WE SOLICIT YOUR ATTENTION. A quilting bee is in progress.

Northern Illinois University Libraries is asking local quilters for help in creating a memorial quilt dedicated to the victims of the Feb. 14 campus shooting that left six people, including the gunman, dead and 16 others injured.

The king-size quilt will have 288 red, black and white squares, NIU associate professor Rebecca Martin said. The 11-by-11-inch fabric squares will be distributed to people in the community, who are invited to decorate them before returning them to the library. A group of library staffers will then assemble the decorated squares into a finished quilt, Martin said.

There is a due date.

Any member of the community can pick up a free quilt square from the information desk inside Founders Memorial Library on Normal Road in DeKalb. The squares will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis.

Squares can be picked up from Monday through April 8, and finished squares must be returned in person or by mail no later than April 30.

The finished quilt will become a display in the library.

CONDOLENCES. Voluntary Xchange's David Tufte reports the death of his father.

RULES WRITTEN IN BLOOD. College admission season requires admissions personnel to temper principle with practicality.

In the first admissions season since the shooting rampages at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, college administrators say keeping students safe is of paramount importance.Yet despite questions about the psychological backgrounds of the two gunmen, officials say federal privacy laws prevent them from seeking more information about applicants with possible mental illnesses.

"There's no question that schools are being pressured to do something," said Doug Lederman, editor of Inside Higher Ed, an online daily journal that covers academia. "But what that should be remains an open question."

The growing national debate is accompanied by little consensus on how schools might spot red flags. While many advocates welcome the dialogue about depression, bipolar disorder and other diseases, others worry that increased scrutiny will lead to more secrecy, not less.

Consensus might not be reachable. Perhaps the laws err on the side of laxity toward individuals who are dangerous to themselves or to others. But a revised policy provides incentives for applicants to conceal their troubles, in hopes of passing as ordinary.

On the other hand, perhaps the academy will lose its fascination with transgressiveness.

Dr. Victor Schwartz, a psychiatrist and dean of students at New York's Yeshiva University, has heard that officials might rethink how they evaluate some essays.

"Ten years ago, an applicant writing at length about her struggles with an eating disorder . . . might be considered interesting or edgy," he said. "In the post-VT era, it might be more likely for an admissions committee to approach this applicant more hesitantly.

"When colleges are given access to confidential information, "it is often being weighed differently," said Schwartz, co-chairman of an American Psychiatric Association task force on the issue.

And thus, the revelation problem again. But "eating disorders?" Something there is about sorority pledge classes???

Moreover, we have to keep our therapies straight. An "eating disorder" is not a "learning disability" is not "certifiable."

After the shootings at Virginia Tech, a government report noted Cho's special-education plan did not follow him as he moved from high school to college.

Typically, students with a prior treatment history don't tip their hand, not when some highly selective schools admit less than 10 percent of applicants. Once accepted, though, the student often reveals the disorder and, with proper documentation, is eligible for accommodations ranging from textbooks on tape (for a reading disability) to a single room (for an anxiety disorder).

Some officials, insisting the system has too many holes, have been pushing for more candor.

These are different policies with different incentives. Because the College Board does not disclose who among the test-takers have made a case for extended time, the dominant strategy for applicants who don't mind shopping for a learning disability diagnosis is to get the extended time, then submit the application without the disclosure, then use the disclosure to obtain additional "accommodation" on tests and assignments. That's an abuse of higher education, but it ought be viewed differently from the abuse that follows from treating differences as "socially constructed" and susceptible to deconstruction or reconstruction or no construction. That's how people get killed.

But again, there's that disclosure problem.

If it were legal to "out" students, they would be less apt to get mental help in earlier grade levels, said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, an expert on psychiatry, law and ethics at Columbia University, which is holding its first conference on campus violence this week.

"Many students who have psychiatric histories thrive and excel in college, while others who experience problems have no such history," he noted.

A smarter strategy: Provide adequate mental health services and insurance coverage for students and implement outreach programs that encourage them to use the services, he said.

Dr. Peter A. DeMaria Jr., a psychiatrist at Temple University, is also anti-sleuthing. But he endorses vigilance once the student is enrolled.

Since the Virginia Tech shootings, Temple has created a "care team" that brings together staff members from different disciplines—security, counseling, academia—for weekly meetings, to ensure a freer flow of information. So the same student who has threatened his roommate and a professor may point to a larger problem.

Is it working? Said DeMaria, "We're very, very busy."

Even with support, though, people relapse. One North Shore mom whose child with bipolar disorder had a "meltdown" freshman year wonders if it would be more prudent to take a cautious approach.

"Perhaps kids on psych meds should not be permitted to 'go away' to college, but should stay closer to home, taking a few classes at a community college and gradual steps into independence. This is what we were advised, but we ignored it," said the mother, who adds that parental denial is a key factor.

"We all want to believe the kids are going to be OK," she said.

Hmmm. It takes a village, but the village has to have standards. Or perhaps other informal methods.

In a practice adopted at one college after another since the massacre at Virginia Tech, a University of Kentucky committee of deans, administrators, campus police and mental health officials has begun meeting regularly to discuss a watch list of troubled students and decide whether they need professional help or should be sent packing.

These “threat assessment groups” are aimed at heading off the kind of bloodshed seen at Virginia Tech a year ago and at Northern Illinois University last month.

“You've got to be way ahead of the game, so to speak, expect what may be coming. If you're able to identify behaviors early on and get these people assistance, it avoids disruptions in the classrooms and potential violence,” said Maj. Joe Monroe, interim police chief at Kentucky.

The Kentucky panel, called Students of Concern, held its first meeting last week and will convene at least twice a month to talk about students whose strange or disturbing behavior has come to their attention.

Such committees represent a change in thinking among U.S. college officials, who for a long time were reluctant to share information about students' mental health for fear of violating privacy laws.

“If a student is a danger to himself or others, all the privacy concerns go out the window,” said Patricia Terrell, vice president of student affairs, who created the panel.

Note: the problem cannot be worked without rethinking the privacy laws, and perhaps the concepts of access and accommodation. There is also the potential for abuse under the more formal procedures being implemented.

Students are encouraged during their freshman orientation to report suspicious behavior to the dean of students, and university employees all the way down to janitors and cafeteria workers are instructed to tell their supervisors if they see anything.

“If you look back at the Virginia Tech situation, the aftermath, there were several people who knew that student had problems, but because of privacy and different issues, they didn't talk to others about it,” said Lee Todd, [Kentucky] president.

High schools have been doing this sort of thing for years because of shootings, but only since Virginia Tech, when a disturbed student gunman killed 32 people and committed suicide, have colleges begun to follow suit, said Mike Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, a leading campus safety firm.Virginia Tech has added a threat assessment team since the massacre there. Boston University, the University of Utah, the University of Illinois-Chicago and numerous others also have such groups, said Gwendolyn Dungy, executive director of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.

Bryan Cloyd, a Virginia Tech accounting professor whose daughter Austin was killed in the rampage, welcomed the stepped-up efforts to monitor troubled students but stressed he doesn't want to turn every college campus into a “police state.”

“We can't afford to overreact,” Cloyd said, but “we also can't afford to underreact.”

Tradeoffs everywhere. Mr Cloyd's closing remark is significant, given the propensity of many a college campus already to approximate a "police state" where political nonconformity is concerned.

SAMUEL INSULL MIGHT APPROVE. Skokie Swift is back on weekends.

The weekend service will undergo a six-month "experimental evaluation," which will help determine if the service will be made permanent, said Wanda Taylor, a CTA spokeswoman.

The agency expects between 900 and 1,000 boardings a day on both Saturdays and Sundays, Taylor said. The weekend service is being funded by a federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program grant, Taylor said.

Sunday's resumption came with no fanfare. That afternoon, some of the cars ran empty, and some had up to eight people. CTA officials said the Yellow Line provides about 1,800 rides on an average weekday.

No sign at the Howard station announced the new service. But in Skokie, the mood was different. Outside the Dempster station was a large sign announcing the resumed service, and nearby business owners such as Cohen and other locals expressed excitement.

We await resumption of service to Old Orchard and Edison Court.

L-ITE EIGHT.The Chicago Tribune brings you the Rapid Transit bracket. There might be complaints about the entire right bracket being seeded from the Northwestern.

Instructions here.

FAILURE IS THE OBJECTIVE. So much for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Caroline Flint, the housing minister, will unveil the measure when she publishes planning guidelines later this week for up to 15 "eco-towns" across the UK, which will house 100,000 people.The Government wants the towns designed and built to encourage people to stay out of their cars.

It will introduce the low speed limit as a means of getting people to use public transport, walk more or use bicycles, with the aim of cutting pollution and increasing the quality of life for local residents.

Via The Transportationist, who links the article without comment.

I will show no such restraint. Where to begin?

Under the plans, the central areas of the new towns would be pedestrianised, with the 15mph limit introduced on "key roads" into the centre. All homes would be built within 400 yards of public transport stop and 800 yards from shops.

It's easy enough to limit vehicle speeds WITHOUT drawing up any expensive plans. All one need do is underestimate the growth potential of a city or town and then not build any new roads. Chicago's suburbs have been managing that for years. For that matter, there are townhouse and apartment clusters within half a mile (that's 880 yards) of many of DeKalb and Sycamore's new strip shopping developments. (My house also qualifies.) Do the planners really expect people to take half-mile bus trips to do the marketing? Or to do their marketing by frequent trips and small purchases that can be schlepped by foot or in a backpack on a bicycle? Perhaps there will be no parking spaces near the shops in order to further encourage such behavior. That is, if the communities don't become self-selected smuggeries with stagnant property values, as people exercise their option to live elsewhere.

WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. Two Rate Your Students posts make the case that academic mediocrity requires enablers. Sometimes it's retention run amok.

My institution use to have a policy that if a student missed more than six hours of class time they could be withdrawn by the instructor. Then some a****** in middle management decided that was unfair to students who only enrolled to keep their full time status and collect grants and loans. The result on attendance is just what you would imagine.

The effect on the poster's morale is evident.

Sometimes it's a convex combination of assessment and faith in a business model.

At my university, instruction is assessed along three metrics: student evaluation numbers, number of drops, and class grade point average. This is a brilliant bit of administrative jujitsu that allows chairs, deans, vindictive senior faculty etc. to punish nearly any non-tenured faculty member they want. People with high student evaluation numbers almost always either get rid of the deadwood early on (leading to high drops), or grade easily (leading to high class GPA). On the other hand people with low drops and/or low class GPAs get worse evaluations.

Not assessed: the job placement and career paths of the graduates. There are market tests.

GEGEN DIESEN IDIOTEN MUSS ICH VERLIEREN? Thus Aaron Nimzovitch's unusual resignation of a chess game, and thus some Wisconsin Sports Bar post-mortems on Davidson excusing Wisconsin from the basketball tournament. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Michael Hunt provides the unsparing annotations.

But as [Wisconsin coach Bo] Ryan so rightly noted, the Badgers could've won with [Stephen] Curry going off like that. But they had no chance when Davidson's supporting cast, forwards Thomas Sander and Andrew Lovedale, made all of their shots. Or when the Wildcats reduced UW's rock-steady swing offense to rubble by keeping the ball out of the guards' hands and denying the big men their customary shots up top.

Where the Badgers almost never got hurt in transition throughout 31 victories, the Wildcats beat them down the floor. Where Wisconsin denied shooters the ball and open looks beyond the arc, Davidson made half its 24 three-pointers. Where UW prided itself on being the better-prepared team, Davidson knocked the Badgers so far off their game that they bore scant resemblance to the outfit that had not lost since Feb. 9.

That left, as God intended and Bob Johnson used to provide, the men's hockey team as the last of the major winter sports teams playing, with an at-large bid and home ice (something that happened with some of the lower seeds in the women's basketball tournament as well). The combination was good enough for a win over Denver to make the round of eight, but North Dakota somehow overcame a two-goal disadvantage to prevail in overtime. North Dakota next face Boston College, who ousted overall top seed Miami of Ohio. Miami of Ohio???

Looks like Blogs for Industry got so excited about Texas A&M ousting the Duke women from the basketball tournament that he left a link tag open.

ENOUGH. Now it's Western Illinois University coping with a threat alert.

According to the Office of Public Safety Director Bob Fitzgerald, an employee of an apartment complex near campus reported receiving a handwritten note in the complex's payment drop-box that indicated there would be a shooting on the WIU campus today.

Residence halls are locked and accessible only by residents with keys. Students who wish to remain in their residence halls and apartments will not be penalized for missing classes today (March 26). Faculty and staff who wish to be absent should contact their supervisors.

"While this is an anonymous off-campus threat, it is imperative that we take all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of our students, staff and faculty," noted WIU President Al Goldfarb.

We had one of these lockdowns, leading to postponement of some final examinations, last December.

FACILITATING INDIVIDUAL ESCAPE? The local news includes favorable public reactions to the City University of Rockford, with the mayor being more specific about this involving the existing higher education infrastructure rather than starting something new from scratch. The venture, however, has potential unintended consequences.

If the community seems to be in decline, should part of the mission of the cc be to facilitate individual escape? Given Florida's correct insight that age-based losses are hard to recoup, doing right by individual students could have the unintended side effect of hastening the decline of the service area. That's a tough sell to local taxpayers. “Help us drain this festering craphole of young talent!” It doesn't look good on a billboard.

A Richard Florida post suggests the effort has merit on equity grounds.

The ambitious and the resourceful may be able to navigate this spiky terrain, but many, many more will become stuck. This will lead not just to rising economic and geographic inequality but rampant political polarization, a greater cultural divide, increasing fear and anxiety, declining social cohesion and greater political and social instability.

Ambition and resourcefulness are attitudes that people can pick up. Does it really serve the declining region to not help develop them?

