WORKING ON THE RAILROAD. Sixteen feet of subroadbed in place from Monday night to Wednesday evening. Ballast board and track to follow. There's no dismantling the tracks when the Christmas decorations come down around here.

TWENTY MOST ANNOYING CONSERVATIVES give or take a few ties. These are Pandagon's picks (via Cal Pundit.)

THREEFER? African state, democratic government, offshore oil for sale. More here.

THE FATAL CONCEIT and how Professor Bunyip killed it.

THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET OF THE TRANSGRESSIVES. "Why in order to be serious, do things have to be ugly?," is the topic for Charlie Sykes today. Doesn't have to be that way. Consider the Norfolk and Western Railway's steam locomotives. Definitely serious, but not ugly. Artists and intellectuals, take note.

SEPARATE BY EQUAL. Scrapple Face presents the new Republican diversity initiative, and Common Sense and Wonder recommends it.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE NOMINEE Governor George Ryan of Illinois??? Just another Third World potentate, I suppose, discovers irregularities in the death sentences handed out by his state courts, while taking bribes for truck-driving licenses.

SETTING A GOOD EXAMPLE. Brian Doherty weighs in on people who opt out of one or another modern convenience, then feel the urge to convert others: "She is full of complaints about how the choices other people make are clearly -- to her -- making their lives worse. People like Ms. Fox who delight in hanging clothes out to dry on the line and, who knows, strapping on a wooden yoke to plow their fields, should live long and prosper. But I'm always a little set on edge myself by the whiff of Big Brotherism that hovers around writing dedicated to telling most people that they are really, if they but stopped to think about it, going about this life business in entirely the wrong manner." Quite so. I joke about being rich enough to not have to own a cell phone. On the other hand, I would never have special-ordered cruise control on a car, but it's a nice feature on the five-speed Golf I recently bought (after the last one gave out after 14 1/2 years.)

WEBLOG PREDICTIONS. Brief index at Right Wing News. Wasn't it Ken Galbraith who quipped that economists made forecasts because they felt obligated to do so, not because they had any special knowledge?

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL. Daniel Drezner's thoughts on why Left and Right respond differently to criticism are worth a look. But I have to wonder a bit about his transition from academy-to-public-life hypothesis. You're not supposed to take comments on your second-order conditions, or your sample selection, or your model specification personally. Are the academicians in public life the second string?

PUBLIC CHOICE. Virginia Postrel has a new column on the political economy of tax policy. Efficiency is a goal. It does not have to be the only goal.

DIFFICULT NEW YEARS RESOLUTION. Tim Hall resolves not to purchase any more rolling stock kits until he's built some of the ones currently in his repository. That's always a difficult resolution to keep. I'm somewhat older than he is and have never been able to keep that one.

LIBERAL RUSH LIMBAUGH. Rush Limbaugh just closed his first hour back with a suggestion: clone him, let the Clintons raise the baby, and in 30 years ...

THE BEAUTY MYTH and the vapidity of elementary education. Peter Kaminski has several thoughtful posts on those subjects.

GRADE INFLATION pro and con. (Requires registration.) The article expands on this post, and provokes yet another question: if more students are entering university prepared to do the current level of "A" work, is it time to rethink the standards for "A" work. In any other endeavor, I think the answer would be yes: the 2000 hp diesel becomes the 3000 hp diesel becomes 6000 hp in one engine; the 4 minute mile did not signify the end of the Olympics, the 386 became the 486 became the Pentium became ...

PLUS CA CHANGE. Bushonomics. Complex adaptive systems do what they d**n well please.

SCHOOL HOLIDAYS. The first school controversy of the new year in Illinois is whether or not to hold class on Martin Luther King's birthday (a Monday in January), Lincoln's birthday (February 12), Casimir Pulaski Day (after 16 years in the state I still don't know when this is), Columbus Day (October 12), and Veteran's Day (Armistice Day, November 11.) There has to be some kind of history for these school holidays. Wisconsin, years ago, didn't mandate any of these as holidays. I recall doing assorted projects involving Lincoln and Washington, Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, and stopping all work for a minute (sometimes involving the public-address, when the school had one) at 11 am on November 11. Martin Luther King was still alive in those days. Pulaski was a high school with a bad basketball team. On the other hand, schools did close on Good Friday (still do, if I understand the current rules.) From Labor Day to Thanksgiving, we stopped only for one conference day and a two-day state teachers convention. From shortly after the New Year until Good Friday, there was only one conference day. If Easter came late in April, we just dug in and kept working.

