tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37600052012-01-31T09:43:39.480-06:00Observations on economics, the academy, the wider world, and things that run on rails.Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.comBlogger105761100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-1084074627772459292012-01-30T20:32:00.000-06:002012-01-30T20:32:13.094-06:00

TAIL TRACK. Barring signal troubles, links to any posts of substance ought to work.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-1100255863102024172012-01-30T20:27:00.000-06:002012-01-30T20:31:54.758-06:00

Yale University and Southern Connecticut State University are separated by two miles as the seagull flies, and something exceeding the legendary six degrees on the academic pecking order.  Their proximity allows sociologist Ann L. Mullen to interview fifty students at each university in order to structure Degrees of Inequality:  Culture, Class, and Gender in American Higher Education.  Book

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-49096755280552605792012-01-30T19:04:00.000-06:002012-01-30T19:04:20.913-06:00

The dean at Anonymous Community catches on.  Contrary to what dispiritingly many administrators and far too many unthinking critics of higher education believe, the work does not stop simply because classes are not currently in session. Moments like these strike me as both necessary and difficult to encourage.  They happen when people have time, but are still physically around.  They require a

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-3253116903844911442012-01-30T18:56:00.001-06:002012-01-30T18:56:53.611-06:00

Gulliver of The Economist finds a Freakonomics panel discussion on Amtrak.  He suggests that analysts place too much emphasis on farebox recovery. Here are some better questions: what's the right balance of public- and private-sector involvement in these sorts of enterprises? How much, if anything, should governments continue to invest in air, rail and road infrastructure? If the government is

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-40297314918868882742012-01-29T22:02:00.000-06:002012-01-29T22:07:21.038-06:00

Since the days of Thomas Malthus, if not earlier, political philosophers have grappled with the possibility of exhausting the carrying capacity of Earth, and attempted to square those limits with the real improvement in living standards since the Industrial Revolution, or to evaluate the limits on improvements implied by that carrying capacity.  Brian Czech's Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train:  

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-22347194055521095202012-01-29T21:12:00.003-06:002012-01-29T21:12:58.333-06:00

Our President is now threatening to take higher education's last subsidy away. President Barack Obama fired a warning at the nation’s colleges and universities Friday, threatening to strip their federal aid if they “jack up tuition” every year and to give the money instead to schools showing restraint and value.Obama can’t proceed without the OK from Congress, where the reaction of Republican

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-77359596939959105722012-01-29T20:28:00.002-06:002012-01-29T20:28:47.550-06:00

At one time, the Cold Spring Shops research library maintained a subscription to Back Track, a history of the evolution of railways in the British Isles from the beginning to the end of the steam era.  On occasion, an article would mention a cosmetic cutting, or tunnel, or a curve not dictated by the terrain, so as to keep the steam cars out of the sight or hearing of some local noble. Now

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-55707279369648961912012-01-29T20:13:00.000-06:002012-01-29T20:13:54.095-06:00

We've previously noted Via Media's use of the saeculum.  A recent essay calling for a fifth understanding of liberalism recognizes the long cycle, intentionally or not. The core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the sixty years after the New Deal don’t work anymore. The gaps between the social system we inhabit and the one we now need are becoming so wide that we

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-69775345663074761302012-01-28T21:07:00.000-06:002012-01-28T21:07:06.451-06:00

Sometimes it is the people who most likely treat unfamiliarity with Atlas Shrugged as a marker of political sophistication who, with no sense of irony, make the work come alive. The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding "a reasonable profit." It would set up a Reasonable

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-7817988146223349152012-01-28T20:44:00.000-06:002012-01-28T21:08:10.789-06:00

Ships sink.  Refloating them is work, but it can be done.  Costa Concordia is in a difficult place, but she's not likely to be dashed to pieces over the next century. [I]f it's determined that the Costa Concordia can be saved, engineers could try to refloat the ship and tug it back to dry dock for refurbishing. The job will likely require 'a combination of barges equipped with winches and cranes

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-11769189823715450742012-01-28T20:17:00.000-06:002012-01-28T20:17:22.106-06:00

On a Passenger Rail corridor, frequency and capacity matter, more than dramatic increases in speed. Amtrak’s Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha Service set a ridership record in 2011, carrying 823,163 passengers. According to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, that is a nearly 4 percent increase from 2010 when ridership totaled 792,848.Amtrak’s Hiawatha Service includes seven Chicago-Milwaukee

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-77353328541530833532012-01-26T23:54:00.002-06:002012-01-26T23:54:52.088-06:00

Daniel Luzer looks at universities contracting out the operation of housing, and sees tradeoffs, some of which trouble him. While the private dorms may not always be in the students’ best interests, it’s a relatively easy way for the colleges to get new buildings on the cheap.The University of Kentucky, [New York Times reporter Ronda] Kaysen reports, is considering farming out all of its student

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-54941406218397646082012-01-26T23:40:00.000-06:002012-01-26T23:40:19.070-06:00

