CROSSROADS OF COMMERCE. A Pennsylvania Railroad calendar painting for your viewing pleasure.

1950 - Crossroads Of Commerce - Grif Teller

That's the kind of day it's been, with Villainous Company billing two posts on today's Blogjam, and this provocatively named site referring readers to the worst major blogger brackets. Thanks for riding, and check in again soon.

The next couple of days look to be rather hectic at the day job, with additional posts most likely to be up late on Friday.

THE THINGS YOU LEARN. Somebody did a search on "Joanne and the Streamliners" which turns out to be a rock band called "The Streamliners with Joanne." Fortunately for the searcher, Cold Spring Shops is not at the top of the search list.

DO EGGS GRAINGER-CAUSE CHICKENS? (Go here for the initial riff.) King at SCSU Scholars has extensive comments on the story James Taranto introduces as "What Would We Do Without Studies?"

FIRST, A REFEREE'S REPORT... King reminds readers that the blockquotes are from the original article, and that it's Granger causality. Mea maxima culpa. See also University Diaries noting some of the criteria by which the study identifies respondents as "liberal."

Both the ideology index and party affiliation, when entered into multiple regression analyses, independently predict the quality of a subject's institutional affiliation. As we would expect, academic achievement matters the most in determining the quality of schools in which faculty teach. But ideology is the second most powerful predictor in Model I (beta=.09, p<.001), accounting for more than one-fifth as much variation in quality of institutional affiliation as does achievement (beta=.39, p<.001). That is, more liberal responses to the attitude questions predict a significantly higher quality of institutional affiliation, after controlling for scholarly achievement.

Yes, but what is the direction of causation? Is this regression coefficient evidence of a preference for job candidates that give off more liberal vibes in interviews? Or is this a spurious correlation, proxying for age (older faculty members more likely to be nostalgic for the Freedom Rides and FDR) or for peer influence?

Second, religiosity is negatively related to quality of institutional affiliation among practicing Christians (beta=-.06, p<.05), but not among Jews. The other variable that is a statistically significant contributor to the equation is gender: Being female is a negative predictor of institutional quality (beta=-.07, p<.01). None of the other potential sources of discrimination for which we have measures is significantly related to the dependent variable.

Not as surprising, in light of evidence such as this, but again, the same question: do hiring committees unconsciously identify more secular applicants of any faith as constituting a better fit, or does academic skepticism lead to religious skepticism? Again, a Grainger-causality problem.

IT OUGHT TO HAVE A LITURGICAL SETTING. The second movement of Beethoven's D Major Second Symphony, Op. 36, that is. This setting is attributed by some authorities to Beethoven and has some thematic elements in common with that movement.

Please turn to Entry 427, "Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life."

DEJA VU. Saturday evening, I'm changing channels from the men's tournament to the women's tournament, and preceding the late game is the medal ceremony from some gymnastics performance in Moscow, with the medalists and the anthems in Olympic fashion. Never mind those Russian tricolors the spectators are waving; I cannot hear what I still think of as Soyuz nerushimiy without recollections of those politically correct 8.2s from the Soviet judge.

THAT NEBULOUS "GREATER GOOD." Socially responsible fund ditches Starbucks. Why?

Socially responsible funds restrict investments to companies that they believe may benefit society, with Pax World ruling out any holdings of companies that make weapons, cigarettes, liquor and gambling products.

Starbucks Coffee Liqueur, introduced last month, is part of Starbucks' effort to broaden its brand beyond coffeehouses to items such as coffee drinks sold in supermarkets and ice cream.

"In the absence of a reversal by Starbucks, our course of action was clear," Pax World Funds Vice President of Social Research Anita Green said in the statement. "Investors in Pax World Funds expect us to do what we say we will do about avoiding companies that produce liquor."

No word on whether the bracket sheets in newspapers are now socially irresponsible under the rubric of "gambling products."

DO IT BY THE BOOK. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education evaluates Colorado's investigation of Ward Churchill.

In sum, the University of Colorado's improper investigation has reached the substantively correct result. Churchill's speech was constitutionally protected, and all other credible misconduct allegations should be referred to the appropriate governing body for review. This conclusion is so startlingly obvious that it is difficult to imagine that an "investigation" was needed to reach these determinations. Even in hindsight, this investigation appears to be little more than a constitutionally dangerous method of temporarily calming a public storm.

It is simply undeniable that Churchill's speech has aroused deep anger across the country. Yet that anger - by itself - does not provide a basis for defying the First Amendment.

(Via The Torch.) View concurring opinions here.

PUSHING THOSE BUTTONS. Laura at 11-D discovers the most effective way to win by intimidation in dealing with school bureaucrats.

HAVING BRACKET WITHDRAWAL? Ted at Crooked Timber hosts the water-cooler conversation that can go on forever without the scoreboard intruding. Simply identify the worst major blogger. Turn in your picks over there. We have an America's Cup to begin worrying about here.

A DOUBLE FEATURE. Brian at Mobile Technology volunteered to host the Carnival of the Capitalists immediately upon his return from Austria. The Carnival will run in two installments this week. The first showing is ready. Hurry, hurry, step right up.

GOING DOWN BY ROCKY TOP. Bruce Pearl, who was last seen repositioning the University of [Wisconsin at] Milwaukee, has accepted a job as understudy to Pat Summitt.

SOME SMALL RELIEF. I have been spared yet another iteration of Tennessee v. Connecticut. Tennessee is still in but Stanford excused Connecticut and gets a shot at Tennessee. North Carolina and Michigan State now have teams alive in both basketball tournaments, and, as in the men's tournament, they get a shot at each other.

SIXTY YEARS AGO. Sgt. Karlson is east of the Rhine. Niemands wollen Hüter sein!

A LECHATELIER PRINCIPLE. The behavior of people under constraints is different from the behavior of people when those constraints are relaxed. The principle manifests itself in the substitution behavior of students who have signed virginity pledges with the understanding that Tab B does not go in Slot G is both necessary and sufficient for "abstention." (Via Eclectic Econoclast out of Marginal Revolution over to Economist's View.) There is news that the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among adolescents that have signed the pledge is almost as great as that among those who have not, consistent with a logical interpretation of the strong form of "abstention."

A commenter on Feministing's post (one of these days there will be interchange conventions for linking to comments) notes the relatively small samples and the relatively small difference in incidence rates (yes, the pledge reduces the incidence of social diseases by about 1/3, but that's from a base of seven per cent of the non-pledging population being infected.)

The best perspective on the issue is Amanda's at Pandagon (fix the trackbacks!)

I suppose if you are sticking to the oral and anal to avoid pregnancy, you have managed to stumble upon a method that actually works by accident. So, yes, the whole thing is a failure from the perspective of those of us who mostly just don't want the kids finding themselves in a clinic with a baby in tow and a raging case of herpes.

In that observation is the potential for some common ground with the traditional values advocates. Perhaps many of the traditional values advocates have no reason other than "we've done things this way for years, and would continue to do so but for noisy advocates ..." There's an economics lesson in that, too. Did the traditional values evolve as a way of preventing less-prepared mothers from having babies, and social diseases that prior to antibiotics were not curable? Might observers have also noticed that the more promiscuous among their numbers had more coping problems that did not yet have the names of "issues" or "baggage?" Put simply, the old rules might have reduced transaction costs that the current crop of youngsters are rediscovering, but that history is not part of the abstinence curriculum, particularly in the forms that rely more heavily on the Old Testament.

THE FALLACIES OF AVERAGING. Bryan at Econ Log looks at some averaging paradoxes. His assertion: Everyone in a country can get richer as per-capita income falls. Yes, but let's look beyond the averages.

Suppose the residents of Country A earn $50,000 per year each without immigration, and $60,000 per year with immigration. They benefit from cheaper lawn-mowing. The residents of Country B earn $2,000 per year if they stay at home, or $10,000 per year if they immigrate to Country A to mow lawns.

Now what happens to per-capita income in Country A if immigrants double the population? Per-capita income falls from $50,000 to .5*$60,0000 + .5*$10,000 = $35,000. The more immigrants come in, the more steeply per-capita income declines. "Immigrants hurt our standard of living. QED!"

Of course, nothing of the kind has happened. By assumption, immigration makes both natives and immigrants richer. But per-capita income declines, as a matter of pure arithmetic. The numbers don't lie, but they are very easily misinterpreted.

Including in the example? This is not a logic puzzle wherein the migration lowers the per capita GDP of both countries. Now, where one had domestic residents competing for the kind of house that is equilibrium at $50,000 you now have competition for a house that is equilibrium at $60,000 and competition for another kind of house that is equilibrium at $10,000. And you wonder why some people write "affordable housing" into zoning codes? The post-migration average is lower and the variance is higher. Jacob Riis, call your office. Read on.

Suppose in 1950 the workforce is 90% male. Men earn $10,000, women $3000. In 1975, the workforce is 50% male. Each man now earns $12,000, and each female earns $5000. What happens to average worker earnings? They fall from $9,300 to
$8500.

Now you'd best start thinking about attachment to the work force and a seniority premium. The cautionary tale at the end of the story:

Before you take an average, you have to think about what you are averaging over.

Yes, and about the variance, and about other gains from trade that the new situation sets up.

REAL AND NOMINAL. Are crude oil and gasoline prices at record high levels? Amanda at Pandagon concurs with polls that see it that way. Steve at Deinonychus antirrhopus takes a somewhat less dim view of the evidence. I'm sticking with my challenge from two summers ago: let me know when unleaded regular hits $2.73 a gallon.

TREMBLING HAND BAYESIAN EQUILIBRIUM. North Carolina was just a little bit better than Wisconsin this afternoon, preempting a Big Ten sweep of one side of the Final Four. There's something about Wisconsin's endgame I don't understand. With about 55 seconds to go, Wisconsin converted an alley-oop to pull to within three. In the next series, Wisconsin had to commit some fouls to get to a foul shooting situation (the rules no longer provide for a free throw on a defensive possession to preempt an old strategy of a team giving up one point for the chance at two.) It is possible to play strong defense without committing lots of fouls, which is why I obsessed about this all season. I can understand using the non-shooting fouls in order to have the option of putting the opponent in the bonus. What I cannot understand is coach Ryan's strategy of putting North Carolina on the free throw line. With a good defense, Wisconsin has the opportunity for a turnover, including a shot-clock violation, or a rebound, and the chance to work for a good three to tie the game. The commentators kept talking about "stretch the game," and perhaps giving North Carolina at most two points while retaining 54 seconds to play was the best strategy, but I'd like to see the strategy tree laid out more carefully.

RUNNING EXTRA: "Trembling hand" indeed.

To that point, the Badgers had committed only four fouls in the second half, so Ryan called a timeout and instructed his team to foul twice more to put North Carolina in the bonus.

Once that was accomplished, the Badgers could have tried to make a defensive stop, knowing they would have at least 17 seconds left to tie the score. The plan went awry, however, when Taylor fouled Felton on the inbounds play.

"I wasn't trying to foul," Taylor said. "I was trying to play close 'D' and get a turnover."

Felton sank both free throws to give North Carolina an 83-78 lead with 52 seconds left.

That should clear it up.

THE BEST IN THE WEST, THE HECK WITH THE EAST The finalists in the 2005 college hockey tournament are Colorado College, Denver, Minnesota, and North Dakota. SIEVE! I still like that North Dakota corner of the Sweet 16. Years ago, defeating Boston University and then Boston College would be good enough for the national title.

RUNNING EXTRA. Chad at Fraters Libertas describes the victories.

SOME EASTER RECOLLECTIONS. Years ago, the Milwaukee Public Schools referred to their Spring Break as "Easter vacation," as the break generally began on Good Friday and lasted for the following week. That made for a long slog from the Christmas break to Easter vacation if Easter came well into April, as it often did.

We'd generally spend the Easter Vacation with my mom's mother, and that made for a different kind of Easter service. My parents attended a church that was active in what Rev. Johnson refers to as the "Council of Churches Nobody Attends." My mom's parents attended an immigrant church in northeastern Wisconsin that had a somewhat more straightforward Baptist tradition, in Polish and German as well as in English. I have few memories of the Easter liturgy at the Council of Churches church. This hymn, which was a regular up North, is as succinct a statement of the Christian faith as I have encountered.

322. Up from the Grave He Arose
(Low in the Grave He Lay)
Text: Robert Lowry, 1826-1899
Music:Robert Lowry, 1826-1899

Tune: CHRIST AROSE, Meter: 65.64 with Refrain

1. Low in the grave he lay, Jesus my Savior,
waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord!

Refrain:

Up from the grave he arose;
with a mighty triumph o'er his foes;
he arose a victor from the dark domain,
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

2. Vainly they watch his bed, Jesus my Savior,
vainly they seal the dead, Jesus my Lord!

(Refrain)

3. Death cannot keep its prey, Jesus my Savior;
he tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord!

(Refrain)

SUPERINTENDENT'S NOTE: I'm moving this post forward from its original position at 3 pm on 24 March 2005 as I have made a few additions to the content and the commentary. I would encourage younger readers in particular to be alert to the potential downside of the "protest babe" phenomenon. There was no Internet in 1970, and no blogosphere in 1989.

Savor the protests if you must, but don't read too much into them, or be disappointed if things turn out differently than you anticipated.

ARE THE TIMES CHANGING? It's been Instalanched, but pay Publius Pundit a visit and reflect on Robert's observation:

Those riot police kind of lose their ferocity after receiving bouquets from pretty revolution babes!

Then read this.

O: Doesn't your division have target practice next week, Meyers?
M: Yes, sir.
O: Are you going there with that silly flower?
M: No, sir.
O: Then what is it doing in your rifle barrel?
M: It was a gift, sir.
O: Do you always accept gifts Meyers?
M: No, sir.
O:Then why did you accept this one?
No answer
O: (Holding out his hand) What are you going to do with it Meyers?
Meyers feebly began to remove the lilac
O: That's better Meyers. Now straighten up and start acting like a soldier and forget all this peace stuff.

Was that 35 years ago? The guns are still loaded ...

SECOND SECTION: The picture I'm looking for from that day is proving somewhat elusive, but I'm not known to be persistent for nothing. For now, a memorial.

"Flowers are better than bullets."

RUNNING EXTRAI have not been able to locate, online, the image that I was looking for. James Michener's Kent State: What Happened and Why makes reference to a photograph taken on May 3, 1970, by Kent State Student Ramesh Garg, that contemporary readers would recognize as a "protest babe" picture. There is a picture of the Guardsman with the flower in his rifle in the book, sorry for the grainy image.

The caption: Guardsman Meyers, his rifle containing the flower given him

by Allison Krause, flashes peace sign.

My perception of domestic attitudes is that there was much more polarization in the United States 35 years ago than there is today. (In fact, much of today's polarization is a reflection of those arguments from 35 years ago, but many of the most vocal actors of those days are dead or have mellowed.) That might be something to keep in mind in Lebanon and the 'stans. Many people there still retain a stake in the existing order (consider that Hezbollah counter-demonstration a few weeks ago.)

And the history from Kent State on ought to give pause. Although Richard Nixon was re-elected on a promise of "peace with honor" in Vietnam only to resign, as did his Vice-President Spiro Agnew, those resignations were over stupid acts of corruption, not over high principles of policy. That administration's more hard line positions against Communism became President Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech which leads to President Bush's "freedom" speeches. The "protest babes" of the 1970s did not win the argument of the 1980s.

FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE.

On! Wisconsin!

The UWM Fight Song.

Come on, UWM, come up with a snappy title for this.
Or find a suitable beer-drinking tune to adapt. There's more "fight" in this than there is in a bad campaign speech...

These links will remain at the top of the site until further notice.

(And yes, they will remain at the top even if the archives are a bit out of joint at the moment.)

And yes, I'm leaving them both at the top although Illinois bested Milwaukee. The Badgers are still standing in two tournaments.

And yes, they remain at the top despite the Badgers learning a lot about the college hockey tournament.

DEFECTIVE OUTPUTS, DEFECTIVE INPUTS? Joanne Jacobs notes that some 71% of Californian high school students finish on time, with caveats. Here's a research project: what effect has the willingness of higher education to do as remediation what the high schools failed to do as curriculum affected the high school defect rate?

BUMMER. West Virginia led by as many as 20 in the first half; Louisville then went to work, and took the 'Eers to overtime. Although West Virginia had previous overtime experience in the tournament, Louisville continued the surge, and earned the first invitation to St. Louis.

NOT OF THEORETICAL INTEREST ONLY. Seasonal foreign workers in short supply this year.

For four generations, Robin Hall's family overcame competition, bad weather and shifting economic tides that threatened to swamp their Chesapeake Bay crab-processing business.

Why is this year different?

But 2005 could be the year the Maryland business goes under — vanquished not by the forces the Halls managed to outlast, but by a U.S. labor visa program they viewed as salvation in their battle.

Fierce competition claimed all the available visas by Jan. 3, creating a crisis that's blocked G.W. Hall & Son Seafood from rehiring foreign workers who had returned season after season.

It's not just crab-shuckers, either.

From Hamptons resorts to Western foresters, from Midwestern tourist centers to Sun Belt landscaping firms, thousands of businesses are being squeezed by the same, unprecedented labor crunch this year as they scramble to hire employees needed for busy spring and summer seasons.