The proposal to hold classes on the five Illinois holidays is controversial. The Chicago Tribune coverage (registration required) suggests that a number of these holidays are early manifestations of identity politics. That was clear enough in the establishment of the King memorial day. Here's a perspective on Pulaski Day: "'As a former teacher, I enjoyed the day off, but from the larger perspective, it's more important that information about Pulaski be correct,' said Jan Lorys, director of the Polish Museum of America and a former Chicago school teacher who produced a video about the Revolutionary War hero. 'The important thing is that students learn. The best way we learn about each other is through our heroes.'" I have to commend Lorys for his heroism, venturing that heroes -- nay, achievers -- matter, and that schools present correct information! Mere social constructions, the modern experts would tell us. Did Pulaski Day come into being about the same time that the number of Chicagoans with Polish ancestors exceeded the population of Warsaw? Clearly that's how at least one person views Columbus Day. "'This is a dilution of the [Columbus] holiday and an extension of the ongoing assault against our culture,' said Dominic DiFrisco, spokesman for the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, an umbrella organization for about 100 Chicago-area groups.

'This holiday is very important to the Italian-American community. Columbus is a symbol for all the Italians who came to this country. But I don't think too many teachers would stand up today and extol Christopher Columbus.'" Live by identity politics, be marginalized by identity politics. Did Columbus Day come into being about the same time the number of Chicagoans with Italian ancestors exceeded the population of Naples?

The Illinois Association of School Administrators favors holding classes on holidays. "The IASA shall support legislation to reduce the current number of legal school holidays in Section 24-2 of The School Code and supports a moratorium on the creation of any additional legal school holidays." They'd also like more autonomy to discipline special education students, but coming before either of those is a plea for improved protection of railroad grade crossings. Indeed. That's one of my favorite lurid examples of the economics of human life. "You say you can't place a value on human life? Then why do school buses have the opportunity to drive in front of trains?"

THE ACADEMIC LIFE. Atlantic Blog disagrees with Ann Coulter's characterization of the workload of academicians. Atlantic Blog is correct about the joys of dealing with university administrators. Coulter is not completely off the mark. Take the whole quote: "Apart from being a college professor, there is no easier job in the universe than being a journalist. For 99.999 percent of writers, there is no heavy lifting, no physical danger, no honest day's work. Andrew Grossman has found a way to make it even easier. No research!" There is nothing honest about sitting around in committee meetings (which the REMFs seem to believe is the most important professorial function.) Years ago, John Panzar, who at the time was chairman of the economics department at Northwestern (located in interesting quarters -- one building, with the north entrance labeled Nathaniel Leverone Hall, leading to the economics department, and the south entrance labeled Arthur Andersen Hall, leading to the graduate school of business -- I wonder if there's a "naming opportunity" on offer for the south entrance.) But I digress. John Panzar had done some work on academic productivity, and he discovered that the modal number of refereed publications by economists with Ph.D.s was ... zero.

HAPPY NEW YEAR. I'll be working on the railroad.

A PERFORMANCE TEST FOR CLASS MATERIALS? Hope springs eternal. And David Warsh gets the QWERTY story right. (That's not news to Craig Newmark, who provided the link, but the QWERTY myth just will not die.)

THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF GRADES. The SCSU Scholars raise the caution flag about a new service called Pick-A-Prof, which appears to be a convex combination of a day runner, Blackboard, and the student grapevine about who is the easy grader. The Scholars suggest that such information might in fact encourage self-selection: "But other students may look at the grades and other info on Pick-a-Prof along with the other online course evaluations and sort themselves into the classes they want and will do best in. If I did manage to have a class like that, rather than people who took my courses ill-prepared and unsuspecting of my workload requirements, maybe they'd all take A's. Wouldn't that be nice for a change?" Indeed. Furthermore, the system appears to be sufficiently open that personnel departments at major employers would be able to use it. Currently, students submit transcripts and the like which provide scant information about exactly how many other students have earned high grades in the same courses, majors, or universities. With a little research (personnel departments, you may ask me how. For a fee I'll tell you. I'm expensive) knowledge about the sources of inflated grades well might become more public, and more systematic.

MORE ON COASE AND LIGHTHOUSES. Some to-the-point observations by Winter Speak (main point: the lighthouse is incidental to another purpose. Frequently that purpose is commerce. A harbor fee collects some of the gains from trade while providing funds to pay for the lighthouse. The lighthouse services themselves have a proper marginal cost price of zero) and a mini-dissertation by Jane Galt. Evidently neither of the posters have spent much time on the water. A Global Positioning System readout will tell you exactly where you are, but without a chart, you won't know whether you're in the channel or not. Bell buoys and navigation lights will still be useful. Right red returning and all that.

IMAGE PROBLEM AT NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY? "Let it be known throughout the Empire that any organization, country or individual using the colors red, white and black are automatically Nazis." Not to worry, the expensive redesign of the Huskie dog doesn't have to be done over again, it's Misha battling some of his tormentors. Although the Huskie basketball teams have had a bad winter break, it hasn't been as disastrous as Stalingrad.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SEX ROLES. "“Females tend to be better at fine manual skills such as threading needles to which they are more suited than men because of their small fingers.

“If you ask them to do small, fiddly jobs they are going to perform much better than men." That's according to a (male) psychologist at Northumbria University, quoted in this bit about why men can't wrap non-Euclidean presents. Evidently the good psychologist has no colleagues in the Gauge O Guild.