Former Speaker of the House Gingrich is saying a number of the right things to angry people, according to Rush Limbaugh. We're sick and tired of being called racists and bigots and sexists, when all we want is the best for everybody.  We are sick and tired of this categorization, when, in fact, it is the people leveling the charge who are the racists; who look at these people and see no

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-20413790427478958752012-01-26T23:27:00.001-06:002012-01-26T23:27:33.154-06:00

It takes a long time to build a pipeline, and there apparently are constraints on their carrying capacity (as well as suffering from fixed endpoints).  In the short run, the railroads will benefit.  The short run, however, lasts a long time. By 2013, [North Dakota] officials expect to drillers to pump 750,000 barrels per day from the stubbornly hard rock formations and to surpass 1 million by

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-63876969036449575202012-01-25T23:55:00.000-06:002012-01-25T23:55:01.532-06:00

I recently picked up a copy of Today's Railways Europe for November 2011.  It's instructive to read about plans for a freight railroad network that don't include double-stacks, bathtub gondolas, or 100 tank loads of ethanol.  But a story about a number of Greek narrow-gauge center cab diesels of class 9400 that had been moved from dead storage in Patras to the end of a derelict branch line,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-27033908803001207202012-01-25T23:39:00.000-06:002012-01-25T23:39:06.907-06:00

So let it be with Joe Paterno, according to The RosenBlog. The only good thing that might come out of this is that money-grubbing college presidents might regain control of their universities’ moral compasses instead of willingly being dictated to by the largely ethically challenged guys in charge of phys. ed. I wish the critics of big-time sports would keep the table of organization straight.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-63263642224645671092012-01-19T23:30:00.000-06:002012-01-19T23:30:05.925-06:00

Captain Francesco Schettino, master of Costa Concordia, gets unsparing peer review.  "Matter of honor."  "Shameful."  "Abject cowardice."  Just go read it.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-59605319733087748452012-01-19T23:24:00.000-06:002012-01-19T23:24:59.889-06:00

Bryan Caplan has a useful discussion of the ways students go wrong by generalizing from their own experiences. Faced with a genuinely difficult question, they answer a different, easier question, then conflate the answer to their question. Go read, understand, and use it in class next Monday.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-59336879307331353062012-01-19T23:21:00.000-06:002012-01-19T23:21:00.648-06:00

Microsoft is working on a new application for smart phones and Global Positioning System receivers to overlay crime data on maps.  That has provoked the president of the Dallas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to preemptively denounce the "Avoid the Ghetto App." “I’m going to be up in arms about it if it happens,” said Dallas NAACP President Juanita

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-41369584999372067352012-01-19T23:07:00.001-06:002012-01-19T23:07:21.448-06:00

I'm skeptical of business fads, including the restructuring that often took away capital for upgrading existing plant and fired the institutional memory.  Daniel Henninger (via Betsy's Page) offers the other side of the story. Airlines, ground transportation, cable and broadcasting, oil and gas, banking and financial services all experienced regulatory rollback. Meanwhile, a competitive,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-77175748914398792802012-01-19T22:51:00.000-06:002012-01-19T23:34:08.387-06:00

Thus did a coach preparing to face Vince Lombardi's Packers (possibly the 1962 team that allowed only four touchdowns and swept almost all before it) describe his difficulties. The good news is that current coach Mike McCarthy has drawn the correct lessons from last Sunday's debacle. “The tackling was just not there all year. We did not tackle well enough as a football team. It’s not acceptable

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-11003600766924646122012-01-17T23:56:00.000-06:002012-01-17T23:56:14.929-06:00

In the early days of Amtrak, travelers in the Chicago - Twin Cities corridor had a choice of two trains a day each way.  That was a step backwards from the frequencies offered as late as 1968,  but plenitude compared to today's schedule, in which one additional coach east of the Cities riding on the Empire Builder is the only recognition of the corridor.  Despite the political turmoil in Illinois

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-52944205788646297672012-01-17T23:34:00.000-06:002012-01-17T23:34:04.067-06:00

In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell describes the condition of Depression-era coal miners in Britain.  A recent documentary suggests working conditions in contemporary China are no better. In [journalist Yuanchen] Liu's film, the miners venture underground without protective masks. China's mines suffer from inadequate ventilation systems, and Liu told me that dangerous coal dust sparkles

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-36343563933002656622012-01-17T23:07:00.000-06:002012-01-17T23:07:37.431-06:00

Self-esteem is the consequence of accomplishment following effort. A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with significant learning opportunities. As schools ratchet up academic standards for all students, new buzzwords are “persistence,” “risk-taking” and “resilience” — each implying more sweat and strain than

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-57943166207328300272012-01-15T20:43:00.000-06:002012-01-15T20:43:09.660-06:00

Cole Hall will reopen for classes on Tuesday. With the renovation came the new Jameson Auditorium, a “Collaboratory” classroom and new features for the NIU Anthropology Museum.The Collaboratory classroom includes separate learning pods that seat eight students each. The pods also have 65-inch high definition digital touch screens. Professors can use a larger screen at the front of the classroom

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-42850661908985194432012-01-15T20:40:00.000-06:002012-01-15T20:40:04.972-06:00

