What Can Cash Mobs Teach Us?

I was recently introduced by a friend to a small store in Los Angeles that’s part of the Downtown Women’s Center.  Made By DWC is a boutique store that sells goods and products made by low-income women.  While I really want to root for a store with that kind of a mission, I made a passing comment lamenting how long before it probably goes out of business.  “Well they just got cash mobbed, so they’re doing pretty well this month,” my friend said.  I thought of a few comebacks but ultimately settled with “What the hell is a cash mob?”

“Cash Mobs” have quickly become a new phenomenon born out of the internet’s “social media” phase.  The idea, widely credited to Chris Smith of Buffalo, is that small businesses get a boost from an organized “mob” of customers who meet and coordinate through online networking.   The concept has so far been put to use in various areas around the country and met much success.  Made By DWC had 35 people from LA Cash Mobs purchase a total of $1200 in a couple of hours.  More interestingly, thanks to a self-imposed rule that cash mobs have to buy everything at the offered price, the practice is more profitable for businesses than turning to the recent Groupon craze that enables customers to buy as much as they can for as little as possible, usually resulting in the business never able to make up the money lost to discounts.  Unlike the Groupon fad, cash mobs have a few things going for them to be attractive to a small business struggling in a small market; no discounts needed, traffic guaranteed to purchase, and online marketability. 

That marketability can’t be overstated; instead of a crowd of people stomping into your store to get a deal, unaware and probably uncaring of who you are and why you chose to open this business, cash mobs are people flooding your store with the intent to improve their local business community, and therefore want to know more about you.  Smith elaborated this in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition:

"What you get with a Groupon or a Living Social deal is a one-time injection. And it's not necessarily a profitable injection," Smith says. "You're having to cut your prices so significantly. I think with this, because we ask people to come and spend a little time in the store, we encourage the entrepreneur to spend some time with each of the shoppers and introduce themselves, talk about the products they have. It builds a relationship that you don't get with a coupon." – Chris Smith to Daniel Robinson, March 29^th, 2012; WBFO.

So what does this have to do with manufacturing?  This kind of community-support sentiment is prominent and very powerful all over the U.S. right now, born out of a general awareness as to the damage the Recession did to American enterprise.  Advocates are realizing the never-ending possibilities of the internet when it comes to organizing events, and it’s these kinds of efforts that are not only giving local retailers a financial boost, but also giving them a chip in the social media PR game. 

I wonder what the manufacturing landscape would look like if it had its own brand of cash mobs.  I realize it’s a bit crude to try to fit the concept of customers gathering together and attempt to support their local glass factory  by buying from it directly.  However, consumers could certainly help manufacturing businesses that may suffer from the kind of brand obscurity that comes with, well, being a manufacturing business.  Tweeter, Facebook, and all the rest of the bells and whistles on the ol’ computer box have taught us that the individual web-surfer can now double as a bona-fide marketing firm.  Cash mobs directly giving their business to manufacturing may not be feasible, but online groups “mobbing” a business to profile it most definitely has a positive impact on its brand awareness. 

Hey, even an indirect cash mob could work.  What’s to stop cash mobs from inundating a store with their foot traffic with the intent of buying a product specifically because it’s made with a part or parts from a local manufacturing business?  I like this idea because it hinges on customers’ growing consciousness of how their products are assembled, as well as an improved line of communication between manufacturing and the end customer, something severely lacking and, in my opinion, contributing to people not knowing more about job opportunities in the industry.

So while the internet is indeed producing its fair share of failed experiments, the cash mob movement may be one that hasn’t even begun to show its true promise yet.  Its very popularity proves that there’s momentum out there for pro-business advocacy on the grassroots level.  Instead of just letting the software and retail score another point in the PR game, manufacturers should stop following their lead and meet the consumer base directly on this one.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

*Stuff* We Should Make Special Edition: Flying Cars Vs. Flying Pigs

 Oh, silly people from the 1950’s and your wacky forward-thinking concepts and ideas...  

