economy

Glad to see things are going so well

Employment Report: 20K Jobs Lost, 9.7% Unemployment Rate

more

James K. Galbraith: "There Is No Return To Self-Sustaining Growth"

'In July of 2009, you signed an initiative of the Roosevelt Institute that seeks an answer to the question: What Caused the Crisis?(ii) May I ask for your personal answer?

'Yes, you may. (laughs.) — The principal cause of the crisis was the dismantling of the system of regulation and supervision in the financial sector which had for much of the post-war period kept the most dangerous elements of that sector in check. In the absence of an appropriate system of effective supervision and regulation, what happens is that the actors in the system, who are intent upon taking the greatest degree of risk — including actors who are intent upon using fraudulent methods to increase their returns — come to dominate parts of the system. As they do that, the general methods of assessing performance in the market, specifically stock-market valuations, become counter-productive. That is to say, they invariably reward the worst actors, while they force more traditional actors, who are still respecting the old norms of conduct, into a competitively disadvantaged position. Thus the bad actors, the fraudulent actors, and the speculative extremists quickly take over.

'That is what happened specifically in the origination of mortgages in the United States in the middle part of the last decade. You had a transition from a traditional method of issuing mortgages to people who could be reasonably expected to service them, to a method of originating mortgages that were sold off immediately, that were rated in a way that permitted them to be bundled and sold to fiduciaries, and where the issuer had no interest in whether the borrowers could pay or not. In fact, in some ways the lenders actively preferred people who did not intend to pay, because they could then inflate the value of the loan and earn a larger fee upfront for doing it. And in this way, not only was there a large segment of the market that was explicitly corrupt, but the equity value of homes all across the country was compromised. When these practices collapsed, so too did the home values not only of people who had bad mortgages, but also those for many people who had good mortgages, good incomes and perfectly good credit.

'The result of that was a general slump in activity. The wealth and financial security of much of the American middle class disappeared. So far about a quarter of the measured wealth of the American middle class has disappeared - about $15 trillion of $60 trillion. That’s bound to have a fantastically traumatic effect on people’s consumption behaviour and on their ability to get new good credit. Even if they wish to continue to extend the past pattern of borrowing in order to finance activity, they can’t do it. So, this is a very big problem. It starts with a failure to supervise and regulate the financial system, and flows on to the reaction of the broader population, which is to protect their remaining assets, to become extremely adverse to taking ordinary business and consumer risks.'

more

The Free Market Fetish
Garbage In, Garbage Out

"Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan answered that he had placed his trust in a flawed theory when he was called before Congress to explain why he, Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, prevented Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation, a government regulatory agency, from doing her job of regulating over-the-counter derivatives.

"The efficient markets theory is that unregulated markets are efficient and rational. According to this theory in which Greenspan placed his trust, unregulated markets produce the best possible result. Any regulatory interference worsens the outcome.

"Greenspan blamed his own bad judgment on a theory. The theory, or Greenspan’s understanding of it, nevertheless still holds sway as Congress has proved impotent to re-regulate the gambling casino that is Wall Street. Clearly, the theory serves powerful interests.

"But what is the truth?

"The truth is that markets are a social institution. Their efficiency depends on the rules that govern the behavior of people in markets. When free market economists talk about markets deciding this or that, they are reifying a social institution and ascribing to it decision-making power. But, of course, markets do not act or make decisions. People act and make decisions, and markets reflect the decisions and actions of people.

"The entire debate over regulation is misconstrued. It is not the market, an efficient social institution, which is regulated. What is regulated is the behavior of people in markets. If you want good results from markets, good regulation of human behavior is a requirement.

"The market is like a computer. Garbage in, garbage out."

more

 09:49 AM - link

photography

You have to check these out!

Michael Paul Smith

more

 09:18 AM - link

america -- a military with a country attached

War, Budgets and Blind Ambition
The Limited Minds of the American Elite

"The American elite's unbounded, unquestioned, indeed unconscious sense of imperial entitlement and dominance -- based ultimately on war, the threat of war and the profit from war -- is one of the defining characteristics of our age. And if you would like to see a glaring example of this attitude in action, look no further than the front page of Tuesday's New York Times, where one David Sanger gives us his penetrating "news analysis" of the Administration's just-announced $3.8 trillion budget.