David (Spengler) Goldman offers the case for corporate raiders. Want to see what America would look like without private equity? Move to Detroit and contemplate the ruins of a city ruined by the placid conformity of auto industry executives. The  economic impact of the corporate takeover business can’t be measured by the outcome of takeovers as such. Private equity transformed the way American

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-51049117097894450012012-01-15T20:29:00.001-06:002012-01-15T20:29:45.994-06:00

I've always understood that the Welfare State exists inter alia because private charities are insufficiently liquid or inclusive enough to do the job.  In Greece, however, as the Welfare State runs out of resources, the church is being asked to pick up the burden. [Ark of the World youth] Centre founder Fr Antonios Papanikolaou told the Mirror: 'Over the last year we've had hundreds of parents

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-62522944496148030852012-01-15T20:10:00.002-06:002012-01-15T20:43:42.098-06:00

The Washington Monthly College Guide follows the recruiting habits of the universities further down the food chain. It looks like, in many ways, however, it’s a great time to be on the hiring committees at some lower-tier schools, who can now take advantage of the economy to attract some rather prestigious junior faculty. In many cases, these hires are for contingent, non-tenure-track positions,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-30083910421650905272012-01-15T20:02:00.002-06:002012-01-15T20:02:48.725-06:00

Packers will begin their next season at the home of the yet-to-be-determined league champion.  Lose as many fumbles in one playoff game as in sixteen regular season games, and home field just gets you booed.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-86747122005523005932012-01-12T20:22:00.002-06:002012-01-12T20:30:20.233-06:00

The most vocal critics of Our President might not be the contenders for the Republican nomination.  Book Review No. 2 suggests that a different dissenting point of view is available in Chris Hedges's Death of the Liberal Class.   The reader must understand, however, that Liberal Class is not about Daniel Patrick Moynihan or Hillary Clinton or Rachel Maddow.  Oh, no, no, no.  Turn to page 122.  

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-50330454689051759242012-01-12T19:38:00.001-06:002012-01-12T19:38:24.118-06:00

An Inside Higher Ed post documents some recent Occupy Wall Street protests inside Wall Street job fairs at Ivy League universities.  That's fairly standard stuff.  What intrigues is the restricted sense in which the column uses the expression "entitled". “There’s a sense among students who easily could feel entitled that they have a responsibility to society, as leaders, to improve that society,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-34989687273608361892012-01-12T19:28:00.001-06:002012-01-12T19:28:16.220-06:00

The DeKalb Chronicle opens up a can on the Illinois Tollway Authority, going so far as to allude to taxation without representation. The Tollway board now has three members from Chicago, whose city limits barely touch one toll road near O’Hare International Airport. They are chairwoman Paula Wolff, James Banks and James Sweeney.Five members live in the suburbs: David Gonzalez of Chicago Heights,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-67525079918218299142012-01-11T19:29:00.000-06:002012-01-11T19:32:15.657-06:00

The first entry in this year's Fifty Book Challenge will be Tom Clancy's Locked On.  I read it rather quickly, and it has a lot of the usual characters going after the usual suspects, with some of the usual antagonists.  Maybe I should call it a work "in the school of Tom Clancy," as one Mark Greaney is stealthily listed as a coauthor.  Maybe I'm getting jaded with the genre, or maybe the

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-11441026442641913792012-01-11T19:21:00.001-06:002012-01-15T20:45:07.541-06:00

Ed Driscoll is assisting at Instapundit, and he points to an Irwin Stelzer essay in The Weekly Standard.  Shorter argument: pro-market policies are not the same thing as pro-business policies, and the Big Bankers are notoriously demonstrating their ignorance of that lesson. Most surprising are the objections of leaders of the banking community to quite sensible reforms, their willingness to

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-25277883203161726852012-01-11T19:09:00.001-06:002012-01-11T19:09:09.050-06:00

"Others receiving votes" isn't enough for sportswriter Ryan Wood. I was surprised NIU didn’t crack the top 25 when the final polls were released Tuesday. Of course, we know voters don’t watch many of the games, making results outside the nation’s top 15 teams flimsy – if they have any meaning at all. And the losses to Kansas and Central Michigan dampen the shine beaming from NIU’s

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-19366697471123998172012-01-10T21:20:00.000-06:002012-01-10T21:44:01.476-06:00

The Fifty Book Challenge, which started as a temporary community, has continued in operation and Live Journal highlighted it for 2011.  An encouraging cohort of new members has begun posting. I've been playing along since 2005, and here is the final report for 2011.   I no longer feel any pressure to file fifty reports, so the roundup will stop at 36.  Lots of exciting football and some progress

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-37072359289347618342012-01-10T20:42:00.000-06:002012-01-10T20:42:56.637-06:00

Voluntary Xchange contemplates the health benefits of beer, or tea.  The transition from being drunk to being wired matters. People drank all day at that time because the water wasn’t safe to drink. They didn’t understand the mechanism, but there were clear medicinal reasons for a lot of beer and wine (remember that spirits were in their infancy at this point). Yet, people had the technology to