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE. It's oppressive for a neighbor to criticize Grandpa for putting up a red Christmas star that might be mistaken for a Stalinist star. It's also oppressive for a landlady to take umbrage when her tenant the granddaughter objects to a U.S. flag. As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. More here.

A 'SLAB' OF MEAT. Engineered steak, no s***, no bovine greenhouse gases. (Interchanged from Mean Mr. Mustard via The Corner.) But will the sizzle be the same?

WHAT ARE WE, CHOPPED LIVER? "There is nothing wrong with programs geared toward attracting brighter students, but I'm not sure that is the role that community colleges are meant to play. There are plenty of private universities that fill that niche," writes Kitchen Cabinet. Excuse me, but some state-tolerated (used to be state-supported) universities are also up to that job. As the community colleges tend to offer two-year degrees, the competition they offer the four year colleges tends to be for the required and general education courses (there is much to rant about there, but not today) and not a few community college athletic programs function as a training camp for Division I. If they can offer strong academic programs for students, that's not all bad. In the Chicago Tribune article Kitchen Cabinet referred to, I saw scant evidence that the four-year colleges were actively recruiting the community college honor students. And who says that "immigrants and the poor" aren't ready for rigorous education?

HOW MANY POLES DOES IT TAKE TO ...? No, it's not going to be a joke. While the rest of the Midwest was telling Polish jokes, the number of people with Polish roots living in Chicago exceeded the number of people living in Warsaw. Perhaps that's another geopolitical implication of Libertarian Samizdata's take on Poland's purchase of Fighting Falcons. From the UK, it looks thus: "Could it be that the above-mentioned 'lobbying' was about more than jet-fighters and that the Bush administration has decided it would be good strategy to gently lure the Poles away from the twitching tentacles of Brussels?"

Not to mention that it will play well with a lot of Reagan Democrats in the States.

FRODO LIVES. Peter Kaminski overhears some twenty-somethings. "Lord of the Rings is the Star Wars of our generation."

MORE WORK FOR SISTER READ. Instapundit finds a Los Angeles Times story giving the most segregated city in the U.S. That's Milwaukee. No secret there. We used to have a joke about it.

Q: What's the longest bridge in the world?

A: The Sixteenth Street Viaduct. It connects Africa to Poland.

LE CHATELIER PRINCIPLE. Cheap bread, if you can get it. (Nailed to Newmark's Door.)

BUT WILL THE ALUMNI CONTINUE TO COME UP WITH THE WAMPUM? No. 2 Pencil reports that the UNC-Pembroke Braves are an endangered tribe. So, apparently, are the North Dakota Fighting Sioux.

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENTS. Joanne Jacobs discovers the world of world-class Scrabble players, some of whom, in the manner of Alexander Alekhine or Bobby Fischer, are hard-pressed to hold real jobs. Hobbies can be like that. Don't get me started on the nuances of "19 East copy two."

WINNERS, WHINERS, AND LOSERS. Andrew Sullivan has a little list.

THE YEAR OF FRESH WATER. Some fresh ideas at Volokh. Highered Intelligence has some recommended reading as well.

POSEUR, OR FUTURE REMF? The St. Cloud Scholars discover that a disaffected faculty member has no publications, and might not even be a faculty member. Developing ...

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH. Here is an interesting hypothesis from D-Squared Digest: "How did the Irish managed to rebuild their social capital? Basically, through local government corruption." I'll let braver souls grapple with the implications of his essay.

LIGHTHOUSES. Atlantic Blog points to a D-Squared Digest reprise of the public good property of lighthouses. D-Squared puts Ronald Coase on his fact checking list. I'd suggest he check some of his own facts as well.

"Second on methodology, while the source of my sympathy for Coase is his methodology; his determination to always look for the real world example rather than the 'blackboard economics' proof, this is one area in which he and Samuelson both screwed up, and it was by adopting the arrogance which is the hallmark of the economics profession. Samuelson had a good argument about the optimal provision of lighthouses, and if he'd studied the history, he would have come up with the Isle of Man and Sir John Clayton examples to show that non-excludability of lighthouse services led to real problems, which caused real ships to avoidably crash. But he had to, as I say, put a f*****g cherry on top by overextending his sensible blackboard argument into a generalisation about the world. Coase then, correctly and admirably, called him on it by falsifying the generalisation, but then fell into the trap of forcing the pieces to fit into his own grand blackboard generalisation -- that free market negotiation between willing participants could always solve problems of resource allocation so long as property rights were well defined."

But wait, there's more ... one of the Deirdre McCloskey columns in Atlantic Economic Journal (Or is it the Eastern???) takes a closer look at "Problem of Social Cost" and notes that the real fun begins when transaction costs are present. That's the real point of departure, whether you're a Coasian or a Samuelsonian. To simply assert that costly information 'justifies' government action is to deprive yourself of a research opportunity. Where information is costly, there might be many ways of conserving on the costs of information.