"Sanger focuses on the huge, continuing deficits that the budget forecasts over the next decade. Completely ignoring the plain truth that his own expert source tell him later in the story -- that "forecasts 10 years out have no credibility" -- Sanger boldly plunges forward to tell us just what it all means. You will not be surprised to hear that the upshot of these big deficits is that neither Obama nor his successors will be able to spend any money on "new domestic initiatives" for years to come.
[...]

"What is most interesting here, of course, is not Sanger's noodle-scratching over imaginary numbers projected into an unknowable future, but his total and apparently completely unconscious adoption of the mindset of militarist empire. For as he puzzles and puzzles till his puzzler is sore on how in God's name the United States can possibly find any money at all to spend on bettering the lives of its citizens over the next 10 years, it becomes clear that Sanger -- like the rest of our political and media elite -- literally cannot conceive of an end to empire. Our elites and their courtiers literally cannot imagine life without a permanent war for global dominance, fueled by a gargantuan war machine spread across hundreds and hundreds of bases implanted in more than 100 countries."

more

Seven Days in January
How the Pentagon Counts Coups in Washington

"After all, if Gates was blindsided in Pakistan, he already knew that a $626 billion Pentagon budget, including more than $128 billion in war-fighting funds, had passed Congress in December and that his next budget for fiscal year 2011 (soon to be submitted) might well cross the $700 billion mark. He probably also knew that, in the upcoming State of the Union Address, President Obama was going to announce a three-year freeze on discretionary domestic spending starting in 2011, but leave national security expenditures of any sort distinctly unfrozen. He undoubtedly knew as well that, in the week after his return, news would come out that the president was going to ask Congress for $14.2 billion extra, most for 2011, to train and massively bulk up the Afghan security forces, more than doubling the funds already approved by Congress for 2010.

"Or consider that only days after his plane landed, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its latest “budget outlook” indicating that the Iraq and Afghan Wars had already cost the American taxpayer more than $1 trillion in Congressionally-approved dollars, with no end in sight. Just as the non-freeze on defense spending in the State of the Union Address caused next to no mainstream comment, so there would be no significant media response to this (and these costs didn’t even include the massive projected societal price of the two wars, including future care for wounded soldiers and the replacement of worn out or destroyed equipment, which will run so much higher).

"Each of these announcements could be considered another little coup for the Pentagon and the U.S. military to count. Each was part of Pentagon blank-check-ism in Washington. Each represented a national security establishment ascendant in a way that the makers of Seven Days in May might have found hard to grasp.

"To put just the president’s domestic cost-cutting plan in a Pentagon context: If his freeze on domestic programs were to go through Congress intact (an unlikely possibility), it would still be chicken-feed in the cost-cutting sweepstakes. The president’s team estimates savings of $250 billion over 10 years. On the other hand, the National Priorities Project has done some sober figuring, based on projections from the Office of Management and Budget, and finds that, over the same decade, the total increase in the Pentagon budget should come to $522 billion. (And keep in mind that that figure doesn’t include possible increases in the budgets of the Department of Homeland Security, non-military intelligence agencies, or even any future war-fighting supplemental funds appropriated by Congress.) That $250 billion in cuts, then, would be but a small brake on the guaranteed further rise of national-security spending. American life, in other words, is being sacrificed to the very infrastructure meant to provide this country’s citizens with “safety.” That’s what seven days in January really means."

more

 10:13 AM - link

cameras and lenses

I've started to mount lenses for my 4x5 as my hole saws come in. I'm waiting for the hole saw on this one: An 1869 Voigtlander Petzval. Check out the link for more pictures and information about this beauty. It was, and will be again, a portrait lens.

 10:05 AM - link

economy

Obama Freeze Forfeits America's Future

"Barack Obama's plan to unveil tonight a non-defense discretionary spending freeze for the next three years will essentially forfeit America's growth future to China.