For more than a decade, they have relied on foreign workers with H-2B visas, a 1990 immigration program that allowed businesses to look outside U.S. borders for workers to fill temporary, non-agricultural jobs Americans increasingly shun.

But in 2005, amid rising business demand, the 66,000 visas authorized each federal fiscal year were gone by Jan. 3, barely three months after the program's annual start. The door slammed shut so early that many business owners say they are unable to hire the foreign workers they recruit to shuck oysters, plant trees, cut lawns, staff kitchens, wait tables and fill dozens of other jobs.

You think there isn't going to be a temptation for some of these companies to make deals with the smugglers of illegal immigrants? And that, with more oyster-shuckers and foresters in the pool of illegal immigrants, there won't be more reason for the government to regularize those illegals?

Perhaps there are some unexplored avenues by which high-technology can be used to complement skilled domestic workers with better opportunity costs as oyster-shuckers and tree-planters. But if you've just won the Chicago-Mackinac regatta those victory drinks might be a bit slow in coming.

On Michigan's Mackinac Island, a Midwest vacation mecca, Patti Ann Moskwa says she didn't get approvals for the 15 visas she'd sought for workers to fill jobs at Horn's Gaslight Bar before the federal program maxed out.

"It's not like we're not trying to hire U.S. citizens. I would if I could," Moskwa says.

But in 10 years of running newspaper ads for seasonal jobs, Moskwa says she has received only three applications. Her recruiting trips to colleges came up dry. "It probably means I'll be washing a lot more dishes," Moskwa says.

Remind me again ... college students are an oppressed proletariat burdened by excessive tuitions and overpriced textbooks, providing employers with an elastic supply of dishwashers. (Oh, that's a different rant.) The article provides good capsule summaries of the principal differing perspectives in the immigration policy debate.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors tighter borders, says allowing firms to use cheaper, low-skilled foreign workers in place of American workers represents a questionable government subsidy. "Immigration represents a thumb on the scale on the side of employers," he says. "Are these businesses a compelling national interest that deserve a federal subsidy?"

That leads to the induced-innovation argument: does the cheap labor subsidy hamper economic growth by preserving more labor-intensive methods of production?

Joanna Hedvall, an analyst at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says the visa program is a business issue, not an immigration matter. She says the foreign workers who participate enter the country legally, stay temporarily and pay taxes on their earnings. There have been few complaints about workers overstaying visas, Hedvall says.

And, to the extent that such workers can be vetted, and can enter and leave without let or hindrance, they're less likely to become illegal migrants by overstaying. It would be useful to know the proportion of illegal immigrants that remain in the underground economy in the U.S. rather than risk repeated border crossings.

"This is a far better system than having businesses hiring undocumented workers," says Melinda Rubin, a New York immigration lawyer seeking visas for temporary foreign workers hoping to return to summer jobs in the Hamptons, on Long Island's East End. "It puts more money in our tax coffers, and it's a good form of foreign aid because the people who work here bring money home."

Yes, immigrant remittances provide substantial resources to many developing countries. Catch that location, though ... evidently working ones way through the Ivies is just Not Done in the East End any more.

KUDOS. The Illinois Council on Economic Education recognizes Chicago Treasurer Judith C. Rice as the 2005 Economics Ambassador.

The Economics Ambassador Award was established in 2004 by the ICEE Boards to recognize public officials who have provided extraordinary advocacy and support for economic and financial literacy education for Illinois youth. The 2005 award is the inaugural presentation of this new recognition.

There's still a lot of work to be done, in Chicago, and elsewhere.

Fifteen states require economics, up from 13 in 1998. Last year, at least a third of all high school graduates had taken a class in economics because the four largest states — California, Texas, New York and Florida — require it.

At the same time, 38 states have standards for personal finance education, up from 21 in 1998. Almost all states have standards for economics. To have a standard means the state's legislature has declared the subject an important one that should be taught, although it is not required.

Still, most kids start college or go to work after high school with only rudimentary understanding of things such as savings accounts, credit cards, the stock market, saving for retirement or getting a car loan. "We all know young people are getting inundated with credit card offers at college," says Joanne Dempsey, president of the Illinois Council on Economic Education. "It's 'Get a free T-shirt! Sign on the line!' You can spend $2,000 without realizing someone has to pay for all this."

Young people may be woefully unprepared for taking charge of their own money, much less their retirement, says Donald Zabelin, who teaches consumer education at Community High School in West Chicago. When he asks his juniors and seniors about money matters, he gets a lot of blank stares. "They really don't know much," he says. "A handful may pick something up from their parents. But for most families, money is a topic that can be put aside because there are more important things to talk about."

Patricia Tomich agrees.

Her students at Notre Dame High School for Girls in Chicago come from working-class families, many of whom "live paycheck to paycheck," she says. "We give them confidence as young women to go out in the world and say, 'I'm not just going to spend, spend, spend.' There are other ways to go."

Zabelin and Tomich teach everything from how to write a check to concepts such as investing in the stock market and buying stocks on margin.

Perhaps the lack of understanding of investments contributes to public resistance to private retirement accounts. This morning, Representative Sander Levin of Michigan delivered the Democratic radio message for the week. Its theme: private retirement accounts are unsound as well as more complicated than a relatively simple government program that pays current retirees out of current taxes. Perhaps the message that the excess burden of Social Security taxes includes a dampening of economic growth fails to resonate with people because the whole response of many people to capital formation is "huh?"

Don't get me started on income accounting. Suppose one increases the current Social Security tax base (it doesn't matter which proposal one adopts) and sets up a bona fide trust fund in which the additional tax payments are exactly offset by additional holdings of government bonds by the trustees of the trust fund. What happens when the trustees redeem the bonds?

DO IT BY THE BOOK. University Diaries links to Blogger News Network's report on Colorado's initial investigation of Ward Churchill. The summary:

Professor Churchill has outraged the Colorado and national communities as a result of profoundly offensive, abusive, and misguided statements relating to the victims of the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks on America.

As repugnant as his statements are to many in the University community, however, they are protected by the First Amendment.

Allegations have been made that Professor Churchill has engaged in research misconduct; specifically, that he has engaged in plagiarism, misuse of others' work, falsification and fabrication of authority.

These allegations have sufficient merit to warrant referral to the University of Colorado at Boulder Standing Committee on Research Misconduct for further inquiry in accordance with prescribed procedures. The research misconduct procedures afford Professor Churchill an opportunity to review and to respond to the allegations before any determination is made. If the Committee determines that Professor Churchill engaged in research misconduct, the Committee is to make recommendations regarding dismissal or other disciplinary action.

Also referred to the Committee is the question of whether Churchill committed research misconduct by misrepresenting himself to be American Indian to gain credibility, authority, and an audience by using an Indian voice for his scholarly writings and speeches.

Other issues brought to the attention of the reviewers, such as teaching misconduct, were not found to warrant action.

King at SCSU Scholars notes,

There are many possible violations here -- the report has more -- and a serious academic even accused of this stuff would be unlikely to have his or her academic career survive. The problem is that Churchill does not care and can drag this out for two more years, hoping either that the pressure will die down and the report can be buried, or that he gets a buyout.

But it will be impossible to dodge an inquiry like this, particularly if the Legislature keeps the pressure on to see it through. In the end there will be a report, and the report will show whether these claims against Churchill are valid. A single incident might go his way, but to find against all of them and completely exonerate Churchill simply seems unlikely, even to those most inclined to believe conspiracy theories. When the report is released, Churchill may still have his job, but what remains of his reputation as an academic will be destroyed.

Colorado's report is consistent with the Claremont Institute bill of particulars that I endorsed here.

Although the Claremont Institute might not be the most objective observer of the academy, their bill of particulars is in the correct form with respect to professional incompetence, moral turpitude, and failings of professional integrity. The document also notes that a review panel including several individuals who may have been involved in Mr Churchill's prior reviews is unlikely to conduct a proper hearing, as those individuals have a strong incentive to validate their earlier decisions. The document also correctly notes, "It need not and cannot be based on his well-documented disdain for the United States of America - as offensive as that is."

In a related development, Michelle Malkin links to Las Vegas Sun coverage of a legislative review of tenure procedures at the state universities of Colorado. Somebody at CU (motto: no football recruit goes without a date) likely failed to follow the university's own guidelines, which in all likelihood include criteria for evidence of an emerging national reputation (for tenure) as well as other criteria for promotion to associate professor, or to professor. If the CU (motto: no football recruit goes without a date) bylaws also provide for members of promotion committees at lower levels recusing themselves from deliberations at higher levels of review, there are other failures of internal institutional integrity that have come back to bite the university.

My use of the term "in all likelihood" is University-speak for "educated guess." I am familiar with the rules at Northern Illinois and at Wayne State and have a strong belief that bylaws elsewhere are similar in structure. That common structure emerged for a reason. (A quick lesson on one difference between economists and social constructionists: economists look for rule changes that conserve on transaction costs. Large differences in rules mean more impediments to faculty mobility. Faculty mobility is a fact of life, particularly for the strong performers.)

KNOWN WHERE IT COUNTS. Wisconsin-Milwaukee coach Bruce Pearl understands the value of a mixed strategy.

The Panthers used their full-court press sparingly but effectively throughout the game, forcing Illinois to call timeouts because it couldn't inbounds the ball twice and turn it over on a five-second violation once. (The timeout request came too late.

UW-Milwaukee coach Bruce Pearl had hinted he might be more judicious with the press because of the Illini's three talented guards.

"We might be pressing ourselves into an early deficit," he said Wednesday.

He didn't try, using the press little until the final 4½ minutes of the first half and again midway through the second half, when it sparked a rally that moved the Panthers back within seven, 58-51, with 9:33 left in the game.

Apparently he's used the mixed strategy well enough to have to consider other strategies.

Bruce Pearl has steadfastly maintained for the past two weeks that it would take a blockbuster deal to pry him away from the UW-Milwaukee basketball coaching job.

Pearl talked about loyalty and putting down roots in a community, but perhaps the most persuasive argument for him staying in Milwaukee would be the state of the UWM program. It is strong and appears to be growing stronger.

The Panthers' success in basketball has inspired differentiation efforts by the university: this article notes the use of "Milwaukee" rather than "Wisconsin-Milwaukee" on the uniforms.

You also get the impression that the Panthers want to abridge their identity by declaring total independence from the mother ship in Madison. The cover of the media guide, which brands them simply as the Milwaukee Panthers, screams individuality. Their uniforms bear only the name of the city. Bruce Pearl's voice mail tells you he is the coach of the Milwaukee Panthers, so away with the hyphen.

And then there was the matter of UWM's Sweet 16 experience and courageous performance against probably the best team in the country in Illinois, the kind of national publicity money cannot buy.

So now comes the time for the next move, the one that could determine the Panthers' future:

What can they do to retain Pearl?

Coaches may come, coaches may go, particularly at that level. It's no different from replacing a successful economist who might get recruited away: look for another succesful economist with talent as an economist. It's when the recruiting attempts to make a statement about some other institutional goal that the trouble begins.

Now for some lighter observations.

For the aspiring basketball analyst: better understand all the implications of G(x,a) = 0.

For Wisconsin-Milwaukee: we used to refer to it as the University Close By The Lake Almost. Try that on a jersey.

And I like the use of the term "mother ship" to refer to Madison.

IF YOU WANT TO BE A BADGER ... the men's basketball team is still dancing, which the Milwaukee paper spins as defying the odds.

Unranked as recently as Jan. 10, the University of Wisconsin basketball team has somehow scratched and clawed its way to within one victory of the Final Four.

(To be pedantic, "unranked" is not equivalent to "not receiving votes...")

In other tournament action ... first, a story. Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year Jane Pegel would report on the performance of Geneva Lake Sailing School students at the youth regattas, and her locution for the kids that didn't bring back any silverware was "learned a lot." It sounds like the Badger hockey team learned a lot.

The one solace for the Badgers is that [goaltender Bernd] Brückler was the only senior in the lineup Friday for UW, meaning the same experience advantage that hurt the Badgers could be an ally for the next couple of years.

"After the game, me and coach were talking and I just said, 'Let's learn our lesson from this,' " [junior team captain Adam] Burish said.

Indeed. Until November, SIEVE!

IT'S JUST A KIDS' GAME. Liberty University's womens' basketball team was excused from the Sweet Sixteen by Louisiana State an hour or so ago, probably to the great relief of Ted at the Women's Hoops Blog.

The players and coaches on Liberty's fine basketball team may find it unfair that they receive criticism rather than support from the women's basketball world. But like all of us, they at some point must stand up and be held accountable for their beliefs. They should all be ashamed of their school's anti-gay policies and homophobic culture. If they disagree with those policies and if they oppose that culture, then they should speak out. Like all of us, they have an obligation to expose and criticize the evil in their midst. They have an obligation to work for change.

If, on the other hand, they support their school's policies and Falwell's politics, then I really have nothing to say to them. They have a right to their beliefs, and I have a right to criticize those beliefs. I will fight their cause in any way I can, and I will cheer against their basketball team.

Give. Me. A. Break. Student-athletes [c.q.] opposing the dominant culture at their school? Why not allow the basketball players the same freedom to be apathetic that other students enjoy, as in an earlier paragraph in the same post.

But (you may say) Colorado's stated commitment to diversity is a sham. It is just another leftist-secular school where conservative and Christian viewpoints are silenced.

I'm not sure that's true. I have several friends who went to Boulder, and they don't appear to have been indoctrinated into leftist radicalism. In fact, they spent most of their time skiing and doing coke; now they're all good Republicans.

In other words, rather than challenge the dominant culture, these alums played their Nash equilibrium strategies in college. Give the players the same freedom. Is it really necessary to introduce academic politics into the women's tournament, for crying out loud, where the stakes are infinitesimally small (you might guess I am not looking forward to iteration n+1 iteration of Tennessee v. Connecticut)?

Hmmm... there's a research project for you: The same three or four teams keep showing up in the later rounds of the tournament, with Connecticut and Tennessee making 12 appearances since 1994, Louisiana Tech 10, and Texas Tech 9. What does that tell you about the elasticity of supply of top-notch players, Title IX or not? (But I digress...)

Consider last year's tournament, in which one of the hyped stories going in involved some seniors at Duke that saw 2004 as their year to win it all, until Minnesota put together a good series of games and earned the right to be excused by Connecticut. (The TV coverage included many clips of the Duke seniors on the verge of tears ... hey, in a field of 64 there will be 63 teams that leave disappointed at some juncture, and yes, that includes Tennessee or Connecticut.)

But shall we chastise any of the Minnesota players for being insufficiently ashamed of their academic culture, where a faculty member notoriously wrote about the recapitulation of the opening movement of Beethoven's Choral Symphony (Op. 125) symbolizing the pent-up anger of a rapist, or any of the Duke players for not speaking out about the now-departed Stanley Fish turning the English Department into Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice? Let the kids play.

And by all means, let the kids have the right kind of support to develop as players. We've had ten years' experience at Northern Illinois with diversity statements getting in the way of the play value, something I expect to see change.

PUBLIC CHOICE. Highway bills provide great opportunities for powerful members of Congress to include local road projects in the transportation bill. I'm taking this opportunity to thank everyone who files a Form 1040 for making possible additional lanes for the backward-ballcap set to get to their rabbit warrens overcrowded streets and for the reconstruction of city sidewalks near Northern Illinois University.

I'm expecting thanks from the people of Corvallis and Albany in Oregon, who are getting theirs, too.

The Senate, and President Bush, have to decide whether to question some of the earmarks in the House bill (note to urban readers: the ear mark identifies the owner of a particular piece of live pork, it is a particularly apt term here) or to exercise fiscal discipline. To get along, go along, and all that ...

THE BEST IN THE WEST, THE HECK WITH THE EAST. Fraters Libertas have a hockey tournament poll that correctly limits readers' choices to teams from the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. SIEVE!

SWIFT OF FOOT IS HIAWATHA. In the latest on-time statistics, the winner is ... the Hiawatha! They've arrived right time 95.8% of the time against a target of 85% on time. The vaunted Acela Express runs to time 77.6% of the time ... at best a C ... against a target of 95%. On occasion I have observed a Hiawatha roll into Chicago about 80 minutes after its scheduled departure from Milwaukee, well ahead of the booked 92 minutes. And that's with a rather plain train of Horizon coaches, an Ugly for power, and a cabbage car. No special trains, no special infrastructure, just crews and dispatchers up to the job.

TELL ME AGAIN, WHY ARE WE HERE? A retired colleague is running against the current mayor. It's not clear exactly what the major differences are between the candidates, but there is one thing on which they both agree.

Both candidates agreed additional parking on Greek Row would be difficult to secure.

I'll keep that in mind the next time I hear whinges about high tuition: apparently the backward ballcap set have plenty of portable capital in the form of space-hogging cars.

The editorial board at the Northern Star also have taken leave of their senses, endorsing the incumbent mayor as being more favorably disposed to ... later bar closings.