Seriously, what happened to the flying car thing?  Was all that just the product of some post-WWII affluent-lifestyle-thinking?  Were we all just so mesmerized by DuPont plastics and Avon and Cadillac and everyone else in the realm of making things that looked so shiny and new, we were convinced we had reached the future a little farther down the road than we really had?  Did the atom bomb, which was supposed to spur the imaginations of the masses in developing technology and products beyond our wildest dreams, wind up stunting us as creative in only weapons of warfare and clever budget tricks? 

Or were we just not smart enough to become a nation of pilots (which is a shame, because I rock the Aviators almost as hard as Beckham.)?

If it only came down to the latter, that may be an issue in the makings of being resolved.  Terrafugia, based just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, is a firm made up of aeronautic engineers, business majors, but all of them private pilots.  Their “About Us” portion of the website introducing the staff shows how passionate they are about their work. CEO/CTO and founder Carl Dietrich received his private pilot license when he was seventeen.  Even the VP of Sales, Cliff Allen, characterizes himself in his online bio as an “aviation nut” who “owns a 1949 Piper Clipper, which he is restoring.”  (I have no idea what the significance is either, but it is a pretty sweet little plane). 

The point being, these guys understand the intricate nuances of flying, most importantly that they’re waaay more difficult than doing a K-Turn in your Chevy Tahoe.  This is why their prototype- the Transition- a plane valued at $279,000 with fold-up wings that enable it to legally drive on roads, might be one of the best models out there of a flying car with some semblance of a chance to be mass-marketed.  In a profile of the Transition from the Economist, Dietrich himself explains how modern navigation systems have resolved much of the issue of common knowledge:

 

“Whereas once a pilot needed to know how to triangulate his position using ground-based radio beacons, portable GPS units and altimeters can now do the job. ‘There are now off-the-shelf systems that can give you the same kind of instrumentation capabilities as an airliner,’ says Mr Dietrich. As a result, although there are restrictions on flying at night or through bad weather, it is possible for someone to get a Lite-Sport licence with just 20 hours’ flying experience—less time than many people spend learning to drive.” – The Economist, Technology Quarterly: What Happened To the Flying Car?

That “Lite-Sport” phrase refers to the latest category created by the FAA 8 years ago to include small private aircraft; a move that actually resulted in an easier path for individuals obtaining pilot licenses.  This, in turn, has created a new market for small plane manufacturing, and since many pilots flying this specific craft tend to have to land it at airfields farther away from areas with easy access to public transportation, the idea of a plane being able to take you up in the air, down on the ground and straight to your driveway/hotel room/underground silo-converted-lair-where-you-do-God-knows-what, really appeals to this demographic.  

Of course, no matter how great the idea sounds, business-minded individuals who spend a ridiculous amount of money to fly by their own means tend to be a bit more practical when it comes to purchasing their next/only plane.  And though the Transition has been proven to work in flight tests,  that doesn’t necessarily mean its potential customer base believes the flying car is an actual next step in the evolution of mass transportation.  

Take Loren Gallagher of Hemet, California, for example. Mr. Gallagher has been flying private planes ever since he got his pilot license at El Monte Airport in 1969. An aviator at heart, Mr. Gallagher found a way to use his hobby to his advantage in the resort management business. He flies for business as well as recreation and has flown to airports as far south as Baja California (that’s Mexico for all you Eastern Seaboarders) and as far north as Anchorage (That’s Alaska for all you Lower 48-ers). When I interviewed Loren about bringing back the ol’ flying cars’ “Manifest Destiny”, he was kind enough to bring me back down to Earth a bit (pun so very much intended):



“I have mixed feelings about mixing "road" and "sky" vehicles into one package. If something happens mechanically to my car, it rolls to stop and I can step out. If something happens to my airplane while flying, the outcome might not be as benign. I remain somewhat skeptical about the constant transformation from car to aircraft to car. Sooner or later, those moving parts will be compromised, not handled properly, damaged by another auto, and you may not understand the consequences until airborne when problems have bigger potential consequences. “



You’ll notice, Loren’s concerns revolve not around the difference between navigation in the air versus on the ground, but rather, how operational changes in the plane’s make-up are going to affect the actual flying-in-the-air part. With all the new innovations in development, for the customer, it still comes down to that timeless nugget of truth: “I’m thousands of feet up in the air and I don’t want to die in this thing.” His concern of the hybrid vehicle being damaged by other cars on the road is totally valid as well, and not an opinion lost on the companies investing in the concept. Rob Bulaga, president of Trek Aerospace of Folsom, California- which has designed its own flying car model- tells the Economist in the above interview, “I don’t want to see this [prototype] in the hands of everybody, because I have seen what everybody drives like.” Yup, so have I. Can you imagine a million of these guys a mile above you every day?



