis! National Geographic News reports that a volcanic explosion 3,600 years ago in the Aegean Sea may have been twice as large as previously thought. How do they know?

Using techniques similar to those employed by oil companies to search for offshore deposits, the research team found a ring of volcanic deposits extending all the way around the Santorini archipelago.

In a related note, Donovan is appearing on stage in Liverpool this weekend with Tony Sheridan and John Lennon’s Original Quarrymen. Little innovation is expected.