Challenger Frank Van Buer said he wasn’t so sure extending the bar hours on Thursdays was the best way to cater to students and keep them here on the weekends - he said there are other ways to do that. True, but the reality, however unfortunate it may be, is that extending bar hours does have a big impact on students. Bars are a part of college life for many. And although DeKalb may not be the ideal college town, it has a college in it. The city needs to take that into consideration often, and Sparrow is better qualified to do that.

I know, I know, my site has frequently noted the income effect at work in the form of early Friday getaways, and any proper South Sider (that's as in Milwaukee, under the shadow of the world's biggest tower clock, for your information) knows that bars close at 6 am and reopen at 9 am. But more parking spaces around the rabbit warrens frat houses and longer Thursday bar hours as a basis for public policy??

SNEAK, SNACK, SNUCK. Evidence that somebody got something out of yesterday's workshop. When the argument turns to the cleanest simplification of the separation conditions I will really be making progress.

MORE BLOGGER ODDITIES. I posted something new about an hour ago, and three older posts vanished from the main page and from the "edit posts" collection. Fortunately I had the current March archive open in another window, and will restore the posts to where they belong, although with an annotation that it's a replacement post, and a slightly different time stamp.

A DIFFERING PERSPECTIVE. Just before spring break, I linked to Owen at Boots and Sabers objecting to the University of Wisconsin Health Service recommending that female spring breakers include the morning-after pill in their hook-up kit. Jessica at Feministing has a different perspective.

I love the idea that there wouldn't be wanton spring break sex if campus health centers didn't provide birth control. I can see it now: Girls Gone Wild...because they had birth control! "I was going to just catch up on my studies, but now that I have emergency contraception I feel the sudden urge to enter a wet t-shirt contest..."

Well, yes, the rabbit culture is a bit more deeply rooted than that. But this perspective fails to address a more serious problem that I noted in my original link.

If the condom fails and the kids don't have the morning-after pill, they still have three months to deal with one "unwanted effect" in the feminist way. The chlamydia or the herpes will be another matter.

And that other matter is no laughing matter. Herewith some evidence, also from the Sun-Times Sex on Campus series.

At least one in four Americans will get a sexually transmitted disease, according to the American Social Health Association. For many, that will happen during the sexually adventurous college years.

Just go read the whole article. Sobering stuff. Almost enough to make me want to invoke the Welfare Economics Paradigm and make a case for "mating licenses" that ought to be at least as hard to get as deer-hunting licenses.

MORE CHINA PICTURES. Mike at the L+N Line has posted some of the traditional, and some unusual, pictures from China. Scroll down from the latest movie review.

INCOME AND SUBSTITUTION EFFECTS. Mark Kleiman asks, "What's So Great About the Work Ethic?"

That led me to ask why a strong "work ethic" as reflected in hours worked -- long workweeks, short vacations, and long worklives -- ought to be regarded as desirable. (A strong "work ethic" in the sense of being diligent at one's work is a different matter.) A poor person who desires to become non-poor is obviously better off if he or she is willing to work hard. If the choice is between working hard and not having enough food to feed you kids, the ethical choice is pretty clear. And a poor community or a poor country no doubt benefits if the average "work ethic" among its members is strong, since working hard (or not) is to some extent a matter of custom and because escaping from poverty is harder the poorer the people around you are.

But why should it be considered desirable for the people who live in the richest country in the world to have less time to devote to themselves, their families, and their communities in return for having more material goods? If everyone in the top three-fifths of the U.S. income distribution worked 10% fewer hours and had 10% less income, wouldn't that make the overwhelming majority of them healthier, happier, and better parents and neighbors? (Yes, some of us get intense satisfaction from our work and believe that it does important good in the world; I'm thinking about the other 95% of the population.)

These are interesting questions, particularly in light of the recent end (via Betsy's Page) of France's dirigiste approach to getting people off the treadmill. But isn't it a logical error to suggest that the top 3/5 ought work 10% fewer hours with 10% less income as a consequence? My sense is that this "other 95%" is already reacting to the higher incomes made possible by greater productivity by in fact reducing their working hours unofficially. With summer coming (it's nearly 6 pm, and the sun has yet to set, this cold snap cannot go on forever) watch for some sightings of the "early Friday getaway" phenomenon in the traffic reports ... and keep in mind the resistance by some parents to lengthening the school year into the summer. If the kids are in school all summer there goes one reason to request some vacation days.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

After all, a 4.0 from an institution known to give away A's and B's will start to mean less to employers and grad schools. Not to mention the students who graduate in their fields and perform poorly when put to the test.

Grade inflation is also an issue of fairness: Some college students simply do not deserve a high grade. If a student makes an A, he or she should leave the class knowing more than the average student.

There is no one thing to attribute the increase to, but we think some of the problems lie with the professors and instructors.

Some faculty members actually teach students and try to prepare them for the world after college, but on the other hand, we think others just do not want to deal with students being angry or upset over their grades and avoiding their class. So, they take the easy way out: They give high grades or make easy tests.

That's from an editorial in Alabama's Crimson White. (Via Charles at Liberty and Power.)

A REQUEST FOR THE CARD DECK. It has been close to a year since I last updated the Academic Administrators deck of cards. King at SCSU Scholars nominates a possible addition to the deck (a few of the fail cards remain to be taken) on the basis of a report from Ohio University detailed by Robert at Division of Labour. The news coverage suggests that somebody has done something worthy of a spot on a card, but not for having a presidential conniption.

The trouble started when Faculty Senate began discussing a controversial new rule that would restrict how faculty members can further their degrees at OU. Faculty Senate has been working for some time on the measure, and the item was scheduled for a vote on Monday.

Further their degrees? With all this talk about excessive Ph.D. production and lots of cheap labor available at Big Red Subway U, Ohio is reduced to hiring people with Masters' degrees? I realize Northern Illinois is somewhat of an outlier in the MAC, both geographically and as a doctoral institution, but what's up with this? A second article has the same story line.

At the Monday, March 14 Faculty Senate meeting, President McDavis spoke angrily to Faculty Senate after the group unanimously passed a resolution recommending that faculty members not be allowed to further their educations in their own departments because it would cause, or at least appear to cause, a conflict of interest.

I don't know how things are done in Athens, but in DeKalb, faculty members continue their education by attending workshops (sometimes finding good ones to visit at neighboring universities) and by writing research papers and presenting workshops, at which colleagues identify useful clarifications. (Yes, I had a good time today!) The dossier of Ohio President Roderick McDavis will be forwarded to Herrn. Schneider u. Schwarz, but the award of a spot, should they find the case worthy, will probably make mention of a severe lack of understanding by this president of what the continuing education of a scholar entails.

A REPLACEMENT POST. This is a restored post from my saved files. If there's one much like it, stamped one minute earlier, the archives have been fixed.

FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE.

On! Wisconsin!

The UWM Fight Song.

Come on, UWM, come up with a snappy title for this.
Or find a suitable beer-drinking tune to adapt. There's more "fight" in this than there is in a bad campaign speech...

These links will remain at the top of the site until further notice.

A REPLACEMENT POST. This is a restored post from my saved files. If there's one much like it, stamped one minute earlier, the archives have been fixed.

ON THE READY TRACK. Sunset Models have delivered my Boston and Maine R-1 Mountain. It's a faithful rendition of the real thing.

Photo courtesy of Fallen Flag Railroad Photos.

The model comes complete with a slot for a DPDT switch, just what the master mechanic ordered to make the engine both analog and command-control compatible.

A REPLACEMENT POST. This is a restored post from my saved files. If there's one much like it, stamped one minute earlier, the archives have been fixed.

CONTINUING THE RESEARCH PROJECT. Milt Rosenberg finds Mark Krikorian in The National Interest, advocating serious changes in immigration policy.

President Bush has pledged to expend political capital to pass an immigration plan that would legalize illegal aliens currently in the United States as "temporary workers" and import an unlimited number of new workers from abroad--something he reiterated in his State of the Union address. One of his principal arguments has been that such an initiative would enhance America's security by allowing enforcement authorities to focus their efforts more narrowly, by shrinking the haystack that the terrorist needles are hiding in. To use a different analogy, a guestworker or amnesty program would deny terrorists cover by draining the pool of ten million illegal aliens and ensure that an ongoing flow of foreign workers comes through legal channels.

On the surface, this appears reasonable. Terrorists have indeed benefited from our lawless immigration system. A 2002 study by the Center for Immigration Studies found that the 48 Al-Qaeda-affiliated operatives in the United States from 1993 to 2001 had compromised virtually every facet of the immigration system. Mass illegal immigration creates a large market for fraudulent documents, allowing the 9/11 hijackers, for instance, to amass more than sixty U.S. driver licenses. Mass illegal immigration also overwhelms the resources available to law enforcement...

Yup, resources have opportunity costs. That's this research project, which will be the objective of this progress report. Here's the conundrum according to Krikorian:

So shrinking the number of illegal aliens living in the United States, reducing the flow of new illegals and generally restoring order to our anarchic immigration system are clearly security imperatives. But can a guestworker program achieve these goals? It cannot. Support for such an approach is premised on two basic assumptions that turn out to be false.

The first assumption is that the Department of Homeland Security has the administrative capacity to properly screen and track millions of currently illegal aliens and millions more new foreign workers. Such an assertion is laughable to anyone with even a passing familiarity with our immigration bureaucracy. Even before 9/11, the old Immigration and Naturalization Service was choking on mass immigration.

More careful screening imposes a higher cost per applicant on the taxpayers. On the other hand, to shift the screening costs to the applicant raises the temptation for lawful immigrants to hire smugglers. Everywhere I look I see tradeoffs. That's probably Visual I for Wednesday's workshop. I also see opportunities for future research.

The second claim of those promoting a guestworker program as a security measure is that it will end--or at least radically curtail--illegal immigration. Tamar Jacoby, a high-profile spokesperson for the president's plan, recently instructed: "Think of it as a reservoir or a river we're trying to channel into a pipeline. The problem isn't the flow: We need the water. The problem is that the pipeline isn't big enough." In other words, there is a fixed amount of foreign labor that the American economy demands, and our immigration arrangements accommodate only a portion of that demand, forcing the rest to come in illegally. If only the illegal overflow were legalized, the problem would disappear.

Immigration, however, is very different from what this image suggests. The labor market is not designed for any specific level of immigration, or even a specific number of unskilled jobs. It is not a static system, but rather a dynamic one that responds to price signals and substitutes factors of production when appropriate. Labor is substituted for capital when the price of labor falls (say, through massive importation of foreign workers), and the opposite happens when the price of unskilled labor rises (say, through consistent immigration enforcement). Of course, this is cold comfort to those employers who have relied on the expectation of continued non-enforcement of the immigration law, and they can be expected to fight efforts to restrict the flow of foreign labor. But this is a political problem, not an economic one. The economy would adjust quite easily to a smaller supply of immigrant labor, and the accompanying disruptions would dissipate in short order.

In fact, not only would the guestworker approach not end illegal immigration, it would almost certainly increase it. The largest flow of illegal immigration in our history before the current wave came during the bracero program, which imported Mexican guestworkers during the 1950s and early 1960s. A similar thing happened after the IRCA amnesty of 1986. This shouldn't be a surprise. Immigration always creates more immigration, whether legal or illegal, because it is driven not simply (or even principally) by wage differences but rather by networks--the family and other connections that prospective migrants use to decide where to settle or whether to move at all. Once illegal aliens are anchored here by legal status, and once new workers arrive from abroad, millions of additional people worldwide suddenly will have a connection in the United States, making immigration here a realistic option, independent of their qualification under whatever new rules we impose.

Doggone it, let me finish one paper before I have to start another one. "Accompanying disruptions" to changes in relative prices don't necessarily dissipate quickly. On the other hand, if they do, the economic incentive for extended family members to come to the United States ought to be among the disruptions that dissipate. Which is it?

But if one is going to propose a policy change, one ought to go beyond the Utopian Wonkery^(TM) of this concluding paragraph.

The most responsible approach the president could take toward immigration would be to state unequivocally that the immigration law, whatever it may be, will be enforced across the board, and that those involved in its implementation will no longer be expected to cut corners and look the other way. The result would not be a magical elimination of the illegal immigration problem, but rather a sustained reduction through attrition, as fewer prospective illegals make the trip and more of those already here give up and deport themselves. In this way terrorists would be kept off-balance, their conspiracies interrupted, their sources of cover reduced. A massive amnesty and guestworker program would do the opposite, serving only the interests of our enemies.

To an extent, this sounds like the government reducing the subjective probability of an amnesty, that's the topic of a currently circulating paper of mine. That does not by itself make the smugglers' networks go away, or the yuppies with lots of disposable income for the health club membership but no time to mow the yard stop looking for cheap gardeners.

CONNECT AND FORGET IT? Or is it plug and play? The Chicago Sun-Times has put together a series of articles about sex on campus titled Hooking Up and Hanging Out. The adults who have taken the time to think about these phenomena seem to be coming to the conclusion that yes, the pshrinks will not lack for work. Here's the abstract for the series.

On college campuses the pressure is intense for one-night hookups, without emotion or commitment -- but some psychologists warn that these young adults are setting themselves up for future relationship troubles.

Now consider these paragraphs from the article that provided the title for this post.

In interviews with college students across the state, some say hookups are preferable to relationships.

"You have a whole life to be with [one] girl,'' said a 22-year-old U. of I. frat member from Chicago. "This is your one shot to have a good time." Added a 21-year-old U. of I. sorority girl from Springfield: "A lot of people feel like college is the only time when you can do what you want, and it doesn't matter.''

"A lot of college is about having a story the next day, 'Oh God, I was so wasted. You won't believe what happened,' '' said a 22-year-old coed from Park Ridge.

Some psychologists, though, say these young adults are setting themselves up for future relationship troubles at a key moment in their emotional development. Chicago's Columbia College junior Kelly Stinson, 21, can see that. Stinson has "friends who are so used to just connecting with strangers that, when they are ready to have a real relationship, they're screwed because they don't know how to open up to someone.''

Even those who are trying to avoid casual sex or are monogamous with a steady partner are feeling the echoing undertow.

"There's so much temptation,'' said Mike Rodriguez, 20, a U. of I. junior from Elk Grove Village. He had a girlfriend for two years but broke up, in part, because of the swirl of permissiveness. He didn't trust her -- or himself. "It's hard to have a girlfriend when you see all that,'' he said.

"Good sex is sex that isn't emotional -- that's the cultural message,'' said [Elizabeth] Paul, the College of New Jersey psychologist, who has interviewed hundreds of undergrads for her research. Students "buy in to the media images we bombard them with that says sex can be something quick and easy and sort of free from yourself. But, most of the time, they get into these quick interactions and realize it's a little more complicated."

Lovely. Read on.

Post-hookup feelings ran the gamut: Almost half of the students surveyed said they were happy or satisfied. Thirty-five percent reported feeling regret or disappointment, more so for women. Eleven percent said they were confused and 7 percent uncomfortable. Some described "an awkward moment" when the two partners "put their clothes back on and realize they have nothing to talk about.''

The disappointed wonder, "Did I really want to do that? Why did I do that? Why was it not a good experience? Did I fail at it? It must be my fault,'' said Paul.

For some women, according to one study of 1,000 college females, hookups are a way "to avoid the pain of breaking up by avoiding commitment in the first place."

What often disturbs them is an unexpected emotional connection.

"This generation is leery of relationships with emotional intimacy,'' Paul said. "One of the phrases you hear is 'you catch feelings' to describe when a hookup goes bad. You get an emotional feeling you weren't expecting." A male student told Paul, "I felt confused after because I liked her.''

Even ongoing though casual relationships can be killed by "catching feelings.''

Columbia's Kelly Stinson has felt the pain. "You start to long for them,'' she said.

Her roommate, Becki Mielcarski, 22, of Westmont, was on the receiving end once. "I made out with a friend of mine, and he told me he was in love with me. I told him, 'You're a dear friend of mine, but I don't feel that way about you.' I felt like a guy. We switched roles.''

J.P. Allen, 20, a Southern Illinois University sophomore from Park Ridge, caught feelings and tried to follow up. "I call them, but it's such a shock," Allen said. "When it moves so fast, it's hard to go backwards."

I suppose that's why friendship with benefits is for friends that aren't really friends. The longer term consequences don't look that good either.

Geraldine K. Piorkowski, a psychologist and former director of the Counseling Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said college students are risking not only their emotional health today, but also in the future. The author of Too Close For Comfort: Exploring the Risks of Intimacy, Piorkowski said trying to have sex without feelings is "psychologically damaging.'' In the short run, she said, "When you're not comfortable with your feelings or you try to put them aside, they overwhelm you, you're very anxious. You get depressed.''

Long-term, Piorkowski said, students involved in the hookup culture are "not learning how to be emotionally close to someone in a relationship, which means learning how to talk about yourself, talk about what's important to you, how to listen to somebody and be supportive of them in difficult times. They're not learning to resolve conflicts or compromise."

Paul allows that, "in some ways, providing some way to sexually experiment and sexually explore is good for people.'' But only, she said, "if it's done in the context of physical safety, as well as self-awareness in an emotionally reflective way: You learn about yourself and how sex can help achieve a connection with another person.''

The problem, said Paul, is that sex "is happening in this non-contemplative way. Kids are just blindly running into it. [They haven't] thought through 'What am I comfortable with? How far do I want to go?'"