Back to Loren:



“I've been watching the Terrafugia[‘s product] with interest. It strikes me as a novelty and not able to complete with ‘real’ airplanes…An hour or two roaming the pages of Trade-A-Plane and you can fund hundreds of airplanes that will do far more than the Terrafugia at a fraction of the price. I'm still not convinced that the ability to park it in your home garage is a sufficiently large selling point. I could be wrong and, candidly, I hope I'm wrong. I love innovation in aviation and have been a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association for many years. The experimental aviation enthusiasts are directly responsible for most of the truly great changes in aviation design and technology that we've witnessed over the last decade.”



So while Loren’s gracious and understanding in the necessity of pushing design and technology, he’s right; there’s a lot of work to do here before manufacturing even thinks of stepping in. Aviation enthusiasts and vets like Loren are pretty stone-set in why they like to fly and how they view it in their life. It usually comes down to one key thing: solace. Every pilot I ever met enjoys private flying for that very reason; its element of privacy, of being away from the world. Creating an infrastructure in the sky that’s similar to what we already have on the ground? That’s kind of exactly the opposite of what aviation nuts want (hell, I drive on the freeways of Los Angeles daily, it’s the opposite of what I want too). Still, there are those out there who have devoted their entire lives to this version of the future. Dr. Paul Moller, of Moller Enterprises, has been designing, refining, and redefining his Skycar since he first got one to fly in 1989. MARCO Industries in Huntsville, Alabama has been designing a car called the SkyRider X2R. It’s designed to take off vertically, meaning it also uses propellers and nacelles. However, it also takes into account the need to divorce the pilot from the burden of delicate maneuvering by coming with a navigation system based on GPS satellites similar to the Transition’s.



Listen, change makes us all apprehensive. Change can be scary. Change is always messy. But with the world’s populations skyrocketing like never before, change is obviously necessary. We need serious new thinking to address serious issues, and in the grand scheme of things, maybe the air above us hasn’t been utilized as properly as it could. Daring to imagine made the US stand out as a nation; why stop now?
 

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

Manufacturing the Manufacturing Jobs

Keeping with the “job creation” narrative that’s all the rage (in every sense of the word) these days, The Urban Institute recently released a poll study of the top 100 Metropolitan Areas responsible for job creation in America up to the month of October 2011.  Data is organized per sector, and the interactive report, which you can check out here,  shows the manufacturing industry doing particularly well, creating jobs in almost two-thirds of the cities and urban areas polled. 

What stands out to me is not so much the progress in manufacturing (I and everyone with knowledge have been firing blog posts all over the internet for a year now trying to get the general public to see how well US manufacturing has been doing-welcome to the party, Time) as where it is progressing.  The national perception of the Midwest, namely Michigan, lagging in job creation clearly gets a shotgun-sized hole blown through it according to this study.  Detroit-Warren-Livonia is particularly encouraging.  Though the region has a five year loss of 23 percent, the past year it gained almost four, and in the month of October alone manufacturing jobs grew by .6 percent.  Even if that rate grows at half that speed from now on, that will take Detroit’s manufacturing job loss into the 19 percent area by 2013, a drastic improvement from ‘09. 

That’s not even the best news out of Michigan; Lansing-East Lansing has gained in manufacturing jobs by 23 percent since ’09 and a 2.2 percent gain over the past year, making it the clear frontrunner for the nation in manufacturing jobs, prompting Lansing Mayor Bernero’s office to blitz the AP with lengthy proclamations such as this (although I wouldn’t speak so soon if I was Mayor Bernero, being as the volatility of the region speaks to a 1 percent decline shown in the month of October.) 