"China has been massively investing in its high speed rail, its science labs, its educational system, its roads, its energy grid an its information super-duper highway. It has been obsessed with job retention and job creation. It has been building a mind-boggling number of every kind of power plant imaginable -- natural gas, high end coal, low end coal. It's investing in next gen renewable energy projects on a scale larger than the United States. It has been subsidizing all of this with a neo-mercantilist currency policy, pumping exports which it finances to consumers not only in the US but all over the world. China flaunts a robust "Buy China" requirement in its government and semi-private industrial procurements and contracting.

"And the President of the United States, one year into his job, and still dealing with the tail winds of the worst economic disaster in global markets and the US economy since the Great Depression, is saying that he is going to freeze spending on virtually everything but the wars we have on hand.

"America needs to invest in itself."

more

Obama Liquidates Himself

"A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

"It’s appalling on every level.

"It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

"It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

"And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.” "

more

 10:08 AM - link

economy

Seven things about the economy that everyone should be more worried about than they are
Dan Froomkin explores the likelihood of an anemic recovery, a double dip recession, another stock market crash, more financial-sector follies, deficit hawks stifling growth, the death of the middle class as we know it, and/or other dire possibilities reporters should be writing about furiously.

"No. 1: The middle class may never be the same again

"The full effects of the crash of 2007-2008 on the lives of regular Americans has yet to be fully appreciated. For most members of the middle class, their sense of financial well-being was largely based on the size of their 401(k)s and their equity as homeowners. After the collapse of stock prices and with the steep drop in home prices, many may never feel the same way again, or spend their money as confidently.

"While 401(k)s have somewhat bounced back, about one in four homeowners now actually have negative equity -- are "underwater". A recent study by Barry P. Bosworth and Rosanna Smart for Brookings finds that American households lost $13 trillion in wealth between mid-2007 and March 2009, or about 15 percent in all. That decline badly hit baby boomers just as they’re headed into retirement. And middle-income families whose head is age 50 or younger actually have smaller net incomes today than in 1983.

"Meanwhile, many American families spent much of the last decade (or two) living beyond their means, piling up debt on their credit cards, or "bubble borrowing." Two University of Chicago researchers have found that the housing bubble hugely increased household consumption as homeowners borrowed on average $0.25 to $0.30 for every $1 increase on their home equity. Now that housing prices have crashed and credit is tight, the inevitable result, Atif Mian and Amir Sufi write somewhat euphemistically, is a "painful process of household de-leveraging."

"Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, an emerging hero among progressives in her role as chair of the congressional bailout oversight panel, sees the latest series of blows as the unfortunate culmination of a crisis that started taking form a generation ago. For long stretches of time, the growth in the nation's GDP has gone almost entirely to the top 1% or less of the population. That has resulted in a dramatic shift in wealth away from the middle class, made the economy more vulnerable to disaster and made the toll of such a disaster more catastrophic to all but the wealthiest Americans. Warren writes:

"America today has plenty of rich and super-rich. But it has far more families who did all the right things, but who still have no real security. Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. Paying for a child's education and setting aside enough for a decent retirement have become distant dreams. Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff.

"She concludes: "America without a strong middle class? Unthinkable, but the once-solid foundation is shaking." "

more

This is a part of a remarkable series on the economy:

Reporting the Collapse

Read them all!

 11:37 AM - link

photography

Chernobyl 1st expedition

"Imagine a city of 50,000 people. A city whose entire population in the course of one evening had to abandon their homes. Forever. Welcome to the City of Ghosts – Prypiat and Chernobyl.

"CATASTROPHE

"First a few words about Chernobyl and the catastrophe itself. On April 26th, 1986, the greatest catastrophe in the history of nuclear power took place. Overheating, partial rusting of the reactor and a hydrogen explosion occurred as a result of a failure of the cooling system. This caused radioactive materials from inside the reactor to be discharged directly into the atmosphere and area surrounding the plant. As a direct consequence of the catastrophe, 30 people died, over 200 became ill with post-radiation diseases and in a 30 km radius around the power plant, over 130,000 people were evacuated creating a closed protective zone. The indirect and long term effects of the incident are still unknown to this day.