Amy Alkon, a syndicated sex columnist out of Santa Monica, Calif., scoffs at the hand-wringing over hookups. "Sociologist after sociologist squawk that the hookup girls will be irreparably emotionally damaged -- conveniently forgetting all the sexual frolickers who made it out of the roaring '20s and free-love '60s without their heads imploding,'' Alkon said. Students "will have casual sex, and sooner or later they'll want to connect and they'll stop. When it's not working, they'll change.''

Made it out of the free-love '60s? You mean the mid-life crisis, and the approximately 30% failure rate of the marriages of that era, and the full calendars at family court are ... my imagination? And when they want to change, will they be viewed by the responsible partners they're seeking as damaged goods?

Another article in the series suggests that some women are recognizing that risk.

Many college women today say they don't expect or want to find a spouse at college. Only 19 percent polled in the dating report "strongly agreed" that they'd like to meet their future husband at college.

"I don't plan on getting married until I'm 26 or so," said Johanna Borgsmiller, a 20-year-old junior at U. of I. "I still have time to get serious."

She does, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The age people get married has gone up considerably in the last quarter century. In 1970, the median age of women walking down the aisle for the first time was 20.8 years. In 2003, it was 25.3.

"You have this elongated period of adolescence and young adulthood that gives [students] a lot more time to experiment," said Patricia Koch, an associate professor at Penn State who has studied sexuality for more than 20 years.

Some women say that, if marriage looms on the distant horizon, there's no sense getting bogged down in serious relationships during college. Instead, they get their sexual needs met through a series of casual hookups, which can elicit a range of conflicting emotions. Sixty-one percent of women who said a hookup made them feel desirable also said it made them feel awkward, according to the college dating report.

"If it's a hookup where [I] actually stayed there ... I just want to get out of there as fast as possible the next day," said a University of Chicago woman cited in the report. "It's that 'walk of shame' thing. You've got front desk people you have to get by. You hope you don't see anybody else in the dorm. And you look like you had a rough night. It's just, like, awkward."

Of course I'll respect you in the morning. Not. Plus ca change.

University of Washington sociologist and sex educator Pepper Schwartz said she has noticed more bravado lately among college women boasting about their sexual conquests. She suspects a lot of it is just talk.

"Are they really happy? Sometimes, I think not," Schwartz said. "In the end, they're still looking for a boyfriend. They're still looking for respect. They ultimately want to pair up, not just hook up."

What role, then, for the university? Are the rabbits being given enough course work to do?

A TOM CLANCY RETRO DROOL-FEST. Owen at Boots and Sabers finds news of a monster Japanese I-boat wreck located off the coast of Hawaii. This submarine, deliberately scuttled by the U.S. after the war, was intended to launch aircraft carrying biological weapons.

RUNNING EXTRA: Amygdala has much more about this submarine, and some good sea stories. Hobby Sea Toy, indeed.

CARNIVAL CALL. The Carnival of the Capitalists goes Beyond the Brand

BACKING IN. Sufficiently many other college hockey bubble teams lost over the weekend that the Wisconsin Badgers will be dancing, at Grand Rapids, in Michigan's back yard. SIEVE! View From A Height is enjoying the view of two Colorado teams scaling hockey's heights, and he's linked to a summary site for the college hockey tournament. Do take a look at that East Regional: BC, BU, North Dakota ... take out Mercyhurst and plug in Wisconsin, or Minnesota, or Denver, and you have the final field from 30 years ago. SIEVE!

Mark Johnson's Lady Badgers have acquired some tournament experience, being excused by Dartmouth, who have a lot more experience at this sort of thing. Nancy from Seabrook, if you're following your team, enjoy the moment.

NEVER MIND THE RETROSPECTIVES, LET'S BUILD SOMETHING NEW. The Superintendent has brought to your attention a number of British projects to re-create historic steam locomotives from the past, many of which went to the cutter as recently as 1969. Word has now reached the Superintendent's office, by way of Railway's steam news section, of an advanced-technology steam locomotive project called the 5AT (the equivalent in some aspects of a Standard Five Ten-Wheeler, using advanced technology.)

I see they're envisioning a proper tender.
View some development notes here.

Note the homage to Argentina. The project designers intend to run their creation at 125 mph, and here their education is incomplete.

The only steam locomotives required to operate (transitorily) at 100 mph to maintain schedules were the Milwaukee Hiawatha 4-4-2's and 4-6-4's, and perhaps the DR 05 4-6-4's. These and a few other classes have reached transitory speeds of ~125 mph on test. The 5AT is being designed for continuous 125 mph capability with a 112.5 mph (180 km/h) continuous operational speed.

I'm looking at a table on p. 70 of The Hiawatha Story (no price comparison available, my copy is not for sale) headlined Up, Up ... Past 100. The author is E. L. Thompson of Railroad, who has some familiarity with British speed log formats.

Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul + Pacific; train No. 6; Tuesday, January 14, 1941; nine cars, 430 tons^(*). F-7 Hudson No. 100 -- tractive effort, 50,300 pounds; drivers, 84 inches; cylinders, 23 1/2 x 30 inches; boiler pressure 300 pounds.

The reader only need note the following observation.

Note that the magic 100 mark was first touched at the third milepost past Tower A-68 [just south of Caledonia, Wisconsin - SHK]; and from a mile past Sturtevant, 31 consecutive miles were timed at 100 mph or better (emphasis in the original). The slow order [permanent way slack -- SHK] over the temporary detour interrupted this string of three-figure speeds, but starting again at Northbrook, 8 of the succeeding 11 miles were also covered in the 100s.

This train departed Milwaukee three minutes late on a 75 minute schedule, arriving Chicago 2 1/2 minutes to the good, in a snowstorm.

The people working on the 5AT project have one other objective to meet. A test run of the recently deliverered Hiawatha equipment on May 15, 1935, using the Two-Spot, a Hiawatha Atlantic, maintained 112 1/2 mph "without difficulty" for 14 miles, probably somewhere between Columbus and east of the Wisconsin Dells, where there are some speed restrictions account curves and a bridge over the Wisconsin River.

The "required to operate" language is accurate, as a 75 minute Milwaukee-Chicago service is an average speed of 68 mph start to stop, but the Hiawatha steam power had the ability to sustain these speeds over great distances if called on to do so. The diesels that replaced them also had the ability, but that's a story for another day.

ROAD TRIP. Mike on the L&N Line has been posting reports from China. Keep scrolling.

PLUCKING THE REAL GOLDEN EAGLES. Perhaps the Team Formerly Known as the Marquette Warriors had good reason to avoid playing Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The UW-Milwaukee Panthers, who two weeks ago were eyeball to eyeball with Detroit in the Horizon League championship game and facing the prospect of a sweaty Selection Sunday, have done it again. For the second time in three nights, the Panthers ousted a larger, more highly touted opponent with a national audience as their witness.

Their latest victim was Boston College, a team that had won its first 20 games and was mentioned in the same breath as No. 1-ranked Illinois.

Next up: Illinois, in Chicago, with lots of sub-plots.

When he was an assistant at Iowa more than 15 years ago, UWM coach Bruce Pearl turned Illinois in to the NCAA for alleged recruiting violations, a moment that Illini fans have not forgotten. A sea of orange inside Allstate Arena will no doubt remind him.

On top of that, Illini coach Bruce Weber is a UWM graduate.

Years ago, when we received our college board scores and had the opportunity to request information from colleges, the response making the rounds at Milwaukee Hamilton was "Princeton. Harvard. UWM." I may be a Badger, but look for a little bit of black and gold in my outfit on Thursday.

SIXTY YEARS AGO. Sgt. Karlson's unit crossed the Mosel and billeted a week in Marienroth, between the Mosel and the Rhine. The weather improved to summery, and he had time to go on a hike (rather than a patrol) in the hills. The Third Army was making good progress in Germany.

UNIVERSITIES ARE FAILING AT THEIR MISSION. I did not make myself very popular penning an essay with that lead for local consumption, some 14 years ago, but apparently I was ahead of my time. Robert at The Torch says there's something happening here.

In the past few weeks, more scrutiny has been paid to the direction of higher education than perhaps ever before. Driven by the twin pillars of the Ward Churchill affair and the Larry Summers controversy, the American press and public are increasingly taking a look at the state of academia—and they don’t like what they see. A vast number of factors are coming together to prompt people to ask the question “What’s wrong with our colleges?” Just off the top of my head, I can think of a number of contributing factors: attention because of the Churchill and Summers stories, increasing financial pressure on state universities from cash-strapped state legislatures, the recent challenge to the federal Solomon Amendment that prevents universities from discriminating against military recruiters, the push in several states for the adoption of an academic bill of rights, college athletic program scandals like the one that recently led to a rash of resignations at the University of Colorado, college costs that seem to spiral upwards regardless of the rate of inflation, and the lack of fundamental freedom on college and university campuses that FIRE has decried throughout its nearly six years of advocacy. For college and university trustees and administrators, it’s March Madness in more ways than one.

Why?

Let’s face it: academia in general is hopelessly out of touch with the rest of society. The current message from the higher education establishment to the public at large is this: “Saying WTC victims are Nazis is good; saying men and women might be different is bad.” Maybe this is an overgeneralization, but look at the facts: On the one hand, we have Ward Churchill, a man who called some of the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns” for being part of America’s “mighty engine of profit”—that is, working in financial jobs. Although roundly condemned in the non-academic world, around 200 professors from his own university have publicly declared their support for him, and the president of the University of Colorado has publicly stated that he won’t be fired for his viewpoint. And he shouldn’t be fired for it. [Emphasis added -- S.H.K.] But at the same time, we see Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, who suggested in an off-the-record speech that there may be innate cognitive differences between men and women. Many are openly calling for his resignation, and he has formed not one but two committees to investigate why there are not more women in the sciences. Last night, he was slapped with a “lack of confidence” vote by the Harvard Arts and Sciences faculty—the first time this has happened in the 400-plus-year history of the school.

Put another way, critical thinking about some topics is permissible, but some things Just. Aren't. Said. ("If Hitler invaded Hell, I would find something positive to say about the Devil in the House of Commons." Buzz. Better check the harassment policy first.)

Even an ivory tower has foundations somewhere, and in the case of the American college and university system, this foundation has been a vast reservoir of goodwill from society at large. I would guess that most Americans who went to college have fond memories of that period of their lives (I know I do) and highly value their college experience. This “warm, fuzzy” feeling makes it possible for colleges to raise millions of dollars a year from alumni while charging students tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition and fees. Yet colleges don’t exist in a vacuum. In return for this goodwill, Americans expect colleges and universities to be places where justice prevails and students are secure. They expect colleges to teach lessons that will be useful for life, and even to inculcate attitudes that are compatible with the free society in which we live. By abandoning this mission and becoming “increasingly repressive and partisan”—as they manifestly have—colleges have nearly dried up this reservoir of goodwill.

The way I put it years ago was "We are only now beginning to see the consequences of the failure to carry out our mission."

Therefore, there’s a good chance that we are seeing the early death throes of the academic establishment. You can see it in the hysterical reactions of administrators faced with, for instance, affirmative action bake sales. Back in the 1960s, students regularly took over administration buildings with few consequences. Now students are threatened with expulsion and even criminal penalties for sitting at a table with a poster and some cookies. You can see it when a professor recommends “psychological counseling” for a pro-American Arab student. You can see it when a student is kicked out of his dorm and forced to sleep in his car because of what was essentially a “fat joke.” You can see it when paranoid college administrators launch a campaign of deceit and deception against a student who mocked them. These are the irrational reactions of an academic culture that sees every attack on its beliefs, however small, as a life-threatening situation. Colleges wouldn’t react this way if they felt the underpinnings of the dominant academic belief system were secure.

Yes, but let us not expect that if we just kick in the door, the entire rotten structure will collapse. There is still work to be done. It calls for patience. It calls for fortitude. It calls for persistence. It calls for reiterating the basic themes. And it calls for humor. The academic establishment is full of Earnest People whose worst nightmare is Carrie's: they're all going to laugh at you. Yup. Heartily.

And it calls for encouragement of the administrators who understand what is at stake. Here is Instapundit's observation (what, some punditry to accompany a link??)

Harvard has done serious damage to its reputation -- or, more accurately, a subset of the Harvard Arts & Sciences faculty has done serious damage to Harvard's reputation. This was meant to be cost-free posturing, but it's turned out to be a bit more than that -- and if I were Larry Summers, I think I'd do my best to make sure that a lot of people felt the pain in as many ways as I could manage. It's an educational experience that the Harvard faculty, apparently, needs.

To borrow an expression, indeed, some asses need to be kicked and some names taken.

THE CASE AGAINST WARD CHURCHILL. Milt Rosenberg links to a Claremont Institute document outlining a dismissal for cause action against Ward Churchill. Although the Claremont Institute might not be the most objective observer of the academy, their bill of particulars is in the correct form with respect to professional incompetence, moral turpitude, and failings of professional integrity. The document also notes that a review panel including several individuals who may have been involved in Mr Churchill's prior reviews is unlikely to conduct a proper hearing, as those individuals have a strong incentive to validate their earlier decisions. The document also correctly notes, "It need not and cannot be based on his well-documented disdain for the United States of America - as offensive as that is."

I have had some experience with for-cause proceedings, as some years ago the university brought such a case against a member of the economics department, and two senior members of the personnel committee decided to resign, citing health reasons, and the chairmanship of the personnel committee fell to me. (There are some interesting stories about the election of additional, less senior members, to serve on that committee, but you'll have to buy me lots of Sprechers first.) Claremont's case is somewhat stronger. The colleague, who might have been discharged for cause or might have taken early retirement, had not published any research for years and had a poor track record as a teacher, but no history of plagiarizing, engaging in retaliatory grading, or falsifying his credentials.

Power Line links to an interview with Mr Churchill that they characterize as misleading.

My favorite Churchill quote is "I'm struggling desperately to be able to deliver to my students what they signed up for." Which is, it seems to me, the heart of the issue: the taxpayers of Colorado, the parents who pay tuition, and the students who sign up for courses at the University of Colorado should be assured of some minimal effort at quality control. Churchill, like lots of bad employees who are in danger of being fired, prefers to cast himself as a victim, saying that the campaign against him is a "pretext for a broader campaign to discourage critical thinking."

I'm going to put that in context. The paragraph from the article reads:

He said the inquiry is not merely an investigation of his work but a pretext for a broader campaign to discourage critical thinking and reduce higher education to "an advanced vo-tech" where students are taught skills useful to corporations.

Let's break that down. Many academicians equate "critical thinking" with questioning the dominant paradigm. But that's relatively new. Find me an economics department in which the errors of the New Deal receive the same treatment as the Fair Labor Standards Act, Social Security, or fiscal policy. To be fair, the regulatory agencies of that era have been recognized for the cartels that they were, but who worries about infrastructure anyway? And, for those of us with a long memory, to what extent were the errors of the Great Society ever discussed in those days shortly after its enactment? One need not buy all the premises in this Opinion Journal article (via Post-Modern Clog) to see that critical thinking about incomes policy ought involve more than the recitation of Democratic Party cliches.

The War on Poverty rests on a false premise: that capitalism creates a permanent class of poor. And War on Poverty attitudes have a deeply harmful effect on those entrammeled in America's current welfare state. So the second Bush term is bringing the War on Poverty--demonstrably a cataclysmic mistake--to an end. A glance at the administration's recent budget shows the ongoing dismantling of antipoverty programs: a sharp reduction in the Community Development Block Grant, the main conduit for funneling federal money to cities; the reduction in HUD money for Section 8 subsidized housing vouchers, which abets the formation of dysfunctional single-parent families and destabilizes respectable working-class neighborhoods; and the shrinkage of ever-expanding Medicaid. Welfare is now temporary assistance in adversity, not a permanent way of life; and we can expect welfare reform's conditions to become even stricter when the 1996 Act finally gets reauthorized.

Milton Friedman was asserting that if the government paid people to be poor, it would face a rising supply of poor people, to much scorn from the avatars of the Welfare Economics Paradigm. Where was the serious discussion of his objections in those days, before the damage became more widespread?

And let's think about that "advanced vo-tech" argument. It's the higher thinking skills that bring the highest incomes, and it's the higher thinking skills that are going missing from much of the workforce, whether degreed or apprenticed. But the mathematics component of those skills has been badly damaged in recent years. The writing component is also missing in many cases.

THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSITY TO COME. Blogs for Industry has been thinking about {fill in the blank} Studies departments and the consequences of their proliferation.

Doing a review of one of these programs has to be hazardous duty for anyone who isn't ready to go along to get along. From the CU experience, even asking for a plan for how the program will fulfill an academic mission is hazardous duty. This isn't just at CU. I found this exchange of editorials from Penn. The defenders of Ethnic Studies are vocal and willing to use demonstrations and strikes to get their way . Today, the Denver Post writes about Ethnic Studies programs on the defensive in the wake of the l'affaire Ward Churchill.

"Because these programs were born out of political controversy - out of the civil rights movement - there is more scrutiny," said [co-director of ethnic studies at the University of North Texas Mariela] Nunez- Janes. "But it seems like a double standard that the actions of one professor reflect on all ethnic-studies programs. If a math professor does something controversial, does it reflect on all math departments?