TIME FOR RECRIMINATIONS? After the memorials, the investigations.

Acknowledging the Feb. 14 shootings raise issues beyond the scope of the current police investigation, Northern Illinois University officials this week will consider creating a task force to review how the campus responded that day.

Cherilyn Murer, chair of the NIU Board of Trustees, told the Tribune she plans to ask President John Peters to appoint a special panel when the board meets Thursday. Officials also must debate whether gunman Steven Kazmierczak's mental health record should be more thoroughly reviewed to see if it contained warning signs, she said.

There are opportunities for both the university and the public to reconsider their policies.

"This is an issue that is a national issue, and I think we should look beyond the four walls of our university," Murer said.

In any such conversation, there will be tradeoffs.

Analyzing the campus' much-lauded response to the emergency will be an easier task than pinning down how institutions responded to the mental health issues Kazmierczak had struggled with since high school.

Authorities have confirmed the shooter had stopped taking mood-stabilizing drugs in the weeks leading up to the killings, but they have not publicly addressed a troubling psychiatric history that included an abrupt Army discharge, a proclivity for self-injury and a year in a group home.

"I think that's a long discussion," Murer said. "You've got issues of privacy and human rights, and you've got issues of the greater public safety."

That only scratches the surface. There is much more for this task force, and other policymakers, and the public, to consider.

Murer, however, suggested the investigation's scope should be widened after the Tribune questioned whether the current inquiry was broad enough to address public concerns about violence and mental illness on college campuses.

Her comments come as law-enforcement officials acknowledge there is no timetable for the investigation's completion. Once Kazmierczak killed himself, the pressure and expediency that comes with arresting and prosecuting the killer evaporated.

Perhaps that conclusion follows if one limits the investigation to clearing the crime. There is, however, still reason to consider what the evidence says about the academic culture, at Northern Illinois specifically, and within higher education generally.

Authorities have been mum on Kazmierczak's mental state or any unheeded warning signs. The Tribune has spoken with dozens of the gunman's relatives, childhood friends, professors, neighbors, fellow students and associates since the shootings. Those willing to talk have helped paint a complex portrait of the graduate student, but many acknowledged they were withholding specific information at the request of either Kazmierczak's family or school officials.

Family members were sympathetic to the public's hunger for answers, but said they did not want to upset Kazmierczak's father, Robert, or his sister, Susan. Indeed, his godfather said the family refused to give him details about any funeral plans after he spoke to the media.

Officials at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Kazmierczak had been working toward a master's degree in social work, have refused to discuss his academic performance or behavior on campus. Professors and students who knew Kazmierczak say high-ranking faculty members have warned them against speaking to the media.

Campus officials have no plans to conduct an internal review to determine if any warning signs were missed, a U. of I. spokeswoman said.

Still, information about Kazmierczak's struggle with mental illness has trickled out. Friends say he took Lithium, a drug often used to treat bipolar disorder, in high school. After graduation, he lived for roughly a year in a Thresholds psychiatric group home in Chicago, where his therapists worked to help him find steady employment and get him to take his medication, house manager Louise Gbadamashi said.

While in the group home, Kazmierczak became a "cutter," a term used to describe people who intentionally hurts themselves, Gbadamashi said.He never showed a propensity for violence during his time at Thresholds, Gbadamashi said. Rather, when he became upset, he would avoid eye contact, buy video games and threaten to return home.

Circle the wagons! We can't have people asking questions about whether the university's vaunted inclusiveness makes campuses more dangerous. We also can't have anybody raising questions about privacy and disability-rights rules, as Virginia Tech's investigation discovers.

The Virginia Tech report questioned whether privacy laws prevented the university from giving Cho proper psychological assistance, a move the report suggests could have thwarted the 2007 killing spree. Gbadamashi wonders the same thing about Kazmierczak's deadly rampage.

The day before our shooting, I took issue with a Virginia Tech diversity statement that paid more attention to affirming "socially constructed" notions of difference, rather than recommending a "tougher policy toward loonies", to quote my post. At the time, I suggested a different stance, including a second look at both our privacy and disability-rights laws as matters of public policy, and at a nonjudgemental stance in the academy that borders on making a virtue out of extreme difference, might be more effective. There is nothing in the investigation of our own shooting that persuades me to think differently today.

THE CIVIL WAR TO COME. That's my sometimes gloomy prediction about where arguments over water will lead. In the State Line, access to Lake Michigan water follows county boundaries, which leads to some unusual situations.

The compact would allow for Great Lakes water to be pumped into counties that straddle the Great Lakes basin dividing line, provided treated wastewater is returned to the lakes' watershed. Waukesha County communities would be eligible for such diversions under the compact.

The potential problem for Mukwonago, about 30 miles west of Milwaukee, is that a wedge of it lies in Walworth County, which is entirely outside the basin. A sliver of that wedge apparently includes part of [retired schoolteacher Tom] Gustafson's new four-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bathroom home.

Gustafson only recently learned he is living atop what could become one of the 21st century's most contentious borders - the line that could someday separate those who have access to Great Lakes water from everybody else. But Gustafson isn't sweating it.

Most contentious -- are others as pessimistic as I? Elsewhere, communities that straddle the crestline face a similar problem.

Mike Rissky knows all about the problem of living on the wrong side of the Great Lakes line.

The retired federal employee moved to New Berlin from Chicago 20 years ago, and one of the first things he noticed about his adopted home was the foul, salty taste of the water. He has always shunned his own faucets at home in favor of gallons of drinking water purchased at the grocery store.

Rissky's problem is he lives on the wrong side of New Berlin. The city straddles the Great Lakes basin dividing line, which is the existing boundary for most communities to legally access Great Lakes water. The east side of New Berlin is inside the line, and under current law, homes on that side of the line are allowed to take their drinking water from Lake Michigan.

Rissky and everyone west of the line who is hooked to the city public water system are left to suck from what is left of a shrinking and increasingly contaminated aquifer. To meet federal drinking water requirements, the city limps along in winter on the handful of wells left that don't exceed radium standards. During peak water use in summer months, contaminated wells are put back on line, pushing the city beyond Environmental Protection Agency limits for radium.

It's a problem everyone agrees must be fixed. New Berlin is pondering a $4 million filtration system to clean the contaminated well water. City officials say that will provide a fix for the next 20 years.

But New Berlin Mayor Jack Chiovatero said the problem could be solved more cheaply - and permanently - if the city's whole public water supply could be linked to Lake Michigan, something he says could be accomplished with a small number of new valves and pumps.

The technical fix to provide safe water to all residents on the city water system might be simple; the political issues are a different matter.

The new Great Lakes compact is still not settled in the United States. Somewhere in this development comes a treaty with Canada. In both countries there are representatives of states or provinces that do not adjoin the Lakes, who might have ideas of their own. The states that do adjoin the Lakes do not agree.

The compact would solve New Berlin's problem.

Because it allows diversions for cities split by the basin line, provided the treated waste water is returned, New Berlin would be a slam-dunk for approval under the new rules - its sewer system is already linked to Lake Michigan via the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. That's why Chiovatero supports the compact.

The nearby city of Waukesha is facing similar radium problems and also hopes to one day get Lake Michigan water, though unlike New Berlin, it would have to build a new sewer system to return the water to the lake. Still, Waukesha Mayor Larry Nelson has also endorsed the compact because he sees it as the surest way for his city to tap Lake Michigan.

Despite the mayors' support, not everyone sees the compact as a good deal for Wisconsin.

The eight governors spent the better part of five years drawing up the compact in a process that included more than 60 public meetings and generated more than 13,000 public comments, and it is now up to the Great Lakes states' legislatures and Congress to decide whether to ratify the deal.

It has breezed through the legislatures in Minnesota, Indiana, New York and Illinois, with more than 90% of lawmakers in those states voting in favor. The Wisconsin Senate approved it, 26-6, on a bipartisan vote this month, despite [New Berlin's state senator Mary] Lazich's protests.

The article goes on to note potential disagreements with Michigan, a state where almost all runoff returns to the Lakes, and with Illinois, with the Chicago diversion grandfathered in (and currently providing fresh water to Plainfield.)

The war fears also arise in an article describing hard times in Dixie.

People hoping to protect the Great Lakes from becoming a Paul Bunyan-sized water cooler for an increasingly thirsty world like to invoke frightening language.

They say we'd better act fast to build a legal dike around the world's biggest freshwater system, because wars in the coming decades won't be fought over oil. They will be fought over water.

It can sound silly, especially in a shore-side city like Milwaukee, where the sun always rises on a horizon of boundless freshwater.

But there is nothing silly about what's unfolding less than 500 miles south of Lake Michigan. The Southeast is in the midst of a drought so severe some have been putting bowls under their air conditioners to capture the condensation dribble, and cities as big as Atlanta have stared down the prospect of literally running out of drinking water.

There are serious proposals to revise Georgia's borders, which do not square with an antebellum survey. What appears to be missing from discussions of southeastern water policy is any mention of pricing.

There is a history of water wars closer to home.

On the surface, the lake-freckled landscape in the Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha County is as green as any you will find in the Midwest.

Settlers didn't even need to dig wells. The place bubbled with natural springs whose water quality was so famous that residents in the 1890s had to pull out a cannon to turn back laborers from Chicago who arrived with equipment and a devious scheme to pipe the water to the World's Fair in Chicago.

Although the famous Waukesha springs are tapped out, outlanders continue to covet water.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin told media last fall it would probably be a good idea for the city to start looking at laying pipelines beyond its basin borders to tap distant water sources.

New Mexico Governor and then-presidential hopeful Bill Richardson said last fall it was time for the water haves to start sharing with the have-nots.

"I believe that Western states and Eastern states have not been talking to each other when it comes to proper use of our water resources . . . states like Wisconsin are awash in water," Richardson told the Las Vegas Sun in October.

Reaction in the Great Lakes, where water levels have been flirting with historic lows, was swift and shrill, and Richardson quickly backpedaled on the statement.

The pressure on the Great Lakes is only going to increase as the Southeast and Southwest continue to swell.

Note, though: no discussion in any of these articles about pricing.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. Professor Munger, on organizing to limit positional arms races.

But, if lazy folks could form a lobby, and lobby for the benefits inherent in BLOCKING smart, energetic people from being able to work hard to give good signals, how much would that be worth? A lot! So, even lazy people might work on that. Or pay somebody to work on it for them.

The problem is that EVERYTHING [Cornell's Robert] Frank points out as a cost is FAR less costly than the rent-seeking orgy he wants to start instead. Giving out the bennies he thinks are "good public policy" would cause a riot of rent-seekers. "Make smart people talk slower." "Yeah, and they don't get to wash their hair. I don't wash my hair, so people who DO wash their hair have an unfair advantage. Legislate that away!

"Rent-seeking is what people do to obtain favorable regulation. The competition for the kind of benefits Frank wants to give out would DWARF, in terms of costs, the tiny effects he claims to be worried about.

More here.

BUSTED THAT MOVE. Me, last week, on Delaware faculty time-slipping Housing for daring to offer curriculum.

The Perpetually Aggrieved among the faculty would no doubt be happy to continue the same ideological themes, albeit for credit.

The editors of the Delaware News-Journal, over the weekend.

The Faculty Senate carved out a bigger role for itself if the ill-crafted program is revived. But the faculty's weasel-worded recommendations didn't repudiate the program that ruined many students' freshman experience.

As one student who was forced to participate in the program put it: "It's basically going to be the same crap, different people."

Via The Torch, where Greg Lukianoff sees the cartel incentive at work.

The prospects for the future of the program remain ominous. Are the faculty really thinking of just replacing RAs with more experienced indoctrinators?

Naturlich. The public interest would be served by an expansion of service from the established providers.

DO AS WRITTEN. Elevation and dimensions on paper, fittings in brass.

Next: a bit more fettling of the crossheads, installation of the ledges in the crosshead guides, fabricate some hangers for the front, non-articulated crosshead. The extra crosshead is to divide the weight of the main rod. There is also a divided eccentric to reduce the weight of any one component.

CART, HORSE. Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey proposes a City University for Rockford.

Morrissey pointed out only 13 percent of Rockford Residents have a college degree, putting the city at a competitive disadvantage. The Mayor has had numerous discussions about the location for the university, as well as how it would be funded. But Adam Smith, the city's education director, says it could happen. Smith adds, " We are committed to making this happen....we can't sit and wait for the State to come in and offer a State University."

I fear that the mayor is misreading his Richard Florida. Sure, there are vibrant and prosperous urban areas, and those often have a lot of university graduates, or perhaps a university just down the street from the Bloomingdale's, but the objective conditions are not likely to be satisfied simply because somebody has set up a university. Rockford might simply find itself in the position of exporting human capital, something that Wisconsin is attempting to stem, and that has been the reality elsewhere in the Rust Belt for some time. (For instance, after our shootings, one master's degree holder and two presidential merit scholars who had attended Wayne State inquired about things at Northern Illinois. None of them inquired from Michigan.)

The state has already committed some resources to Rockford, including Rock Valley College, a Northern Illinois University outreach center, and the University of Illinois medical school. A different article suggests the mayor would really prefer to work with the cartel, rather than against it.

He wants the city to partner with already-established colleges in town to offer a chance for the 87 percent of Rockford residents who don’t have a college degree to get one. Together, he said, local schools can increase the ease and accessibility of college without hampering any one school’s institution.

“A lot of people are intrigued,” he said. “They want to see what direction we’re going to go with it.”

That's a separate issue. Perhaps the mayor would like to have more Rockfordians equipped to finish college, that is, to not be among the inefficiently many people in institutions pretending to offer higher education. That, however, is a call for stronger common schools, or perhaps stronger commitment to the Habits of Effective People among Rockfordians.