LOWERING THE BAR. John Mc Whorter must have had better teachers than Sister Joel Read. Sample: "To understand what I mean, we must pull back the curtain to see what admissions committees really do in the name of "diversity." Many people operate under an impression I call "Affirmative Action 101": They assume that admissions committees operate under the "thumb on the scale" principle that Powell suggested, favoring black candidates only in the case of a tie.

The misconception is understandable, as college administrators typically paint this picture until someone with smoking-gun documents drags them into court. But again and again, universities have been exposed as using race neither as a tiebreaker nor as "one of many factors," as they tend to claim, but as the most decisive of all factors, regularly admitting brown students under lower standards regardless of their background."

Amen.

THE BEST EFFORTS OF A RETIRED EDUCATIONAL INNOVATOR. Sister Joel Read, who recently retired as president of Milwaukee's Alverno College, offers some words of wisdom. I hope the editor is being kind. If that was her idea for a title, it's another reason to pull your kids from any classroom headed by an Alverno grad:

I don't think that any one action if taken on behalf of any one issue, by itself, can make Milwaukee a better place. The issues are too complex. Instead, we need multiple efforts on multiple fronts.

Specifics, please.

"Do I think that would be possible? Yes, I do, if there is the will to do so. There are multiple people with multiple talents and insights that could match and help resolve the multiple issues that confront us. Does this argue for some leader to pull it together so that there would be one solution that would make Milwaukee a better place? No. And here's why I think so."

I know it's good writing to avoid elegant variation, but the multiplication of multiples, again, without concrete proposals, doesn't help much. Or is the Sister simply conceding that she's not up to the task of being the leader, which would be her responsibility should she in fact spell out the problems and offer suggestions?

"We need solutions identified not by one gender or the other. We need both genders; we need to join our talents, interests, insights and the will to do and to get going on the things for which we have a passion."

Here's a classic non-sequitur. I was under the impression that Milwaukee's problems included nest-feathering county board members, inadequate schools (with not a few Alverno graduates in the classrooms), a few priests taking liberties with the altar boys, and indecision about whether to demolish or finish the expressways.

"Perhaps that is the one thing that would make Milwaukee a better place - collaboration on all fronts by both genders, whatever their race, color, religion, politics or economic status."

Collaboration on what fronts? Is this a weather report gone wrong, or is there a renegade Minnesota national guard unit making its way through the Kettle Moraine?

"There are already multiple efforts under way seeking to drastically improve our schools and the status of women and minorities in our economy. Every one of those efforts needs support of time, talent and funds by many more individuals than are currently involved."

Whose economy? Whose schools? Would this lady be able to write a term paper that would satisfy a competent eleventh-grade composition teacher?

"Great cities are the result of decisions made by each of the persons within that city who cherish it and demonstrate that they cherish it by the way they choose to serve the city and the neighborhoods in which they live. I believe such civic responsibility exists, can be harnessed through collaboration and channeled to issues of substance."

OK, put away the platitudes and spell out the issues. Good grief.

"As issues move toward greater and greater resolution, Milwaukee will be a better place."

Huh???

MERRY CHRISTMAS. The Cold Spring Shops are taking a vacation.

HANDS IN THE COOKIE JAR. Education Weak reports that an REMF had to reimburse the school district for some,. um, expenses not deductible on Schedule A or Form 2106. "This happens in school districts across America and provides a clue as to why teachers do not have money for pencils or tissues." Indeed.

RESEARCH PROJECT "The answer, of course, is that what is good for each individual child is what is good for society. Society gains nothing by having the next Albert Einstein sitting in a class where he's bored out of his mind because all the other students don't understand how to add. Society gains nothing by ensuring that teachers have to split their attention between twenty different levels of ability. Society gains by encouraging every child to reach his or her potential, something that is impossible when a genius is in a class with a dimwit," notes Highered Intelligence. Much more to think about in that post. More thoughts from me next year...

STOPPED COLD. Packers 10, Buffalo Bills 0. Despite more injuries and substitutions, the defense stops the NFL's eighth most productive offense, and the Packers win all eight games at Lambeau.

PERMA-POSTING. The Cranky Professor discovers that the grade book in Blackboard does not allow scores to be altered once a time limit passes. Perhaps one of these days there will be Blogger-style editing features in the gradebook. The current version permits posting of letter grades, which is sufficient for my purposes. That spares me the responsibility of preparing secret codes in order to allow students a peek at their grades before the University mails the report cards. On the other hand, it makes more easy the preparation of argumentam ad misericordiam emails from the disappointed students.

TIME TRAVEL. Cal Pundit asks, "If you could choose to be anybody during any historical period, who would you be?" His choice: quantum physicist in Europe around 1920. Good choice, and there are lots of other good answers. But consider this possibility: you find yourself in the role or era of your choice, and a week after you arrive, suffer a scratch, or catch the 'flu, or suffer some other minor injury for which we currently have a fix, and die because it isn't treatable with the knowledge in that era.