Note the appeal to the civil rights movement, a specialty of the Jesse Jackson school of political discourse.

Put another way, administrators are more responsive to mau-mauing from some people than from others. Someday, an administrator will do for the universities what Ronald Reagan did for the United States, namely call the Division of Cooling Out the Mark a "Mickey Mouse" system.

The use of protest as a way of adding departments and areas of study to the curriculum is not without threats to the rest of the academy, as the owner of Blogs for Industry, a lab scientist, points out.

It seems to me that there are legitimate reasons to have people in universities that study history, literature, sociology, or political science from the point of view of various ethnic groups. But doing this in "multidisciplinary" programs has a tendency to create new disciplines, and this seems to be part of what has happened here. With a history of justifying their existence based on real or imagined slights from the mainstream historians, literari, and political scientists, Ethnic Studies seems to reject the standards of scholarship of the parent disciplines, such as they are. The traditional departments also get to wash their hands of any oversight responsibilities they would have if these programs were still under their umbrella. If we ever see programs in Evolution by Intelligent Design, or if chiropracters ever get their own med schools, expect this to happen. This is why many of us are concerned about the growth of programs in Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Count your blessings. Suppose a researcher turns up a papyrus by a lesbian Egyptian arguing that Ra indeed did create the earth in six days, and that bulrushes from the Nile Delta have healing powers. (I exaggerate, but only slightly: watch for the solstice observations at your university.) On the other hand, some of us older heads remember the lab scientists being quite willing to go along with the campus radicals to endorse these {pick your victim} studies programs, precisely because it was an easy way to look Enlightened while confining the dilution of scholarship to other parts of the College. If I ever became president of a university (dream on), the following paragraph spells out what my first move would be.

A separate existence creates opportunities for faculty to become administrators in the new discipline, where they can argue for resources for their "discipline" without having to convince colleagues at the departmental level that new hires focused on gender and ethnicity would be more valuable than other kinds of hires. This turf aspect of things is not at all limited to niche programs in the liberal arts. Take a look at the lists of departments at many major universities. Departments get created for subspecialties and it's difficult to ever fold them. There are disciplines that involve perfectly respectable scholarship that could be reincorporated into larger departments. This would save money on administration and give students more flexibility, but it would mean that the subdisciplines would lose autonomy. Most subdisciplines would fight this, but few will get their students to hold hunger strikes.

As my brother puts it, "kick ass and take names." And here's why.

As Stephen Karlson points out above, these issues can be addressed within more traditional departments. Does anyone really believe that the modern versions of humanities and social science programs don't cover this ground?

Quite so.

BUBBLE BADGERS. The North Dakota Fighting Sioux (who are grandfathered in; Wisconsin's boycott of universities with Indian theme names does not extend to conference members) took the play-in game from the Badgers in the Twin Cities. For the perspective from the other side of the Red River, see The Elder.

THE GERONTOCRACY. The U.S. Congress resembles the Supreme Soviet both in the high re-election rate of Members and in median age. A Constrained Vision invites readers to compare and contrast the current Congress with the Signers and the Framers.

SEND THE STREET THUGS HOME EARLY. One and done for Syracuse, bay-bee. (What on earth is a catamount? A catamaran that ran aground?) Wisconsin unleashed an early shock and awe offensive, then held off a stubborn Northern Iowa (UNI, not NIU, for those of you north of the Cheddar Curtain) to advance to the second round.

PEOPLE WHO COME WITH WARNING LABELS. Mullets, tattoos, prison pants. That's so September 10. Introducing the International CXT.

The advertising copy that goes with this product is instructive.

Let's be honest. You didn't become the success that you are by doing things halfway. For you, it's go all out, or go home. Now there's a lineup of trucks that shares your bold attitude and entrepreneurial spirit. The International® XT family. These aren't just beefed up pickup trucks. They're performance and beauty taken to the extreme. Of course, it helps to have strong bloodlines.

As if those pickups from the Big Three that resemble a small Kenworth aren't enough, now for about $100,000 you can have your very own pickup that looks like a scaled down International tractor. Put a pickup bed on an American Flyer sized tractor (1/64 actual size) in place of the fifth wheel alongside some Lionel sized tractors (1/48 actual size) for a comparison of the proportions.

Perhaps the relatively high fuel prices (about 70% of the 1980 record highs) will dissuade the Big Three from taking the next step. Some of the grilles on the Dodge Ram series bring to mind the Illinois Central Green Diamond.

Let us count our blessings that the current fuel prices are probably dissuading designers from taking the next step and making a pickup or a sport-ute this big.

BARF ME OUT, GAG ME WITH A SPOON. Many colleges and universities use TIAA-CREF to manage their defined contribution pension plans, also known as private retirement accounts. The agency (company) has been buying airtime during the basketball tournament to run some treacly adverts with "There's a place for us" as background music, with narrating that postures about people in the academic, medical, and artistic "communities" serving the "greater good." Come off it, already. Should any of the economists on either the TIAA or the CREF boards of trustees (there are two) resign in protest, noting that any mutually beneficial trade serves the "greater good," whatever that is, I will report that news on this site.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR, YOU MIGHT GET IT. The Faculty Senate at Louisiana State (it's a .pdf, can't copy and paste, grrr) correctly prays for proper procedure in the investigation of Professor Ward Churchill in Colorado.

Therefore, Be It Resolved that the Louisiana State University Faculty Senate endorse this resolution in support of Dr. Churchill's [c.q.] right to academic freedom, as befits a tenured faculty member, that any review of his professional conduct be initiated and implemented only by the appropriate academic committee and that the review consider only those issues which would normally constitute failure of scholarship, service, and pedagogical standards within the university's mission, and

... First, some observations from the Superintendent. Isn't the fact that this fourth-rate Barrington Moore, Jr. holds a tenured post at a flagship university evidence of a failure of scholarship and pedagogical standards within the university's mission? Would it not be "appropriate" (Fred Kahn had a great riff on the lack of content "appropriate" generally had in a bureaucratic setting ... he was speaking of a regulatory commission, but university governance isn't too far removed) for Colorado to come clean on its diversity boondoggles. Otherwise the administration looks too keen to be covering for expense-preference behavior and the State government has a fiduciary duty to investigate that.

Be It Further Resolved, that the Louisiana State University Faculty Senate censure the Colorado House of Representatives and the Governor of Colorado for their attempts to intrude on the academic freedom of a tenured professor, and to dictate limits to any professor's inquiry and right to challenge accepted belief, even in times of war.

A state university enjoys great immunity from legislative intrusion. With that immunity comes great responsibility. A century ago, elected officials in Wisconsin took umbrage at Wisconsin's employment of Richard T. Ely, (yes, cub economists, as in the Richard T. Ely Lecture at the job meetings) who raised questions about railroads, corporations, and "natural" monopolies, and he might have thought well of socialism. /gasp!/ Wisconsin's Regents came back with this declaration.

WHATEVER MAY BE THE LIMITATIONS WHICH TRAMMEL INQUIRY ELSEWHERE, WE BELIEVE THAT THE GREAT STATE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SHOULD EVER ENCOURAGE THAT CONTINUAL AND FEARLESS SIFTING AND WINNOWING BY WHICH ALONE THE TRUTH CAN BE FOUND.

Sifting and winnowing separates the content from the chaff. Colorado's college and university promotion committees confused chaff for content. The history of this case suggests officials acted on unsubstantiated fears of losing an individual they incorrectly viewed as a diversity plus, despite evidence that two Colorado departments had recognized chaff when they were offered it.

In my stints on Faculty Senate, I have sometimes heard colleagues say "we have to do something before somebody in Springfield makes us do it." Those statements tended to set my teeth on edge, as the "something" often involved some unsound fad or some avoidance of the real problem. In this case, however, the onus is on Colorado, and per corollary, Louisiana State, and, yes, Northern Illinois, to take a hard look at whether academic freedom (correctly construed, more on this anon) has translated into academic license and led to the creation of a Division of Cooling Out the Mark in which professional protesters misuse academic respectability for non-academic ends.

TWELVE BEATS FIVE. That's the UWM Panthers getting the better of Alabama in the first set of the Big Dance. The Badgers face Northern Iowa (a news reader at WTMJ said "Northern Illinois" this morning, but that's wishful thinking) on Friday.

EMERGENCY ENGINEERING POSSESSION. Patience.

SIXTY YEARS AGO. Sgt. Karlson has been on the move for the past two weeks. His unit left Manderfeld, Belgium, occupied an empty house in Losheim, Belgium, before crossing the now-pacified Siegfried Line into Germany. Wilkommen Deutschland. "Spent a cold, rainy night on a muddy hillside in a pup tent." Thence to Lessendorf, then a week in Fuesdorf. The entire week was rainy with extremely dark nights. Their next move is to south of Koblenz, again in the mud and rain.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. Blogger appears to be storing posts but not publishing them, and the dial-up is acting squirrelly. I will take care of any duplicate posts and the trackbacks once things are running more reliably. Here's a little suggestion for people frustrated with posts being eaten: copy your HTML windows to Word Pad, and note the time and date of the post. That gives you the opportunity to restore your posts in case the server is acting badly.

CERTIFIED NEITHER IMPLIES NOR IS IMPLIED BY QUALIFIED. A Constrained Vision picks up a case against teacher certification, with links to related research. The American Mind finds a related story that indicts what is going on in the Colleges of Deaducation.

merican colleges and universities do such a poor job of training the nation's future teachers and school administrators that 9 of every 10 principals consider the graduates unprepared for what awaits them in the classroom, a new survey has found.

Nearly half the elementary- and secondary-school principals surveyed said the curriculums at schools of education, whether graduate or undergraduate, lacked academic rigor and were outdated, at times using materials decades older than the children whom teachers are now instructing. Beyond that, more than 80 percent of principals said the education schools were too detached from what went on at local elementary and high schools, a factor that made for a rift between educational theory and practice.

There are other problems.

Much of the problem, the report said, stems from what Dr. Levine called "the consumer mentality" dominating the nation's education schools. All states, and nearly all public school districts within them, award higher salaries to teachers who take additional courses and earn advanced degrees. One result of this has been an "army of unmotivated" educators looking for extra credits "in the easiest ways possible" during their off hours, the report said.

The universities, in turn, capitalize on this demand by viewing their education schools as "cash cows," setting low admissions standards and offering "quickie degrees" instead of investing in a quality curriculum, the report said. In fact, while criticism has often focused on the questionable academic qualifications of many teachers, the report found that school administrators typically had substantially lower scores on the Graduate Record Examination than the teachers they supervise.

Principals and superintendents need to be better trained than ever, the report contends, a necessity that puts added pressure on already faltering education schools: federal law is demanding that students make measurable academic progress; where local districts once set the bar, more states have adopted uniform exit exams that students must pass in order to graduate; and the population itself is changing, with more immigrants whose English is limited.

But others contend that these same conditions are precisely why education schools cannot be held wholly responsible for the failures of their graduates. In the era of federal demands for quick and consistent test-based results from even the most troubled districts, some defenders argue that education schools have little power to set the tone of what goes on in the nation's classrooms, and therefore are often inappropriately blamed for it.

On the other hand, the slack tone of the classrooms might be a consequence of untested theories that sound good, although I also blame the teachers for making every day a casual Friday. When the jackets and ties came off, much of the respectability also went into the closet.

BUILDING UP THE RAILS. For the first time since World War II, capacity constraints are binding on the freight rail network, which earns a C minus in the American Society of Civil Engineers 2005 Report Card for America's Infrastructure. One ought take such studies with a pinch of salt, as additional spending on "infrastructure" translates into additional work for civil engineers -- an understanding of rent seeking makes one cynical. On the other hand, there has been darned little investment in building new roads or oil refineries, and this observation, while anecdotal, resonates.

“Americans are spending more time stuck in traffic and less time at home with their families,” William Henry, the group’s president, said in a statement.

Although mass transit, including light rail, continues to look like an expensive proposition, it is the fastest growing mode.

“Transit use increased faster than any other mode of transportation – up 21 percent between 1993 and 2002,” the report states. “Yet, many transit properties are borrowing funds to maintain operations, even as they are significantly raising fares and cutting back service.”

That puts a P. J. O'Rourke snark (excuse the redundancy) Professor Althouse chose to highlight in some perspective.

The Heritage Foundation says, "There isn't a single light rail transit system in America in which fares paid by the passengers cover the cost of their own rides." Heritage cites the Minneapolis "Hiawatha" light rail line, soon to be completed with $107 million from the transportation bill. Heritage estimates that the total expense for each ride on the Hiawatha will be $19. Commuting to work will cost $8,550 a year. If the commuter is earning minimum wage, this leaves about $1,000 a year for food, shelter and clothing. Or, if the city picks up the tab, it could have leased a BMW X-5 SUV for the commuter at about the same price.

This comparison is a common canard from the highway lobby, particularly from those individuals who perceive the trolley service as "public," hence tainted with socialism, and the private owner vehicle as "private," despite the public spending on roads, which are congested in part because there's been little construction of new roads. The comparison presents the full cost of the trolley service, including some share of the spending on the permanent way (is it amortized correctly) with the incremental cost of another sport-ute, without contemplating the full cost of providing sufficient capacity for additional sport-utes.

ARMOR AGAINST PLEASURE, COBWEB AGAINST DISEASE. It's Spring Break at several universities, and the health service at the University of Wisconsin is doing its part to encourage the MTV vision of that week. Owen at Boots and Sabers is not pleased with a poster suggesting that female spring breakers off for a week of hook-ups bring along the morning-after pill as a fallback just in case the university-issue condoms break. He raises three objections; apparently others in Wisconsin are also displeased.

"It is a strategy that students can use to avoid the unwanted effects of decisions they make when they are on spring break," [Wisconsin health services director Kathleen] Poi said. "Sometimes they let their guard down, they don't make the best decision that they could. Or they're following the safer sex practices and the condom breaks. If they're here in Madison, they know who to call. If they're in Florida or Cancun, that's not an easy option."

But [Pro-Live Wisconsin director Peggy] Hamill said the ads were, "an insult to women. It trivializes the marriage act to begin with, and I think it's insulting to the self-esteem and dignity of women. We must give women more credit than to assume people are going to get 'crazy' " during Spring Break.

If the condom fails and the kids don't have the morning-after pill, they still have three months to deal with one "unwanted effect" in the feminist way. The chlamydia or the herpes will be another matter.

SEE-EE-OH. Northern Illinois University hires Carol Owens '90 to coach the women's basketball team.

“This is a dream come true,” said Owens who became the first Northern Illinois undergrad to serve as a head coach in a revenue program at the DeKalb-based institution since Hall of Fame head football coach Howard Fletcher (1956-68). “I remember when I was a sophomore and I told (then head coach) Jane (Albright) that once I graduated, I would come back as her assistant in two or three years. This is even better. I can’t explain how excited I am to be part of the Huskie family again. I’ve had a few other (head coaching) opportunities, this was the best fit. Things just fell into place. It was just meant to be. Northern Illinois was one of the best times of my life. I hope our kids can experience what I experienced at NIU.

This coach has the proper ambitions, and the proper apprenticeship.

Owens’ ultimate goals in her new Northern Illinois cage role? Win the Mid-American Conference and head to the NCAA. “I want our students to enjoy playing the game, enjoy the collegiate experience, and enjoy the time with their teammates,” Owens admitted. Recruiting? “No doubt, we have to get into Chicago. NIU is a Chicago school.

“I had a great experience here. Playing under Jane, Deb Patterson (now the head coach at Kansas State University), and Kamie Etheridge (also at KSU)---all were huge influences on me. And Muffet allowed me to grow and get ready for the next step in my career. I still seek their guidance in everything I do. They were all instrumental to me as a coach.”

Coach Owens has been instrumental in developing several of Notre Dame's centers. That she came to work for Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame and participated in their national title run might be evidence of a good leadership principle at work: bring in people who might be better than you. There was a game in 1989 or 1990 when a new coach called Muffet McGraw brought a weak Notre Dame team into DeKalb to be destroyed by Northern Illinois. That was Jane Albright and Deb Patterson coaching, Carol Owens, Tammy Hinchee, Denise Dove, Lisa Foss, and several other talented kids playing.

HOW OTHERS SEE US. The Pseudo-Indian Defense is proving to be unsound, and the repercussions are making the academy, and the academic culture, look bad.

(click the image for Cox and Forkum's commentary and some recommended reading.)

Pirate Ballerina has been following the Churchill story aggressively, most recently offering an Out-of-Context, Nonviolent Churchill Quote of the Day, most of which suggest Mr Churchill is at best a fourth-rate, fourth derivative Barrington Moore, Jr. but who takes his research inspiration from Buffy Sainte-Marie's "My Country Tis of Thy People You're Dying." The Los Angeles Times has the details.

Three professors have said that Churchill reinvented history to suit his politics. In one case, he wrote that the U.S. Army deliberately infected Mandan Indians with smallpox-laden blankets in what is now North Dakota. His source for the story was UCLA professor Russell Thornton, whose own account of the incident is completely different and makes no mention of the Army.