OPEN THE BACK DOOR. In college hockey, Wisconsin's men's team secures an at-large bid with home ice in the first round, despite a losing regular season record. Duluth's women's team denied Wisconsin a third straight title.

INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY. With the coming of spring, here are suggestions for road trips to vintage, resurrected, and reused breweries. Nearly every Wisconsin town with any ambitions once had one. There's an intriguing State Line tour: Janesville - Monroe - New Glarus - Potosi.

ACCUMULATION OF SMALL ADVANTAGES. Once upon a time, chess was an exciting game. The preferred style of play involved gambits and counter-gambits, and good chess etiquette made it a faux pas to refuse the offer of a pawn. Thus would the attacking player place additional material en prise in order to open attacking lines, while the defender would attempt to husband the material for a winning ending. First, though, came the middle game.

Then came Steinitz, and after him Nimzovitch and Portisch, who demonstrated that the way to refute a gambit was to accept it, then to return the material in such a way as to achieve equality, by forcing the gambiteer to accept an inferior position otherwise. The commentariat began to refer to chess as "boring" as the lines with fireworks and Queen sacrifices and alley-oops proved to be unsound.

So let it be with basketball, where Wisconsin have been conducting a clinic in breaking opponents through the accumulation of small advantages.

You could see it in the [Kansas State] Wildcats' frustrated body language not long after the Badgers began to exert their dominance, and you could sense it in [highlight film aspirant Michael] Beasley's exasperation as he made just two field goals in the second half. Per the Ryan way, the Badgers played Beasley straight up, mostly with Marcus Landry. And in keeping with the UW custom, they took it right at Kansas State inside; you knew it was their day when Greg Stiemsma, sometimes going over the top of Beasley, scored a career-high 14 points in 14 minutes off the bench.

Via Wisconsin Sports Bar, a Kansas City Star columnist who concedes the same thing.

Saturday, though, [Kansas State] were not exactly ordinary. No, they were just beaten by a better basketball team, a college basketball team that contests every shot, and controls the tempo and finds the open man. That’s a team that knows exactly what to do and then does it. NBA scouts may not agree. But that’s talent.

Here's the columnist reacting to Kansas State coach Frank Martin.

“That’s not the team you want to play on a night you don’t make jump shots,” Martin said. But the thing is, nobody makes jump shots against Wisconsin. That’s the whole point. The Badgers gave up 53.8 points per game this year. They have not given up even 73 points in a game since early December. This is like the old Tim McCarver line about how Bob Gibson was the luckiest pitcher ever because every time he pitched, the other team didn’t score any runs.

Position, overprotection, all that is missing is a poisoned pawn. Note the slow diffusion of the idea through the tournament. Michigan State, where Tom Izzo has already won a national title after getting past Dick Bennett, the father's, Badgers in a semifinal game the commentariat mischaracterized as a "throwback", are still playing, as are Washington State, coached by Tony Bennett, the son; and are Tennessee, with Wisconsin transplant Bruce Pearl demonstrating the praxis of his system. Meanwhile, scratch Marquette, scratch Duke, scratch Georgetown.

OPPORTUNITY COSTS. The Student Association continues its open meetings on the future of Cole Hall.

Among the lesser-voiced opinions Thursday night was to reopen the building without renovations.

“There are other buildings on campus that are in far worse shape and could really use the funds,” said student and campus custodial worker Pete Suffield, who added he understands the sensitivity surrounding the issue. “Those auditoriums are crucial, and leaving them closed for an extended period of time isn't right. We are facing a space crunch.”

The editorial board at the Northern Star issues another challenge to apathetic students.

Please show up.

Or start to shine to the idea of attending class in Blago Hall in a few years.

In related news, some future Huskies changed their birthday plans to help us.

Two local seventh graders gave a big gift to NIU on Thursday in memory of the victims of the Feb. 14 shootings.

Jaylene Thompson and Nick Bourdages, both 12, gave up their birthday gifts this year in favor of making a large donation to NIU. They held a combined birthday party March 13 and had friends donate money instead of gifts.

The pair raised $580 dollars from 35 of their friends to donate to the Feb. 14 Student Scholarship Fund, set up by the university to memorialize the fallen students.

“We wanted to give to charity,” Thompson said. “And when the shooting occurred, NIU seemed like the perfect one.”

Both Thompson and Bourdages are students at St. Mary School in DeKalb. Bourdages’ older brother, Austin, is a freshman at NIU.

President John Peters accepted the donation Thursday, thanking Thompson and Bourdages for their gift and rewarding them with gift bags of NIU apparel.

“My faith is renewed in our young people,” Peters said. “I’m strengthened in my commitment to make sure they get a good education.”

Peters said there have been more than 900 donors to the scholarship fund, totaling more than $200,000.

“This will continue, from what we know from Virginia Tech,” Peters said, referring to the large number of donations received after last year’s shooting at VT. “I can’t think of a better way to memorialize our fallen students.”

Peters was eager to meet the two students, saying there must be an outlet when the people in the community are moved to make such an effort.

“I never miss an opportunity to meet with young people,” Peters said. “I see so much potential in them. They are the future of the country.”

Today was our first open house since the shootings (Good Friday often functions as a school holiday leading into spring break, church-and-state notwithstanding.) The turnout was good, with yet another snowstorm providing a confounding explanation for any fall-off in attendance. The storm made for truth in packaging: this is Northern Illinois. There is one weather-related inconvenience. Cole Hall offers a 100 yard shortcut out of the elements between the central and west campuses. That shortcut has been unavailable.

WORK IS WHAT WE DO BETWEEN MEETINGS. That is Professor Munger's best riposte to the REMFs. In a related post, he suggests that compulsive meeting-organizers pay for the privilege. Now comes a productivity tool to do just that.

Free time on workplace calendars is available for all to see and reserve.

That's why Mike Monteiro came up with meeting tokens - bumblebee-colored poker chips good for 15 minutes of a colleague's attention, inscribed with a warning, “Don't Waste My Time.” Monteiro, the director of San Francisco-based Mule Design Studio, designed the tokens after tiring of disorganized and lengthy office meetings.

“I think this actually could work,” he says, although he hasn't used them in his office. In his utopian vision, workers would receive a pack of tokens each Monday. A 30-minute meeting with two colleagues would cost four tokens; an hour-long call with 12 folks from three department: an unaffordable 48 tokens. Some bags would contain the prized Red Merlin, which ends any meeting on the spot, no questions asked, with its imposing slogan: “We're DONE Here.”

That token is named for Merlin Mann, part of a new generation of productivity gurus who have moved far beyond the File-o-Fax and color-coded folders of the workplace of yore.

Mann has attracted a following among “knowledge workers” with an empowering message: your time and attention are scarce and valuable, so give them away wisely. (How to tell a knowledge worker? Smooth hands and an ability to take lunch whenever, Mann says.)

The article includes a number of suggestions short of holding a Demsetz auction for meeting organizers, some of which reinforce the Mungowitz Block characterization of e-mail, instant communication, and all the other ways to hold a meeting on the spot that leave people saddled with tasks that others think are urgent (for the moment) but which are not important. I've touched on some of these before, such as in this review of Never Check E-Mail in the Morning,

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR. I've recently noticed nostalgia for the 1950s, particularly among self-styled "progressives." Now comes Howard Zinn, who would like to set the Wayback Machine^(TM) for the 1930s.

Still, in today’s climate of endless war and uncontrolled greed, drawing upon the heritage of the 1930s would be a huge step forward. Perhaps the momentum of such a project could carry the nation past the limits of FDR’s reforms, especially if there were a popular upsurge that demanded it. A candidate who points to the New Deal as a model for innovative legislation would be drawing on the huge reputation Franklin Roosevelt and his policies enjoy in this country, an admiration matched by no President since Lincoln. Imagine the response a Democratic candidate would get from the electorate if he or she spoke as follows:

“Our nation is in crisis, just as it was when Roosevelt took office. At that time, people desperately needed help, they needed jobs, decent housing, protection in old age. They needed to know that the government was for them and not just for the wealthy classes. This is what the American people need today.

Pedant's note: that admiration for Lincoln is a recent phenomenon. Visit the Lincoln Presidential Library to see what his defenders would characterize as Lincoln Derangement Syndrome, had they had the vocabulary.

On to the substance of Mr Zinn's article. A lack of decent housing, when brand new McMansions are available at foreclosure prices in many neighborhoods? (Puzzlement: why do realtors place a "Foreclosure" notice on their For Sale signs? Is it required by law in some states? I see it as a large invitation to drive a particularly hard bargain.) A lack of protection in old age, when Mr Roosevelt's Social "Security" is soon to run afoul of its actuarial design flaws, abetted by the propensity of Democratic Congresses to use the trust funds to mask the size of the annual deficit? Come off it.

“I will do what the New Deal did, to make up for the failure of the market system. It put millions of people to work through the Works Progress Administration, at all kinds of jobs, from building schools, hospitals, playgrounds, to repairing streets and bridges, to writing symphonies and painting murals and putting on plays. We can do that today for workers displaced by closed factories, for professionals downsized by a failed economy, for families needing two or three incomes to survive, for writers and musicians and other artists who struggle for security.

Note the conjuring tricks. Closed factories? Must public policy repeat the preservation of manufacturing for its own sake what it has done for farming? Two or three incomes to survive? How many times must I remind readers of the Say Aggregation Principle? Or perhaps Mr Zinn doesn't want female labor force participation rates to approach those of males. Writers and musicians and artists? Why ought their hobbies rate subsidies? Is it really a "failure" of the market system that MFAs and Ph.D.s in the evergreen disciplines fail to grasp the signal in their pitiful starting salaries and the paucity of tenure-track jobs? What gives the guitarist a claim on the public purse that a railway preservationist does not enjoy?

“The New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps at its peak employed 500,000 young people. They lived in camps, planted millions of trees, reclaimed millions of acres of land, built 97,000 miles of fire roads, protected natural habitats, restocked fish and gave emergency help to people threatened by floods.

“We can do that today, by bringing our soldiers home from war and from the military bases we have in 130 countries. We will recruit young people not to fight but to clean up our lakes and rivers, build homes for people in need, make our cities beautiful, be ready to help with disasters like Katrina. The military is having a hard time recruiting young men and women for war, and with good reason. We will have no such problem enlisting the young to build rather than destroy.

There he goes again with those houses. On that military recruitment, follow this and weigh the evidence. Then take a road trip to one of the national forests and note those Corps projects: monoculture tree farms particularly sucsceptible to pests or disease or fire. But the Brain Trust knows what's best.

“We can learn from the Social Security program and the GI Bill of Rights, which were efficient government programs, doing for older people and for veterans what private enterprise could not do. We can go beyond the New Deal, extending the principle of social security to health security with a totally free government-run health system. We can extend the GI Bill of Rights to a Civilian Bill of Rights, offering free higher education for all.

Lovely. Does that mean a two- or four-year degree for all? There are already inefficiently many people in college, with inefficiently much capacity devoted to access-assessment-remediation-retention, and he wishes to have more.

"We will have trillions of dollars to pay for these programs if we do two things: if we concentrate our taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, not only their incomes but their accumulated wealth, and if we downsize our gigantic military machine, declaring ourselves a peaceful nation.

“We will not pay attention to those who complain that this is ‘big government.’ We have seen big government used for war and to give benefits to the wealthy. We will use big government for the people.”

If there is any consolation, the true believers appending favorable comments to the post are even sillier than Mr Zinn.

THEIR WORK EXPANDS TO FILL OUR TIME. A few weeks ago, Inside Higher Ed quantified the proliferation of REMFs, which prompted the dean at Anonymous Community to note, not at Anonymous. (And, as a generalization, not in community colleges, where stingy budgets also place cheap and contingent labor in positions where experience and stability are helpful.) The rising tail-to-tooth ratio at the four years, whether they be obscure, mid-major, land-grant, or high-priced private, provoked this Rate Your Students call for observations.

I'm only in my second year of teaching, but it seems to me that there is no end to the terrible ideas, suggestions, and mandates that come down to mere faculty from the administration, the Dean's office, and the department chair. Everything seems designed to make the job harder, to give more and more power to the lowest common denominator, and to suck any of the joy out of being a college proffie. What's the worst "new idea from the President" or "program change for better education" that has ruined your job?

The call elicited multiple responses. I can classify many as self-defeating efforts under the rubric of access-assessment-remediation-retention, and most of what remain as respect-destroying attempts to lessen the proper social distance between student and professor. I wonder, though, whether any of the colleagues who sent these anecdotes in have ever done anything to change the academic environment at their university.

I wish to exclude the post's gripe about writing-across-the-curriculum from either characterization. Life after college is more than likely to be a sequence of reports than a sequence of scan-trons, and life after graduate school is a sequence of term papers (to crib from Dale Jorgenson or Mike Rothschild or perhaps it was Robert Solow.)

A LATTER DAY MINSTREL SHOW? So much for the student in student-athlete.

[Oregon neurobiologist and co-chairman of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics Nathan] Tublitz concedes that there's only so much that the NCAA can do [to maintain some integrity in intercollegiate sports]. The bigger problem is with a sports-mad American culture that doesn't care how college athletes are admitted, if they graduate, or if they ever make it to the NBA. All most fans care about, he says, is winning championships -- whatever the cost.

"You have to stop the drift away from academics, and our universities are the standard-bearers for maintaining academic standards," Dr. Tublitz said. "Thus it seems appropriate for our universities to be the first in line to say we should reverse this cultural trend and not continue to look the other way when students are accepted primarily for their athletic prowess."

More important, schools aren't doing these kids any favors by admitting them when it's unlikely that they will succeed academically. "We bring in 17-year-old kids, some of them from the inner city," he said. "We wine and dine them. They have female chaperones. We put them up in fancy hotels. They come here and see an incredibly fancy locker room with individual TV screens, air conditioning and videogames. They go in and see the new football stadium and the new $200 million basketball arena. They see a medical training facility that is stunningly beautiful with waterfalls, treadmill pools, and state-of-the-art medical and dental equipment.

