In all honesty, I'm not the biggest fan of business books. I think it's more of the hype that surrounds the "flavor of the month" rather than the actual books. Many are well-written and -researched, but once everyone jumps on the band wagon, I've got to hear about cheese being moved, listening to the wisdom of the crowds, and searching for a new blue ocean. Buzz words become replacements for common sense, and people drop them in conversations trying to lose friends and alienate people.

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This blog post is rooted in a discussion my husband and I had yesterday regarding a news item I ran across about a 'green' race car that runs on vegetable oil and waste chocolate. I get vegetable oil, but where on earth does waste chocolate come from? Godiva, Ghirardelli, Hershey, Fannie May, and other chocolate candy companies? An admitted chocoholic, I don’t understand waste chocolate; waist chocolate makes far more sense to me.

After talking about what a shame it is to use chocolate as fuel, we began talking about 'green' automotive initiatives in general. My husband's comments, courtesy of Bill Nye, the Science Guy, had me googling faster than an SSC Ultimate Aero.

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This country seems to be itching for the next big thing, those game-changing innovations that drag us out of our economic malaise. General Electric Co. CEO Jeffrey Immelt knows this, and it's why his company announced a $100 million investment in an R&D center 25 miles west of Detroit. As the AP reported over the weekend, the center will employ about 1,200 engineers and scientists.

It's been awhile since we've seen true game-changing innovations out there. The last real innovation came with the personal computer and the dot-com era that ensued. During the past decade we've had "financial innovations," and we all know where those led. I equate these complex financial instruments to fancy motor oil. You need oil for an engine to run, and good oil may make a good engine run even better. But if we have a poorly designed engine, it doesn't matter how good the oil is; the thing eventually just will fall apart.

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One trend that we have been following for a couple of years has been the "green" movement. Obviously, many people see environmental consciousness as a simple marketing push, but ample evidence exists nowadays that this is becoming a bonafide movement in manufacturing.

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Care to dust off a few aged issues? This isn’t the news. I guess you could say this is the “olds.” Whatever term you use, I think these stories are worth a look.

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Oprah, I'm not. And I don't have a book club. But this morning, I read about a book in USA Today that I believe might appeal to thefabricator.com's visitors. In fact, I'm guessing many of you could have written it. I plan to read it; maybe you'll want to also.

The book's title is Blue Collar & Proud of It. USA Today published a Q&A with the author, Joe Lamacchia, 50, of Newton, Mass., who owns a landscaping company. Newton argues that despite societal pressures to the contrary, not all high school students need to go to college to be successful. This sentiment is shared by many in the metal manufacturing community, including "Welding Wire" readers who responded to last month's newsletter about disappearing voc-tech programs.

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In the late 1990s I recall renting a VHS tape (remember those?) of a recently aired PBS series called "Triumph of the Nerds." It detailed the rise of the computer industry, from the garages of San Jose to the boardrooms of corporate America.

It's an incredible story, really. The PC business started from nothing and transformed into a multibillion-dollar industry within a decade and a half. The rapid rise happened not just because the technology helped people and businesses become more efficient (though some early adopters debated that). It also did something that at that time no business in the world had ever done: As time went on, products became better and cheaper. This must have raised a lot of eyebrows in a business community browbeaten by years of high inflation and interest rates.

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“Research and development” sounds like the domain of people with Ph.D.s, wearing white lab coats, developing new pharmaceuticals, or toiling away in clean rooms, working up fancy new computer chips. And then we have “tax credit.” You can’t get around the image that conjures up: the inescapable maze formally known as the U.S. tax code, written by Congress, deployed by the Internal Revenue Service, and reinforced by the long arm of the law if you don’t comply.

But it’s really not that bad.

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"It's paid for" … three little words that have come to mean so much to so many. Could they have contributed to the automakers' troubles?

Case in point—yesterday my colleague, Tim, and I were talking about his recent new-car purchase. You may have read about the mishap involving his 11-year-old vehicle. Clouding his excitement about owning a brand-new car is the realization that he now has car payments. I understand completely.

My family has two vehicles, vintage 2000 and 2002. In spite of their ages and the fact that newer models look different and have more bells and whistles, we are quite fond of these automobiles. That they are paid for makes them even more attractive to us. I commented to Tim that I have less than 100,000 miles on my 2000 Jeep and intend to drive it for as long as it will run—or as long as I have someone to service it (we'll get to that).

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Shape Corp., a supplier of car bumpers based in Grand Haven, Mich., laid off 630 people since December. But as Chrysler plans to reopen plants, the company reportedly hopes to hire back 80 people.

Officials at Die-Matic Corp., a Brooklyn Heights, Ohio, metal stamper, told The Wall Street Journal that 65 percent of its business still serves the automotive market, but the remaining revenue streams come from such sectors as mining, construction, and small appliances. The company also is looking to the medical industry for more work.

These kinds of stories have peppered the news in recent weeks. They're reports that show what's really happening on the ground. Economic pundits continue to argue about what direction the economy will take. Will it continue its upward climb or sink back down to become a double-dip recession? Meanwhile, manufacturers have been quietly making adjustments.

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