Betsy's Page's coverage of the story discovers the existence of a Center for Academic Integrity. Why not? Underwriters Laboratories destructive-tests toasters so as to better calculate insurance premiums. There is no comparable destructive-testing of ideas in the academy. Alas, that's what's sinking Colorado's departing Betsy Hoffman. Several of her Iowa State colleagues were at the Midwest Economics Association and they spoke well of her as a person. Alas, this Newsweek article suggests she's somewhat clueless about the proper role for academic inquiry.

"A university is a place where you're supposed to think deeply about things, where you're supposed to challenge established thought, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to do that in today's political climate," she says. "We are so deeply divided as a country." This division, she says, threatens the foundation of liberal higher education. "The modern research university is a big and complex place," she says, "but it ultimately is about the generation of new ideas and the transfer of those new ideas to students. If we can't even talk about controversial subjects, we can't make progress."

I'd rather not get into the tu quoque mud where people get offended about heteronormativity or about suggestions that the two sexes are wired differently for spatial and intuitive thinking, to introduce controversial subjects that some of the area-studies types would just as soon not talk about. Belmont Club properly takes Professor Hoffman, and the Colorado academic establishment, to task for that omission.

Ironically, the public glare focused upon Ward Churchill's ideas in the aftermath of his "little Eichmanns" essay provided the scholarly scrutiny that the University of Coloardo itself neglected to supply. Did the US government actually specify a 'blood quantum' for Native Americans? Did US troops really distribute smallpox-impregnated blankets to tribes and with what precautions to themselves? Did Professor Churchill really provide the content of books on which his name appears or did he swipe it from some other scholar? Those are questions which have been dissected at length by persons "outside the campus" and even by "Colorado lawmakers". That they were not raised or even contemplated by academic departments at the University of Colorado constitutes a failure of its most basic mission. Universities not in the business of asking these these questions are arguably not institutions of higher learning at all. That neglect, not the discussion which her University went so far out of its way to avoid, "threatens the foundation of liberal higher education".

Victor Davis Hanson suggests that what we are seeing is more of the same.

The usual exegeses suffice: The contemporary campus has devolved into an Orwellian world in which the ends usually justify the means. Diversity really means no diversity of ideas. Unfettered expression is a code word for groupspeak of the Left. Academic freedom and tenure ensure timidity and monotony of thought. The champions of the oppressed and discriminated are, in fact, the affluent and privileged, whose antics are excused only by the irrelevancy of academic culture and properly deplored solely through the accidental discovery of a forgotten rant or taped remark.

Underneath all this is the disturbing fact that progressive campuses are charging their students tuition whose annual increases exceed the rate of inflation, while vocal professors have plenty of idle time on their hands and live lives that most Americans — or their own college staff members — can only dream of.

That bit about idle time is gratuitous. But there is some truth to the groupthink charge. Dave Kopel, in the Rocky Mountain News, which has been covering the Colorado follies, but in his mind not sufficiently extensively, elaborates.

For all the ink devoted to the Ward Churchill case, the Denver dailies have done virtually nothing to investigate the dysfunctional campus academic culture which led to the Churchill fiasco.

Here are some of the questions the Denver media have not even attempted to probe: Why did the University of Colorado Arts and Sciences administration continue to promote and laud Churchill after the late-1990s publication of professor Thomas LaVelle's articles alleging extensive academic fraud and plagiarism on Churchill's part? Are there other academic frauds and plagiarists at CU whom the administration has protected? How did CU become such a racist institution that a patently unqualified man was pushed for tenure in three departments because he claimed to be an Indian? How many other poorly-qualified teachers have gotten jobs at CU, based on their ethnicity or their pretended ethnicity? To what extent does the extreme left dominate hiring at CU, so that highly qualified applicants for teaching positions are rejected, whereas politically correct hacks get the job? How often do other CU teachers act like Churchill allegedly did by punishing students for expressing opinions contrary to the teacher? Has CU protected other teachers who have been credibly accused of making violent threats and/or perpetrating on- and off-campus violent crimes against people who disagree with them?

A news article in the same paper suggests that Mr Churchill's tenure, a special case of defeat, is nontheless an orphan.

University of Colorado regents want to know how ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill was granted tenure without going through the usual process.

The people who made the decision have either gone to other positions or crossed the final summit. But their chickens have come home to roost. Calderon's Call takes a rather polemical look at how those chickens hatched and at their nesting instincts.

The Churchill affair neither is one of academic freedom versus an intolerant thought police nor a problem of tenure. It is the predictable outcome of a decades-long higher educational policy of creating, promoting, and tolerating Leftist-oriented niche programs that serve as outlets to every aggrieved, victim-hood-pleading, second-rate, so-called advocacy-scholar and activist “revolutionary”, crackpots who grow like barnacles on the flagship institutions ostensibly committed to higher learning. The best that can come out of the Churchill Affair is a thorough reevaluation of these niche programs by the consumers of higher education, namely students, parents, responsible scholars, trustees, provosts, alumni and alumnae, and only as a last resort, state legislators who of course funnel billions in taxpayers’ dollars to support
higher education in their respective states.

Tell us how you really feel. But leave aside that "consumer" talk, and learn the Principle of Derived Demand. Naw, better to rant.

Niche programs today run the gamut of aggrieved victimology groups and offer victim-hood courses in departments like African-American Studies; “Black” Studies; Chicano and Chicana Studies; Ethnic Studies; Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Studies; Hispanic Studies; Middle-Eastern Studies; Multi-cultural Studies; Native American Studies; Asian-Pacific Islander Studies; “Queer” Studies; Transgender Studies; and of course the venerable standby, Women’s Studies (alternately spelled “Womyn’s” Studies by the more radical, man-hating lesbian-feminist separatists). A collective of mediocrities and hardcore ideologues has gained access to full employment largely at taxpayer-funded state colleges and universities, mediocrities that otherwise would have ended up selling books at radical “cooperative bookstores” or herbal tea potions and organic food at any number of communes scattered across the United States.

Face it, these are departments in the Division of Cooling Out The Mark. Their presence gives the academy a bad name, and their graduates can contemplate their oppression while asking "want fries with that," while the serious work on cultural bias or discrimination or power can be done by the departments of long-standing. The Denver Post's Ed Quillen has a modest proposal: turf 'em out.

There's also the "Ward Churchill Problem," which could quickly be solved by eliminating the entire ethnic studies department. It's hardly a necessity, since the university managed to operate until 1993 without one.

It's misnamed, because its focus is on "Afro-American studies, American Indian studies, Asian American studies, Chicano/a studies," where "students gain substantive knowledge and expertise in one of the four specific racial/ethnic fields," according to the department's website.

Other ethic groups in Colorado history - the Irish miners of Leadville, the Italian quarry workers of Salida, the Slavs of the steel mills in Pueblo, the Jews trying to farm in 1882 near Cotopaxi, the Volgadeutsch of Weld County, the Balkan coal miners slain at Ludlow, to name a few - are apparently unworthy of study, or even mention, at CU these days.

So the ethnic studies department does not bother to study more than four ethnic groups, which is made clear in a required class, Foundations of Ethnic Studies. The catalog says this course "applies analytic perspectives, especially racial formation theory, to the experiences of the four principle (sic) peoples of color in the United States."

He'd like to toss the football program, too.

For starters, the new president should eliminate the football program. Without it, there aren't recruiting scandals that involve minors, alcohol, sex and drugs. Without football, no football-camp cash boxes. No football, no players subject to rape allegations. No football, no assistant coaches to be accused of having sex with student trainers.

But doesn't a big-time university need a big-time football program? The University of Chicago enjoys a good reputation, and it hasn't fielded a football team since 1939.

Yes, and that's the same Chicago that inspired the line "champions of the West" in the most-overplayed tune in the least creative college band's repertoire, and the line used to be "run the ball around Chicago" in On! Wisconsin!, and Chicago has been competing, in football, in a lower division, for the last few years. (We build nukes underneath our grandstands!) But I digress. Perhaps, as this commenter to this post notes, the university ought not be a Club Med with a few more books and Power Points than the usual resort.

But if that university is to be neither a Club Med nor a grievance factory, what sort of destructive testing of destructive ideas will it engage in?

M-A-C! Yesterday at about this time the sports guy on a Milwaukee radio station was pointing to a "winnable game" for the Team Formerly Known as the Marquette Warriors. There's Western Michigan from the Mid-American coming into the Bradley Center, no problem, right? Tee hee. (Fifty-four-forty-no-fight!) The Mid-American has provided excellent training for coaches in several of the so-called income sports, and playing at our level isn't for the faint of heart. Mid-majors, indeed.

GOING DANCING. The University of Wisconsin women's hockey team accepts an invitation to the NCAA tournament. First game: at Dartmouth. I spoke with the captain of the 1977-1978 Dartmouth women's team on the Night Owl enroute from Providence south ... here come the Badgers.

The men's third game had 3,423 spectators. BOOOOOOO!

SEEKING ALTERNATIVES TO CHALK AND TALK. University Diaries points to Hugo at Cliopatria who points to Scott Inside Higher Ed all contemplating the evolution of the lecture into entertainment.

I will quote from Hugo at length.

One thing that would improve college teaching immensely would be mandatory drama and speech classes for all new faculty. Forget the expensive technology. Teach them how to use their voices, how to modulate their tones, how to string together an exciting narrative without notes. Teach them to make the passion that is surely inside them manifest in their words and in their movements. Teach them the forgotten art of the genuinely engaging lecture. Twelve years of college teaching (and over 120 classes taught in that time), as well as thousands of student evaluations, have made it clear to me that students really prefer a professor who is willing to bring his passion and energy into the classroom.

This is not to say that good teachers can't be both great lecturers and skilled employers of the latest technology. I have a few colleagues -- a very few -- whom I know to be both. But I do know that the college culture is one where innovation and novelty tend to be prized more than the ability to teach effectively using the same methods used for centuries. No one writes grants to get money to teach professors how to tell good stories using their memories and their voices alone. I think that's a pity. I, as the son and grandson of teachers, delight in knowing that I use little or nothing that those who came before me would not have used. I take inordinate, perhaps excessive, pride in that.

I expect to spend another 25 years teaching, perhaps more. I am always interested in developing new classes and discussing new ideas. But I have yet to see the need to show many videos, or to have a smart classroom, or to put up Power Point whatevers for my students. Don't wire my classroom. Give me a cup of coffee, put chalk in my hand, put me in front of a blackboard, and let me do my damn job.

Technology faddists, note: Power Point is not an "active learning" alternative to lecturing. If anything, Power Point, and the even more unproductive use of technology called the video, provide even less of an opportunity for give-and-take than the lecture. The largest of lecture halls provides opportunity for the lecturer to maintain eye contact, to look for visual cues that people are not following the presentation (it is bad form to bring a stock of tennis balls to catch the attention of the catnapper in the back row), and to encourage and to take questions.

Furthermore, many users of Power Point, or of the do-it-yourself overheads, use them in such a way as to diminish the role of the lecturer either to clarify points or -- to use the language of the College of Deaducation -- as "facilitator." Darned little "facilitating" going on if the presenter limits himself to reading his slide to you aloud while you have read it silently and are waiting for the supporting detail, and the custom of having the slides available for everybody as a handout before the presentation or for later downloading further diminishes the value of the presenter. (But perhaps those uses of "technology" appeal to administrators for just those reasons: once "facilitating" equates to "any dummy can read somebody else's slides^(*)" there's not much point in hiring expensive experts who can distinguish the uninformed question from the subtle but imprecise question, let alone do independent research.

^(*)Knew I had an earlier rant on this!)

THE REAL BRACKET-BUSTERS. Derrick Z. Jackson offers the Thought of the Day.

It must be unrealistic when your eighth-ranked men's basketball team is sitting on an 11 percent graduation rate.

He surveys a few men's college basketball teams that are not currently making grades, and a few that are.

Of the 46 schools, 31 -- a full two-thirds -- had a graduation rate of under 50 percent. Sixteen of the 31 were under 30 percent. Worse, 22 of the nation's top 46 teams -- nearly half -- have an African-American player graduation rate of under 30 percent. Nine schools -- Kentucky, Utah, Pacific, Oklahoma, Cincinnati, Nevada, Louisiana State, Wisconsin-Milwaukee (ugh, my alma mater) and Minnesota -- have a black graduation rate of zero. To be fair, Oklahoma, Pacific and UWM were over 925 for 2003-04. The NCAA will make graduation rates more current by adding successive years until it gets to a new four-year rolling report in 2006-07.

It will be amazing to see these schools scramble to avoid NCAA penalties. Of the 46 teams, only nine have a snapshot score of at least 925 and long-term graduation rates of at least 50 percent for both the team and African-American players: North Carolina, Syracuse, Michigan State, Villanova, Wisconsin, Old Dominion, Holy Cross, St. Mary's of California, and Pennsylvania.

The Heels, the Spartans, Villanova, and the Badgers. How's that for a dream Final Four? (There's probably a bracket conflict in here somewhere, but if I were on the seeding committee ...)

KEEPING THE PSHRINKS BUSY. I picked up a copy of the UWM Post, an unofficial publication for University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students. There's an advice column called "Sex and Relationships" by Devon Marie Wiesend that describes "Friends with benefits." (The site doesn't appear to have archives up to Northern Star standards, so this transcription from the paper copy will have to serve.) The question for March 9 is about a guy who has been hanging around a girl who is hot but troubled, and he wants to make a play for her but not a commitment. (Do such people come with warning labels?) The columnist answers a question with a question.

Well, to avoid your direct question for the moment, how much do you value your friendship? I've always found that friends with benefits shouldn't be good friends. There's a good chance, even if you become lovers, that the friendship will deteriorate.

Hmm, so if you keep your good friends at a distance, what are you getting involved with? Read on ...

An aside to the girls out there: men are easy...

I believe that many people in this country have quite a few friends they are attracted to -- take advantage of that. Only give this a shot if the friend is disposable. Let's be honest, on the importance scale, we all have friends that fall below sex. These are the friends you hit on.

Lovely. And people study domestic abuse ... will there be sufficient data to establish some connection between this instrumental view of commitment-free sex and a propensity to be mean to people one supposedly commits to?

THE OLD ORDER IS RAPIDLY CHANGING. Has it really been six years since the Tennessee Volunteers last won an NCAA title? And how long has Stanford been in the convex hull of the mix? Michigan State earns the right to wear home whites throughout the regional, with Florida State and defending champion Connecticut also in that regional. Some things don't change, however ... Wisconsin-Green Bay again opens on the home floor of its first opponent, Maryland, a No. 7 seeding.

FAMILIAR FOE, NEW OPPORTUNITY. Wisconsin advances to the WCHA quinta-finals in the Twin Cities, with the North Dakota Fighting Sioux first up on Thursday, the 17th.

LET'S PLAY THREE. Alaska-Anchorage takes game 2 from Wisconsin before 8,100 fans (better, but still BOOOOOOOO!)

OUCH. Word reaches the Superintendent's Office of a collision between a Union Pacific work extra and a Burlington Northern van train on the diamonds at Rochelle. More details as warranted. Sorry, I don't own the proper tools to live-blog a train wreck.

SECOND SECTION: The collision was Friday evening, it looks like a self-propelled rail grinder clipped some containers. By Sunday noon, most of the wreckage had been hauled away, although some remnants of a container were left along the north edge of the parking lot at the railfans' park. These things have jagged edges and are susceptible to being blown around by the wind so I got away from there fairly quickly. No good photo opportunities left.

JUST ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS THE RIGHT WAY. Suppose the air-quality people and the Highway Commission want to know something about local trucking, called "drayage," from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to warehouses and manufacturing establishments in the Los Angeles Basin. If you're Long Beach State's Kristen Monaco, you take a box of donuts and a stack of questionnaires to the port gates before the dockers report, and you learn all sorts of interesting things about a business in which the truckers own their tractors and act as subcontractors for the shippers or for the consignees. Beats another pass through a panel study or getting the security clearances to use the Census data. Today's Clever Research Tip for aspiring dissertators: don't treat the terms "source" and "Government web site" as equivalents.

STARTING THE PLAYOFFS PROPERLY. The University of Wisconsin hockey team spotted Alaska-Anchorage a 2-4 edge, then came back to win 5-4 at the Dane County Coliseum on Friday night. The attendance was 5,912. Big Ten basketball tournament notwithstanding, BOOOOOOOOO!

CURSED IF YOU DO, CURSED IF YOU DON'T. John in the Shadow of Mount Hollywood notes that the graduate programs in the United States produce more Ph.D.s than there are tenure track jobs for them. This phenomenon, which he correctly notes is glossed over at some of the academic weblogs, has been present since the mid-1970s, with The Progressive once editorializing (let's face it, any article in any opinion magazine is an editorial) "Ph.D., the new migrant." And yes, the effect of excess supply is to drive down salaries as well as to provide incentives to substitute contingent workers doing a lot of teaching for little pay in place of teacher-scholars with some time to think about new ideas, particularly if your vision of higher "education" is more Big Red Subway than Great Steel Fleet.

But what happens when the novices and the postulants notice that the abbeys are full? That's the situation in economics, where one school of thought holds that the occupational birth control is misguided, with "math bigots" controlling access to the graduate programs with dire consequences.