"They come here and are treated like royalty. Until they break a leg or get put on the second string and then they get set aside. Many don't earn a degree. They don't have the training or the skills to be independent after they leave the university. They're lost."

Indeed, only about 3% of high-school basketball players will get a Division 1 scholarship. And less than 3% of those who do will have a meaningful NBA career. "What about the 97%?" Dr. Tublitz asks. "We need to give them the tools to succeed beyond athletics, and we're not doing that."

And, of course, many of these kids are African-American. "It's no coincidence that basketball has the lowest APR," Dr. Tublitz said. "One of the major determinants of college success is socioeconomic status. Kids from privileged backgrounds, on average, do better. As educators, we need to make sure that those kids from underprivileged backgrounds are given the skills to achieve their potential. We need to put more resources into that group of students."

In fact, the trend is just the opposite. According to a report last year in the Journal of Sports Management, alumni giving at the nation's 100 biggest athletic departments was up significantly, while academic giving at the same schools remained flat. That's a significant shift. In 1998, athletics gifts accounted for 14.7% of all donations. By 2003, the figure had increased to 26%.

With these increased donations, often comes increased pressure to win. "There's a correlation between Oregon's attempt to have winning teams and the quality of students that they have to attract in order to achieve that goal," Dr. Tublitz said of his own campus. "This is not rocket science. It's not neuroscience. There are many extremely talented athletes for whom academics is not their primary goal at university. The fact that many people are OK with that says a lot about who we are and what we value."

The flip side of the positional arms race in sports, academic integrity excluded, is the positional arms race for prestige degrees, sports standing irrelevant. See University Diaries for more from Professor Tublitz on Oregon's academic slippage. The Berkeleys and the Northwesterns and the Carletons don't have to come for the students; they can win by default. They can come for the faculty, particularly if the faculty have sponsored research to bring.

SORRY, PREPPIES. Hey, Harvard, on paper you may be ranked first. You're only as good as your last game.

Erika Lawler scored once and added an assist to lead the Badgers past Harvard, 4-1, in the semifinals of the 2008 women's hockey Frozen Four.

Jinelle Zaugg scored twice and Jasmine Giles once for the two-time defending champions, who will face Minnesota-Duluth for the second straight year in the title game Saturday.

Meghan Duggan had two assists, and Jessie Vetter stopped 33 shots for the fourth-ranked Badgers (29-8-3).

The loss was the first in 22 games for top-ranked Harvard (32-2-0). It was only the second time this year the Crimson allowed more than two goals. It lost both games.

SIEVE!

Next up for the Badgers will be tournament hostess Minnesota-Duluth, on what promises to be a busy sports Saturday.

ONE! TWO! WE! WANT! MORE!

CONSENSUS IS DIFFICULT TO ACHIEVE. The Lutheran Campus Ministry has raised six crosses, to represent the six dead in our Valentine's Day shootings. Not everybody agrees with the gesture.

A wooden cross from the Lutheran Campus Ministries memorial site was found burned Monday morning.

Sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning, an unmarked cross from the memorial site at Lutheran Campus Ministries, 401 Normal Road, was set on fire. It is believed the suspects attempted to light the cross on fire at the site and then moved it to a spot 100 feet north of Lucinda Avenue and set it on fire there, said Lt. Gary Spangler of the DeKalb Police Department.

The article notes that no person's name has been assigned to any of the crosses, although an Army scarf, honoring veteran Julianna Gehant, is on one of them. There are notes honoring each of the dead, including at least one to Stephen Kazmierczak, who was a prize student in sociology, on the crosses. The crosses are on church property, not university property, and variants of Lutheran theology have the dead, however they got there, with God, or being judged by God. Thus six crosses. Debate the theology if you wish. Write letters to the editor if you wish. I really don't want to deal with a replay, even on a smaller scale, of Sterling Hall, where some people get tired of talking about it and do something about it, a phrase from a communique issued by the bombers.

But when you talk, perhaps you'll not reach agreement. President Peters would like to have a "consensus" on what to do with Cole Hall, preferably by early May. I'm no fan of consensus. A quest for consensus will degenerate into an agreement on something empty, if it doesn't culminate with the most persistent faction cajoling or mau-mauing or bulls****ing everyone else into accepting something just to end the misery.

We don't have the option the New England Puritans have of setting up a Northern Illinois Center and a West Northern Illinois and a Northern Illinois Heights so each faction can have "consensus" with like-minded people.

Although the university has great support from residents of the State Line in recovering our spirits, there is much less support for spending large sums of money to replace a still-serviceable building. The quest for consensus over Cole is impeding other, potentially more urgent permanent improvements. Word has also reached me of an even more dangerous elevator on campus. The north elevator in Zulauf is going to hurt somebody. There is one in Stevenson that has the potential to kill somebody.

IT'S NOT IN YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION. The faculty at the University of Delaware have time-slipped the division of Residential Life for calling a voluntary activity a "Residence Life Education Curriculum."

The Student Life Committee of the Faculty Senate believes that Residence Life should have relied on the faculty in the development of a Curricular Approach to Residence Life.

That is, if the intent of somebody at Delaware was to develop a curriculum.

The Student Life Committee of the Faculty Senate believes that there was not a clear understanding on whether the participation in the Residence Life Curriculum was voluntary or mandatory. Considering the nature of the topics, it would be imperative that students clearly understand that it is voluntary rather than having the impression it was mandatory.

And if it is a curriculum, it is supposed to be the responsibility of the faculty.

The Student Life Committee of the Faculty Senate believes that there was an inappropriate reliance on resident assistants in the implementation of the curriculum. It was not in the best interest of either the residence assistants or the residents that certain activities were not led by qualified professionals.

But only after the faculty curriculum committees, in best regulated industry fashion, eliminate all possibility of wasteful duplication or incompetent provision of service.

Use of “curriculum” and “educational” on a university campus implies academic content that is typically conveyed in classroom or laboratory settings. This content has withstood rigorous review by faculty members and academic departments. The committee feels the term “educational” still conveys a classroom image and not an extracurricular activity that should be enjoyable as well as mind-expanding. To avoid any confusion, when talking about education that is planned to occur in residence halls, it is recommended that the term curriculum be replaced with “residence life program”.

At The Torch, Adam Kissel commends the faculty.

The first and [unquoted by me -- SHK] third points look like the main reasons that the faculty committee continues to have no patience with the Residence Life proposal to run an educational program with any agenda, much less its own highly politicized one.

Well done, UD faculty!

A point he does not quote suggests a more cynical interpretation.

Given the unique opportunities that exist because of the residence hall setting, learning opportunities related to study habits, personal development, citizenship, community, sustainability, and diversity can and should continue to be available in the residence halls. To that end, it is recommended the mission statement and activities of Residence Life continue to address these opportunities; however, the specific learning outcomes, goals and implementation related to these opportunities must be revised. Residence Life should also be proactive in communicating with the students to determine which types of programs should be offered and what issues should be addressed.

The Perpetually Aggrieved among the faculty would no doubt be happy to continue the same ideological themes, albeit for credit.

TEAMWORK WINS GAMES. Chris at The Wisconsin Sports Bar has an insightful description of Wisconsin's basketball team.

In some ways Wisconsin is like a Steroid version of a Mid Major kids who play as a team and play 3 to 4 years, kids who buy into the coaches system and execute it to perfection.

I guess I am going back to my the Whole is greater than the sum of its parts theory.

In chess terms, it's about the accumulation of small advantages. One can see the will of the individualists on other teams (frequently described by the ignorant as more "athletic", which is really a consequence of defensive breakdowns they can exploit in a showboaty way) crumble as the advantages accumulate, most recently in the Big (11) Ten title game where, at about eight minutes to go, it was clear that many of the members of the other team were ready to get back on the bus to whatever prison they'd been paroled from.

In other basketball oddities, consider this ordering: Northern Illinois - Akron - Ohio - Maryland - North Carolina.

COMMODITY BUBBLES. Harvard's Jeff Frankel explains the economics of easy money and commodity price increases.

A monetary expansion temporarily lowers the real interest rate (whether via a fall in the nominal interest rate, a rise in expected inflation, or both – as now). Real commodity prices rise. How far? Until commodities are widely considered “overvalued” — so overvalued that there is an expectation of future depreciation (together with the other costs of carrying inventories: storage costs plus any risk premium) that is sufficient to offset the lower interest rate (and other advantages of holding inventories, namely the “convenience yield”). Only then do firms feel they have high enough inventories despite the low carrying cost. In the long run, the general price level adjusts to the change in the money supply. As a result, the real money supply, real interest rate, and real commodity price eventually return to where they were.

There is money to be made, if one is able to be among the earliest to join the "widely considered" set.

3. 4. 5. Tony Canadeo. Brett Favre. Paul Hornung.

Mark Murphy, president and ceo of the Green Bay Packers, said Wednesday that the Packers plan on retiring Brett Favre's number sometime this coming season.

THEY ARE BEGINNING TO CATCH ON. In the comments to a Bellows post on freight rail expansion (which suffers from an Official Region perspective: let them come to Cajon Pass or to DeKalb or to Downers Grove and see what private capital is accomplishing) a commenter objects to the arbitrary and cartel-inspired speed restrictions.

That FRA rule for 79 mph (unless you install in-cab signaling) is another example of the horrendous regulations still placed on the railroads. Back in the day, the railroads managed to operate their express trains without in-cab signals and without problem - those passenger trains would routinely operate faster than 120 mph on straight sections of track - some of them, such as the Hiawatha between Minneapolis and Chicago, were actually steam trains operating at those speeds. The FRA regulation is not only unnecessary, it’s completely arbitrary.

The ensuing discussion ventures somewhat off the topic of freight railroad improvements to consider the tradeoffs inherent in government mandates of train speed or of crashworthiness (the two work to cross purposes in places.)

For historical accuracy, let us stipulate that Hiawatha speeds in the 100 mph range were routine, with 100-110 possible until the Roadmaster asked the engineers to tone it down a bit, around 1940.

LEARNING TO WIN. The women's basketball team makes the best of adversity.

It’s hard to find bright spots in a season filled with injuries and tragedy.

Despite a 10-18 overall record, it‘s hard to judge what the Huskies did and didn’t do with so many outside factors affecting the entire season.

“There were some obstacles that we had to overcome,” NIU head coach Carol Owens said. “I was proud how our team overcame the obstacles.”

These hurdles affected both the team and the individual athletes during the season.

The Huskies were picked pre-season to finish second in the MAC West this season, but fell very short of that mark. NIU finished fourth with a 6-8 conference record.

That's the bad news. Now for the good news.

One highlight included a three-game winning streak with a road win over eventual MAC Tournament champion Miami.

Also, the Huskies pulled out an emotional win over Western Michigan in its first game back after nearly two weeks off for the Feb. 14 shootings.

“It was a season of growth and a season of maturity,” Owens said. “I was proud of how they handled things, with the injuries and playing ball without key people for a while.”

Next up: finishing the semester and staying in shape in the off-season.

SO SAD. Record-Setting Young Pilot Dies at 26.

Vicki Van Meter, celebrated for piloting a plane across the country at age 11 and from the U.S. to Europe at age 12, has died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Crawford County coroner said. She was 26.

Van Meter died Saturday and her body was found in her Meadville home on Sunday.

Her brother said she battled depression and opposed medication, but her family thought she had been dealing with her problems.

"She was unhappy, but it was hard for her to open up about that and we all thought that she was coping," Daniel Van Meter said. "This really is a shock, because we didn't see the signs."

So much we have yet to learn about people dealing with their inner demons.

There's food for thought here, too.

Later she earned a degree in criminal justice from Edinboro University in Pennsylvania and spent two years with the Peace Corps in Cahul, Moldova. She recently worked as an investigative agent for an insurance company.

"She led a full and interesting life. ... She had more guts than any of us could ever
imagine," said her mother, Corinne Van Meter, 57.

Corinne Van Meter said her daughter had recently begun applying to graduate schools and wanted to study psychology.

Our condolences to the family.

BRING BACK THE EUROPEAN AND NORTH AMERICAN. New name, same old Guilford.

Lawmakers in Maine are looking at a possible takeover of Pan Am Railroad operations in the state of Maine, according to the Blethen Newspapers of Maine.

“State lawmakers’ latest plan for improving freight rail service in Maine essentially comes down to this: engineering a hostile takeover of the rail lines owned by the state’s largest railroad,” wrote reporter Tom Bell. “A legislative committee believes the state could use an obscure federal statute to force Pan Am Railways to sell the company’s lines in Maine to the state. The action would put the state in the position of choosing another railroad company to operate trains on the lines.”

Shippers who have criticized the railroad, formerly known as Guilford Rail Systems and controlled by Timothy Mellon of the famed banking family, for poor service have been pressing for state intervention because of the rising costs of transportation, increased highway congestion, and the need to compete more effectively with other parts of the nation that have more extensive rail service.

“Legislators allege that the railroad fails to provide timely and consistent service to many of its manufacturing customers, particularly smaller companies,” wrote the Blethen paper. “There is no evidence that the railroad has improved service since the Legislature first began prodding it to do so three years ago,” the newspaper quoted Rep. Stacey Fitts (R-Pittsfield) as saying. His district includes Pan Am customers. “He said the railroad’s poor service is hurting the manufacturers’ ability to compete because they can’t meet their customers deadlines. In some cases manufactures are shipping heavy products by truck, which is not only more expensive but causes additional wear and tear on the state’s road system.

