The revolution we forecast in 2005 with the appearance of desktop 3D printers is now here.  Open source 3D has gone very mainstream. We just waiting for the killer app (print files) that will make it all a must-have.

Today, a look back at some of our work from the period and review how that forecast (and our back-when website on topic, www.nationaldesignlibrary.org, worked out and who’s in that space today.

All because we have hit the “watershed price point” so yeah, a lot of “Manufacturing Must Die.”

Funeral plans after some headlines and charts. The world of custom mass manufacturing (done at home) beckons.

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Many people have “special interest’ workspaces.  But what if you have lots of interests?  Why, in no time at all, you will find all of your space – home, garage, all of it – eaten-up by a plethora of tools.

Late summer is a good time of year to spend some quality “shop time” on organizing, Here are some ideas that might increase your productivity as well as your enjoyment of project-making and being a “maker.”.

But first, we roll through the headlines and charts since shops not only take time, and some organizing, but also a fair bit of money, done right.  (May noad slowly due to large number of graphics…)

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We’re not big on conspiracy theories, except when we find one supported by the data!  It’s not simple to explain how we got there, but you may see, as I certainly did, the clear shadow of a “hidden hand” behind society-wide market moves.

The problem – even more complex than the data sets – is now that we have the data, what is it trying to tell us?  How do we change it?

Just the kind of thing some cream cheese Danish and  coffee is designed to sort out.  After our usual few headlines to turn-over the crank between the ears…

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Political distractions aside, the real news is under the surface this week. As the market claws its way higher, we are looking at much of the same data the Fed uses and coming to some interesting conclusions. 

As a result, our normal “focus” piece will be an expanded ChartPack today with all eyes on where this market may go later this year and into next.

Right after some headlines and more coffee…

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No hype and no BS:  If the lights went out today, How long would you live?  I know, summer weekend and it’s not so bad, provided you don’t live down by the Gulf with Barry rolling in.

If there’s one semi-regular pattern to highly successful people, it is this:  They do the most difficult things first Around here, thinking the unthinkable is top of the list.  After you get through those items, the rest of life is easy-peasy.

So, let’s be very serious today and talk about some actuarial realities.  If the crap really hit the fan, how long would you last?  I mean stop everything, drop your pencil.  Look up right now.  What you see is all you have to work with and the power is off and the water no longer runs.

Have you got a 5-year plan for recovery that doesn’t depend on someone else getting the power back on, or your computer back online?  How do you slake that thirst?  Got even a one-week plan that doesn’t involving moving more than 1,000 feet?

Those are the kind of “toughies” we will be getting into after a few headlines and the ChartPack which shows how the markets now seem intent on either reprising The Fifth Dimension song or events from May to September 3 of 1929.

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Who owns the environment?  A strange mental disease began creeping into Western thinking.  Today, as we go looking for Quality – long lost in action – we focus not only on the major environmental issues that are here, but also on the underlying mindset that enables ‘others’ to claim primacy over things like clouds, rainwater, the oceans, and sure…the weather.

But, before we get to that, some comments on the morning’s news plus a ;look at our charts.  Two cups worth, by the look of it…

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So this morning we put on our “project engineering hat” and begin thinking and planning a migration path from a good experience with basic gardening to something which could become a ‘daily activity planner’  resulting in a never-ending garden.  Meaning you might never having to worry about food again – ever.

We won’t be using wildly complex design theory.  This will be more of a “roll your own” although we will probably build-up a simple spreadsheet in the future to help us with the mechanics of timing of how such a garden would operate in most climates.  There’s much to the process.  Who said eating was ‘simple?’

We will ‘hop to it’ just as soon as we get through a few headlines about the LA quakeand, of course, a look at the charts…

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Follow-up today (with some pictures) from this year’s hydroponic build.  We are running a race, of sorts, between the hydroponic tomatoes and their cousins grown in the dirt and in more controlled conditions in large pots in the greenhouse.  Junior high school science project?  Not quite…

If you plan to eat when the crap hits the fan (TSHTF), and you have some solar panels, which growing method is ‘best’ given where you live?

Fun stuff- and since tomorrow is a holiday and the markets close early today, why not get down with our hoes and party a bit?

After some headlines with the latest jobs data just hitting and our Aggregate Index view of markets…

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Faster than Rome, Slower than Venezuela.  Maybe.  A 20-year colleague in the study of long wave economics has been corresponding with me as we continue to consider how what has been ‘marketed’ as anti-fragile complex society may in fact just be a society unfamiliar with the nature of non-linear systems.

Don’t worry; we won’t be tossing around terms for you to graph, although Northwestern University’s open textbook discussion of Placewise linear approximations may lead you in some interesting directions.

Instead, we will use our ‘truth templates’ from our Substitution Method of Learning (SML) to show you how some moderate-to-advance aircraft acrobatics (aerobatics, since I used to fly one) will teach you more about real-world economics than any collection of loud-mouth socialists who have never created value for a living; instead spending their time on OPM/TM (other people’s money/tax money).

A few headlines, the weekly ChartPack and then we’re ready for a take-off into the future of slow-motion (initially) social collapse.  Cheery stuff, huh?

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Energy is the ‘new money.’ If you went looking for a ‘new kind of magic’ it would be hard to beat energy.  Almost doesn’t matter where it comes from, either.

You see, when  you invest in “energy” you are investing in a physical good that can make fertilizer, drive cars, power boasts and planes and a whole lot more of that boring daily stuff called ‘life.’  As such, it makes a hell of a lot more sense that investing in a ‘secret number’ with limited fungibility now and absolutely worthless without a grid being up and networks that function.

Energy can ensure water is pumped and available.  Even keep reverse-osmosis plants going as they extract fresh from saltwater.  It can put food on the table, gives rise to industry plus much more.

The problem is we are not keeping up with the raw economics of this ‘new money’ in a sustainable fashion.  So when the musical chairs music ends, millions may have nowhere to sit, let alone eat.  Can’s sayt we haven’t mentioned it, though.

Our quest for quality in our future continues today along this track after we power through some headlines and run through our usual electrifying charts…

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What?  Not exactly our usual (meat & potatoes) economic fare, for sure.  But, this week thanks to my writing up of a woo-woo piece for Urban (next weekend)  and talking to Chris McCleary, who took on the National Dream Center project that I founded back in 2008, we are moving the ball slowly downfield toward self-discovery in some most unusual ways.

A portion of this will be reported as (another weird George experiment) next weekend on UrbanSurvival under the title “Saturday Woo-Woo: Automatic Writing” but in keeping with our practice of giving subscribers the “first and best” of our work, a discussion today of how things may work in the boundary areas between work-a-day waking life and the somnambulistic higher-self  should prove more than worthwhile.

After a few headlines and at we look ahead to the (for now) still-rising market.

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Million Mile & 100 MPG Cars. In today’s chapter we take on some of the most vexing design-balancing problems of all.  Though not limited to cars, the design tradeoffs are easy to understand and they translate well to other transport modalities such as ocean-going vessels and airplanes, as our quest for “Good old-fashioned American Quality” continues through the Seven Major Systems of Life.

First, though, the usual headlines and ChartPack as the helium-laced markets can’t seem to get enough of themselves and the prospects of cheaper money.

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The Trouble with McMansions. Today with launch into some interesting aspects of trying to nail-down just what “quality” is in homes.  No, it’s not 2″ deep well-padded deep splush white carpet.

First, though, a couple of headlines and a look at the charts.  Bean up and on to our….

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