As a result, it is impossible to survive as an economics graduate student with a math background that is less than that of an undergraduate math major.

Methinks he doth protest too much. Most of the fundamental mathematical theorems for general equilibrium or game theory come in the first chapter of a basic real analysis text. (A colleague in math explains that the subsequent chapters tackle the kinds of abstractions that are more likely to appeal to pure mathematicians.) Micha at Catallarchy contends that the mathematization serves the same function as the liquor licensing board, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the bar exam, namely to lessen competition and restrain trade. (Thanks to A Constrained Vision for the links.) I'm not prepared to grant that (yes, I have a vested interest in the status quo, but there are as-yet unexploited extensions of the existing paradigm for the clever.

A second school of thought is concerned that there is a disconnect between the undergraduate program and the graduate program, and that might be affecting the domestic supply of graduate students. An all-star panel at the Midwest Economics Association convened to address that problem. The share of enrollment in U.S. Ph.D. programs of students who did undergraduate degrees in U.S. universities peaked in 1976 (let's see, that's about when the "new migrant" meme came out), and the total production of economics Ph.D.s has remained constant since then, although total Ph.D.s in all social sciences has continued to increase (more boxcars to convert into coaches?)

This panel looked at the domestic supply of Ph.D. students, identifying the Ph.D.-degree granting universities (the "big football schools," which might describe Northern Illinois) and the elite private colleges (which enroll many children of the existing faculty.) The program at Swarthmore provides future economics Ph.D.s, many of whom you'd recognize if I had remembered to write their names down. But Swarthmore provides an interesting mirror to hold up to look at the demand side of the equation. Future economics majors respond to incentives. We have a downturn in enrollments after 1975, about the same time the Silent Generation and early hippie cohorts snagged a lot of the tenured slots. Then let's compare and contrast two departments with eleven faculty members, Swarthmore, and Northern Illinois two years ago. We have more accounting majors than Swarthmore has majors of all kinds. The work is rewarding, but you have to like it, and you can't be too in love with making money to be happy in the mid-majors. Sure, it would be nice to offer all undergraduates the kind of temptation to do economics and the kind of support that Swarthmore does, but that would be too Great Steel Fleet for all too many administrators still mired in a Big Red Subway, "Lay off six of those men!" mentality. Likewise, a core curriculum for undergraduates with a required derivative-producing calculus sequence as a prerequisite to economics or finance would help break the disconnect between the undergraduate, literary economics tradition, and the graduate, set-theoretic way of thinking. But that would involve REQUIREMENTS. Can't have that.

A participant in the session, who attended the undergraduate program that provides the most U.S. economics Ph.D.,s (Seoul National University, if you're curious) correctly objected to a subtext of the panel, which is "there aren't enough U.S. graduate students in your programs." He, correctly, didn't like being treated as an outsider. Administrators, however, ought keep in mind that if professoring is such a cushy job for such high pay, there ought to be swarms of domestic students lining up for a shot at those jobs. Not the case. I wonder why not?

Wouldn't it be better for those administrators to consider a few more useful actions, such as tightening admission and graduation requirements, and paying entry-level economics faculty more?

NOW TAKE THE REST OF THE ADVICE. Spring break is here, and I recommended that the theory class take a bit of down-time after most of them had confronted three exams within a week in the face of a rather grueling first eight weeks, a busy recruiting season, and a January that won't go away.

Apparently some did.

Now for the rest of my advice.

1. Whenever possible, prepare answers to homework problems and exams as if you were writing for Econometrica.

2. Whenever the objective function is a closed form of two variables, use the constraint to solve for one of the two variables in terms of the other and the parameters, find the zero of one first derivative, and evaluate the sign of one second derivative.

Will I see as much acceptance of this advice as I did of "stand down?"

MARKING OFF. The Midwest Economics Association conference calls at Milwaukee, where the Marquette Not-The-Warriors again avoid having to play the Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panthers, this year by failing to win the Conference USA tournament. Spring Break is next week. Thanks for looking in.

REAL ECONOMISTS DON'T DO INTEREST RATE FORECASTS ON TV. Russell at Cafe Hayek is thinking about the public image of economists, and he provides the Quote of the Day.

It may be the result of our penchant as economists for using the word "competition." I use it all the time. I understand it to mean the propensity of humans to truck, barter and exchange. But for too many, the word conveys the zero-sum game world of sports. Maybe we should stop using it.

I, too, use "competition" a lot, to refer to the discovery and consummation of gains from trade. Let's see, wasn't "intercourse" an archaic term for "commerce?" Time to take a holiday.

THE BIG RED SUBWAY AND THE GREAT STEEL FLEET. I have found several posts suggesting that academic tenure limits the flexibility of the academy to respond to changing enrollment patterns. A number of these posts draw parallels to the passenger transportation industry, something to which I can claim some expertise. Wormtalk and Slugspeak spells out the basic problem.

Administrators would like to address the problem, but if you can't reduce the number of tenured faculty in department A, it's budgetarily dangerous to increase the number of tenured faculty in department B. So things just stay the same, and administrators make up the difference with exploitation of adjunct faculty.

That's the basic flexibility problem. This observation, within the same post, illustrates a problem that requires a separate analysis.

Obviously administrators would have a lot more flexibility in staffing courses if they weren't constrained by tenure. Administrators could also continually replace senior faculty with less-expensive junior faculty. The senior faculty and all the junior faculty who hope to become senior faculty (i.e., all the faculty in TT or T jobs) know this, and it is by far the biggest reason for the ferocity of the defense of tenure.

As an exercise, ask yourself whether you'd prefer to compensate, and then pension off, the best researchers the same way that professional sports does. But that's for another day. I want to focus on the flexibility argument. Blogs for Industry provides a focal point, using budget airlines as a metaphor for flexibility.

The airplanes may be moveable to different routes, but they're expensive, long-term investments. Changing the routing is nontrivial, as an airline also has to deal with landing rights, gate space, maintenance facilities, the various employees from mechanics to pilots who may have to be housed overnight more often in St. Louis, away from homes and families, and moving the planes around the cities they serve so that moving planes to St. Louis doesn't cost them more than they'd make serving the demand. In fact, increased demand is often unmet by major carriers, creating market opportunities for the Southwests and Jet Blues of the world, and driving the Pan Ams and TWAs under. These new carriers, which have more fuel-efficient planes, lower labor costs, and niche market advantages, can drive decreases in the price of air travel - the benefits of deregulation for those of us who travel, and a nice example of why "pro-market" is not the same as "pro-business"...as long as "creative distruction" is happening at the level of companies and not actual airplanes. I'm not an economist but this is my impression of the state of the airline industry.

Why hasn't this sort of thing happened in academia? Where are the Southwests and Jet Blues to teach government to Dartmouth students?

The Southwests and Jet Blues are called Northern Illinois and St. Cloud State, and the lifetime prospects for graduates with comparable talents and ambitions to their contemporaries at the Ivies are just as good. That's the Ivy degree as positional arms race among parents, something else that I've been following for some time. Presumably the "Dartmouth students" who want comparable lifetime rewards at Southwest prices are at Northern Illinois. But that doesn't completely answer the question. John in the Shadow of Mount Hollywood suggests that the oversubscribed course problem at his alma mater, Dartmouth, is comparable to the poor service on Amtrak.

If I were foolhardy enough to book long-distance travel on Amtrak, and in consequence found myself asking the conductor, "Wait a minute -- I paid four or five times to ride on Amtrak what I'd pay to fly to Chicago on Southwest, and here I'm riding in a car that smells like s--t. Why does this car smell like s--t?" I could expect an answer not much dfferent from Prof. Sa'adah's reply to disgruntled students and alumni: "Sir, it's very complicated. And it's just not fair to complain that this particular car smells like s--t. We have several other cars on the train that do not smell like s--t. Any report on the web that all the cars smell like s--t is just inaccurate. The baggage car, in fact, smells very clean right now. And we're doing everything we can to try to clean all the cars when we get to Chicago, but frankly, if you've ever had to get three kids in the car and make it to Sunday school on time with them, you can understand our problem. We're trying to get budget to hire more car cleaners. It's all very complicated. Have a nice day, sir."

Amtrak is probably a poor analogy, as it is even more a political creature and it is less productive than higher education, even if its shameless redefinition of "on time" might have inspired the academy to look at six-year graduation rates. But it's an analogy that gets me thinking about some transportation history, and hence the title of my post. Right now, higher education would be a growth industry. (Enrollments at Northern Illinois are historically high. My department is a faculty of 13 with three adjuncts. When I started in 1986 we were a faculty of 23 with a number of adjuncts, each teaching fewer courses per person.) The tenure system might saddle universities with irreversibilities that makes them less responsive to changes in student demand than some other set of labor relations might allow, and administrators exploit adjuncts (to a larger extent in some disciplines than in others). But the tenure system might also serve as a constraint to encourage universities to ration their services differently. Hence the contrast between the Great Steel Fleet and the Big Red Subway. During and after the Second World War, the New York Central Railroad's Great Steel Fleet (note the precision implicit in "on time!") continued to offer a premium service (although rationing limited the food service in the dining cars, often that was restricted to uniformed armed services personnel) but when the train sold out, travelers were out of luck. (Interstate Commerce Commission regulations precluded the New York Central from raising fares to allocate the space efficiently. University trustees are under no such compulsion.) The Pennsylvania Railroad's Big Red Subway would accommodate everybody, sometimes late, often in a converted box car (I am not making this up, the illustrated caboose is a war emergency caboose and it may have been converted from a box car to a coach before it was converted to a caboose) and there might not have been seats for everybody, but you got there.

Blogs for Industry spells out part of the problem.

The long term question, then, is whether the designer universities can justify their higher cost relative to the coming wave of Outsource Universities to students, parents, and in the case of state institutions, to taxpayers. Having a product that is actually different and better would help. As I am as close to a true believer in the post-WWII research university as anyone I've met, I think this can and should be what we do, and why things like tenure and academic freedom can be justified as more than just special pleading.

The unanswered question is, can the Outsource Universities do as well by their students as the traditional research universities. My position is that the traditional research universities are to the Outsource Universities as the Great Steel Fleet is to the Big Red Subway. The Outsource Universities might offer people an opportunity to talk shop with colleagues in related businesses, but that's not the same thing as a liberal arts education. (And let us not forget Adam Smith: "People of the same trade seldom gather together, even for diversion and merriment ...") Research matters. Tenure as we understand it has a purpose. I will defend these positions, probably next week, which is spring break and it offers some thinking time I haven't had recently.

I pledge also to continue the trashing of the "access" fiction, the "assessment" follies, and the depressingly high defect rate in higher education. But those are a consequence of administrations undermining the authority of the faculty -- sometimes with the connivance of the faculty -- rather than evidence of the shortcomings of tenure.

RETHINKING THE CANONICAL EXAMPLES? One of the questions on the just-concluded graduate price theory exam is a logic question: if x₁ is a complement to x₂, and x₂ is a complement to x₃, must x₁ be a complement to x₃? Answer: no. A counterexample can be a disproof. Many of the students had learned the same counterexample, as I read numerous answers (from people who were sitting well apart from each other and whose answers to other questions were different, no cheating scandal brewing here, move along ...) offering coffee as a complement to sugar, sugar as a complement to tea, but tea as a substitute for coffee.

Fair enough, but the canon will have to be modified in light of the chai latte.

A NASH EQUILIBRIUM. A Constrained Vision links to a Business Weak For Stoners (bear with me, I just finished grading large stacks of bluebooks and problem sets, and there was a diplomatic resolution addressing the shortcomings of the women's basketball team, so this is therapeutic) article questioning the usefulness of game theory. Eclectic Econoclast begs to differ, noting that "as-if" marginalist theorizing stands up to simple questions about how businesses behave. The analogue for game theory would be "Do your forecasts about rival behavior credit them with doing what is best for their company?

I suggest that game theory is more useful in making sense of other behaviors. Consider the recent resignation of Colorado president Elizabeth Hoffman. View From A Height has an interesting characterization of Colorado's problem: he calls it a case of "terminal State-U-ism."

At Colorado, here's what that means.Flash forward to 2005. In the last couple of years, it's become clear that Colorado's branding initiative has yielded a football helmet. And now, the brand is so tarnished that if you tried to polish it, it would break apart like some relic from the Titanic. Sex scandals, recruiting scandals, alcohol scandals, money scandals, CU Foundations, summer camps.

A provocative John Andrews column in the Denver Post notes the same phenomenon. He'd like to unbundle state financial aid for students from state operation of universities. (Heck, in Illinois that is happening by default, one of these days somebody is going to look at the pittance coming from Springfield and the micromanagement that comes with it and find the stones to say "sod off," but again I'm venting.) But read on.

Still, we pour hundreds of millions of tax dollars into all these colleges. Then we're shocked to learn of curriculum meltdown, grade inflation, alcohol deaths, football scandals, foundation slush funds, leftist bullies in the classroom and tenured radicals who taunt that they "don't work for" us poor schmucks who pay their big salaries.

Making college possible is a valid public purpose. Owning and running a bunch of colleges may not be. Why not let nonprofit boards of trustees do that - and devote our whole budget to helping needy students pay tuition? If the GI Bill was good enough for the Greatest Generation, isn't it good enough for 21st-century Colorado?

It is that first paragraph to which I wish to speak. Although it is dangerous to generalize from my own experience, particularly with a small sample, I have yet to encounter a young person in the Midwest who has attended Colorado for the academics, although they will speak highly of the "lifestyle opportunities" (I think that means skiing every day for five months) the university offers them. And hence, the Nash equilibrium. The professors would like to do their research. The undergraduates would like to ski. The payoff to a professor who can use office hours to do research rather than work with students is larger given that the students are on the slopes. The payoff to a student who would like to ski rather than attend class or study is larger given that the professors are dealing in inflated grades anyway. Thus if the reward to a professor is r and the reward to a student is s, both r(research,ski) > r(advise,ski) and s(ski,research) > s(inquisitive,research) . Neither the students nor the professors have cause to regret their actions, given the actions of the professors and the students, which means the students and the professors are using their Nash equilibrium strategies.

That, by the way, puts this Denver Post editorial in a different light.

The investigators are operating between a rock and a hard place - to find fault they must overcome their past decisions to grant Churchill fat salary increases and upbeat job evaluations.

Put another way, they must find reason to regret their previous actions, which might have been Nash at the time they made them. No surprise, then, that the administrators impede the investigation.

Why is it only now that the scandals are coming to light at Colorado?

WHY I KEEP POSTING THE SAME THINGS. Milwaukee's Charlie Sykes links to a disturbing article about shortages of skilled workers.

Manufacturers already are struggling with unfilled job openings because they can't find qualified help, said John Engler, president of the group and former governor of Michigan.

"The emerging problem in manufacturing is not a shortage of jobs, but rather a shortage of qualified applicants," Engler said.

"A full 36 percent of our members have said they have employment positions unfilled right now because they cannot find qualified workers. This confirms what our members have been telling us: that the people applying for manufacturing jobs today simply do not have the math, science and technological aptitude they need to work in modern manufacturing."

So much for shop class as a dumping ground for the stoners and burnouts. Yes, I'm talking about those humanities professors who couldn't carry my calipers too.

"But there are very few companies looking for low-skilled workers," Engler said. "That's not where the demand is."

Instead, companies aren't able to find enough qualified help to work in an increasingly technical and more demanding manufacturing environment, according to Engler.

"I am not saying you have to know complex algebra to get a job on the plant floor, but you do need fundamental math, science and communication skills," he said. "You can't be illiterate and communicate with other members on a manufacturing team."

Why, then, continue to frame math -- particularly computation and estimation, not analysis -- and the lab sciences, not to mention rhetoric and composition as college-prep stuff? (That preparation isn't being done terribly well, either, but that rant is here.) Those are all things the high schools used to do, and in my view better years ago, and it continues to serve all our students ... whether they be desk jockeys, disk jockeys, Dash-8 jockeys or Demag jockeys ... well to have those skills. Call it a core curriculum, not college prep. And the inefficiency of college-for-all is getting the attention it deserves.

Parents and teachers are partly to blame for the shortage of skilled workers, said Phyllis Eisen, vice president of the Manufacturing Institute, the research and education arm of the National Association of Manufacturers. They have promoted four-year college degrees as the key to success, even if those degrees are not well connected with current employment trends, Eisen said.

Hey, King, I see an allusion to your Department of the 3.7 GPA and all of those [your choice here] studies programs.

CARNIVAL CALL. The Carnival of the Capitalists calls at Blog Critics, where the Chief Critic was kind enough to provide a link to my poster contest announcement. Thanks!

DIPLOMACY. Northern Illinois head Women's Basketball coach Carol Hammerle announces her retirement.

“After 32 years of coaching, I believe it is in the best interest of the NIU women’s basketball program and myself to retire,” Hammerle said. “At this point, the team has a strong foundation of talented, young women who have the potential to be successful. I would like to thank Athletics Director Jim Phillips for his outstanding support throughout the season, as well as the administration, the university, and the community for the opportunity to be part of this program."

That's an interesting way of describing the situation.

