The new NBC procedural, Law and Order: Los Angeles has so far avoided the politically correct scolding that made the original series so tiresome its last decade or so. The episode Wednesday featured an “equal-opportunity killing,” as The Los Angeles Times’ reviewer summarized it.

Still, something rang false in the show, “Hondo Field.” The episode guide summarizes:

It’s 4:00 a.m. and two teens are skinny-dipping at an El Segundo Beach, where they discover a drowned corpse. Dawn has broken by the time TJ and Winters arrive to check out the body of Freddy Ramirez. He’s got oil on his clothes, oil in his mouth, and an account at GoldShore Oil Credit Union. TJ looks up to spy an offshore drilling rig five miles out to sea. After her investigation, the coroner knows Freddy was drunk when he died, which was before he hit the water. Since the oil company records claim roughneck Freddy punched into the Hondo Field rig where he worked at 2:36 a.m., the detectives visit GoldShore’s VP, who claims jurisdiction for all oil rig accidents belongs to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

A drilling rig, five miles off the coast of Southern California? Don’t think so.

Aside from that fundamental mistake, good episode. We stuck with it, as opposed to the enervated CBS series, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which on Thursday fictionalized the already fictional “Gasland” movie to come up with this plot in an episode entitled, “Fracked“: “Two men are murdered right before exposing a natural gas company for poisoning residents in a farming town, and the CSIs must discover who is responsible for their deaths.”

Yes, yes, it’s fiction, a procedural drama, and writers are allowed a little artistic license. Perhaps at the end of the episode, the alienists explained the error of their ways. Somehow we doubt it.

(continue reading…)

The International Spy Museum sponsored the Fourth Annual Parade of Trabants on Saturday, bringing a collection of the East German automobiles to the corner of 9th and F Street.

It was very interesting to see the various models all in one place. Thanks to the Spy Museum (although the promotional copy could have done with a little less Ostalgie, the nostalgia for the cultural accoutrements of the defunct DDR):

Where were you when the Wall fell? The Berlin Wall is long gone, but one Cold War icon is still chugging away—the Trabant. Despite their questionable performance and smoky two-stroke engines, these little cars are now affectionately regarded as a symbol of East Germany and the fall of Communism.

State designed, state manufactured, state marketed: The waiting list for a Trabant could be 10 years or longer unless you were favored by the dictatorship. (continue reading…)

We’ll have Election Day coverage starting 6:30 p.m. Eastern today at Shopfloor.org, and our skilled Twitterers from the National Association of Manufacturers will be tweeting @Shopfloor_NAM and with the use of the hashtag #namvote.

For updates from Jay Timmons, the NAM’s executive vice president and a keen observer of things political, visit the NAM’s Election Center through the evening and early morning and probably mid-afternoon Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a few personal thoughts and observations…

This microtargetting of independent voters has gotten SO sophisticated. As we exited the Metro at Metro Center this morning, the Democratic activist playing the guitar was singing, “Roxanne, you don’t have to turn on the red light.”

North Dakota has a law that requires a halt to campaign advertising on Election Day, even to the point of requiring people to take down campaign signs. The law has helped create a tradition and a sense of transition, as campaign workers drive around the state in vans and pick-up trucks gathering the signs. The campaign is over, now we count, and then comes the change.

The law’s patently unconstitutional, a violation of First Amendment freedoms, but we can appreciate the sensibility behind it. Except it’s unconstitutional.

No such issue inside the Beltway. On WMAL radio this morning, we heard our first spot featuring Mary Kane, the Republican lieutenant governor candidate whom Bob Ehrlich picked to appeal to suburban D.C. voters. A little late to be unleashing your secret weapon. Judging from our local TV watching, Gov. Martin O’Malley outspent Ehrlich early and often on campaign advertising.

Democratic incumbent Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) dominated local TV last night with attack ads against Keith Fimian. You know an incumbent is feeling the heat when his ads have live rats scurrying through them. That’s an explosive charge: My opponent supports rodent infestations.

Your correspondent has already voted in Washington, D.C., using new electronic voting machines. There may be some problems: Harry Reid’s name was the first one that popped up on the screen.