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-47520452866691761122012-01-10T20:36:00.001-06:002012-01-10T20:36:35.446-06:00

David Brooks meditates on the tendency of rent-seekers to capture government. You would think that liberals would have a special incentive to root out rent-seeking. Yet this has not been a major priority. There is no Steve Jobs figure in American liberalism insisting that the designers keep government simple, elegant and user-friendly. Sailors scrub their ships. Farmers clear weeds. Democrats

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-71035164339069409332012-01-10T20:25:00.000-06:002012-01-10T20:25:16.874-06:00

It's his part-humorous, part-on-point suggestion for putting a stop to the economic successes of Asian countries, and it's probably deliberate to make the heads of some of his listeners explode. Now comes Via Media with a variation on the same theme. The rise of business schools in America led to greedy CEOs milking their companies for multimillion dollar benefit packages, to weird financial

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-91073146027340602942012-01-10T20:19:00.000-06:002012-01-10T20:19:27.338-06:00

The Sports Economist contemplates Chicago Bear and former Northern Illinois receiver Sam Hurd's method of supplementing his income. Hurd earned $1.5 million playing for the Cowboys in 2009, so even after including other costs in the net income calculation, it’s almost certain that his take from dealing was more, maybe far more, lucrative than what he earned on the field. Standard economics stuff

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-57541632647461791812012-01-09T23:51:00.002-06:002012-01-10T00:11:45.347-06:00

Northern Illinois's football team gets it done the hard way.  The title belt even says so. Northern Illinois University photograph, Day 3: Practice album. Spot the other team thirteen points, have the starting quarterback hop off the field: all in a day's work. After falling behind 13-0 quickly in the first quarter, the Huskies roared back, scoring 31 unanswered points and never looking

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-70943913420458756262012-01-09T23:17:00.001-06:002012-01-09T23:17:41.240-06:00

The latest Destination: Freedom meditation on Amtrak at Forty notes that there are other passenger trains available to travellers in the U.S. One step that Amtrak management could take is to give potential customers more information that would help them make connections between Amtrak and local transit. While a few Amtrak riders take a long-distance train from one small community to another,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-58509365710293513252012-01-09T22:53:00.000-06:002012-01-09T22:53:10.342-06:00

A Fresno Bee editorial takes businesses, most frequently the former regulated utilities, to task for their artlessness in imposing fees for services that used to be part of the cost of doing business. Then once outrage invariably builds, they have to do an embarrassing U-turn, plus damage control to their brand.The latest mea culpa was almost immediate. Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-77582825281058960492012-01-09T22:42:00.000-06:002012-01-09T22:42:05.472-06:00

At Phi Beta Cons, Jason Fertig notes that abolishing academic tenure for its own sake and in spite of possible cost fails to consider the downside of the alternatives. If tenure goes away, how will this new majority of professors on “multi-year contracts” be assessed? By student teaching evaluations and number of pubs (regardless of quality)? That’s the system we have now. With professors

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-63852283782685254732012-01-05T23:15:00.000-06:002012-01-05T23:15:58.985-06:00

A dean at Illinois Valley Community College helps judge student projects for the regional history fair. He's not happy with the performance ratings. When the Social Studies teacher gave me the grading rubric, I saw only three categories: Superior, Excellent, and Good.I asked the teacher what I was supposed to do if a presentation was bad or poor. She looked at me and said, with a straight face,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-76618020660417341892012-01-05T22:50:00.001-06:002012-01-05T22:50:33.060-06:00

Sometimes, railroad maintenance trains recycle classic passenger cars for use as bunk cars or kitchens or crew space.  On occasion, one of those cars remains in something close enough to its original condition to warrant restoration.  Such appears to be the case with an original Hiawatha coach 4448, being rebuilt by the Institute for Small Town Studies in Fairfield, Iowa. Image courtesy

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-59131173921072946712012-01-02T21:29:00.002-06:002012-01-02T21:29:19.600-06:00

Paul Krugman takes on some misconceptions about public debt. Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.First, families have to pay back

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-35818267830396075152012-01-02T21:10:00.002-06:002012-01-02T21:10:44.689-06:00

The Packers did not dress several of their starters for Sunday's game, one that the Lions really wanted to win. Sunday's video-game eruption of yards and points and records ended in a 45-41 Green Bay Packers win over Detroit. Inside the locker room, ultra-reserved, shun-the-spotlight Jordy Nelson wore a champion's smirk. A quiet swagger emanated. There might not have been much defense, but a

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-1667577421942666422012-01-02T20:56:00.000-06:002012-01-02T20:56:15.792-06:00

Robert Freeman draws the wrong lessons from the loss of the postwar industrial monopoly the U.S. enjoyed. At the end of World War II, the U.S. bestrode the world like a colossus. Its only industrial rival, Europe, had blown its brains out 30 years before, in World War I. And it did it again, in World War II, with Japan joining in. In the history of the world, there has never been such asymmetry

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-14021984766710352092012-01-02T20:26:00.001-06:002012-01-02T20:26:44.145-06:00