“We are putting them on notice,” the paper quoted him regarding Pan Am Railways. “If you don’t respond and treat us seriously, we will have to take serious action.” Maine manufactures are already operating at a competitive disadvantage because of high energy costs and distance from markets, said Sen. Philip Bartlett, D-Gorham, Co-chair of the Utilities and Energy Committee,” the paper reported. “Unless rail service is improved, some companies could leave the state,” he said.

Perhaps that statute is obscure for a reason. A state that condemns a railroad once can condemn the property again, which is likely to give pause to a bidder looking to pick up the franchise.

THEM THAT HAS GETS. Marquette gets a bye in the Women's NIT in part because eight of the teams that finished ahead of them in their conference went to the cartel's tournament. Wisconsin also received a bye, with Green Bay having to play in the first round. (Powers of two, baby, powers of two.)

"I'm disappointed," [Green Bay coach Matt] Bollant said. "It's hard to tell why we didn't get in, but it seems they give preferences to the bigger conferences when it comes to at-large berths."

Yes, there's a lot of play value in having reprises of the Southeastern and Big East tournaments.

OUCH. Talking smack at Cafe Hayek.

It's astonishing how prevalent is the view that economies are "run" by people pulling levers -- or should be, or could be, run by people pulling levers. This misconception is the economics equivalent of the belief that the earth is flat, or that volcanoes won't erupt if they are fed a sufficient number of virgins.

Appropriately for St. Patrick's Day, there appears to be a drunken brawl in the comments area.

STOP CRYING WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL. Cheryl Miller.

It's just soooo hard to be a young professional in Manhattan and live in a walk-up apartment and only get to go out occasionally to nice restaurants while people in Grand Rapids, MI are living off the fat of the land in huge McMansions and have three SUVs. Even the cereal is more expensive in NYC! Plus, the loans from Harvard Law School are killing me.

People are aware they can move, right? There's this company called U-Haul and you can lug all your sad IKEA furniture in one of their trucks and head out West to start anew. Americans have been doing it for centuries. But wait, your cool job in publishing/journalism is only here on the East Coast? And you really like all those nice restaurants? And then there's the museums, the live music and the great social scene...All good points, I agree. Let me introduce you to the notion of trade-offs.

The comment is a reaction to a post that, let us say, does little to refute the stereotype of a latte liberal.

IT WAS FUN TO WATCH. Learning to win.

Teams with great chemistry can still play poorly while other teams can barely get along and still succeed. In the case of Northern Illinois' women's basketball team, this year fell somewhere in-between.

This year could be considered a yearlong lesson in chemistry for the Huskies. The result? A 10-18 season that provided plenty of lessons and offered some hope for next season.

The expectations weren't high entering this season. NIU needed to replace nearly its entire scoring load outside of wing, and eventual All-MAC Second Team member Whitney Lowe. The Huskies essentially needed nametags at the start of the year and it showed with an early five-game losing streak.

“I think the interesting thing about the team this year is what we had to replace in some of our girls that left,” said coach Carol Owens. “To lose that kind of scoring power and then see the growth and maturity of these girls.”

Indeed. The team that was on the floor in January and February was very different from that of November and December.

BACK FROM SPRING BREAK. Classes will resume Monday.

Via the Church Sign Generator.

O SCALE SPOKEN HERE. The March Meet has come, and with it a few more head-end cars for the railroad. I concentrated on storage mail and postal cars this year. There are still some bargains to be had in remaindered kits, although the latest ready-to-run cars at under $100 a unit are opportunity-cost competitive with the kits, particularly given the level of built-on detail.

At the Fox Valley O Scalers, a view from the railing of a Mississippi River steamer.


Thanks to all the participants at the meet who inquired about things at Northern Illinois. Your interest helps.

WE SOLICIT YOUR ATTENTION. Today is Selection Sunday, which means little work will be done tomorrow morning as the annual ritual called the office pool gets organized. The Fairfield Community Foundation is again raising funds, by way of an online office pool, for the Timothy J. Hines memorial fund. The fundraising coordinator is Jim Wessel, American Metal Fabricators, 5574 Wooster Pike, Cincinnati, OH 45227. He receives electronic mail at jwessel6 at yahoo dot com. The entry form is the online bracket form at Netpick. The closing deadlines are noon Thursday, 20 March for bracket sheets (apparently the play-in game is irrelevant) and Thursday, 27 March for entry donations.

Elsewhere around the tournaments, apparently the Big Dance and the National Invitational Tournaments aren't enough. There's now a College Basketball Invitational for the also²-rans.

A team with a record under .500 can be selected for the NIT, but that might be a long shot. [Not-the-Huskies coach Bruce] Weber wants to keep playing, even if that means lobbying for a bid in the College Basketball Invitational, a third postseason tournament this winter.

It's amateur sport. It has nothing to do with money.

On the ice, the Wisconsin women's hockey team ousted Minnesota in overtime, to advance to the NCAA semifinals in Duluth.

ONE. TWO. WE! WANT! MORE!

PREFERRED BY MANY. To reach Springfield, I used the Amtrak Lincoln Service. It offers the same frequency of train service the GM&O offered in 1964, although with somewhat more convenient times and intervals.

Loadings were rather heavy in both directions.

Amtrak Lincoln Service 305, Wednesday, 12 March 2008. Genesis P42 diesel 24, Amclub-dinette 48169, Horizon short-distance coaches 54524-54531-54503. Temperature about 40 degrees, clear skies, dry rail. Leave Chicago 5.15:01, Summit 5.35:41-5.36:30, signal checks east of Joliet, Joliet 6.04:02-6.06:05, stop opposite Raceway Pizza west of Joliet 6.20:55-6.24:43, Dwight 6.54:39-6.55:15, Pontiac 7.10:33-7.11:12, meet 304 in siding west of Pontiac, Bloomington 7.37:00-7.41:33 (entire rear coach emptied at Bloomington), Lincoln 8.09:35-8.10:02, arrive Springfield 8.36:58. Train able to leave Springfield on time.

The GM&O advertised "preferred by most" as their direct Chicago to St. Louis line had competition from the Wabash to St. Louis and from the Illinois Central to Springfield. The Illinois Central sold their last ticket on the Governor's Special on April 30, 1971. The station has since been restored, including a new clock tower, as a visitor's center across the street from the Lincoln Presidential Library.


Most of the people on the platform were waiting for the train to Chicago, although some were awaiting the Texas train that was due shortly. The station is close enough to the capitol for the agents of influence to book a business class seat and walk over.


Amtrak Lincoln Service 304, Thursday 13 March 2008. Genesis diesels 62-36, Amclub-dinette 48185, Horizon short-distance coaches 54518-54512-54510. Temperature about 50 degrees, overcast skies, dry rail. Leave Springfield 5.31:20, meet 321 in siding east of Springfield, Lincoln 5.58:52-5.59:44, Bloomington 6.28:05-6.31:13, a few Illinois State spring breakers getting an early start, Pontiac 6.57:20-6.57:55, meet 305 in siding east of Pontiac, restrictive signals west of Dwight, Dwight 7.13:36-7.14:42, Joliet 7.54:04-7.55:44, Summit 8.22:44-8.23:35, arrive Chicago Track 24 8.52:08.

At Chicago, Hiawatha 342 turned up on time at 9.00, a little unusual for a train that regularly turns in an 85 minute performance. The crew might have had occasion to handle the train a bit less aggressively. In the rake is the Wheel of Fortune car, advertising National Train Day. May 10.


On the markers, two of the Charter Wire private cars.

THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR OPPORTUNITY COSTS. Rising costs properly, are evidence of substitutions everywhere.

Exactly one year ago National Turkey Federation president Ted Seger told the House Agriculture Committee that the federal ethanol mandate would drive up corn and soybean prices and hurt consumers who eat turkey.

There have long been tax breaks to encourage production of ethanol, and last year President Bush signed a law mandating a substantial increase in the use of renewable fuels, principally ethanol, over the next 15 years.

At the Annual Meat Conference this week, a gathering of retail meat industry, economist Tom Elam reported his estimate that the ethanol mandate would result this year in each chicken raised by an American farmer costing 53 cents more to raise than it would have cost without the mandate. As for turkeys, well, it'll cost the farmer $3.40 more to raise each one.The responsibility rests with consumers.

As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke explained to the Senate Banking Committee last month, “a significant portion of the corn crop is being diverted to ethanol, which raises corn prices.”

And he added, there are “knock-on effects. For example, some soybean acreage has been moved to corn production, which probably has some effect on soybean prices. So there is some price effect on foodstuffs coming through the conversion to energy use.”

The hogs are happy.

But senators and governors from the ethanol-producing states defend the tax incentives and mandates that have led farmers to divert more land to corn, and more corn to ethanol.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, said, “What we have now (corn-based ethanol) is going to be viewed as early stage, and what’s coming is going to be much better. And what’s coming is cellulosic ethanol, where you’re going to be able to take not food and make it into fuel, but other sorts of products — it may be corn stalks, switchgrass, woody pulp material, or other things that are not connected to the food chain.”

Perhaps one does not eat these other things, but one could use the land on which one grows such things to grow food instead. Whether one diverts the corn to ethanol, or diverts land that could be used to grow corn for tortillas to growing switchgrasses, one is changing the opportunity cost of an ear of corn.

TO PROTECT THE CURRENCY. Sean Hackbarth doesn't like the new five.

Our currency continues to get uglier and uglier. The new and “improved” five dollar bill is now in circulation. “Enhanced security features” fail to give the bill any elegance. It sports a big, ugly, purple “5″ on the back. Is Barney now living in the Federal Reserve?

The 5 is a high-visibility feature. (More evidence of aging Baby Boomers who vote?) It's purple because that was Mary Todd Lincoln's favourite colour.


I can claim advance knowledge of the new design, as it was revealed to Illinois and Iowa schoolteachers at the Lincoln Presidential Library as part of an Illinois Council on Economic Education and Federal Reserve effort (for the Fed, a joint effort of St. Louis and Chicago) to enhance civics and economics in the schools.

There are additional security features on the new note.


Those security features are to make it more difficult for an artist to buy things without earning money, as Mr Lincoln is here explaining to some Springfield fifth graders (I didn't see Bart Simpson) who will have the honour of spending the first new notes. (It was for show: the new notes were sent back to St. Louis after the festivities.)


Here Mr Lincoln and State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias compare notes. The high-visibility feature is at work.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. David Tufte notes that playwright David Mamet doesn't necessarily have to swear allegiance to the vast right wing conspiracy.

I think what he's really done is recognized that economists are on to something.

That something is that decentralized exchange is way more important and widespread than most non-economists recognize. The big lie is that centralization is terribly important in our lives.

Complex adaptive systems do what they darn well please and all that. Put another way, that's why economists will never lack for work. There are parts of the vast right wing conspiracy that don't grasp complexity.

This is not a politically conservative point. Rather, it is a worldview which is currently lined up fairly well with conservative thought. It's a credit to conservatives that they have this idea in play, in spite of their moralistic nonsense.

I suggest that the "moralistic nonsense" refers to Pigouvian welfare economics arguments applied, with perhaps less polish, to a different set of externalities.

ANOTHER RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS HYPERINFLATION? Lenders finance slum houses with nothing down and forever to pay on the expectation that the house price will double and the owner can refinance into a thirty-year fixed with the appraised value providing the equity. Oops. Investors purchase any company with an e-this or a .com that in its name that is actually reporting earnings at 300 times those earnings on the expectation that the company will show a 25-fold increase in earnings over the next 3 or 4 years. Oops. And now the oil price of a dollar is rising, in the expectation that oil today will be able to buy even more dollars tomorrow. Soon to be oops?

According to economist John Kemp at the commodities firm Sempra Metals, the U.S. consumed 4 percent less petroleum in January 2008 than it did the year before. [Citigroup's Tim] Evans agrees, noting that the U.S. demand for petroleum products began falling off last July. Interestingly, this drop in U.S. oil consumption began before crude prices turned vertical and before we began to see weakness in the broader economy. Even China's thirst for oil is abating somewhat. Its demand for oil, which once rose at 10 percent per year, has now dropped to 6 percent per year. In addition, world surplus oil production capacity has gone from a very tight 1.5 million barrels per day a couple of years ago to more than 3 million barrels today, says petroleum economist Michael Lynch.

So supply is up; relative demand is down and yet, the price of oil is soaring. What's going on?

Those who do not remember the past ...

Economist Richard Rahn from the Institute for Global Economic Growth believes battery technologies are improving so rapidly that the majority of cars sold in 10 years will be all-electric. This would certainly help drive down the price of oil. Supply is also inelastic—it takes a long time to do the exploration, drilling, and refining necessary to boost production in response to higher prices. This inelasticity of demand and supply means that petroleum prices are very sensitive to relatively small changes in either. This means that prices can fall as steeply has they rose.

Whenever you begin to hear market gurus decree that "this time it's different," as we did during the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble, that's a sure sign of danger in the market. Naturally, proponents of the peak oil theory claim that the recent run up in prices is evidence that the end is nigh. Evans responds, "Fears of peak oil are what this market has in common with the 1980s, not what is different." Recall that during the "oil crisis" of the 1970s when oil prices were as high as they are today, U.S. oil consumption declined by 13 percent between 1973 and 1983. The higher prices of the 1970s led eventually to an oil glut and prices fell to about $10 a barrel by 1986.

So what will happen to oil prices over the next few years? No one is predicting $10 per barrel oil. However, once the current bubble bursts, both Evans and Lynch believe that the price of crude will settle at around $60 to $70 per barrel in the next couple of years. "It's very hard to pinpoint just how long a bubble can expand before it breaks. Getting the timing right is not an easy matter," says Evans. But he adds, "I think that this is the riskiest time to be long in crude oil since 1980."

If one can anticipate, perfectly, when the bubble bursts, one can make large sums of money. It's also possible for sufficiently forward-thinking traders to make a transitory above-normal return on investment by being close enough to the right time.