PUBLIC CHOICE. What do Senators Mary Landrieu and Trent Lott have in common? "[T]he old southern pol's promise: to use government to help her tribe against outsiders." According to Virginia Postrel, "That promise is what connects the segregationist politics of the past with the pork-and-protection policies of the present. Hence the transformation of Strom Thurmond from a segregationist to someone who got federal dollars for black colleges in South Carolina. In neither case is government to be a neutral arbiter between equal citizens. The difference is merely who counts as an insider worthy of privilege." Presumably that is why each state has two senators and at least one representative, in order to preserve the fiction that each lives at the expense of the other.

CHRISTMAS TRUCE. The SCSU Scholars report that Vice President Church will be apologizing to the local College Republicans for his misguided request that the students remove an Israeli flag from an information kiosk. The College Republicans have received a letter from the Israeli Embassy approving of their display of the flag. No resolution yet of the attempted strong-arm robbery case.

TRIUMPH OF THE BULLDOZERS. Milwaukee's east-west freeway, and the south leg of the Zoo freeway, use the right-of-way of the Milwaukee Electric Lines Rapid Transit Line, and the Hales Corners branch. The freeway is worn-out, and the somewhat newer Marquette interchange (so named for its proximity to the home of the basketball team formerly known as the Warriors) is due for renovation. As part of that renovation, the Aldrich Chemical building in the middle of the interchange is to be removed. That building used to be an office tower and freight house for the Milwaukee Electric Lines, with freight tracks on two levels, and it guarded the entrance to the never-completed Milwaukee subway. Sic transit gloria interurbanus Wisconsinensis.

As part of the renovation, several Milwaukeeans, including someone whose name I recall from high school, are proposing to make the rebuilt interchange a toll road. But if Wisconsin scans cars for a toll transponder, will it accept Illinois I-Pass accounts? (Link via The American Mind.)

NO CHRISTMAS TRUCE IN THE CULTURE WARS. The Twenty Most Annoying Liberals (via The American Mind.)

WE DO IT ALL FOR YOU. Evidently not. Perhaps the Arches require a new marketing strategy.

CELEBRATE DIVERSITY, NOT CHRISTMAS. James Lileks is not amused. There are limits to the commercial aspects of Christmas, but I have trouble seeing Tom Lehrer sending an anti-Christmas card.

OBSERVANT TRAINSPOTTER. Michael Jennings (via Transport Blog) has caught the conjuring tricks in the latest Harry Potter movie, and offered all sorts of thoughts about providing high-speed rail in England. The latest movie shows the hotel in front of London's St. Pancras station, rather than the front of King's Cross (which, to my eye, is not that bad looking, although taking away the post-WWII concourse would help), and access to the Hogwarts Express on No. 9 3/4 apparently is through the supporting wall between Tracks (platforms, over there) 4 and 5 where the two arches join. The Hogwarts Express, by the way, has a Great Western Railway Hall pulling it, which is actually out of the loading gauge for the Great Northern Railway (of England, Rocky's Road had power that wouldn't fit anywhere in England or the rest of Europe.)

Now, about that Stratford station being built southeast of London. Jennings is concerned that it will cut into running times, as fast trains lose a lot of time decelerating and accelerating, as well as dwell time at stations. Granted. But consider what's involved in getting to St. Pancras. I don't recall any massive parking lots nearby, or any expressways with an exit marked St. Pancras-King's Cross. Perhaps the Stratford station serves the same purpose as Route 128 southwest of Boston, New Carrollton north of Baltimore, or Glenview north of Chicago (this last would be more effective with a more frequent Wisconsin service.)

BY THEIR FRUITS SHALL YE KNOW THEM. Segregating for diversity is like ...

RULE G. "The use of intoxicants or narcotics while on duty, or while subject to duty, is prohibited." Apparently there has not been any such policy on British rails. I do recall reading some of the Adrian Vaughn memoirs about life in the signal boxes, where crews would retire to the local at a dull moment, and wondering why that wasn't grounds for discipline.

SPONTANEOUS ORDER. Lengthy Kitchen Cabinet post on the usefulness of hardship admissions to universities, with cross references. There's more about the David Brooks article referenced here, and a relatively minor point in Brooks gets the attention it deserves. Namely: the quality of education a student gets at a top university depends to a great extent on the quality of other students. There's not that much difference among the faculties, but a bull session that gets into the finer points of Republic or Wealth of Nations is likely to yield different results from a bull session that determines who are the hotties in the class.

TUITION AND FEES. It's deceptive, at least in Missouri, to advertise "free" tuition then to charge fees.

GOOD MANNERS ARE NOT EQUIVALENT TO POLITICAL CORRECTNESS. On the road yesterday. Talk radio topic: has "political correctness" made writing Christmas cards (or is it seasonal cards) too much of a chore? Here's the distinction: if you know people well enough to distinguish the Christians among your friends, recognizing that in a card is simple good manners. Cards that recognize the Christian origins of Christmas are proper to believers. Cards with a more generic "greetings of the season" make sense for others, the message is, "At this time of the year we take time to remember our friends. We do not take the occasion to proselytize, or to guilt trip." That's just good manners. Political correctness views manners as, well, judgemental, while judging that transgressiveness deserves to be privileged. Got that?