Interesting question at Unlocked Wordhoard. "What modern dishes were impossible or impractical in the Middle Ages?" It builds on the recollections of one Waldo Jaquith attempting the do-it-yourself cheeseburger. No joy. A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors—in all likelihood, a couple of

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-28526337843750378522011-12-29T23:42:00.002-06:002011-12-29T23:51:56.209-06:00

He spent much of his junior and senior year as a reserve for a tradition-rich college program going through a rough spell. He obtained a tryout for a professional team and spent the first few years of his career as a reserve for a tradition-rich program going through a rough spell.  His name, though, continues to surprise number-crunchers who would like to quantify the value of professional

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-70043086945864108702011-12-29T23:24:00.000-06:002011-12-29T23:24:00.436-06:00

Jonathan Robe of the sometimes-misnamed Center for College Affordability and Productivity questions the preferences revealed by the state flagship universities. Could it be that the prestigious public research universities are the ones who are throwing teaching to the side in their quest to catch and overtake the most prestigious private research universities? Are these public institutions the

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-20611980970412010762011-12-29T23:04:00.003-06:002011-12-29T23:04:39.708-06:00

A Chicago Tribune article on the construction of new housing at Northern Illinois University buries the lede. Residence hall improvements are part of the university's broader plans to boost enrollment and improve academic standards by 2020.[University president John] Peters' Vision 2020 initiative calls for enrollment to rise from 23,000 to 30,000 — including 27,500 on campus. Tuition and fee

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-34656417549171168922011-12-29T22:58:00.000-06:002011-12-29T22:58:11.448-06:00

Steven Horwitz offers a Trenchant Observation for all time, and particularly for political economy. One of the most commonly deployed arguments against free markets is that they are plagued by “market failure.”  Critics point to particular cases where some problematic outcome has occurred and then argue that markets either did not or cannot possibly address those situations. The market-failure

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-30704869910765363922011-12-26T22:10:00.001-06:002011-12-26T22:13:07.916-06:00

In The Time of Our Lives: A Conversation About America, longtime NBC correspondent Tom Brokaw looks at the complicated, Washington-centered procedural world he and his Silent Generation contemporaries created, sees that it's too complicated to accomplish much, and expresses his regrets.  There's not much to say in Book Review No. 35, as there's not much by way of organization or consistent

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-75465034707347451102011-12-26T21:56:00.001-06:002011-12-26T21:56:32.547-06:00

A recent David Rotman column in Technology Review notes that technical progress requires shop floor experience to provide reality checks and unanticipated improvements to the scheming in the research office and boardroom. After decades of outsourcing production in an effort to lower costs, many large companies have lost the expertise for the complex engineering and design tasks necessary to

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-5521538560196669172011-12-26T21:42:00.000-06:002011-12-26T21:42:12.568-06:00

The team name begins with P, and it includes a number of players never recruited by better-known programs. It’s a remarkable record made even more remarkable by the fact it’s been accomplished largely by players from Wisconsin who were not highly recruited, if recruited at all, by the big schools in the power conferences. The players use that knowledge as motivation. We all kind of play with a

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-80158364825162448562011-12-26T21:18:00.001-06:002011-12-26T21:18:57.084-06:00

The case for activist or paternalistic government often, but not always, is an argument from bounded rationality or incomplete information.  Arnold Kling suggests that bounded rationality or incomplete information can also be reason for the activists or paternalists to back off. Cognitive hubris is particularly troublesome when combined with radical ignorance. Indeed, this configuration

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-91724956444028979052011-12-26T21:14:00.000-06:002011-12-26T21:14:05.766-06:00

Betsy's Page has a lengthy roundup of investigations, most from the right side, of some of Representative Ron Paul's more outrageous public statements.  Probably better to have the scrutiny before the first delegates get assigned.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-45189236053070551072011-12-22T23:56:00.000-06:002011-12-22T23:58:07.649-06:00

Santa's elves double as Huskies.  (The reindeer are otherwise occupied.) Their enthusiasm was not wasted. The university's Festive Season greeting features One World, Many Huskie Stories. Closer to home, the stockings are placed near the train set with care. Are you ready for some football? Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-48384640065920789842011-12-22T23:46:00.000-06:002011-12-22T23:46:13.825-06:00

Don't mess with Cajun Mama. Train travel with Amtrak is what travel by air used to be like. I realize traveling by train is the alternative to driving, but with the craziness of the TSA over the past decade, paired with the airline’s nickel and dime shenanigans, train travel should be the alternative to flying. Yes, it will take you longer to get to your destination, but if you factor in

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-48756299837713775412011-12-22T23:36:00.002-06:002011-12-22T23:59:33.623-06:00

Instapundit characterizes the diffusion of remedial developmental courses throughout the Cal State system as a "lower education bubble".  Dig deeper into the article, and the logical solution to the problem might be suggesting itself. If half the students eligible for the Cal State system are unable to handle college work, [Cal State Chico chemist Jim Postma] said, California is in bad shape."

