Furniture Class

Over the summer I took a woodworking class (at IIT) with Frank Flury. He's been at my school/in the US for about ten years and he runs a design build studio. Here was his last project which he and his class won an AIA award for. It's beautiful. Needless to say he's pretty okay at woodworking and building in general.

This walnut box with maple splines was built in 2 days.

The dimensions are: 7" (17.5 cm) wide, 9.5" (24 cm) long, 6" (15 cm) tall, and the walnut is 1/2" (1.3 cm) thick.

These are just some scraps from wood world. It cost less than $10.

It's hard to overstate how easy it is to screw up in woodworking. One wrong cut and you have to start over and lose money. Marking everything out, taking your time, not cutting corners (no pun intended), and staying organized are the only way to screw up less.

I had to buy one of these. It's a digital angle finder. If only I knew these existed when I was pipe fitting/building concrete plants.

A good glue joint is actually stronger than the natural bond between wood fibers.

This is the spline jig.

In this application the spline doesn't add too much strength - you really need thicker boards to have a big effect. The idea is to add more gluing surface and in another direction.

The maple splines are cut off with a japanese saw and the box was sanded and finished with teak oil. After a few coats of oil I alternated between #0000 steel wool and teak oil. The result is a buttery smooth finish. The lid is a little warped but oddly it acts as a kind of spring to keep the action of the lid semi-tight.

This is actually the first thing we built. It's a somewhat simple chair. It's called an Ulmer-Hocker Stool and was designed by Max Bill. It's red oak with finger jointed tops and sides, dominoed feet, and a polyurethane finish. The original dimensions are 40 cm x 28.5 cm x 45 cm and was made of beech and spruce.

The dimensions are: 15.5" (39 cm) wide, 11.5 (29 cm) deep, 19" (48 cm) tall, and the oak is 5/8" (1.7 cm) thick.

Changes in Hours at Chicago Public Schools

My wife works for CPS and just had her first day back yesterday. Long story short, at some point in the day the head of the CPS teachers union gathered all the psychologists, speech language therapists, etc. into a room, shut the doors, and told everyone that they should be outraged that their workday and number of days worked will be going up while wages will only go up 2%. Never mind the failing schools - people needs to get paid. So let's break that down:

Currently:
Average salary is $68,200 (2009)(starting salaries are nice too)
Days worked per year 170 (176 is required in IL but CPS gets special permission)
The work day is from 8:30-2:45 so 6.25 hours
1062.5 hours/year (53% of a 40 hour a week job with 2 weeks vacation)
$68,200/1062.5 hours = $64.19/hour

Rahm Emanuel's Changes:
The union turned down a 2% increase after they were told they would get a 4% increase, so average salary would be (by 2009 numbers) about $69,600
Days worked is going to 180
Work day will now be 7.75 hours
1395 hours/year (70% of a 40 hour a week job with 2 weeks vacation)
$69,600/1395 hours = $52.77/hour

I understand that working more and not really getting paid much more is frustrating, but my wife always has to clock out, lest she be reprimanded by union workers, at the end of the day then stay and do her work. I don't know... $53 an hour plus benefits and summers off with job security sounds fairly okay to me. It reminds me of a quote by Michelle Rhee at the end of Waiting for Superman where she says something similar to 'the amount of harm we visit on our children so that adults can be civil to one another is astonishing.'

Affordable Healthcare Act Explained

I hesitated to watch this since it ran about 9 minutes long but it was actually very good and informative.

Children at Play

My friend Joe sent this to me. It's easily one of the best articles I've read regarding our current economic, political, and societal morass. It was penned by GMO co-founder Jeremy Grantham.

If you give a damn it's worth reading.

If You Bemoan Federal Debt I Bemoan You

I am not an expert in economics. I have an undergraduate degree in it, but I'm not an expert. None the less the basic tenants of economics are being violated wholesale by our elected officials. This is part one of a basic overview of what is happening in the US right now. This is the simple stuff that if you don't understand you really shouldn't open your mouth about anything economics related. Sounds harsh? So are the consequences for saying stupid things. No one walks into a hospital and requests blood letting just as no one walks into congress and votes for reduced spending during a recession... oh wait.

What is disturbing is that our federal government is literally doing everything wrong that it can. I expect my friends and family who have never looked at an IS/LM curve or Keynesian multipliers to say ignorant things like "oh just let them default or whatever, we need to stop all this deficit spending," but for our government to act in a populist manner in this scenario is nothing short of insanity. It is wrong. It will hurt people. This is not an ethical debate. There are thousands of research papers, billions of data points, and hundreds of relevant historical examples to garner experience and guidance from. If you have a different opinion post the data because your slogan (big government is bad!) does not hold water.

Where to begin? Let's keep it basic. How much money does the US produce every year - or thought of as personal income - what is the US's salary? This is called GDP or GNP. Please read about it. It is important. Well the number is $14.1 trillion per year currently. That's 14,100 billions or 14.1 million millions.

How much is the federal government's revenue? That is, how much money does it collect in taxes? According to the CBO data (congressional budget office) it was about $2.2 trillion in 2010. That's $2,162 billion or 15% of all the money generated during a year in the US. Let's look at some data.

So how much is the deficit? It's there on the far right of 2010 above: $9 trillion. That's a lot of money and it's been growing, but why? Look at revenue on the far left in 1971 and then look at the next year and the next. See that? It goes up every year as the economy grows. Then look at 2001; it dips. Why? In 2001 and 2003 we had the Bush tax cuts. Revenue fell, nothing shocking here. After 2003 revenue continues to go up as usual until 2008 when Bush was still in office and our current mess started. Straight forward right? It usually is...