NOT SO EASY AS PI. To bring a gorgeous Pi Day to an end in the State Line, a math teacher's lament (via Joanne Jacobs) about teaching trigonometry.

Today an old time teacher, one that I "had respected" told us that he doesn't bother teaching the trigonometric functions of the special angles. That is of the 30, 60 and 45 degree angles. He said there is no reason for the kids to know the exact values as they can figure out all multiple choice questions using a calculator, working backwards from the choices, if necessary.

That sounds like a lot of extra work, compared to knowing that sin(pi/4) = cos(pi/4) = 0.71 (to two decimal places, it thus follows that tan(pi/4) = 1), and sin(pi/6) = cos(pi/3) = 0.5. The first set of relationships is useful for setting the A triangle (a right isosceles, see example 3) in the Inland Lake Yachting Association race manual, and the second and third work to set the B and C triangles, which are 30-60-90 with the short leg to weather or to lee. And on the boat our headings are reckoned in degrees. So why did I throw in those angles as fractions of pi? I certainly wouldn't impose that on the race committee, not to mention that "pi/6 west of north" is a lot more cumbersome than "330 degrees". Math teachers, however, often impose radians on students without offering a satisfactory explanation.

The reason for this is that so many formulas become much easier to write and to understand when radians are used to measure angles.

The context from which I grabbed the quote is correct but incomplete. The real power of radians crops up in Euler's trigonometric series, and it's unfortunate that there doesn't appear to be an intuitive introduction to their use that would be suitable for ninth- or tenth-graders first encountering trig. But it's so cool to fool around with the expansions of the sine and the cosine and see all the terms cancel when you sum the squares, and it's even cooler to note that each expansion looks like part of the natural exponential, which it is: cos(pi) + i sin(pi) + 1 = 0.

WASH THE STONE, WASH THE BONE. Nearly forty years later, the new brickwork is still evident.


A plaque in the courtyard describes what happened here.

THE BENEFICENCE OF THE PIZZERIA. Or perhaps its regard to my interest. Sunday is generally Pizza Night at Cold Spring Shops, and thus this picture becomes my invitation to view this year's winning and honorable mention entries in the Northern Illinois regional economics concepts poster contest.


The full gallery of winning and honorable mention entries is open.

HEY LOVE. Gayle Dubowski's cousins have composed a song with that title. It's available as a $1 download on CD Baby with proceeds supporting Hope Worldwide's efforts on behalf of Russian orphan children.

EXERCISING THE FRANCHISE. At King Banaian's request, a post mourning eight deaths in a post-election protest in Armenia.

Closer to home, the special election to fill Speaker Hastert's seat took place today. Saturday elections are uncommon here. In DeKalb, several churches are polling places. A close look will reveal a small Stars and Stripes, the official POLLING PLACE sign, and a Forward Together Forward banner at the door.


Polls closed 45 minutes ago. There is not yet a winner, although there is carping about voting irregularities. (I thought we'd sold all the defective equipment to Florida. That's not a joke: we used to vote with template assemblies that indicated the holes to punch in the Hollerith cards that served as ballots. The rest of the world now knows those assemblies as "butterfly ballots" and the effect of an incomplete punch as a "hanging chad.")

Despite the persistent winter, Ollies were serving custard. I did my civic duty, then treated myself.

THE WAR AT HOME. World War II, that is, when Sycamore was a work site for German war prisoners.

Sycamore Historical Society photo republished in the DeKalb Chronicle

The Historical Society recently hosted a presentation on the prisoners' work in the area.

About 300 German prisoners spent summers during World War II at a POW camp in Sycamore, at a South Avenue branch of the larger Rockford-based Camp Grant. The Rockford facility, which opened in the late 1910s, served as both a training center and a detention camp during the second world war.

Nearly 75 area natives gathered at the Sycamore Center on Thursday to share their memories at a brown bag lunch led by [90-year old Martha] Wetzel and 73-year-old Connie Wallin. The event was coordinated by the Sycamore Historical Society and Museum in hopes of gaining information for archives and to get community members talking.

“We only have one picture of the site,” said Michelle Donahoe, executive director of the Sycamore Historical Society and Museum. “You would think people would have taken more photos, so we thought this might encourage them to bring some in.”

They spoke of seeing prisoners dressed in green uniforms that had “POW” branded on the back. Many remembered them working in the fields and harvesting and canning vegetables, they said. Wallin's earliest memories of the camp were from horseback riding when she was 11.

German war prisoners well inland were not great security risks, although there were escapes from camps in Texas and Arizona. One person at the meeting spoke of his time, in the early 1950s with the occupying U.S. Army in Germany, of having a driver assigned who was a German in the U.S. Army. The driver was offered a sort of amnesty: when the war ends, enlist in the U.S. Army and become a citizen, which he did. I believe it's contrary to the Geneva Convention to make free agency offers to war prisoners.

Recollections of World War II railroaders include tales of working the prisoner trains taking Germans and Italians to Rockford and beyond. An article in Trains noted that the prisoners' experience of an undamaged United States, as seen from the Pennsylvania Railroad, caused some cognitive dissonance with the propaganda Germans were given at home. An article in Railfan and Railroad mentioned the effect the sight of a Union Pacific Big Boy on 100 cars of war materiel had on the morale of Germans bound for points further west.

HOOP DREAMS. Wisconsin, unambiguous Big Ten season champions. The Wisconsin Sports Bar has the required music.

DEFINING THE COMMONS. Wisconsin's just-inland counties hustle to divert water before the new Great Lakes compact takes shape.

The compact has been approved by the governors of eight Great Lakes states and is now making its way through the legislatures in those states. If approved by all eight, it would go to Congress for ratification.

The provision added to the Wisconsin Senate version of the legislation Thursday says that a water diversion to Waukesha County could be approved before Congress acts.

The competitive interests of the states differ.

Compact supporters likely could encounter trouble from those who want to eliminate a provision in the Senate version that allows a diversion project to be stopped by a single governor.

"Neighboring states like Michigan, which is almost entirely within the basin and wouldn't ever require a diversion, and Illinois, with its near-limitless 2.1 billion gallons per day court approved diversion ability via the Chicago River, would control the fate of straddling communities like the City of Waukesha as well as Stevens Point and Burlington," Patti Wallner, president of the Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.

Legislatures in four of the eight Great Lakes states have adopted the compact, which strengthens water conservation measures and Great Lakes diversions.

If ratified by Congress, the compact would replace existing federal law that vaguely regulates use of Great Lakes water.

The Wisconsin Senate amendment also allows the Department of Natural Resources to approve expansion of the area in which New Berlin wants to send lake water and take those areas off city wells.

Some Waukesha County legislators were concerned that Lake Michigan water would not be available until after the compact was ratified, an issue the provision added Thursday addresses.

Henderson stressed that the best chance Waukesha County communities have of getting lake water is through an approved compact.

Somewhere in this legislating, there's a treaty, as the Canadian South Coast touches four of the five Lakes. Stevens Point is some distance inland from Green Bay, giving some idea of the potential for conflict over water resources.

ENOUGH. The information center at Altgeld Hall features condolence cards that elementary schoolers have sent us.



Again, click the photos to enlarge. Note that the card at left is in Spanish. Note also Merging Lines and Main Lines on the bookshelf.

We learn today of the murder of the student government president at the University of North Carolina. The story also reports a probably unrelated murder of an Auburn student.


We also learn of a Hezbollah endorsed, if not Hezbollah sanctioned, library shooting in Jerusalem.

A student, Yitzhak Dadon, said he shot the attacker first with his own pistol. He told Israel Radio that when the shooting started, he climbed out of a window to a porch. "The terrorist went out and started spraying gunfire in the air," he said. "He stood at the main entrance to the library. ... I shot two bullets in his head, and he started to turn. He started swaying and then a fellow with an M-16 ... finished him off. We kept shooting at him until we emptied our clips."

Spring Break is here, and the animals are going about their business in Watson Crick. (For the past 22 years I've been pronouncing it correctly but not spelling it correctly. It's a bit of academic humor.)


And so a most un-spring-like Spring Break begins. Posting will probably be lighter in the upcoming week.

WE'D BELIEVE YOU IF YOU DIDN'T SHOUT SO MUCH. A gutter brawl erupts at Phi Beta Cons over Harvard's attempt to become a nonconference cupcake for Marquette or Wisconsin. A particularly angry collegiate sports fan (who might not even be a collegian) sends Travis Kavulla an e-mail of the sort that depressingly frequently appears in debates over college sports.

You're nothing but an elitist twerp. Harvard deemphasized football because they couldn't compete, not because of some high-minded educational purpose. And yes, graduates of schools with big-time programs do affiliate themselves with their teams. That's certainly better than the affilations that Harvard students have, e.g Gay Feminists, Anti-Fur Activists, Leftist Anarchists etc. It's on the fields of play at college that are sown the seeds of victory. But effete present-day Harvard pussies aren't aware of that as they prepare themselves for their productive careers in hedge fund management (perhaps they'd be better off learning how to use a pair of hedge clippers) and progressive journalism (i.e. giving away national secrets). Lose your rose-colored glasses as I'm sure you learned a lot less in your college days than anyone enrolled at UNC Charlotte.

Whew. Sophomoric Democratic cliches at least have some structure to them. Mr Kavulla's response has a bit more structure, but it's incomplete.

As to the imputation that I had somehow defended Harvard, let me apologize: It would also be to my great amusement to see Yalies, Harvardians, whoever, try to “sow the seeds of victory” on any sort of field against, say, the University of Florida. That is a game I would surely turn out for, if only to appease a morbid sense of sadism vis-à-vis the ninnies in crimson.

Um, Florida can't skate. On occasion, however, the preppies can beat the miners.

Harvard at last (April 2, 1989) gained the pinnacle of the college hockey world by defeating Minnesota, 4-3, in overtime to win the national championship tonight at the St. Paul Civic Center.

Ed Krayer scored the winning goal at 4 minutes 15 seconds of the sudden-death overtime period. Krayer lured Robb Stauber, college hockey's best goalie, out of the cage and then flipped a backhand shot into the net.

It was the first National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I championship for a Crimson hockey team in 14 tournament appearances. Four previous teams had made the Final [now Frozen -- SHK] Four and two had played for the title, in 1983 and 1986.

That 1983 appearance was against Wisconsin. Hey, Harvard, this is a hockey game, not the quiz bowl! But to take the Goophs to overtime in the Twin Cities and to withstand a Gooph flurry early in the overtime ... M I N N E S I E V E!

REACTIONARY PROGRESSIVISM. Or as Tech Central Station's Peter J. Wallison puts it, "Obama's well aged beef".

In the 60 pages of words, there's hardly a major new idea or an idea that departs significantly from the Democratic Party's agenda since the New Deal. It's all here: the activist government, the ambitious programs without reference to costs, the appeal to some people's sense of victimization.

Put more unkindly, the standard Democratic cliches that are depressingly often a weak substitute for collegiate discourse, probably because they appeal so well to sophomores.

If you've never heard this message before, and if you don't have any background in the politics of the last two generations, you might think these ideas will be generally accepted. But anyone who has followed American politics over more than the last year knows that there is real disagreement in this country about the role of government, about trade, about taxes, about confronting the nation's enemies. If Senator Obama is ultimately elected, and if his program ultimately adopted, it will certainly bring about change, but no one should be under the illusion that this is a message of reconciliation, or that the American people as a whole will rally around these ideas.

Those who do not remember the past will be compelled to relive ... the Seventies.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. Michael Gerson of Real Clear Politics (and the Council on Foreign Relations, for you conspiracy buffs) tackles The Myth of America's Unpopularity.

It is easy to be loved when you are a victim. It is harder to be popular when you act decisively to protect yourself and others.

A successful president should strive for America to be liked -- and expect, on occasion, for America to be resented in a good cause.

ALL IN THE FAMILY. Three Bailey sisters on the Northern Illinois golf team. Their mom and the Northern Illinois coach were teammates at Illinois State.

EVERYTHING WE LIKE GOES AWAY. The New England Confectionery Company is owner of Stark Candy, the manufacturer of those Valentine candy hearts that until recently were made in Pewaukee.

The firm has plenty of capacity at a 5-year-old plant in Revere, Mass., that is much larger than the 64,000-square-foot Pewaukee factory, said Bill Leva, NECCO's vice president of operations.

Further, Leva said, NECCO has faced stiff competition from foreign candy producers, thanks to federal subsidies of domestic sugar growers and tight quotas on imports.

That has protected U.S. sugar growers, but kept prices here at double the global level or more, a 2006 Commerce Department report said.

As a result, according to the agency, many U.S. makers of sugar-containing products such as candy have closed or relocated to Canada or Mexico. Imports of products containing sugar, meanwhile, have soared.

"It's been very hard to compete," Leva said. Smaller operations like the Pewaukee plant are "just getting knocked out," he said.

Support your right to keep cane farms in Hawaii and water-mining beet farms in the High Plains of eastern Colorado in business! Candies, on the other hand, are manufactured goods that cross borders without tariff under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Your tax dollars subsidize the export of sugar.

MORE FETTLING AND FITTING. (Click pictures to see larger images.) First measure and drill all holes for pivots and mounting screws, then remove sub-assemblies from etches.


Next, fold, measure, solder, and locate mounting screw holes on the frame.


Next: a session of drilling and tapping.

LIVE, LOVE, AND LAUGH. Cicero honors Catalina Garcia.

School officials said Garcia was an honors student who ran track, worked on the yearbook staff and was a member of the modern dance team that expressed ideas and personal views through movement.

She was quiet but had big ideas, said Lilia Contreras, who taught Garcia's advanced placement English class in 2006. She can't forget Garcia's most prominent attribute: "She always had a smile on her face."

Garcia's family members agreed, saying she was always grinning and liked to dote on her 6-month-old niece. She also enjoyed dancing and listening to music.