Washington Examiner columnist Harry Jaffee’s piece today on the D.C. elections is amusing and accurate. He asks, “Why bother to vote in D.C. gulag?”

Well, for one thing, there’s a charter amendment on the ballot to change the appointed attorney general’s position an elected one. We blogged our thoughts at Point of Law, “For grandstanding, more litigation, elect D.C.’s attorney general.”

Also at Point of Law are several round-up posts (here and here) about races of interest to those who follow civil-justice reform issues. We haven’t seen this reported elsewhere: The American Association for Justice is recruiting member lawyers to go to Nevada as “election protection volunteers” to support Sen. Harry Reid.

Otherwise …good night, and good luck. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Optimus Prime, photo by Jeff Ostermayer

Film crews have taken over sections of the National Mall this week to film “Transformers III,” with the big event Tuesday night pyrotechnics. As today’s Washington Post reports, “‘Transformers’ blasts D.C. in a blink of an eye“:

Five hours to set up, one minute to set off. The wait for truly special effects was long, but Michael Bay’s Tuesday-night pyrotechnics display on the Mall — part of the director’s D.C. shoot for the sequel “Transformers: The Dark of the Moon” — ultimately delivered the big-budget kablooey.

Our Shopfloor At Night correspondent Jeff Ostermayer was on the scene and delivered this cell-phone camera shot of Optimus Prime, the leader of the Transformers, who manifests himself mechanically as a flame-detailed Peterbilt. 

We hope Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots inspire a new generation of engineers and manufacturing technicians. We can picture the exchange as father takes his son or daughter to the movie, and the excited child exclaims, “That’s so cool! How do they do it, dad?” 

“Hydraulics, kiddo. It’s the hydraulics.” 

New York Times, “Science Foundation Backs Climate-Change Play“:

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $700,000 grant to the Civilians, a New York theater company, to finance the production of a show about climate change. “The Great Immensity,” with a book by Steven Cosson (“This Beautiful City”) and music and lyrics by Michael Friedman (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”), tells the story of Polly, a photojournalist who disappears while working in the rain forests of Panama. The grant is a rare gift to an arts organization from the foundation, a federal agency that pays for science, engineering and mathematics research and education. The company says it plans to spend the money on the development and evaluation of the show, as well as on a tour and educational programs, including post-show panel discussions with experts in related scientific fields. No performance dates have been announced.

The National Association of Manufacturers has called for enactment of the America COMPETES Act, which, among its many research-related provisions, increased authorization for the National Science Foundation spending. The idea was that the NSF could support more research and science — not politicized theater. We already have a federal agency that does that.

The bill, H.R. 5116, did pass the House at the end of June, 262-150. Federal agencies showing themselves to be poor stewards of the taxpayers’ dollar makes it harder to argue the case in the Senate.

Via Mark Hemingway, Washington Examiner, “Your tax dollars at work: National Science Foundation gives $700K grant to theater company for play on climate change.”

The band Bad Religion has appeared on Shopfloor now and then, and, come to think of it, on Thursday. They’re loud, fast, tuneful, multisyllabic and pay attention to technology. What’s not to like?

Now the band’s lead singer, Greg Graffin, is in Scientific American, the subject of Q&A reacting to his new book, “Anarchy Evolution.” Graffin has a doctorate from Cornell and is a lecturer in life sciences and paleontology at UCLA.
We’ll eschew comment on his theological arguments, but his observations about technology and industry are right on:

Obviously, you are pro-evolution and pro-nature, but are you anti-technology? Your most famous song is “21st Century Digital Boy,*” which pokes fun at our gadget-laden era.
Oh no, we love technology and gadgets. We use irony in 60 percent of our music. “21st Century Digital Boy” is an ironic twist characterizing the youth of today. The truth is that even though the song was written in 1990, it was clear that the youth were going to be affected for good and bad by digital technology. It’s probably because we loved video games so much.

What do you make of synthetic biology? Will we have 22nd-century bio-boys?
The greatest gifts of the genetic revolution are the applications for industry. The types of things we can do with manipulating genes, inserting them into cells. That’s just the beginning, I think. Theoretically, the guys who are really good at programming video games, who are already writing code all day, could be creating organisms in the future. It could be a whole family of code writers. “Dad worked for EA Games, but I work for Genentech.” This is something that is conceivable, it’s an exciting time.