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-36414479848415550642011-12-22T23:06:00.000-06:002011-12-22T23:06:07.761-06:00

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush writes a policy manifesto for The Wall Street Journal. As Florida's governor for eight years, I was asked to "do something" almost every day. Many times I resisted through vetoes but many times I succumbed. And I wasn't alone. Mayors, county chairs, governors and presidents never think their laws will harm the free market. But cumulatively, they do, and we have

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-3404251861812835532011-12-22T22:59:00.000-06:002011-12-22T22:59:44.122-06:00

Transit’s Not Bleeding the Taxpayer Dry.  "Non-users fork over $779 per household for roads — as opposed to $50 for transit." Read and understand.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-83618342519896053032011-12-21T15:37:00.000-06:002011-12-21T15:43:45.871-06:00

Some state legislators would like to toss Chicago out of Illinois. Under the lawmakers' proposal, the state would be telling Chicago and Cook County to get lost. Without the domineering, overly liberal and tax-hungry metropolis, [state representatives Bill] Mitchell and [Adam] Brown contend, Illinois could be more like GOP-run Indiana.For some down south in the Land of Lincoln, their resentment

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-4909652628836409892011-12-21T14:36:00.000-06:002011-12-21T14:36:00.657-06:00

Seven years ago in Cold Spring Shops: Presumably the set of social institutions that involved Dad working, Mom minding the kids, and parents staying together for the sake of the children, which takes advantage of the Say Aggregation Principle to ensure that one wage earner could support a family, and which makes unilateral dissolution of marriage less attractive, are not the set of social

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-41053676415712653272011-12-21T13:51:00.000-06:002011-12-21T13:51:45.105-06:00

There's a collection of observations about the various college football bowls that, taken together, suggest the consequences of coordination failure, but no easy way out of the dominant strategy equilibrium.  We'll start with University Diaries, a critic of long standing of Big Time Football, with Schadenfreude over the failure of big time programs to sell their allotment of bowl tickets. Human

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-80619455468778711132011-12-21T12:52:00.000-06:002011-12-21T12:52:51.638-06:00

There have to be more than a few people who see in the income-expenditure model and the Keynesian Cross the potential to do Good Things through the use of expansionary fiscal policies, and some of them might consider a career in economics.  Robert Samuelson suggests that the enthusiasm might be misplaced. When Keynes wrote “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” in the mid-1930s,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-79299248956934480672011-12-21T12:24:00.000-06:002011-12-21T12:24:27.632-06:00

Newmark's Door features two thoughtful posts on why poverty is hard to fix.  Both recognize that life-management skills matter, and both posts save the main message for last.  At Business Insider, here's Eric Falkenstein. Life is a journey from ignorance and instinct to higher virtues, including the prudence needed in a complex world. Such prudence comes mainly from acting with thoughtful

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-21446671977873684562011-12-20T23:55:00.000-06:002011-12-21T00:06:04.730-06:00

Huffington Post correspondent Jeff Selingo (via Joanne Jacobs) has encountered a few corporate college recruiters who, while conceding their employers' failure to develop their human resources, are less than happy with the applicant pool. [A]ll of the recruiters told me they were surprised by the number of applicants they encounter who clearly were not ready to go to college in the first place,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-28143494344490231922011-12-20T23:45:00.002-06:002011-12-20T23:45:55.311-06:00

A Bloomberg report suggests that faster passenger trains in the megalopolises should not be politically controversial. Because of its ingenious scope, neither the airlines nor the auto industry contested the plan. It targeted corridors among major cities that are too far apart to drive, but too close to make flying worth the time and hassle of trudging through airport security: Chicago, Detroit,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-82305478038690559272011-12-20T23:18:00.001-06:002011-12-20T23:18:40.171-06:00

Cold Spring Shops is on record as not pleased with Northern Illinois University spending of money on taglines, branding initiatives, and a new trademark, particularly when five-gallon plastic buckets are strategically placed in the corridors of heavily used academic buildings, including the home of a theater department that developed Joan Allen and Dan Castellenata.  Information that arrived with

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-59381554939844066962011-12-20T22:56:00.000-06:002011-12-20T22:56:27.867-06:00

Walter Russell Mead draws parallels between the primitive practice of executing the leader and the contemporary cult of the presidency. If the crops were bad, the solution was obvious: kill the king, sprinkle his blood on the fields, pick a new and more righteous ruler, and wait for the boom when the new harvest came in.American elections can be viewed as a mild form of this practice today.  In

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-32584851825581245582011-12-18T23:44:00.001-06:002011-12-20T23:23:47.285-06:00

Larry Webster of Popular Mechanics comes close to alleging that the two easiest licenses to get are a driving license and a marriage license. It’s true that drivers not focused on the task at hand are a risk to everyone on the road. But the real problem isn’t our gadgets. It’s us. Why do we treat driving so frivolously that we allow ourselves to be easily distracted?Perhaps it’s because

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-6813994982873312002011-12-18T23:28:00.001-06:002011-12-18T23:28:15.440-06:00

Playwright, dissident, presided over a peaceful separation of Czechoslovakia, now among the honored dead.  Margaret Soltan has a recollection, and the commenters recommend more.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-37088939941515574572011-12-18T23:24:00.001-06:002011-12-18T23:24:21.162-06:00