THE SUPPLY ELASTICITY OF CUPCAKES. The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, home to a basketball mid-major that famously worried Marquette's Al McGuire, contemplates becoming a football power. George Leef demurs.

We’re told by the feasibility study that football increases school spirit and pride and “captures the competitive spirit of America.” Perhaps so, but are such intangibles worth the increase in mandatory fees? An added cost of $300 to attend UNCC is not pocket change for many families.

The study also defends the proposal by claiming, “football would help increase the public perception that UNC Charlotte is a great institution.” But certainly participating in top-level football is neither necessary for sufficient for that public perception. The University of Chicago hasn’t had intercollegiate football in 60 years,^(*) but is no doubt regarded as a great institution. Conversely, there are football powers like Florida State whose reputations probably suffer precisely because of their persistent gridiron success.

To which we might add Wisconsin, simultaneously celebrating bowl appearances, March Madness seedings, and hockey titles, while attempting to retain successful professors and keep the brightest graduates in state.

The article correctly points to Buffalo's forlorn attempt to become a football power.

The allure of big-time football has been too much for some schools to resist. Throughout its history, the State University of New York at Buffalo (now just called the University of Buffalo, or UB) played in the low-key NCAA Division III. No prestige, but little cost. Then in 1990, the administration, egged on by the athletic department, decided to move up.

UB spent eight seasons in Division I-AA, a notch below the big-time and then reached the pinnacle, Division I-A, by obtaining membership in the Mid-American Conference in 1999. University president William Greiner said that the reason for going into big-time sports was that they make “a major contribution to the total quality of student life and the visibility of your institution.”

Buffalo’s athletic director, Bob Arkeilpane, added, “Not having big-time college athletics at Buffalo meant there was a quality of life element that was missing here.”

Those sentiments sound a lot like the rhetoric in favor of starting football at UNCC.

The Mid-American isn't exactly the "pinnacle" as its teams have to sell wins to the power conferences to meet the football cartel's attendance criteria. It's rare that Northern Illinois or Toledo isn't in the win-selling business, as Maryland and Alabama and Iowa State once learned, and it's more rare that Northern Illinois is in the win-buying business, as bitter experience with Southern Illinois and Western Illinois has taught, although there's probably room for Charlotte to become a non-conference cupcake to the Mid-American, at least in the early years of its program. That's what Buffalo was before it formally affiliated. (Temple, too, probably to Bill Cosby's dismay).

After six losing seasons, in 2005 the university commissioned a report from nationally recognized sports consultant Gene Corrigan on what it needed to do to become successful. Endorsing Corrigan’s report, the school’s new president John Simpson said, “Building a high-quality, highly competitive athletics program is integral to our success and progress as a leading university community.”

One of the recommendations was to hire a new director of athletics and UB promptly undertook such a search. Corrigan also said that the school needed to put more financial resources into its athletics program. With state financial support tightening, that meant scraping up more private donations for sports and raising student fees.

Buffalo has had a little more success in the Mid-American Conference over the last couple of seasons, but it’s hard to see that student life is any better than at non-football schools. It’s also hard to see how being an also-ran in a low-luster conference does much for the school’s visibility and reputation.

On the other hand, some pretty good economists are at Buffalo. New York's stinginess might have prevented them from getting more. Northern Illinois has received some favorable publicity and perhaps a few enrollments because of football success, although the True North capital campaign reflects the reality that there were plenty of positive things happening elsewhere long before anybody noticed those wins. (The radio call-ins the night of the shootings tended to mention these other things.)

^(*)Pedant's note: the Maroons take the field in Division III, although "Run the ball around Chicago" is unlikely to be written back into On! Wisconsin!

THE THINGS YOU LEARN.

Four Block World for March 3.

CARTEL MANAGEMENT. Regulation in the public interest means regulating participation. There's a litany of objections incumbents can raise to applications for new service. The existing service is adequate. If additional service is required, the existing carriers can provide it. The applicant carrier is not competent to provide the service. Thus the issuance of certificates of public convenience and necessity, and thus, too, the issuance of permits for proton therapy clinics. The profit motive is apparently evidence of incompetence.

A week after getting state approval to build a proton-therapy cancer-treatment center in West Chicago Northern Illinois University officials on Wednesday blasted Central DuPage Hospital's plan to build another, arguing it is motivated by greed and the facility is not needed.

In a hearing before the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, hospital officials and their corporate partner, ProCure Treatment Centers Inc., said NIU came out against the $140 million proton-therapy facility to prevent competition. NIU officials, whose project is a non-profit venture, said ProCure's goal is to make money.

In early April, the board will rule on Central DuPage's application to build the center in Warrenville.

The public interest is adequately served by existing carriers.

NIU Vice President of External Affairs [usually making the university's case in Springfield, which we used to call "legislative relations" and which the rest of the world understands as "lobbying"] Kathy Buettner pointed out that only five proton-therapy centers exist in the U.S., 20 years after the technology was discovered. She noted the proton-therapy center in Loma Linda, Calif., advertises for patients in the Midwest, and she views this as proof that two centers only 6 miles apart cannot possibly operate successfully.

"We stand ready and able to treat the very patients CDH/ProCure would treat at its proposed site," said Buettner, who described Central DuPage's proposed project as duplicative and premature.

Reminds me of the Chicago and North Western's dodge to get rid of passenger trains by arguing the Milwaukee Road also operated a service, although that inverts the duplication argument. (The Milwaukee got suckered on that one numerous times.) Here, the incumbent argues the existing service will be adequate.

Dr. James Cameron, president and CEO of ProCure, acknowledged that proton therapy is not the most effective treatment for all types of cancers but said thousands of patients could still be helped.

He cited National Cancer Institute data that show about 180,000 people living within 250 miles of Warrenville will be diagnosed with cancer annually.

NIU officials say their research shows those numbers are inflated.

I'll never lack for work.

HELP FROM OUR NEIGHBORS. Some Hokies take a spring break trip to DeKalb.

The Blacksburg, Va., community has repeatedly reached out to DeKalb in the wake of the Feb. 14 shootings. While the intent is to help a community suffering a similar loss, the outreach has also been healing to VT students approaching the first anniversary of the shooting at their school, junior communication student Jackie Peters said.

Sorry we can't offer some of those early spring days with highs in the 50s or 60s.

RESUMING NORMAL OPERATIONS. Three weeks on from our troubles, here is the traffic record. I'm not sure yet whether there's a small permanent increase in readership, or an exponentially decaying following of events at Northern Illinois and in the State Line.

I do have a few Book Reviews ready to go, as well as continued developments in transportation policy and higher education to follow. There's still fallout from the Northern Illinois shooting, including a scare at Sycamore High School, a Code Yellow lockdown at Rockton Hononegah High, another threat on a bathroom mirror, this time at Rockford Boylan High, and a threat alluding to Northern Illinois at the Belvidere Chrysler plant. The third shift will be laying off in a few hours. The evening news suggests this threat is not credible. It has also been a difficult weekend for the Chicago Public Schools.

The Northern Illinois spring break begins with the end of classes Friday or Saturday, and it comes none too soon.

KNOWING WHEN TO WALK AWAY. My Illinois readers who are savoring Brett Favre's retirement ought think again.

Favre gave the organization he loves the greatest gift of all: The best chance to succeed in 2008 and beyond.

One indicator:

I’m convinced that his decision to retire was the right one for the Packers. And though Favre, like most fierce competitors, probably wouldn’t concede this – and, in truth, likely isn’t even conscious of it – deep inside, this was an act of selflessness made with the franchise’s best interests in mind.

As terrific as Favre was in 2007, as deliciously surprising as it was that he returned to Pro Bowl form after two shaky seasons, what went down at Texas Stadium on Nov. 29 was drenched in symbolism. In the biggest game of the regular season in the NFC, Favre, for whatever reason, looked positively awful against the Dallas Cowboys. He was 5 for 14 with 56 yards and two interceptions before getting knocked out of the game in the second quarter with a separated left shoulder and bruised right elbow.

At the time, the Packers trailed the Cowboys 27-10 and seemed to be overmatched against their aggressive hosts. What happened next, to most outsiders, was somewhat stunning. Aaron Rodgers, the former first-round draft pick who’d been chilling like the old hamburger buns in the back of a freezer for three seasons, ran into the huddle and played like, dare I say, the young Favre.

He got Green Bay back into the game, cutting the Dallas lead to 27-24. The Cowboys ultimately prevailed, 37-27, but Rodgers was a revelation. He looked smooth, unruffled and utterly in command, completing 18 of 26 passes for 201 yards and a touchdown, with no interceptions.

The columnist suggests only Mr Favre could pass the torch.

Eventually though, someone had to end The Streak for the Pack to move on, and neither coach Mike McCarthy nor general manager Ted Thompson was willing to do the deed. Thankfully, Favre chose to end it himself, rather than let some ferocious defensive end or blitzing linebacker do the honors.

Vince Lombardi once, controversially but probably correctly, pushed guard Fuzzy Thurston into retirement, and the last two or three seasons of Bart Starr's career were rather sad, as he endured repeated shoulder separations in ultimately futile quests for one more Super Bowl run.

Some of the fans leaving Lambeau, at least those who could move their mouths, uttered the unthinkable to one another: “Maybe we’d have won the game with Rodgers.”

Favre didn’t see Webster lurking when he floated that ball to Driver, but the great quarterback’s vision was impeccable when it came to looking at the big picture.

Because of Favre’s stellar season, many assumed he’d want to come back in ‘08 to enjoy the Pack’s surprising revival. But Favre knew it wasn’t that simple, especially in today’s NFL of sudden rises and falls.

At one point in January, Favre referenced the Saints and Bears – the teams that battled in the ‘06 NFC title game but missed the playoffs in ‘07 – as proof that nothing about the Pack’s ‘08 prospects should be taken for granted. Even after his fantastic performance led Green Bay to a 42-20 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in the divisional round, he voiced that sentiment, saying in his postgame press conference, “We could be 3-13 next year. Who knows? So enjoy it and try to get the most out of it.”

I think Favre is at peace with himself, with his career and with his decision to walk away. He was never particularly nurturing toward Rodgers, as most of us might not be to the young worker we feared was brought in by management to take our jobs, but he also knows that the kid’s time has come. The Packers had the league’s youngest roster in 2007, and they’ll gravitate toward Rodgers’ refreshing energy, even as they stumble and fall while trying to forge what could be a nice run of prolonged championship contention.

This columnist suggests the apprentice is ready for Urlacher.

It's impossible to replace Brett Favre's personality, but replacing Favre the quarterback is not as tough as you might think. Heir apparent Aaron Rodgers' playing style and talent better fit coach Mike McCarthy's offense.

It certainly will be easier to convince the much younger Rodgers to not take as many gunslinger's chances in throwing downfield. He will be called upon to spread the ball around in the passing game, playing wisely off the running game.

Rodgers will have trouble matching the pure passion of Favre -- which current NFL quarterback can, really? -- he has the skill set and enough time and "experience" to keep Green Bay's offense humming.

There's also an opportunity cost to protecting a franchise player.

The team benefits hugely from a loyal fan base that isn't going to wane with the departure of one player, no matter how prominent. There are over 70,000 people on the waiting list for Packers season tickets. Those at the top have been waiting since the mid-1970s.

And now, the Packers can spend the $12 million they would have paid Favre in 2008 on free agents or locking up current players to longer contracts.

One columnist notes that the timing of the curtain call is correct.

In recent years, as Favre's play declined and the Packers struggled, we kept thinking that those would be the key factors in his decision to step away from the game. Instead, he kept coming back. Kept trying to win again, and to play up to his previous Hall-of-Fame standards.

And then he did, last season. The Packers won again, and Favre flashed so much of his old magic. With a young and potential-laden team around him, it seemed like retirement would be the last thing on his mind this offseason. I thought for sure he couldn't walk away with so much going for him now, having endured the lean years in Green Bay.

So of course, he did. He said no to the lure of more glory -- something few professional athletes ever overcome -- and called it a career after the memorable comeback season that added an exclamation point to his legacy. He's leaving on a high note, just like all great entertainers do. We might all want more, but he's smart not to give it to us. In the past 17 years, we've seen more than enough from Favre, and that'll just have to do. It was his show all along, and knowing just when to end it was his last good call.

I'll give the last word to the editorial board at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

But there was something else that helped make Favre a favorite wherever he went - for fans and for us, too. Despite fame and fortune, he was still human, painfully and publicly struggling with his wife Deanna's breast cancer, with his own problems with alcohol and pills and with the death of his father and other loved ones.

And, oh, yeah, the toughest guy on the field wasn't afraid to cry.

WHY IT MATTERS. A Northern Star columnist makes the case for the transfer student.

“The quality varies between junior colleges,” said Danny Beeman, assistant undergraduate adviser for the NIU Economics Department. “But on the whole, I think they are as good as universities.”

Some critics even think that community college should be avoided like the plague, a leper or a Wisconsin driver; but is this view really justified? As a transfer student from Rock Valley College, the answer is no.

What is it about a two-year school that is so troubling to some? Is it the misconception that a lower price necessarily means a lower quality product? Is it the less-selective acceptance policies? If it is for either of these reasons, these worries aren’t warranted. It’s true; community college tuition costs less than a university’s tuition does, but that doesn’t mean the education quality is that much lower.

“Students who transfer from two-year schools will not get the same experience that students have here but, historically, our transfers have performed very well here,” said Bob Burk, NIU director of admissions.

If the quality of the general education classes is not much different between the two, the criticism of community colleges being less selective is not a criticism at all. If a student graduates from a two-year school, they [c.q.] have the skills to be in college. If they drop out, they wasted a lot less money than they would have at a university.

It appears, though, that community college poobahs are not paying attention, to judge from the frustration the dean at Anonymous Community is showing.