THE LUMP OF LABOR FALLACY. Daniel Drezner spots it in a recent Chicago Tribune series, and applies the proper correctives.

UPDATE: Instapundit simply mentions economics and Paul Krugman. Virginia Postrel appears to be reading too much into that mention. Never mind the quest for hidden meanings and innuendo: read and understand the article. There will be a quiz on the lump of labor fallacy later.

PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES. Daniel Drezner weighs in on David Brooks's visit to a campus. Here's Drezner: "It's always depressing when my best students ask for letters of reccomendation for admission into law school or B-school -- not that there's anything wrong with those choices, but there are more than two flavors of career in the world. Even as someone in the ideological minority, I love my job. I get paid to sit around, read, and think deep and not-so-deep thoughts all day. On regular occasions I'm asked to impart my thoughts to some students, who actually write down a lot of what I say. I'm something of a specialist in what I write, but I'm certainly not a specialist in what I read. The hours are flexible, the dress code is minimal. It's a good life."

All true, all true, but it takes a certain kind of stubbornness to discipline your own thoughts and get them on paper. Doing what someone else asks you to do is in some ways easier. But Adam Smith's observation about compensating differentials kicks in, because doing what someone else asks you to do means every time the 'phone rings, it's someone with a problem. Your compensation depends on making his problem your problem. I don't know what the equilibrium is, apparently there still is a reserve army of unemployed and underemployed Ph.Ds, as Drezner's closing line notes, despite the higher pay and potentially greater job security in business or the professions.

BY THEIR FRUITS SHALL YE KNOW THEM. Civil Rights CommissionerAbigail Thernstrom: "After an era of liberal leadership, the typical black or Hispanic student graduates from high school today with junior high skills, according to the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress." (Via Volokh out of Andrew Sullivan.)

SPIN. Is "whether telling a series of truths in a way that creates the wrong impression, whether that's a lie or not" misrepresentation or defensible in service of a positive goal? The latest development from St. Cloud State University is a letter from disaffected faculty members to potential students. It's giving the diversity boondoggle fits.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT. From Discriminations: "This is a moment of truth for the Republicans and a serious test of President Bush's leadership, as serious perhaps as the war on terrorism. The problem now is not Lott's defense of segregation; it is that a number of Republicans are defending Lott. If repeated kind words about Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat campaign do not disqualify someone from a position of leadership in the Republican Party today, then that party does not deserve to lead.

Lott, like Clinton, has become a test of his party's integrity. I detested what Clinton did, but I never thought it made any more sense to be angry at him than to be angry at a skunk for smelling. Those who richly deserved scorn were his enablers in his party who kept insisting that, if you only inclined your head toward his policies, he really smelled sweet, or, if you couldn't do that, at least he smelled better than the Republicans. Same with Lott. It's a little late to blame him for his past and present views -- that's who he is. The real question is who the rest of the Republicans in the Senate, and the White House, are."

Put another way: integrity and honesty must trump hype and spin.

FREEDOM IS PRESERVED BY FREE PEOPLE. Great abstract here, full elaboration here.

OCCAM'S RAZOR. Best of the Web notes that wing icing, rather than mechanical failure, or the Vast Right Wing Icing Conspiracy, is the likely cause of Senator Wellstone's plane crashing. That's exactly as my brother the commercial pilot suggested and then alerted me (the last link is a bit squirrelly.)

CLASS SIGNALS. The recently-relocated Letter from Gotham also challenges the validity of the name discrimination experiment.

Try this experiment: two cover letters accompany otherwise identical resumes. One comes from Avner Jochum. The other comes from Abner Yoakum. Which gets the more favorable follow-ups?

BILLIONS FOR REMFS, BUT NOT ONE CENT FOR RESEARCH. Joanne Jacobs notes that despite a budget problem in the state government, and increases in student fees, the California public universities are adding more diversity facilitators and assessors of the obvious. "Many of the non-teaching jobs involve counseling students, which seems to be a major growth industry on campus." Naturally. In order to keep enough money flowing to pay for the revenue bonds, the universities used to have a reason to admit marginal students, and make efforts to keep them eligible. Although the population of potential students is much larger today, (with provision of new classroom facilities coming in somewhere behind arenas, administrative offices, and indoor practice fields) the keep-em-eligible mindset still exercises its hold. Furthermore, as the continuing St. Cloud State debacles illustrate, (follow all the links provided) it helps keep the diversity facilitators employed if the students have exaggerated sensibilities about their own identities and identify grievances for the diversity boondoggle to assuage. Worst thing that could ever happen to the diversity boondoggle is for people to just get along: they'd have to do some real work.