What’s the real reason Michigan is doing so well?  Bob Sherer, executive director  of the Capital Area Manufacturing Council makes a few observations in Lansing Business Monthly:

“Our fortunes are tied to the auto industry of course, and the rebound is predominantly in this sector, especially at GM’s Lansing Delta Township plant. The higher volume Chevrolet Traverse is now made here and has replaced the Saturn Outlook. Some of the job additions include workers transferring from Spring Hill, Tenn.—and the plant is operating on three shifts while Lansing Grand River remains on one shift. Jobs at supplier plants have responded to this increased production by adding jobs.

Unlike GM employment growth, which consists solely of recall and transfers, many of the suppliers have added true new hires. And since manufacturers use employment agencies extensively to help staff their plants, some of the job gain at local plants shows up in “business services,” and a good portion of this industry’s gain of 1,000 from a year ago is actually linked to manufacturing.”

All good news in the long run: stable jobs running multiple shifts to keep up with high-volume production.  Music to my ears.

It’s not all rosy, of course, as the region once had about 50,000 workers in the auto industry alone.  Numbers like that may not be seen for quite awhile.  Not to mention, the newest local product investment- lithium batteries- have dropped in demand this year to the point where Livonia’s A123 Systems laid off 125 employees back in November despite a $242 million grant from the Department of Energy given NOT to lay off people.  The lay-offs have more to do with delays in the newest hybrid vehicles more than the lithium industry, however, and A123’s partner in battery pack production, GM, doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.

All in all, the Urban Institute’s report shows steady, if unimpressive, improvement in the sector’s growth and permanence. Of course, I’ll take steady and unimpressive over rapid and unstable any day of the week, particularly when the country’s economic future is at stake.  But that’s just me.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

What to Do With the Skills Gap?





A recent survey revealed that only 37 percent of respondents

said they would encourage their child to seek a career in

manufacturing. (Photo—Rotor Clip Press Room)





Out of all the elephants in the room that is “American Manufacturing”, perhaps the biggest one is not the economy, nor unemployment, but something that directly ties to both:  the lack of skilled American workers needed to meet the demand of the new global manufacturing standard.  After a full decade of outsourcing patterns as well as a university system focusing its recruitment around  “knowledge jobs” in areas of finance, service and academia, most business communities in the country are discovering that even when they want to pursue labor options at home, the pool is not very impressive at all.  Consider a recent study done by Manufacturing Institute.  Excerpts include:

                        “Overall, our survey findings are remarkably consistent with previous Skills Gap     studies, with 67% of respondents reporting a moderate to severe shortage of available,             qualified workers and 56% anticipating the shortage to grow worse in the next three to five     years. In addition, our survey indicates that 5% of current jobs at respondent manufacturers are             unfilled due to a lack of qualified candidates. These results underscore the tenacity of a     worsening talent shortage that threatens the future effectiveness of the U.S. manufacturing   industry.” - Manufacturing Institute, 2011 Skills Gap Report.

Yowsers.  That last part makes an economist want to shove a pencil in his eye.  All the stimulus programs, tax cuts and incentives in the world can't really make up for the fact that if not enough people know the trade, the trade is left undone.

So, in my opinion, we're back to education.  This subject surfaces in mainstream media once a year as everyone blitzes in with their input on how to fix the system, or reform the system, or throw the system away and get all you need to know from Old Fashioned Guy.  Then, after we all realize that real changes to education would mean putting investment into programs and learning development that wouldn't show results for years, we realize our good ol' American instant gratification itch ain't gonna get scratched anytime soon and we move on to bashing Snooki.

But as we see here with a study like this, kicking the can down the street is having a real effect on solving multiple problems in this country right now.  Manufacturing is doing better than anyone else right now, and yet it will not be able to meet its full potential not because some other country is getting unfair advantages, or because our government is squabbling.  No, potential will not be met because none of us are really pushing to pass on the trades.  Consider another report done by the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte on the public perception of Manufacturing: 

            “While Americans believe manufacturing is of vital importance to the country, they are        reluctant to pursue jobs in the industry.”