FLORIDA GULF COAST? Sounds like a railroad, but it's a nonconference cupcake on Marquette's schedule.

[T]he Golden Eagles got back on the winning track by beating Florida Gulf Coast, 67-37, on Tuesday in their home finale.

Wisconsin handled Penn State as roughly.

Not much was expected of Wisconsin coming into the season. The Badgers had lost stars Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor, and it was unclear who would emerge as the new leading scorer. But sophomore guard Trevon Hughes proved he could be counted on to score, senior Brian Butch had a solid season and the Badgers used their size advantage and discipline to play stifling defense.

Wisconsin entered Wednesday leading the nation in scoring defense, giving up an average of 54.9 points per game. The Badgers held Penn State (14-15, 6-11) to 7-for-27 shooting in the first half.

Wisconsin held Penn State scoreless for a 5:21 stretch late in the first half, going on an 8-0 run to take a 27-12 lead on a 3-pointer by Michael Flowers.

WE. WANT. MORE.

RUNNING EXTRA. Wisconsin's offensive efficiency rating was 1.35 and its defensive efficiency rating was 0.72.

OBSERVATION OF THE DAY. An anthropologist makes a professional judgement.

So when I see Westerners with all kinds of tattoos, piercings, stretchings, scarification, brightly colored hair, my assessment is that person is displaying their [c.q.] social status and group membership just like any other culture. Except, what they are saying is "I am an outsider, I am a social outcast, this is how I separate myself from the rest of society, this is how I try to intimidate the society that I perceive has somehow kept me down, I embrace my freakishness!"

So, that said, it always pisses me off when folks like yon tattooed Tina, make statements like, "And there are times when the less mainstream of us feel marginalized or stereotyped, even in academia..." Uh, duh! Isn't that what you were going for when you CHOSE to modify your body?! To set yourself apart (read: marginalize) yourself from the rest (read: mainstream) society?! You're a hypocrite.

Seriously, get over yourself. You can't choose to look like a freak and then expect to NOT be treated like one.

Indeed not.

THINK IT OVER. The legislature and the university are rethinking the future of Cole Hall.

"There has been some urgency to some of the things that were done and I'm not sure that urgency is necessary," state Rep. Bob Pritchard told the Daily Herald. "We do have time to have a discussion on what the future of Cole Hall is."

President Peters has created a special e-mail suggestion box, colehall at niu dot edu, for commentary.

3. 4. 5. Tony Canadeo. Brett Favre. Paul Hornung.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel photo by Jeffrey Phelps.

"I know I can still play, but it's like I told my wife, I'm just tired mentally. I'm just tired," Favre said. "If I felt like coming back - and Deanna (his wife) and I talked about this - the only way for me to be successful would be to win a Super Bowl. To go to the Super Bowl and lose, would almost be worse than anything else. Anything less than a Super Bowl win would be unsuccessful," Favre said in the message.

"I know it shouldn't feel unsuccessful, but the only way to come back and make that be the right decision would be to come back and win a Super Bowl and honestly the odds of that, they're tough. Those are big shoes for me to fill, and I guess it was a challenge I wasn't up for."

Fair winds.

THE WORK GOES ON. Northern collaborates with Northwestern.

NIU has named Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation as its expected provider of clinical services for the $160 million proton therapy cancer treatment and research center to be built in the DuPage National Technology Park in Chicago’s western suburbs.

On the heels of the Feb. 26 announcement naming the expected service provider, the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board in Chicago gave its approval for the project to proceed.

“We are here today in that spirit of hope and with constant focus on our mission,” NIU President John Peters said at the facilities planning board meeting. “This facility will stand in testament to our mission as a world class-educational, research and now, cancer treatment center.”

NIU Board of Trustees Chair Cherilyn G. Murer hailed the collaboration with Northwestern, saying that NIU’s expertise in advanced accelerator physics and engineering, coupled with the world-class cancer treatment experience of doctors from the Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation in Chicago, would make NIU’s proton treatment center the best in the world.

“Our anticipated collaboration with Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation speaks to the high caliber of our endeavor,” Murer said.

“While patient focus will be our primary objective, the incredible byproducts we will offer through education and research in the form of medical, scientific and technology protocols will work to advance the human condition across the globe,” she added. “Ours will be far more than a community proton center to treat cancer. We envision the NIU facility as a regional and even national resource complemented through NIU’s work with Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratories, both world leaders in accelerator physics, neutron and proton therapies.”

The center will be the sixth proton therapy clinic in the U.S.

OPPORTUNITY COSTS. Reason's Steve Chapman urges restraint on replacing Cole Hall.

There are lessons there for any institution that goes through a similar tragedy: Be strong. Hold to your own purposes. Understand that this will pass. Don't let a psychopath govern you from the grave.

But none of these was offered by the governor of Illinois or the administration of Northern Illinois University in the aftermath of the Valentine's Day slaughter in a lecture hall on the DeKalb campus. In what must come as a shock not only to the people of the state but the rest of the country, they propose to bulldoze the building and replace it with a new one, at a cost of $40 million.

If the facility were an ancient firetrap, this might be the right moment to do the inevitable. But Cole Hall is a perfectly functional building that, having been built in 1968, is younger than your average tenured professor.

Cole is not "perfectly functional" where handicapped access and the latest instructional bells and whistles are concerned, although the university's renovation plan has several other projects, most notably a renovation of the adjacent and slightly older Stevens Building, ahead of a replacement for Cole. The discussion of what to do with the building, which is also home to the anime society, offers an instructive manifestation of the broken window fallacy, and its more plausible-sounding but more pernicious relative, the bombed factory fallacy. (That's the one that attributes Japanese industrial success relative to the United States to its new factories.) It's clear from the discussion about what to do with Cole Hall that removing it could involve the sacrifice of an opportunity to build something else. That would be equally true if it had been demolished by a tornado or damaged by a bombing, both events that have occurred on midwestern campuses. To take it down and replace it cannot be viewed as economic stimulus for DeKalb. The anime society, by the way, has left a memorial sign at the rear entrance that expresses a wish to keep their screening room.

SUBSTITUTION AND ARBITRAGE POSSIBILITIES. A number of the Ivies have been competing to spend their endowments as tuition waivers to people of modest means. Robert VerBruggen of Phi Beta Cons suggests that the positional arms race will change as the tuition waivers induce more applicants at what he characterizes as a "fixed number of slots" at the "top schools." In that competition is an opportunity for the land-grants and mid-majors to note that they are in the same business as Harvard and Brown, and as capable of delivering the same educational experience. Mr VerBruggen's remark that the competition has to work down the "prestige chain" suggests that parents and students -- perhaps some of the well-to-do ones who will compare in-state tuitions at Madison or Urbana or DeKalb with full fare at the Ivies -- might lobby for greater intellectual challenges. We shall see.

INEFFICIENCY BEGETS PROSPERITY? An American Prospect article by Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein notes that access to education, while useful for broadly shared prosperity, is not the sole policy instrument.

Of course we should work to improve schools for the middle class. And we have an urgent need to help more students from disadvantaged families graduate from good high schools. If those students do so, our society can become more meritocratic, with children from low-income and minority families better able to compete for good jobs with children from more privileged homes. But the biggest threats to the next generation's success come from social and economic policy failures, not schools. And enhancing opportunity requires much more than school improvement.

They observe,

Rising workforce skills can indeed make American firms more competitive. But better skills, while essential, are not the only source of productivity growth. The honesty of our capital markets, the accountability of our corporations, our fiscal-policy and currency management, our national investment in R&D and infrastructure, and the fair-play of the trading system (or its absence), also influence whether the U.S. economy reaps the gains of Americans' diligence and ingenuity. The singular obsession with schools deflects political attention from policy failures in those other realms.

But while adequate skills are an essential component of productivity growth, workforce skills cannot determine how the wealth created by national productivity is distributed. That decision is made by policies over which schools have no influence -- tax, regulatory, trade, monetary, technology, and labor-market policies that modify the market forces affecting how much workers will be paid. Continually upgrading skills and education is essential for sustaining growth as well as for closing historic race and ethnic gaps. It does not, however, guarantee economic success without policies that also reconnect pay with productivity growth.

American middle-class living standards are threatened, not because workers lack competitive skills but because the richest among us have seized the fruits of productivity growth, denying fair shares to the working- and middle-class Americans, educated in American schools, who have created the additional national wealth. Over the last few decades, wages of college graduates overall have increased, but some college graduates -- managers, executives, white-collar sales workers -- have commandeered disproportionate shares, with little left over for scientists, engineers, teachers, computer programmers, and others with high levels of skill. No amount of school reform can undo policies that redirect wealth generated by skilled workers to profits and executive bonuses.

College graduates are, in fact, not in short supply. A background paper for the Tough Choices report (but not one publicized in the report itself) acknowledges that "fewer young college graduates have been able to obtain college labor market jobs, and their real wages and annual earnings have declined accordingly due to rising mal-employment." In plain language, many college graduates are now forced to take jobs requiring only high school educations.

Rephrase that: inefficiently many college graduates are purchasing a high school education that their high schools failed to deliver. Rather than hint at a conspiracy among the sales managers and the corporate offices to keep the engineers and teachers poor, consider the continued lamentations from the personnel department about the lack of skilled workers, who have to be purchased with better pay packets (and I keep beating the drums for more favorable hours of work).

While it's popular to blame the U.S. education system for the lack of skilled workers and to look at elementary and secondary schools as the place to solve the crisis, manufacturers can't refute that lower turnover is one of most potent salves to this problem, and the ingredients to this salve are better working conditions, higher pay and more training. And, these challenges are more easily addressed than an overhaul of the U.S. education system.

That strikes me as more likely to succeed than raising wages by restricting output, as Mr Mishel and Mr Rothstein would have us do.

Another too glib canard is that our education system used to be acceptable because students could graduate from high school (or even drop out) and still support families with good manufacturing jobs. Today, those jobs are vanishing, and with them the chance of middle-class incomes for those without good educations.

It's true that many manufacturing jobs have disappeared. But replacements have mostly been equally unskilled or semiskilled jobs in service and retail sectors. There was never anything more inherently valuable in working in a factory assembly line than in changing bed linens in a hotel. What made semiskilled manufacturing jobs desirable was that many (though not most) were protected by unions, provided pensions and health insurance, and compensated with decent wages. That today's working class doesn't get similar protections has nothing to do with the adequacy of its education. Rather, it has everything to do with policy decisions stemming from the value we place on equality. Hotel jobs that pay $20 an hour, with health and pension benefits (rather than $10 an hour without benefits), typically do so because of union organization, not because maids earned bachelor's degrees.

It is cynical to tell millions of Americans who work (and who will continue to be needed to work) in low-level administrative jobs and in janitorial, food-service, hospitality, transportation, and retail industries that their wages have stagnated because their educations are inadequate for international competition. The quality of our civic, cultural, community, and family lives demands school improvement, but barriers to unionization have more to do with low wages than does the quality of education. After all, since 1973 the share of the workforce with college degrees has more than doubled; over 40 percent of native-born workers now have degrees beyond high school. Additionally, the proportion of native-born workers that has not completed high school or its equivalent has decreased by half to just 7 percent.

Left unstated: that those unionized factory jobs were the consequence of closed markets and little global competition after the second World War. Oligopolistic prices above competitive levels made possible the union scale wages based on the resulting marginal revenue product, and the substitution of more productive technology induced by those union wages meant fewer people shared in the prosperity. Consumers, understandably, balked at paying the higher prices for the products, and substituted the first chance they saw.

DRILLING AND FETTLING. I'm drilling mounting holes for the motion brackets. The crosshead guides (two to a side) will be attached next. The guide parts are laid out below the brackets.


To provide some scale, here is the superstructure temporarily in place, alongside a podstakannik, in case any University Diaries readers are curious about tea in the Russian style.


Dobrii vyetcher.

MAKING TRADEOFFS. The public, and public officials, recognize them.

State Rep. Robert Pritchard, R-Hinckley, said he has received calls from alumni, students and community members.

“People think the governor reacted too quickly and that he's calling for a solution that hasn't thoroughly been discussed so that people can understand it ... to see if the solution matches the need,” he said.

The key issue, he said, is figuring out how to meet the need for classroom space.

[John] Puterbaugh, the Northern Star editor, said university officials may be interested in the replacement idea because of the chance to get money for a new building after years of limited aid from state government.

“Our administration can't say no,” he said. “They don't want to bite the hand that routinely does not feed them.”

AMERICA. CHANGE IT OR LOSE IT. During the 1960s, that was a rebuttal from the left to the Right's AMERICA. LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. I find lots of riffs on the latter slogan albeit little on the former. Now comes Freakonomics, with the winning entry in their six-word motto contest.

OUR WORST CRITICS PREFER TO STAY.

They elaborate.

[It is], while perhaps not outrightly uplifting, a wonderfully concise acknowledgment of the paradox that a capitalist democracy inevitably is: a place that is often well worth complaining about, and which allows you to complain as loudly as you wish.

Participants in the ensuing bull session concur in part and dissent in part.

IN SIGHT, IT MUST BE RIGHT. That's the slogan if you're Chief Takhomasak or Lord Faxasak, and that's also the objective for students participating in the middle school history fair. There are a few topics one comes to expect. Then come the surprises. This is the first time I've seen Steak 'n Shake (it originated at Normal, Illinois and it's a source of road food for ferroequinologists) as topic of a project.


Two Illinois icons make an appearance.


There were several entries featuring Al Capone, with the obligatory mention of the 1929 Valentine's Day Massacre. These entries were in preparation before ours happened.


I thought this display was particularly well-done.



It refers to one of the more notorious cases of corporate malfeasance. To this day the former watch factory is a Superfund site, and there is a cemetery in Ottawa that registers on radiation detectors.