According to this analysis, US manufacturing is far from in decline, it's just manufacturing job numbers that are falling due to increased productivity. Would be interesting to see a similar version for the UK. The big question, that this doesn't seem to address at all, is what's going to provide the alternate employment for the workforce?
The speech that Ove Arup (the founder of engineering firm Arup) gave which outlines the companies aims and core values. A great blueprint for any company, I think.
Interesting specification for a way of providing signed comments and syndication of said comments to piggyback on an Atom feed. Lots of good links to other standards for doing signing, etc. too