Aside: if our debt is $9 trillion and we produce over $14 trillion a year that's like the typical American who makes $32,000 (as of 2006) a year having a debt of $20,500 - sounds like a car loan (in 2006 the average cost of a car was $28,400 according the the government). Does having a car loan make you reckless, irresponsible, and broke?

Now let's look at how much the government is spending (outlays), that's the next column over. I made an Excel spreadsheet using the CBO data starting in 1990 because I'm lazy. You can see the formula I use and all the numbers. Look at the percentage change.

In the 90's federal government spending increases at about the rate of inflation. Then in 2000 spending ticks up and in 2002 it surges. Why? Well, wars are expensive. See how it's high in 1991 and 1992 when we blew up Iraq for the first time? Anyways, it jumps in 2008 and 2009 greatly because Obama is a socialist. Oh wait, no. The recession begins in Q2 2008 and lots of people are unemployed and now collect unemployment and depend on other social welfare programs. Which is what they are designed to do. That and there's the stimulus and bank bailouts in there. Then the stimulus mostly goes away in 2010 and outlays actually drops slightly.

So why is debt bad? Well, there is only so much money out there so whenever the government borrows it "crowds out" private investors and raises the cost of borrowing to some degree. Well, that does not matter right now because we are in a liquidity trap. What the hell is that? Basically, everyone is trying to pay down debt, save, and invest money. If everyone is saving then who is borrowing that saved money? When you put money in a bank or pay down a mortgage that money is lent back out again. If more people are saving than spending it makes it cheaper to borrow money because there's less demand for it. A liquidity trap is when common monetary policy (changing the federal funds rate) no longer has an effect. That is, lowering the interest rate does not spur more borrowing/growth. Well, the federal funds rate has been zero for a while.

So why else is debt bad? Because you have to pay interest on debt. What does the government pay in interest? They pay whatever investors are willing to lend them money at. That is, Treasury Bills. So what are the current rates?

Inflation adjusted rates - that is, the money investors receive after inflation, is currently negative on both 5 and 7 year treasury bills. At 10 years the government pays a "real" rate of 0.38% interest. This is not magic. There is almost nothing to invest in right now because there is so little demand and everything is so uncertain, and up until recently it was unthinkable that the US Federal Government would default on its debt. Hence, we are the safest debtors in the world and get the lowest interest rates. Let's see some data...

Look at the second to last column. Every year we pay more and more in interest until 2009. Then it drops and stays pretty low. Why? Because the federal government can pay almost nothing to acquire long term debt as explained above. Hell, people will pay them to acquire short and medium term debt (up to 7 years!).

Do we need to do something about the debt? Absolutely, but not in a depressed and now stagnant economy. So why do we need to reduce the deficit in a depressed economy? We don't. Borrowing is cheap. If I told you that you could take out a 10-year loan for 0.38% above inflation, try to make money with it, and then pay it back do you think you could? If your answer is no then keep your 9 to 5, otherwise welcome to America. Let's borrow more money so investors have something to do with all their cash that's sitting on the sidelines or in gold bars doing nothing. Let's build some bridges, fix some national parks, upgrade our research facilities, double NASA's funding, fix our schools, invest in cleaner energy, help the poor, and provide basic healthcare to all. It's an investment in our basic infrastructure and I bet the returns will be more than 0.38% over inflation.

Chicago Poetry Center Opens

I took these photos a little over a month ago, but I've been in production mode so not a lot has gotten off of my computer or into the developing tank.

This is the Chicago Poetry Foundation's new headquarters just a few blocks from my house at 61 W Superior. It was designed by architect John Ronan who teaches at my school. He's been getting some excellent stuff built in the area and this is no exception.

Here are some other articles about the building: 1 , 2 , 3

The screening is made of zinc so it should both last forever (it's what they make galvanizing out of) and get somewhat lighter over the years.

Lots of levels and nooks, a cat would love this place.

Entrance courtyard.

Finnish birch (?) plywood shiplap corner.

The scoring in the concrete continues inside much like Mies buildings.

Finch's Brewery - Process Photos - Film

First off here's some 4x5's. My scanner doesn't do a great job with them since it's for film that's you know... not 4" by 5".

This was taken on my phone. In person they're like prints in and of themselves. You can drum scan them to hundreds of gigabytes if you pleased. Basically the amount of information in them is staggering.

This is the canner.

The cooking platform.

An accidental double exposure of the fermenters.

More of the cook platform.

The single exposure of the fermenters.

Now the B&W 120 film. The negatives measure 2 1/4" x 1 3/4" (56mm x 42mm) and the film is Kodak 400 TMY-2 if you were interested.

This is what you would see if you were delivering say a pallet of grain.

The grain silo.

All stainless fermenters.

The keg washer and filler.

The grain mill.

Cleaning the grain out of a batch that just got cooked. They had multiple dumpsters of spent grain. Seems like an opportunity for a productive reuse if someone would come haul it away (big if). The guy who makes our moonshine in NC has a flock of "wild" turkeys that eat all the mash. Supposedly they're delicious.

This machine places the tops on the cans.

Cooking station.

Glass House

This is a house that was designed and built by one of my professors, Thomas Roszak (wiki article).

A more complete set of photos will accompany these shortly.