IF HE'S SO SMART, WHY ISN'T HE RICH. Cal Pundit has discovered the latest attempt to time the arrival of the next bull market. "I don't know whether Sornette's algorithms really work or not — most models of this nature work great right up until the next recession — and I can't help but be suspicious since he claims not to have invested any of his very own money using his system." Perhaps someday, more accurate economic forecasting will be possible, but complex adaptive systems tend to do what they d**n well please. "The scientific status of economics has always been shaky, despite the fact that for the past century it has been heavily mathematical in nature." Depends on what you're trying to do. Much economic theory involves existence proofs (demonstration that a particular problem has a solution.) Sometimes the existence proofs are sufficient (supply curves slope up, demand curves slope down, markets clear, participants cheat on collusive agreements.) Some of the problems are a bit more difficult but amenable to solution (valuing an option, selling more seats than are on the airplane.) The equation that predicts the location of the next $100 bill to fall on a sidewalk would be worth producing, however, widespread use of that equation would change the incidence of dropped $100 bills.

There is more about the stock-market prognostication research here and here

TAX INCIDENCE. Social Security taxes are taxes. More here, here, and here. You may have seen it here or here or here first.

BALANCE SHEET. Israel, asset or liability to the U.S?

WE OWE IT TO OURSELVES. Stephen W. Stanton explains why the little tin box is empty, even if the little tin key hasn't been used to unlock it.

CONDESCENSION, in this case, "Liberals have won, yet they still aren’t happy."

PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES. Professor DeLong notes, "However, it is a true crisis when your child forgets her Hot Lunch ticket, and winds up at school in the middle of the day with no ability to get her Hot Lunch--and no cold lunch to eat in its place either. The value to having an institutional backstop to provide Hot Lunch tickets to the feckless is quite a high proportion of the value of the lunch. Yet it appears that we are failing to maintain an effective social institution to provide this service." Sounds like an inducement to fecklessness, I say. I bet the kid that has a hungry afternoon account leaving a lunch ticket at home (leaving it at home? what ever happened to bringing lunch money and buying the ticket at the school?) never, ever, forgets that lunch ticket again. At least one comment at the Semi-Daily sees it that way.

SHOWING CHEEK? Just because you can, it doesn't follow that you should.

LET HIM COME TO ROCHELLE. Tech Central Station's automotive correspondent, Brock Yates, deviates from his latest defense of the sport-utility vehicle to resurrect the wreck of the Penn Central.

"The railroads, once the major arteries for freight movement in this nation, are running on rotting roadbeds and on trackage that is tens of thousands of miles shorter than when the system was in its pre-World War II prime. Amtrak, the bureaucrat's version of the Toonerville Trolley, remains bankrupt with no solution in sight, save for more Federal bail-outs." Let's start by getting a few facts straight. Yes, there are problems with Amtrak, and this site has noted them, most recently here. The freight railroads are another matter. I invite Mr. Yates to stand trackside at North Platte, Nebraska (there is a secure viewing area, you want to be careful these days about where you do your train-spotting) or watch the stack trains doing 70 miles an hour through Ashton, Illinois (watch from the town square), or spend an evening on the Colorado Plateau. The one true statement about the freight railroads in Mr Yates's column is that the railroads well might have abandoned too much traffic. The CSX Corporation recently doubled the old Baltimore and Ohio line through Ohio and Indiana to keep the goods moving. (They also kept Amtrak's Three Rivers moving this summer, imagine sleeping on a roller-coaster.)

Mr Yates sees policy failures. Indeed. Perhaps the place to start is with incentives to provide additional airway and highway capacity. (Via Common Sense & Wonder.)

FIRST FLIGHT. Ninety-nine years ago today, thanks for the reminder.

LIBERTARIAN COUP? Clayton Cramer suggests the possibility. Time, though, for a bit more research: concluding on the basis of a Libertarian Party gathering in Silicon Valley that there are precious few libertarian Republicans is, well, like concluding on the basis of a list of names not tested for confounding factors, that there is racial discrimination in inviting job applicants for interviews.

WHAT WENT WRONG? Plenty, according to Ben Stein. InstaPundit is less concerned. Volokh Conspiracy offers a lengthy evaluation of Stein's second point. I'm not persuaded that U.S. immigration policy is suicidal. The next paper in the amnesty series is about done.

EMERGENT CREATION. Vernon Smith's toast at the Nobel Awards (via Volokh.)

WHAT WENT WRONG? Tony Palmeri argues Strom Thurmond got his way.

CLASS SIGNALS. "I've always suspected that middle-class whites think 'black' names -- and redneck names -- are low class. But the results for women in this study seem to indicate discrimination against job-seekers named 'Anne' and 'Emily'," notes Joanne Jacobs. That's a spot-on observation about a recent news story purporting to find racial discrimination using randomly shuffled names and credentials. The set of female first names appeared Monday on Best of the Web. My sense is that there's something more in that list of names than meets the eye, as there are two kinds of exotic names, those chosen by well-off people, and those chosen by poor people. Try a list with Christina or Tiffany or Michael or Louis or Aaron or Brett (names from recent class rolls, I won't tell you anything further about their parents) on it and see what happens.