"RADIATION

"These days, the level of radiation is not as high as at the moment of the explosion. It’s enough to just not stray from the asphalt roads, which are naturally less contaminated, and to not go where you’re not supposed to. However, you should also know that in the zone there are places where you only have to go a few hundred metres into to inadvertently receive a high dose of radiation. And so in the zone, I make a new friend- Geiger. The Geiger counter, to be exact. Without this it’s quite possible to end up somewhere you shouldn’t be. There are many unknown places in the zone where radioactive waste has been buried. It’s also worth knowing that grass and moss, which are abundant everywhere, are hundreds of times more radioactive than asphalt. Bringing the Geiger counter close to such moss causes it to freeze instantly. The counter is not capable of measuring such high radiation and simply jams. Thus it is worth avoiding strange looking and bright green moss and grass…

"And it is safest to have a Geiger counter with you and have it switched on the whole time."

more

 11:27 AM - link

the united states -- a military with a country attached

Tomgram: William Astore, Going Rogue in Combat Boots

"Here’s a bit of cheery news: Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates met with the nation's top defense company executives, including the CEOs of those mega-military-industrial combines Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and called for a “closer partnership.” He also made them a promise. He pledged, according to his spokesman, “to work with the White House to secure steady growth in the Pentagon's budgets over time.”

"Let’s put that pledge in context. Last week, President Obama did something common in the Bush years, something he swore never to do; he requested a supplemental $33 billion over and above the fiscal year 2011 defense budget, mainly for his Afghan surge. That sum, when appropriated by Congress, will bring the total official Pentagon budget to $708 billion dollars ($159 billion of which will be directly slated for Afghan and Iraq war costs). To put that sum in context, it’s close to what the rest of the world combined spends on military matters. And you can be guaranteed of one thing: this won’t be the last supplemental request of 2011.

"By the way, if you were to add up the real “defense” budget, including funds for the Department of Homeland Security, the Energy Department (which handles the U.S. nuclear arsenal), veterans' care, the State Department’s planned near-billion-dollar expansion of its embassy in Pakistan into a mega-command post for the region and the planned doubling of the number of personnel in its already monstrous embassy in Baghdad for a similar purpose, and many other relevant things, you would be closing in on $1 trillion per year.

"Meanwhile, in December 2009, the total funds Congress has so far appropriated since 2001 only for our two wars topped $1 trillion dollars, with no end in sight, and that figure doesn’t include projected future costs ranging from care for soldiers wounded in those wars to the cost of replenishing worn out military equipment. At the war-fighting level, the Congressional Budget Office has already projected direct war costs over the next decade at $867 billion.

"The Pentagon’s 2011 budget is already the highest since World War II, according to defense analyst Winslow T. Wheeler. Now, consider that the secretary of defense has just “pledged” more of the same for years to come. And note that none of this -- with the possible exception of that $33 billion supplemental request -- is considered particularly controversial by anyone who matters in Washington, or worth much front-page news attention. Sums that put health-care reform in the shade cause barely a stir. In other words, the Pentagon rules the roost and, as TomDispatch regular William Astore indicates, it could get a lot worse."

more

 12:09 PM - link

cameras

Blaine sent me this link. We've talked about designing and building a view camera but when I can buy a view camera of the quality and capability of my Toyo View D45M for $150, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try to make my own given that I probably couldn't buy the materials to make one for what I bought the Toyo for, not to mention the time in designing and building. I do have to admire someone who does do it. This is an interesting one.

The Medium Format Camera Project

"I first got the idea when I was surfing the web for some camera information I needed, exactly what I can´t recall. But I found this german company called Sinar which manufactures various kinds cameras, mainly for medium format applications. I thought the design of these cameras was really cool and I started researching how they worked, only to discover that they were essentially just simple view cameras. Only in a more sophisticated and fancy package than the old wooden box versions. One particular model called P3 really got my attention with it´s extremly analouge appearance and huge knobs. My second thought were something like: wouldn´t it be possible to build a camera like this with Lego technic parts around a really cheap lens and a bellow? Well at that point i just knew i had to try!