That belongs to the Whitewater Warhawks. UW-Whitewater survived a defensive slugfest with a familiar nemesis Friday night and emerged with its third consecutive NCAA Division III football championship.A key turnover led to the Warhawks' only touchdown, and they fended off Mount Union, 13-10, in their seventh consecutive meeting in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl. The Packers put together nineteen

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-11268678893737850802011-12-17T23:40:00.002-06:002011-12-17T23:40:57.444-06:00

I had time to watch Wayne State play Pittsburg (Kan.) State in the Division II title game.  It started well for the Tartars Warriors with Wayne running the opening kickoff back for a touchdown, then intercepting Pittsburg on their first series.  Pittsburg (I'm not sure whether a gorilla mascot is inventive or silly) turned the game around late in the first half, first when their defense blocked a

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-84086182032552458512011-12-16T21:24:00.002-06:002011-12-16T21:24:29.072-06:00

Joe Sharkey of the New York Times discovers First Class on what passes for the West Coast Champion these days. Given the length of the trip, I reserved a sleeper compartment. The private sleeper had two comfortable seats that could fold down into a bunk bed and a second bunk that ratcheted toward the ceiling when not in use. It also had a toilet, sink, a work table and an electrical outlet. The

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-10390719881695961962011-12-16T21:10:00.001-06:002011-12-16T21:10:20.309-06:00

Headquarters probably had something else in mind. Chicago Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd was locked up in federal custody Thursday and charged with trying to set up a drug-dealing network.U.S. Magistrate Young Kim ordered Hurd, who played college football at Northern Illinois University from 2002-2005, held until at least today while prosecutors and defense attorneys work out bond details before

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-90206290363480677442011-12-16T21:02:00.000-06:002011-12-16T21:02:47.080-06:00

In a tribute to homeschooling, Nathan Harden pens a mission statement that would be worthy of any institution of higher learning. Makes you wish there was such a thing as college home-schooling. Then again, if students received an education in our public schools that tapped their full potential, rather than the low-performing, time-wasting experience they often plod through, they might actually

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-79137567998334019902011-12-15T23:58:00.001-06:002011-12-15T23:59:56.706-06:00

USA Today guest columnist Amy Sullivan proposes a truce in the culture wars. The battle for the soul of Christmas ended a long time ago, and cultural forces won. That's clear when Christmas trees fill homes and apartments in Japan, a country where 2% of the population is Christian. As a friend put it years ago, "What's more pagan than a Christmas tree?" In his wonderful book Christmas: A Candid

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-36636550524575344092011-12-15T23:46:00.000-06:002011-12-15T23:46:02.449-06:00

Devon Butler is now wearing pads. NIU coach Dave Doeren said Butler can participate in non-contact drills, but won’t be cleared for contact until April – one year after Butler had potentially life-saving surgery at OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center. Butler, who used his medical redshirt this season, was unavailable for comment Friday because he will not play in the GoDaddy.com Bowl on Jan. 8.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-5922261742149258492011-12-15T23:39:00.000-06:002011-12-15T23:39:51.980-06:00

He criticizes Wall Street for lobbying against new regulations. Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It should have welcomed new financial regulation as a means of restoring public trust. Instead, it’s busily shredding new regulations and making the public more distrustful than ever. I'd be more worried if Wall Street endorsed the regulations. Do whatever you want with me, but don't fling me in

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-72577950685265216602011-12-13T23:54:00.000-06:002011-12-13T23:54:26.276-06:00

City Journal correspondent Sol Stern, initially an advocate of No Child Left Behind, gets the dual proposition. I should have realized that by focusing almost exclusively on the educationally disadvantaged, yet ignoring the country’s future scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, NCLB—despite its framers’ best intentions—would damage America’s competitiveness. As noble as combating “the soft

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-32710020121323189572011-12-13T23:34:00.002-06:002011-12-13T23:34:43.432-06:00

At the beginning of the year, that was the Packers, with a happy ending. At year's end, it's the Wayne State Warriors, who impressed the Division II selection committee to secure the final playoff seeding and make what USA Today characterizes as either an improbable or a magical run. This opportunity has been a long time coming for coach Paul Winters. A former assistant at Akron, Wisconsin and

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-22405906442176619022011-12-12T23:42:00.002-06:002011-12-12T23:52:42.112-06:00

Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum collaborated on That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back.  It's time to catch up on the reading.  I'll keep Book Review No. 33 (seventeen more to go?) brief, sticking to the main ideas. Some things have gone wrong in the country, and some of them are self-inflicted.  The title for the post comes from page

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-28343779804787615812011-12-12T23:06:00.000-06:002011-12-12T23:06:50.606-06:00

The Natural High Speed Route is one of the busiest Passenger Rail lines in the country, and it's a bargain, not just because it's being run on the cheap with depreciated equipment. The Hiawatha is the national passenger railroad's most heavily used route outside the East and West coasts, providing more than 800,000 rides a year and growing. Southeastern Wisconsin business leaders strongly

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-56074604328880298582011-12-12T22:48:00.001-06:002011-12-13T23:57:29.165-06:00