                                    -Public View on Manufacturing Report, 2011, Manufacturing Institute, Deloitte

The report goes onto show that in surveys that asked whether they would encourage their child to seek a career in manufacturing, 37 percent of respondents said “Yes”.  More telling is how many respondents state that their local school system encourages its students to pursue manufacturing, 19 percent.

Now we're getting to the root of this.

Perception is always established by the previous generation, and it seems we're back to the same stigma that I've written about on here before. Only according to studies such as this, it seems the stigma has been institutionalized.

If you're asking me for solutions to this, go get me a good publisher and I'll work on a good five years of research to do so.  The truth is there are tons of pathways to take.  One that did interest me somewhat lies in what Korea is doing to address issues in their much-ballyhooed school system.  Consider this article from Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post:

                        “South Korea’s government has decided that too many people are going to college. It is      working to restore the luster of a high school diploma as a stopping point for some and to         establish a vocational track for others.”

                                    -Fred Hiatt, Washington Post

Obviously different cultures call for different measures, but as the article goes onto state, huge investment by families into their children learning “knowledge occupations” when trade jobs are in demand not only puts a wear on the family's income, but it also greatly diminishes the priorities that culture puts on trade jobs altogether.  If this is an issue we're dealing with as a nation, perhaps the solution lies in closer cooperation between corporate communities and their local technical and vocational schools.  I always thought the Army did such a good job recruiting off campuses and neighborhoods because an ROTC program has a direct result it can point to:  if you do this, you will end up like that guy you see on the commercial, or saluting the President as he walks into the Rose Garden.  If manufacturers can find a way to make their livelihoods more apparent and attractive as an alternative to the kinds of jobs a BA, MFA or MBA demand, they may find themselves tapping into an undiscovered demographic.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

Spider Silk Still Has Us Beat



What substance has the greatest tensile strength

on the planet? Ask a spider.

 Recently I wrote about UC Irvine and HTL Labs researchers’ unveiling of a new metal composed 99.9 percent of air with the capacity to absorb half its mass in force.  This is just the tip of the iceberg in utilizing the fairly new wave of nanotechnology, which seems to be all the rage these days. 

The promise of nanotechnology entails more than just even faster software, or turning all of us into miniature Dennis Quaids.  It could also, ironically, contribute to discovering methods for stronger, denser construction materials, resulting in even bigger, longer, stronger buildings and bridges as well as armor capable of resisting the most horrific assaults imagined and unimagined.

While there are already breakthroughs out there for venture capitalists to chuck checkbooks at, the Holy Grail of micromaterial potential is, in my opinion, still the one that’s been around the longest.  Longer than carbon nanotubes, longer than Dow Chemical, longer than even Mickey Rooney.

I’m talking about spider silk.  That ol’mainstay of your overstuffed basement.  The stuff you shriek like a girl at when you run into it.  After a few hundred thousand years of mankind discovering tools, building with them, fighting each other with them, then building with them some more, then fighting each other some more, then finding oil and making each other rich, then fighting each other over oil, then discovering the internet and dropping everything to Google why they were fighting in the first place, we still have not developed a substance with as much diversity and potential as spider silk.  Breaking it down, its tensile strength beats steel and rivals Kevlar (although one type made by Darwin’s bark spider is ten times tougher than what our Marines wear in battlefield scenarios).  Carbon nanotubing stretches longer but is not nearly as flexible, and spider silk stays solvent in both extreme freezing and boiling temperatures.

The idea to mass produce Charlotte’s web has been kicking around for quite awhile.  The problem of course is the amount of spiders one would need to compose enough silk for anything significant.  Back in ’08-09, a textile research team successfully wove an 11 x 4 foot cloth derived from 80 feet worth of silk firmament.  That cloth alone took roughly one million, two hundred thousand Madagascar golden orb spiders to produce.  Now, despite those numbers seeming rather astronomical when applied to manufacturing and construction, I have faith the US could make something like this happen.  Certainly there’s a scenario where we could sign a trade pact with Madagascar and spend billions of dollars building spider farms, raising spider colonies to maximal health and training them to spin their silk cost-efficiently through measurable certifications such as vocational school and graduate programs. 

OR, we could just make it ourselves.