"Thus the goal of this project is pretty simple, to build a fully functional camera from scratch that in the end can be used with either full format or medium format (probably medium format) negative film, and offer about the same functionality as the "real" equivalents do. I do not plan on obtaining flawless image quality but rather just understand all the physics and produce some at least decent pictures."

more

 12:05 PM - link

martin luther king, jr. 1929-1968

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability,
but comes through continuous struggle."

 02:12 PM - link

why?

Answering Helen Thomas on Why They Want to Harm Us

"Thank God for Helen Thomas, the only person to show any courage at the White House press briefing after President Barack Obama gave a flaccid account of the intelligence screw-up that almost downed an airliner on Christmas Day.

"After Obama briefly addressed L'Affaire Abdulmutallab and wrote "must do better" on the report cards of the national security schoolboys responsible for the near catastrophe, the President turned the stage over to counter-terrorism guru John Brennan and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

"It took 89-year old veteran correspondent Helen Thomas to break through the vapid remarks about channeling "intelligence streams," fixing "no-fly" lists, deploying "behavior detection officers," and buying more body-imaging scanners.

"Thomas recognized the John & Janet filibuster for what it was, as her catatonic press colleagues took their customary dictation and asked their predictable questions. Instead, Thomas posed an adult query that spotlighted the futility of government plans to counter terrorism with more high-tech gizmos and more intrusions on the liberties and privacy of the traveling public.

"She asked why Abdulmutallab did what he did.

"Thomas: "Why do they want to do us harm? And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why."

"Brennan: "Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents... They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he's (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death."

"Thomas: "And you're saying it's because of religion?"

"Brennan: "I'm saying it's because of an al Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way."

"Thomas: "Why?"

"Brennan: "I think this is a - long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland."

"Thomas: "But you haven't explained why."

"Neither did President Obama, nor anyone else in the U.S. political/media hierarchy. All the American public gets is the boilerplate about how evil al Qaeda continues to pervert a religion and entice and exploit impressionable young men.

"There is almost no discussion about why so many people in the Muslim world object to U.S. policies so strongly that they are inclined to resist violently and even resort to suicide attacks."

more

 12:52 PM - link

photography

Showcase: Dark Screens, Bright Memories

"Twelve years ago, Carl Weese parked his truck off Route 8 in rural Connecticut and stood in a field. Something peculiar had caught his eye.

"From the middle of the field, Mr. Weese could see the screen of an abandoned drive-in movie theater at the foot of a nearby hillside. It was half-covered in a thicket of overgrown trees. The image of the derelict screen blending into the surrounding landscape intrigued him.

"The following morning he got up early. At dawn he photographed the drive-in, just as the day’s first shafts of light fell upon the white screen and illuminated it.

"It was Mr. Weese’s first photograph of a drive-in theater. Over the years, he has produced hundreds more. “Drive-ins are this stealthily strong feature of American history,” said Mr. Weese, who takes a sociological approach to much of his photography.

"Since 1998, he has traveled to 27 states in search of theaters that convey a story of the nation’s love affair with the automobile and the open road, as well as a sense of the country’s past and present.

"Most of the theaters Mr. Weese has visited are abandoned or deserted. Of the nearly 5,000 drive-ins that were open in 1960, he said, fewer than 500 still function. Development pressures have often contributed to their demise.

" “There’s a saying: there’s only one way to get rich off a drive-in theater, and that’s to sell it to Wal-Mart,” he said."

more

Carl also has a photo blog I follow:

Working Pictures

 12:49 PM - link

america the beautiful

Bass Boats and Queer Marriage
The battle for the American soul is over and Jay Leno won
By Joe Bageant

"Holy smoking Jesus, America is losing its middle class! "We're taxing the middle class out of existence," charge the conservatives. "The middle class is being hollowed out," wail the liberals, pouring forth great mock turtle tears (although one wonders how such a vacuum, as middle class life in America could be further hollowed).