Anything that’s fraught with as much danger as potential for good makes for an exciting time. That stuff is dangerous as well.

Graffin goes on to talk about gene therapy in an intelligent way.

We really admire Graffin and Bad Religion’s ability to breed new ideas and songs from the old. “Pride and the Pallor” off the new CD, “Dissent of Man,” was grown directly from The Only Ones’ 1978 classic, “Another Girls, Another Planet.” Really.

Last year for the first time in history, organized labor in the United States represented more government workers than private-sector employees.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, private-sector unionization fell to 7.2 percent in 2009, down from 7.6 percent the previous year.

Labor’s declining relevance to workers in the private sector has many roots: Generally improved wages and job conditions, the imperative of workplace flexibility, global competition, and union corruption all play a part.

There’s another important but less recognized factor: Organized labor’s leadership has abandoned the very reason unions first came into existence, which is to represent the economic interests of its workers. In their drive to amass political power, union leaders have aligned themselves with left-wing and “progressive” groups who often agitate against the interests of union workers and show contempt for their deeply held beliefs.

Take the “One Nation” march scheduled for Saturday in Washington. The unions are major sponsors and organizers, busing in union members and doing PR for the effort. The SEIU touts its leadership, the AFL-CIO is making a huge online push for the march, and AFSCME is promoting the effort.

Then take a look at other groups on the list of endorsing organizations, the “partners.”

(continue reading…)

The House adjourned at 1:04 a.m. this morning, and then the rains came. A deluge flooded the city, tornado warnings surrounded the area, fires and street closures bedeviled this morning’s commuters.

We worried about a post-adjournment apocalypse, but fortunately had Bad Religion’s new CD at the office. Greg Graffin was never more reassuring:

Rain fell like judgment
Across my windowpane
Said it fell like judgment
But it was only rain

Phew. That’s right…probably.

The House returns at 2 p.m., November 15, after facing the judgment of the voters. And this time, it won’t just be precipitation.

P.S. The song is “Only Rain,” best cut on the album, “Dissent of Man,” which is unusually poppy for Bad Religion.

Using the Google News search to search for “Reid and taxes and Senate,” we got this group of links.

Well, if Stephen Colbert can be called on to testify about illegal immigration, why shouldn’t we listen to Lady Gaga about tax rates?

Additional cultural reference: Bert Ambrose and His Orchestra, 1931, “Yes, Yes, (My Baby Said Yes)“: “Well, ta ta, we’re going to go gaga, my baby loves gaga, she told me so.”

Whoever laid out page one of today’s Washington Post has a well-developed sense of humor by juxtaposition.

Is college worth the cost? Sure. Just look at the splendid offerings at the University of Baltimore, which include a course on zombies. Not only edifying, but something to highlight on your resume.

Over the last month or so, there’s been a big uptick in reporting and commentary on the “higher education bubble,” the contention that  universities and higher-ed systems have oversold their benefits even as the educations become unaffordable. It all seems so unsustainable, like the financial system that collapsed within the past few years.

The start of the new school year with student loans and visits to the bursar’s office stimulated some of the reporting, and President Obama has touted new laws that expand the federal government’s subsidies of college educations. And there’s a new book by Professor Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, “Higher Education: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids — and What We Can Do About It.”

At the same time, many manufacturers will tell you that there are plenty of good jobs — good careers — available to workers with even a modicum of technical ability and training.*

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has done a great job of chronicling the coverage, which you read by searching for “higher education bubble.” And George Leef of the Pope Center diligently follows the overselling of higher ed at the National Review blog, Phi Beta Cons.

* From an earlier Shopfloor post, citing comments from the owner of a Baltimore manufacturing company: “DREW GREENBLATT, PRESIDENT, MARLIN STEEL WIRE: We have a mismatch. We have people out there that are skilled and trained, let’s say, to work in a retail showroom or to work in a MacDonalds or a restaurant. They are not necessarily trained to be able to know what a radius is or to know how to read a tape measure or to know how to read a blueprint or know how to change a bearing, or a die set in a robot.”

But zombies, they know zombies!