AMSilk is a German biopolymer company clearly devoted to the latter.  They’ve already come up with a way to grow spider silk by feeding its proteins to E.coli bacteria (if that was all we needed to do I could’ve made spider silk out of my fridge years ago).  Although this gets the spiders out of the way, it doesn’t quite amount to a system conducive to mass production.  So they’re teaming up with Fraunhofer IAP, a company that specializes in spin processes for biopolymer materials, to put their methods on a grander scale.

It’s not like the US doesn’t have groups developing their own method of harnessing natural silk.  Nexia Biotechnologies has been funding research at the University of Wyoming to derive spider silk from goat milk, and Clemson University believes they can cultivate it from plants.

This is the kind of breakthrough that merges many different kinds of imaginations.  Think of how lighter bulletproof material could be. How far could we build a suspension bridge?  Could cars bounce off each other when they crash?  Remember, toughness and strength is only one aspect that goes into choosing materials that need to hold up over a long period time in a harsh environment.  Flexibility, as any architect will tell you, is key in finding material that will last.  I suppose synthetic metals and nanotubes hold their own promise, but natural substances like spider silk have another advantage; they’re confirmed as not toxic.  The same can’t be said for stuff that hasn’t been around long enough for adequate testing.  If you snapped your Achilles tendon in two, what would you want replacing it, material made from spider silk or a lab beaker?  Yeah, me too.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

Light as a (Synthetic Micro-Latticed Metal) Feather



Researchers have developed a metal that is strong yet as light as styrofoam

 Southern California's “light and airy” reputation may give the perception it isn't the most industrious region in America. Of course, the perception of “light and airy” as non-industrious may have just been proven wrong altogether.

Researchers at UC Irvine, along with help from HTL Laboratories and the California Technology Institute of Technology recently announced the development of a metal (ish) material 99.9 percent composed of air and 100 times lighter than styrofoam. The project was funded by the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

You can read the rest of the details in Product Design and Development's article. It goes onto delve into the secret of the material's light weight (a “micro-lattice” cellular makeup) as well as its intended use (battery electrodes, shock absorption).

William Carter of HTL is also quoted as saying this:

“Modern buildings, exemplified by the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge, are incredibly light and weight- efficient by virtue of their architecture. We are revolutionizing lightweight materials by bringing this concept to the nano and micro scales.” -William Carter, manager, HTL Labs

I'm under the suspicion this quote in particular was a juicy one to cite because of the inference that a synthetic material like this may one day be used to build future generations of skyscrapers and bridges. While the thought of how many resources a nearly-lighter-than-air building material could save global supplies, it's probably wise to keep a few things in mind:

PC World released its own take on the new material; highlighting, for one, the material's incredible compressive strength and noting that “[if] you were to squash the material more than halfway it would just rebound back into its original shape.” Okay that may be true and it's an excellent quality if we're thinking along the lines of software protection or more durable electronics. Certainly, I'd sleep safer at night knowing my smartphone had some sort of synthetic material in it to prevent my clumsy self from dropping it into permanent slumber mode. Shock absorption, however, does not translate into tensile strength, which is what we're really after here.

Yes, this stuff is lighter than carbon nanotubes, which you can read about here. But while being able to recover from high energy impact of over 50 percent is very noteworthy, nobody speaks of how this material holds up if you pull it apart with an equal amount of force (although to be fair, carbon nanotubes have the opposite problem in that they have tremendous tensile strength but buckle easily under compression). And what about its toughness? Does its strength on the nano level translate into durability with the right amount of flexibility on the macro? Moreover, just how expensive was it to make that tiny amount and is there a prayer of mass-producing it cost-efficiently?

I don't mean to rain on the ridiculously tiny, super-dense parade over here. It's just that I'd like news like this- that gets coverage from the internet to NPR to MSNBC- to come with details that bridge the gap between our ambitions and the real world just a liiiiitle more.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

Basketball Player Involuntarily Demonstrates Texas’ Cryotherapy Potential

Basketball player Manny Harris gets Cryogenic therapy from

US made Cryon-X machine.