"For both political camps, high dudgeon over "the vanishing middle class" is supposed to represent some sort of "new populism." Not that the populace disagrees with them, mainly because the populace, if we are referring to the genuine America populace, hasn't the slightest notion of the definition of populism. But the word sounds like it has to do with popularity, the highest virtue in the American mind, and can even lead to the celestial heights called celebrity. So what the hell, they're willing to run with it.

"In any case, much overwrought political theater is being dedicated to the subject of the middle class' demise. If demise is the right word for losing its ability to engorge on commodities at obscene levels.

"A month or so ago I watched news footage of some fat guy being interviewed inside his the three car garage of his $300,000 cardboard house. The poor fellow was about to lose his bass boat, and maybe his home too. From the looks of it, I'd say the bass boat was a Ranger X520. Now these babies start at $45K, not to mention the $30K for the four wheel drive usually seen pulling. Looked like it was sitting on a 20-plus foot Hurricane boat trailer, another $4K or $5K. My wife, who was watching the show with me, turned and said, "What class is this man supposed to be in?"

" "I don't know, they say middle class."

" "Hmmm. Whatever it is, we've never been members."

"George Jones and Tammy Wynette said it all when they sang:

"No we're not the jet set
We're the old Chevrolet set
Our steak and martinis
Is draft beer with weenies

"Indeed, we are witnessing the death of the American lifestyle, bass boats and all. Unless of course, the Chinese banksters will keep on loaning us enough dough for one more fix, one more snort of crank to keep the American lifestyle from going into withdrawal. Yeah, sure.

"That does not keep both political parties from assuring us that "the great American middle class lifestyle is not negotiable," then proceeding to negotiate the hell out of it."

more

Six Months To Live?

"The economy that is. Especially the part that consists of swapping paper certificates. That's the buzz I've gotten the first two weeks of 2010, and forgive me for not presenting a sheaf of charts and graphs to make the case. Just about everybody else yakking about these thing on the Web provides plenty of statistical analysis: Mish, The Automatic Earth, Chris Martenson, Zero Hedge, The Baseline Scenario.... They're all well worth visiting.

"Bank bonus numbers are due out any day now. The revolt that I expected around the release of these numbers may come from a different place than I had imagined earlier -- not from whatever remains of "normal" working people, but from the thought leaders and middling agents in administration (including the prosecutors) who, for one reason or another, have been diverting their attention, or watching and waiting, or making excuses for a couple of years now. When Frank Rich of The New York Times starts calling for Robert Rubin's head, then maybe the great groaning tramp steamer of media opinion is turning in the water and charting a new course for the port of reality.

"Anyway, the grotesque carnival of rackets and lies that the US economy has become -- held together with the duct tape of stimulus cash, gamed accounting, mortgage subsidies, carry trades, TBTF bailouts, TARPS, TALFS, shell-game BLS reports, and MSNBC "green shoots" cheerleading -- gives every sign of tipping into collapse at a moment's notice. There are just too many obvious things that can go wrong, and that means there are many less obvious, hidden things that can go wrong, and isn't it tragically foolish to tempt Murphy's Law, since it operates so well without any help from us? The call is even going out lately for criminal prosecution of the current Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner, for engineering AIG's $14 billion credit default swap payoff to Goldman Sachs as part of the AIG bailout. Okay then, why not Paulson, Bernanke, Blankfein...?"

more

 11:40 PM - link

bicycles

Do It Yourself: Building Your Own Bamboo Bike

"The Bamboo Bike Studio is run by three men in their late 20s who know a lot about bamboo and a lot about bicycles. On a cool autumn morning, two of them are out on a bamboo harvest — in a dense grove near New Brunswick, N.J.

"Justin Aguinaldo and Sean Murray carry a small Japanese pull saw and a caliper to find bamboo stems that are 1 1/2 inches thick. When they find stems that are just right, they tap the bamboo to make sure it's not too soft: "If the bamboo's too watery, it's not as dense and it's not as strong," Aguinaldo explains.

"Aguinaldo makes his living as a bicycle messenger. Sean Murray is a former schoolteacher whose voice mail greeting makes note of the fact that he is now living the dream of making bikes with his friends."

more

Bamboo Bike Studio

 11:32 PM - link