UPDATE: Armed Liberal is doing some significance testing on the numbers provided, and intends to follow up. He raises a good point: how would a Dweezil or a Moon Unit (or a Sadie?) fare in such a study?

OVERSCHEDULED, UNDERCOMMITTED. Life at the elite colleges, as viewed by David Brooks, and somewhat more skeptically by Giants and Dwarfs.

UPDATE. Cal Pundit views Brooks's observations more optimistically.

LUMINOUS DIAL COMPANY. Has Garry Trudeau ever been to Ottawa, Illinois?

SUGGESTED LEGAL READING. Harvard Law's Federalist Society offer their weblog. Fine white on boxcar red design, too.

COMMERCIAL CHRISTMAS PRO AND CON. "And what kind of Christmas, exactly, is profitable? Many Americans crave that quaint Norman Rockwell holiday. Thanks to commercialization, amid the Tonka trucks, plastic toys and battery-powered gadgets with an inordinate number of flashing little lights, we can still get model trains, old-fashioned toy soldiers and Red Ryder BB guns--the commercialized gifts of their day," according to Brendan Miniter.

"God rest ye merry merchants,
May ye make the Yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high,
Tell us to go out and buy!"
per Tom Lehrer.

YOUR CLASS LISTS will look like this in twenty years.

BELLICOSE WOMEN. How does the U.S. Army credibly demonstrate that female soldiers are searching women in burqas? The soldiers use the Brandi Chastain solution. What will they do during the harsh Afghan winter?

CORPORATE WELFARE. The narcotic effects of subsidized water in the West (recommended by Virginia Postrel.) Perhaps one of these days we'll figure it out. Twenty years ago, there was a trade imbroglio with Japan. Japan's Customs denied entry to a U.S. trade exhibit that included U.S. rice. Pundits in the States howled: how dare Japan dump cars into the United States and deny our farmers access to Japan's rice eaters? Only part they missed was how the rice was grown in California, using the subsidized water.

OPPORTUNITY COSTS. Spanking is an inferior good? (Via Atlantic Blog, be grateful exams are over.)

INSTITUTIONS EVOLVE TO REDUCE TRANSACTIONS COSTS. Lengthy Jane Galt post on the efficiencies of arranged marriages where the institutions of government are corrupt or nonexistent. Read it in tandem with this article about the importance of getting the institutions right (reference nailed to Newmark's Door.) And don't lose sight of Atlantic Blog's observations about the usefulness of economics. Sex, death, and why the lines are longest at the rollercoaster, is the way I put it.

Why does this good stuff come out at the end of the semester? Ah, but there will be another semester coming ...

FOURTH TURNING ALERT. Mindles Dreck notes the aging of the current generation of conservative thinkers. Those who do not remember the past and all that ...

WHAT'S UP WITH MINNESOTA ANYWAY? Incompetent pizzerias (via Mean Mr. Mustard) and professors who misconstrue the flag code are in the news.

Reminds me of a joke: How do you get the Viking fan off your front porch?

Pay for the pizza.

REVELATION. Milwaukee talk-show host Charlie Sykes just noted that de jure segregation is contrary to libertarian-conservative principles. About time, too! For too long the Left has couched the civil rights debate as using the national government to trump illegitimate states rights, by expanding the power of the national government. What has been missing all this time has been this: why not use the power of the national government to limit the power of the states without expanding the powers of the national government. That would be completely consistent with the Constitution as written and as amended by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, as far as I can tell. Equal protection under the laws means that no law shall impinge on people's freedom to associate, which is precisely what de jure segregation did.

LET KIDS BE KIDS. Lengthy discussion of overstressed kids at Highered Intelligence, and a news report on another dimension of the phenomenon. There's a reason I announce my last check of email the night before an exam is at 10 pm.

This post about positional arms races among parents is another dimension of the same problem.

DRESS FOR SUCCESS. Are hooded sweatshirts suitable school attire? And I'd be in big trouble at Milwaukee's South Division High School: Northern Illinois University sells red-and-black hooded sweatshirts, and my car plates used to have a 13 in the number. You'd think there would be a way to socialize the students to look like respectable members of society, but that would no doubt be privileging respectability. Can't do that.

DRESS FOR SUCCESS. A commendable development. But you'd think, in Wisconsin, that the kids would have the sense to leave the sandals at home in December.

RAILWAY PRESERVATION. Depot becomes museum, with toy display.

CHRISTMAS REBELLION. Cold Fury suggests that such a strategy is even less effective than Give War Bonds, Not Toys.

REPUTATION EFFECTS? The New York Times has correctly identified the nominator of Arthur C. Clarke for the Nobel Peace Prize. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, I suppose.

GOOD NEWS FOR DEMOCRATS. That's Virginia Postrel's reaction to Vice President Gore's decision not to run. Preachy and sanctimonious doesn't cut it, even for ministers and saints.