Hammerle has produced at least one All-MAC performer in each of the last six seasons---Michele Johnson (Honorable Mention in 1999-2000 and Second-Team in 2000-01), Jennifer Youngblood (Honorable Mention in 2000-01 and 2003-04, plus Second-Team in 2001-02 and 2002-03), Kristan Knake (Honorable Mention in 2001-02), and Stephanie Raymond (Third-Team in 2004-05).

The news coverage of Ms. Raymond's honor is also interesting.

"I was a little disappointed because I was looking at the stat sheet and I thought that I could have been on the second team."

I trust that the athletic department is serious about its intentions to conduct a proper search.

A national search will be conducted for Hammerle’s successor, according to NIU Director of Athletics Jim Phillips.

In the past ten years, young women have been denied the opportunity to develop as players at Northern Illinois University. In both of the previous searches, the search committee hired an individual with a strong record at a lower level of competition who also symbolized the university's commitment to diversifying its staff. But are 350 wins in lower divisions the athletic equivalent of fifty articles in Rivista Internazionale Numero Due di Bovini? Will the outcome of this year's search be more of the same?

DIABOLICAL. Okay ... Welcome, Villainous Company readers.

SAME OLD, SAME OLD. Rockets cash in at foul line to end NIU women's season.

Northern Illinois University head coach Carol Hammerle has talked about a marked foul disparity between the Huskies and their opponents all season.

Perhaps it seemed somehow fitting that the University of Toledo shot 32 free throws while NIU was allowed only half that number during Saturday's first-round game of the Kraft Mid-American Conference Women's Basket-ball Tournament. That gap played a role in the No. 6-seeded Rockets gaining a five-point halftime lead en route to an eventual 76-61 victory over the No. 11-seeded Huskies.

Fitting? Or simply par for the course?

IT'S FICTION. Book Review No. 10 is Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (details or compare prices), a counter-fictional that starts with Charles Lindbergh defeating Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 Presidential election on a peace platform. President Lindbergh works with Christian nativists and some secret help from the Germans to encourage businesses to engage in Jim Crow practices against Jewish customers, as well as to create an Office of American Absorption to answer the "Jewish question" in the U.S. (Canada along with the rest of the Commonwealth is assisting England and the Soviet Union against Germany) by breaking up Jewish communities, encouraging Jewish families to live amongst Gentiles, and otherwise forcing assimilation. (Mr Roth does not serve up his usual gratuitous sex references.)

Walter Winchell becomes a presidential aspirant in part to reverse the policies of the Lindbergh administration. I do not want to give away too many of the plot details as the resolution is a bit contrived, but the United States does end up in the war on the British and Soviet side, and the postwar world is pretty much the world we know.

People who would like to foster greater understanding among people by compelling association might do well to read those parts of the book, to understand the dynamics that compelled association sets up, some positive, many not. Roth's Office of American Absorption comes off as the oppressive scheme it really is. Will the forced association being contemplated in some Nebraska school districts one day be seen in the same light?

HIGH-TECH DIRIGIBLES. Photon Courier reports that Graf von Zeppelin's concept is enjoying a new life, with carbon-fiber framing and helium (not made available by the U.S. Navy to the German government in the 1930s) providing the lift.

GET A GOOD START AND SAIL ON THE LIFTED TACK. Sailing is fun, and learning to win is rewarding for everybody.

Where she once saw fear and danger, Patricia McLemore now finds serenity and challenge. Serenity comes with the flapping of a sail against the mast, the challenge from carefully steering a sailboat into the harbor.

It's an inner peace that wells up from the feel of the helm and the skills McLemore says she has learned from the sport of sailing.

Read the rest.

RULES WRITTEN IN BLOOD. Book Review No. 9 is 102 Minutes (details or compare prices), which tells the story of the attempts by people trapped inside the World Trade Center to get out.

The book identifies a number of lessons learned from the 1993 bombing in the parking garage, some of which the tenants knew and some -- most notably the decision to lock the doors leading to the roof, despite helicopter rescues in 1993 -- which tenants did not know.

New York's emergency services come in for some criticism, as police and fire radios were not always compatible. Police helicopters noted a weakening of both towers above the crash site but police were unable to get the word to firefighters inside the building. The knowledge that one emergency stairwell in the south tower remained open could not be communicated to people above the crash floors, as the 911 operators did not get the word.

Changes in building design philosophy also come in for some criticism. Apparently tests on the floor trusses established that 70 foot trusses would stand up to fire, but those results did not generalize to the 140 foot trusses actually used. Revisions to building codes that permitted builders to eliminate reinforced fire stairs in order to free up more rentable space might have contributed to occupants' inability to leave, although the optimal provision of reinforced stairs sufficiently dispersed that a single plane crash cannot destroy all of them remains as a project for future research.

FRIDAY RAIL BLOGGING. An Eastern train calls at Specht's Ferry, Iowa on the Fox Valley O Scalers layout.

The baggage car is my work, from an All-Nation kit. The combination car is a Walthers kit that somebody else built. I added the interior to it. The coach is a Sunset ready-to-run with lights and interior.

PROCESS, NUANCE, FAILURE. Newmark's Door picks up a message to National Review's Jay Nordlinger drawing a contrast between the people who Get Things Done and the people who like to show off how clever they are.

[Harvard president and economist Larry] Summers is quintessentially an MIT man (of the post-WWII, pre-1980s MIT, after which things changed). This means he focuses at work on solving complex real-world problems in a limited time with available resources. People who are good at this (they can be engineers or scientists) are both extremely creative and completely realistic. They clarify problems, re-framing them in new ways as necessary, aiming for the best solution possible under the circumstances, recognizing that a better one might come along in the future. They have little interest in or patience with talk for talk's sake, talk that isn't relevant to actions, talk focused primarily on establishing the speaker's self-image and status, and they pretty much tune it out. Since this way of thinking and acting isn't part of the, shall we say, skill set of most of Harvard's Arts and Sciences faculty, they haven't a clue where Summers is coming from. So they assimilate his actions into a more-familiar-to-them model of corporate management and complain about his predilection for "hierarchical decision making" and lack of "collegiality." They focus on process (an essentially bureaucratic perspective, though they have more self-flattering language for it) while Summers focuses on interactions and information that produce solutions to problems.

Milt's File finds a K. C. Johnson post at Inside Higher Education that makes the same point.

Many aspects of this case, of course, are peculiar to Harvard: questions about Summers' efforts to expand the Allston section of the campus; a feeling among many professors that the president has not treated them with appropriate respect; a belief that Summers uses an overly centralized approach in running the university. At Tuesday's faculty meeting, Caroline Hoxby, an economics professor, observed that concern over Summers' management style, not a battle of "right versus left" about political correctness, accounted for the faculty uprising.

The linked post, also on Inside Higher Education, has more.

Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard's embattled president, apologized to faculty members Tuesday not only for his comments about women and science, but for a management style that many have said is too domineering.

There is more to this story than meets the eye. Many faculty members take faculty governance seriously and view attempts by department chairmen, deans, presidents and trustees to expand their powers as actions to be viewed with the most serious, and with the most skeptical attentions. It is also true that many faculty members become involved in faculty governance out of a lack of other things to do, a phenomenon that I have encountered frequently here. It is no accident that many of those individuals are of the age group that Vice President Agnew once referred to as "nattering nabobs of negativism." Many such individuals would rather dither over process and posture, which might be fine if one is conferring honorary degrees or matching donations to naming rights, but it's darned annoying when promotions, tenure, or curriculum are at stake. Yadda yadda yadda ...

But these are the people who become individuals that prevent productive work from being done, and the administrative proliferation in response to assorted "crises" that John in the Shadow of Mt. Hollywood correctly predicts (based on my experience) provides additional opportunities for the vicars of vacillation (another great Agnew reference to that age group) to interfere with the productive work.

Somewhere in my cruising through the posts on tenure I found a post suggesting that some senior academics continue to be helpful by serving on committees. Can't provide a link, sorry, but have to use a pet engineering expression to reply to that: Up. To. A. Point.

YOUNGSTERS CLEAR ON THE CONCEPT. One of the pleasures of operating the Office of Economic Education at Northern Illinois University is the opportunity to run the annual Economics Concepts Poster Contest. The winning and honorable mention entries in the 2004-2005 Regional competition are now available for your viewing pleasure.

KUDOS. Florida State's Sue Semrau has been named ACC Coach of the Year and she joins Kansas State's Deb Patterson, along with many of the usual suspects, on the short list for the Naismith Award.

MORE REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL. The mud-season weight restrictions have been posted on the county roads, and WGN Radio have commenced broadcasts of Chicago Cubs spring-training games.

TIME TO START A LIFE AS WELL AS A CAREER? The Chronicle of Higher Education covers a report recommending changes in the way scholars establish themselves.

In particular, the report says, women are being driven away from careers at research universities because of the lock-step nature of a tenure-track career. That is happening even though women now earn 51 percent of the doctorates conferred by American universities (The Chronicle, December 3). If careers in higher education do not become more flexible, the report says, universities will continue to lose out on talented women, particularly those who want to have children. Already, female faculty members say they are much less satisfied with their jobs than men say they are, according to the report.

Part of the problem is that departments are run by men who "typically have spouses or partners who do not work or work only part time to manage their home lives," says the report. Young faculty members, by contrast, are much more likely to have partners who work. "Consequently, faculty homes with spouses or partners to manage the family and household are becoming obsolete," says the report.

That's the Say Aggregation Principle catching up with young workers, and the problem is not limited to the academy.

Playing School, Irreverently, suggests that the job dissatisfaction is not limited to working moms.

And is that why universities lose female faculty? This bit about wanting to have children assumes that by the time one arrives on campus one has a spouse and is ready to procreate. Or has spouse and kids already. It totally ignores that many new faculty have focused on school, not social lives, for years and then suddenly find themselves uprooted to parts of the country where they know no one. They get a demanding job, and then work either in relative isolation (research, writing) or with people who are not suitable friends/dating material (students, departmental colleagues). No one really seems to pay attention to that problem, but I've known 3 women who have left for that reason ... and it is possible that in a year or two I would make myself a 4th.

So, looking at this proposed tenure delay idea ... can I take 10 years to tenure because I need time to meet men, date, and figure out if I want to get married and/or have a kid? Or because I need to travel long distances regularly to see friends and family in order to be happy? Because if I had a corporate job I'd have made my choice in part based on geography.

And presumably working men would benefit by a similar dispensation. How then to balance the income effect of greater prosperity, which works in favor of shorter and more flexible working hours independently of any explicit policy, against the competition effect, in which the individuals willing to work harder (the most independent men and women, for the most part?) will get to the prizes first? The French solution of legislating a shorter work week has not been particularly successful.

MEEP MEEP! The Carnival of the Capitalists calls at Coyote Blog, who has found the right sponsor for his show.

QUESTION OF THE DAY. A professor who wishes to remain anonymous asks,

Is anyone else bothered that our primary feedback on our work comes from children? I'm talking, of course, about course evaluations. But if you think about it for a minute, it's true: most jobs, you complete a project, someone tells you good job (or should). Moreover, the people who observe and evaluate your work are peers and superiors. In academia, the people who observe and evaluate you on a day-to-day basis are distracted 18-year olds who don't understand what your job actually is.

But they say the most interesting things.

"She expects us to be too mature"
"She expects us to actually be interested in the course material on our own" (this was listed as a "weakness" of mine)
"Professor ... doesn't know how to lecture"
"Too much work on WebCT! I signed up for a lecture course, not a distance learning course"
"I do not pay to hear what other students think. I pay to hear what the instructor thinks"
"Her regionalisms [from a different part of the country] bother me"
"By requiring us to post on WebCT before class, she forced us to do the reading ahead of time, which is very difficult and unfair for students with other obligations."

The post has hit a nerve with the professor's readers, there are lots of comments. That last one is priceless (as if a student lacks the life management skills to include reading ahead of time among other obligations but mirabile dictu finds the time to read afterwards!)

Among the comments is this gem:

"She favors smart students over the regular students which is bias."

Hee hee. Life after college is the revenge of the nerds. Deal. Then there's this:

"She's too smart to be my teacher."

You can't make up stuff like this. And, unfortunately, identity politics has appeared to have poisoned the well.

"This was supposed to be a class on great Victorian literature, but half the writers were women."

Let me guess: George Eliot, assorted Brontes, Jane Austen?

I had some fun with course evaluation comments last summer. The sequel will be this June.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST. David Horowitz gave a talk at St. John's in to the west of the Cities (not to be confused with the old basketball power in New York.) King at SCSU Scholars and P.Z. at Pharyngula offer differing perspectives on the presentation.

I'VE BEEN EVERYWHERE, MAN:

Bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho^(*) / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana^(*) / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota^(*) / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon^(*) / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

^(*)Passed through on a train, with perhaps a quick trip into a station for a newspaper.

And yes, I have been at the Four Corners.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT. Dean's World has pictures.

Clearly neither dowdy nor frumpy

There's also a new bumper sticker for your consideration.

IT IS TO LAUGH. Virginia Postrel interviews Claudia Goldin, who introduced me to the principles of economics.

Economists dress one way, and people in the English department dress another way.

Katie at Constrained Vision picks up the thread. Economists have nothing to apologize for.

My English-major roommate often delighted in telling me how the English department was much hotter than the economics department. She was undoubtedly correct, but after reading Goldin and Postrel, I realize now that I should have told her that I prefer substance to style.

Why not go for both ... the ladies of the English department, even the younger ones, epitomize frumpy when they're not epitomizing dowdy, if they're not epitomizing butch. At least that's the case here.

JUST NORTHWEST OF KISHWAUKETOE. Jiblog attended Ward Churchill's speech at Wisconsin-Whitewater, and has pictures and commentary. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, keep that pointer moving, Though Blogger's disapproving...

Expect additional sections of this post tomorrow as more correspondents from north of the Cheddar Curtain check in.

SECOND SECTION: Sean at The American Mind was there, and took additional pictures. Brainpost also attended, and filed a report. Charlie Sykes noted that some protestors there to defend Mr Churchill's right to free speech found a prayer vigil for the September 11 dead to be an inappropriate exercise of free speech.

When the minister tried to lead the crowd in prayer in memory of the dead -- they continued the shout down, and largely succeeded in drowning out the prayer.

A speaker with a megaphone performed a rap-left-wing-screed shoutdown all through the prayer and the moment of silence. If his fellow radicals had any sense of shame, it wasn't apparent.

This is beyond boorish. It was hate on display.

Professor Althouse covered the story, more out of obligation than to discover any originality (or perhaps -- check the time stamp -- because even the same old arguments from the left that there are no innocents were insufficient to bore her to sleep?)

I find him incredibly boring, saying the sort of tired old things that radicals have been saying for as long as we can remember. He's getting way too much leverage out of a metaphor, and it's not even an inventive metaphor.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's coverage observes, without commentary, the academy's dodge of excluding controversial speakers for safety reasons.

Media coverage, especially on conservative talk shows, has turned Churchill into a villain for people who believe he's unpatriotic and not using academic freedom responsibly. Some colleges, citing security, have canceled his talks.

You'd think, with all that sensitivity training that goes on in freshman orientation, that campus audiences would be more mannerly. Oh, wait a minute, "mannerly" has hegemonic overtones, doesn't it.

A REPLACEMENT POST. This is a restored post from my saved files. If there's one much like it, stamped one minute earlier, the archives have been fixed.

FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE.

On! Wisconsin!

The UWM Fight Song.

Come on, UWM, come up with a snappy title for this.
Or find a suitable beer-drinking tune to adapt. There's more "fight" in this than there is in a bad campaign speech...

These links will remain at the top of the site until further notice.

DUDE, YOU MEAN THERE'S REALLY, LIKE, DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION? Not quite, but in response to a weekend stabbing near a fraternity house, the Northern Illinois University administration has had a Homer Simpson moment (Homer Simpson and false categorical syllogisms, d'oh!) and placed a moratorium on Greek-letter organizations having parties where adult beverages are sold, pending a review. University officials and representatives from the Greek-letter organizations had a confidential meeting to consider policy changes.

The editorial board at the Northern Star does not like the secrecy.

University officials left Greeks out in the cold this weekend by suspending all alcohol-related events indefinitely; they also left the Northern Star and students out in the cold Monday night by refusing to allow the Star access to a meeting where the past weekend’s events were being discussed.

Administrators refused to let the Star cover the meeting headed by Brian Hemphill, vice president of Student Affairs, and hear what both Greek leaders and NIU officials had to say about the recent stabbing, suspensions and safety on Greek Row.

While administrators didn’t refuse to comment on the matter after the meeting held in the Holmes Student Center’s Capitol South Room, there is no reason why members of the NIU community should be kept in the dark and fed bits and pieces of information that concern more than those sitting around the table at Monday’s meeting.

And although NIU’s intention to remedy a "problem" on Greek Row is good at heart, it is unfair and unjustified to punish the entire Greek system because of an incident that happened in the middle of the street outside a row of fraternity houses.

Reality check. Despite all the talk about "celebrating" diversity and "affirming" alternative life-styles (whatever that means), Greek-letter organizations are not eligible for celebration or affirmation, nor is their "marginalization" cause for concern.