I watched Manny Harris play his rookie season as a professional basketball player last year and thought he was decent.  Not exactly star material, but could definitely develop over a few years into a solid NBA player.  He had a smooth stroke, pretty decent hops, couldn’t really play defense (Although who does anymore?) and was a tad bit undersized to deal with the grind at the Pro level. The Cleveland Cavaliers recently decided to part ways with Manny and sign someone else to round out the bottom of their roster.  Harris will most likely bounce back with another team, and most experts usually frame getting cut as a learning lesson for young athletes.

 The reason why he was cut, however, is not exactly a lesson he could have prepared for, in any reasonable way.

Apparently, Harris has been slow to recover from a severe burn on his foot he received in Cleveland’s brand new cryogenic chamber.  Darren Rovell from CNBC.com explains:

“In November, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Manny Harris got into a Cryon-X machine on Nike's campus in Beaverton, Ore. When he came out, he had a nasty freezer burn on the side of his right foot…

The machine is the new age version of an ice bath and is the latest in athlete recovery methods. In just three minutes, the company that makes it, Millennium ICE, says the machine cranks the temperature inside to minus 166 degrees Fahrenheit, thus oxygenating the blood, helping to reduce fatigue and muscle soreness. 

But the waiver that each athlete has to sign before getting into the stand-up tank specifically says that the briefs and socks that are worn while in the machine cannot be wet. Sources told CNBC that Harris got in with wet socks, which resulted in the freezer-type burn. It's not the first time this has happened. Sprinter Justin Gatlin also got in with the socks he had just worked out in when he entered the Cryon-X machine at ESPN's Wide World of Sports in Orlando.”

                        -Darren Rovell, CNBC.com, Yahoo!Sports The PostGame
Ow.
 I mean, when I was a kid I fell into an icy puddle in January and ran back inside howling in pain as I felt my legs being jabbed with what must have been a thousand needles.  Poor Manny Harris wore wet socks in temperatures one hundred times colder than a puddle in winter.  At that point, it’s like you don’t know where the sock ends and your flesh begins.  Like one big merged clump of fabric and skin meshed togeth- okay, I’ll stop with the grossness.  Just watch what happens to Jeff Goldblum in the last scene of The Fly.  You’ll get the idea.

Freak accidents with wet socks aside, technology like the Cryon-X is being used more and more in pro-sports. That’s because of a new method called “whole body cryotherapy” clinics are now developing.  The method involves immersing a person’s whole body in a chamber cooled with liquid nitrogen at temperatures around -120 C (-220 F) for a quick three minutes; any longer and the cryogenic chamber turns into a human icicle machine.  Cryotherapy specialists claim the effect causes the body to work a number of mechanisms in chemical release that boosts the immune system, oxygenates the blood and speeds up fatigue recovery.  So far, the pro sporting world is buying into the hype: the Dallas Mavericks apparently used cryotherapy last season when they won the championship, as well as rugby players preparing for the World Cup. 

Texas seems to be a favorite location of cryotherapy believers, as several labs and clinics who deliver the process are located there.  Cryo-USA is a new company based out of Texas Sports Medicine in Dallas and seem to focus mainly on athlete recovery.  Perhaps the most interesting story of development comes out of Cryo-Studio in Austin, founded by former Soviet track coach Galina Bukharina.  After coaching at Texas State University, Bukharina, who was a fan of cryotherapy even when she was coaching the USSR national team, opened Cryo-Studio with her children in April of 2011.  She’s been working with athletes since and she believes enough in cryogenics as physical therapy to make it her later-life legacy.

So what does the future hold?  The science is very new but if it holds up, the broad application of cryogenic hardware could be very promising and lucrative.  Cryotherapy chambers could come in handy anywhere fast recovery is necessary, not just in pro sports, but in the military, construction, firefighting, law enforcement and occasional baby-sitting job (because some children are literally going to drain your life energy; this should be taken as fact).  The demand for keeping up with today’s fast-paced work schedule could pose the kind of opportunity for this kind of technology to be produced on a large-scale.

And it’s all thanks to Manny Harris forgetting to change his socks.  Even if his career in hoops only lasts as long as Clay Aiken’s in American Idol-ing,  that’s an accomplishment to hang your  hat/footwear on.
                    

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.