Third-party payers such as insurers and government-guaranteed lenders attenuate the pressure to discover prices.  It's that phenomenon that causes me to cringe whenever somebody speaks of containing health care "costs."  I still have no idea why a passive stretching device rents for $120 a month out of network but $40 in network, or what determines the network, but I sure got familiar with those

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-16930650023976145932011-12-12T21:59:00.000-06:002011-12-13T23:45:44.050-06:00

Updating an old joke: I went to a gang fight and a basketball game broke out. It's not so funny. "We're a tougher team. We're grown men over here." Pathetic. RUNNING EXTRA: Rick Moran commends Cincinnati basketball coach Mick Cronin for telling his players to remove their jerseys until they "have a full understanding of where they go to school".  His commenters are skeptical.  Four players

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-54345157698244795632011-12-12T21:56:00.000-06:002011-12-12T21:56:28.471-06:00

That's simply post-modern thinking. Americans are an invented people too. So are British, Chinese, and every other national group. We’ve been teaching that in our college classrooms for twenty years or more as an obvious no-brainer. No, the no-brainer is in using the expression "socially constructed" to stand in for a number of possibilities, including "evolutionarily stable," "emergent," "voted

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-27445830893617497072011-12-12T21:40:00.001-06:002011-12-12T21:49:07.885-06:00

Last year's standard for National Football League coaches was getting destroyed by the Packers. This year, Kansas City Chiefs head coach Todd Haley didn't even get to prepare. Defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel, who had a 24-40 record coaching the Cleveland Browns from 2005 through 2008, will take Haley’s place for the final three games of the season. The Crennel era will begin with Sunday’s

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-64689699976570408692011-12-11T20:43:00.001-06:002011-12-11T20:48:42.872-06:00

Aaron Rodgers calls for a snap while Oakland is still substituting players.  Despite the presence of an extra defender somewhere on the field, the Packers score a touchdown enroute to a big win over Oakland  in Green Bay. The last time the Packers, as division leaders, faced a division leading team, it was late in 1996, when Denver played at Lambeau Field in a game with a comparable outcome.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-20236614694312853792011-12-11T20:31:00.001-06:002011-12-11T20:40:39.267-06:00

The first traces of snow. The Waterman Illuminations are in place. Santa will be receiving children in the warming house, where there is hot chocolate, and the train is ready for the next load of passengers. The moon, giving the luster of midday, new-fallen snow or not.  The eclipse uncharitably showed up at sunrise. Snoopy has either recruited Victor E. Huskie to hunt for the

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-56465880535481079382011-12-07T22:55:00.001-06:002011-12-15T23:40:31.244-06:00

Age, declining health, and the challenges of travel lead to the disbandment of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-4812930716579892212011-12-07T22:48:00.000-06:002011-12-12T21:49:24.657-06:00

The success of the Green Bay Packers is no accident.  A quarterback has to do more than call the plays and avoid the sack. [Aaron] Rodgers realized 10 years ago at Butte College that it helped to understand his teammates in order to ask them to play their best."I was 18, just out of high school," Rodgers said. "Our center was 25 from Canada, our left tackle had been in the Army, one of my best

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-5431644115822128522011-12-07T22:39:00.001-06:002011-12-07T22:45:31.586-06:00

A Washington Post guest column by Claremont's Daniel de Vise identifies the source of failure in higher education. Our Achilles heel is elementary and secondary education. American high school students routinely score at, or close to, the bottom on international assessments of math and science achievement, well below students from such countries as Japan, Ireland and Slovakia. It might be, as he

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-80716779399717908862011-12-06T22:58:00.001-06:002011-12-06T23:29:16.998-06:00

Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds understands that substance trumps symbolism. The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we'll have more middle class people.But homeownership and college aren't causes of middle-class status,

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-22504465418953740652011-12-06T22:01:00.000-06:002011-12-06T22:55:20.779-06:00

The latest Destination: Freedom meditation on Amtrak at 40 years suggests that airline envy might have made sense when the carrier began operation, but it's hampering progress today. In 1966, the back of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s system timetable featured a drawing of a duck with an obviously fearful expression on his face. He was afraid that he would soon become dinner for a happy passenger

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-15054325927900869582011-12-06T21:33:00.001-06:002011-12-06T21:56:03.180-06:00

At Grantland, Chris Jones suggests that sports fans lose the "we." If you don't play for, or you are not an employee of, the team in question, "we" is not the pronoun you're looking for."They" is the word you want.When I said as much the other night, I heard all sorts of indignation from loyal fans. Most of their righteous defense boiled down to some version of, What is the team without us?I'll

Stephen Karlsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02945914425504935287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3760005.post-30050514110873269712011-12-05T22:44:00.001-06:002011-12-05T22:57:28.521-06:00

Perhaps fewer Friday classes qualify as being more student-centered. For sophomore engineering major Dan Drenth, having no class on Fridays is a dream.One extra day to sleep in and study would be nice, Drenth said. Unfortunately, he has classes scheduled five days a week.Fewer on-campus class sections were held this semester on Fridays compared to Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

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