SOME THINGS BETTER NOT KNOWN? Mad cow case leads to ban on bovine intestines as bologna, knackwurst, or chorizo casings. Braunschweiger cased in plastic? Ach, du lieber!

SHIFTING TWO CURVES. Apparently, the demand curve for a university degree is shifting right at the same time that the opportunity costs are increasing, notes King at ScSU Scholars, who also has some thoughts on what consumer sovereignty means in a market for credentials. There's a follow-on by Roderick at Liberty and Power. It's also worth recalling that there's a derived demand component in education. Doesn't matter how student-friendly you make the courses if upon graduation said graduates can't find their way to the bathroom, let alone understand the lending policy or reboot the server.

SECOND SECTION: Today's dummies a form of job security for geezers? Details at Joanne Jacobs.

MARKING OFF. Thanks for looking in. Posting to resume Monday.

TODAY'S IMMIGRATION ROUNDUP draws heavily on Carnival of the Vanities No. 69, which this week calls at Snooze Button Dreams. You Big Mouth, You, who sees some inconsistency in the thinking of limited-government types, and who grasps the potential efficiency gains of a periodic amnesty (which under some conditions, by lowering the penalty for turning yourself in, is a Pareto improvement. Libraries seem to get this.) Sneak Easy hasn't posted 99 theses at his joint, but one knows where he stands on the issue. Presto Pundit (source of Company Mail rather than Carnival participant) has been posting on the topic, repeatedly. Just keep scrolling. The facts on the ground might call into question the extent of a cheap-labor subsidy illegal immigrants provide to the rich country.

SECOND SECTION: Milt's File continues to follow the debate, here and here.

THE MAIN STREET OF THE NORTHWEST? Shot in the Dark comments on Minnesota Governor Pawlenty's proposal to obtain funding for a commuter rail line (or not.) Superintendent's Note to Mr. Berg, who writes,

Commuter Rail is not light rail. It uses existing tracks - the same ones that freight trains run on. It uses common, wide-gauge rollling stock - it can even be purchased used (although I'm sure it won't be).

Kindly be advised that, with the exception of the Pittsburgh light rail lines, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, and parts of the Philadelphia rapid transit system, light rail, rapid transit, and commuter rail all use the same track gauge (which San Diego has exploited to help with the operating expenses by hiring out the tracks for freight trains,) and the aforementioned systems use a wider track gauge (in Pennsylvania as a way of protecting the steam railroads against freight competition from the street railways, in San Francisco for engineering reasons that led to more expense in special tooling than the system ever saved in train stability.) Moreover, Minnesota might be wise to consider starting with second-hand equipment, which is how Virginia Railway Express, serving the southwest suburbs of the District of Columbia, got started (trainspotter site here), buying cars from Boston and Chicago when those systems did an upgrade.

Some of the oldest Chicago gallery cars are now preserved. Nothing quite like seeing one's former conveyance treated as a museum piece to make a person feel old.

TODAYS MODEL RAILROADING NEWS

There are some problems, alas with the command control module at On My Workbench. (Via Where Worlds Collide, who unaccountably did not remark on Carnival of the Vanities No. 66. All of your motive power depots are belong to us!)

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE. The Beeb plans to go off the air for 4 min 33 sec. It's easy enough to play 4' 33" as a piano piece with an orchestra: simply roll a piano onstage.

PROTECTING COMPETITION, OR PROTECTING COMPETITORS. Radio broadcasting used to be regulated in the public interest, so the reaction of the traditional trade association to the emergence of a rival is as expected.

CHURCH OF ST. MARY'S IN A HAZEL HOLLOW .... Brian at Transport Blog visits Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch, which is or is not the longest train station name in the world, depending on whether or not you use a hyphen to set off "church of St. Tysilio by the red cave." The pronunciation guide raises a wicked thought: would the Beatles have been as big a success had they first played in the Red Cave club at Llanfairpwll?

And a quick thumbs-up to Patrick at Transport Blog who notes, "privatisation ≠ fragmentation." Of course not. Look who is billing itself as
North America's Railroad.

ANOTHER RETENTION DILEMMA. Critical Mass notes that somewhere between 50% and 70% of students enrolled in Ph.D. programs never finish. The cause of such attrition is not going to be easy to discover. The retention rate in my department's doctoral program is lowered to some extent by students who discover an aptitude and enroll in a more visible department. Some of them have gone on to successful academic careers upon completion of a Ph.D. elsewhere.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

By far the funniest of these was a young lady from our state, who described herself as a college student and a Republican who wants socialism and doesn't think Bush can deliver it. Medved, obviously amused, asked her what she meant by socialism, and she replied that she wants to go to college for free and thinks everyone else should be able to go without paying tuition, too. Now, obviously this young woman has not yet been schooled in the art of demanding socialism by proclaiming it as a selfless and noble system under which every person is given equal distribution of resources, and so on; she took the breathtaking and refreshingly honest course of telling us it would benefit her directly.

Report to the Captain's Quarters for the full after-action review.

SECOND SECTION: King at SCSU Scholars has commentary and additional linkage. (Raku roku moyet, tavarishch. Spasibo.)

MEME OF THE DAY. "Adolescent screw-you defiance," spelled out at Atlantic Blog.

DOING THE WORK OF ... It has been Instalanched, but check it out all the same!

CANDIDATES FOR THE DECK OF CARDS. It has been a while since any new members of the Most Unwanted Academic Administrators sheepshead deck have been announced. The Cranky Professor has identified some candidates, whose credentials are being reviewed by the headhunting firm of Schneider and Schwarz.

THE SECRET IS OUT. The Superintendent has never had much respect for what the literary types refer to as "theory." How can there be theory without theorems or testable implications? In that spirit, please read and understand this Tightly Wound post linking to some proper introspection among the literary types, about why others might hate them so much.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Now that NIU is the place to be for high school graduates, it’s time to improve academic admissions requirements — instead of packing as many students as possible into classes that already are overcrowded and underfunded.

That's the Northern Star editorial board seeking for ways to distinguish their university from the other compass-direction universities in the state. I love these kids ... they've stayed on this message since the academic year began.

CARTEL MANAGEMENT. There is a governing body at Northern Illinois University called the Greek Life Standards Board that, not surprisingly, rejects some petitions by some national Greek-letter organizations to establish chapters in DeKalb. The Board's advisor noted that eight new organizations were too many to bring to campus at one time. Right. The money quote is deeper into the article. where some existing fraternities feared the loss of dues. Doesn't this sound like motor carrier regulation? The applicant is not competent to provide the proposed service, there is insufficient demand for the proposed service, and existing carriers are capable of providing the proposed service if there is demand for it.

IMMIGRATION AMNESTIES, CONTINUED. Jonathan at Cliopatria provides useful background, noting that the occasional amnesty, or guest worker program, might serve to "keep the mess to a minimum." Tamar Jacoby also notes the attractiveness of the U.S. economy (or the economy of any developed country) to ambitious workers in less developed countries. Whether the amnesty serves to encourage migration by future productive workers or to free resources for enforcement remains to be seen. Mark Steyn suggests, based on past performance, that the Immigration and Naturalization Service is unlikely to be able to cope with the mess, as the illegal immigration problem is a consequence, in his view, of the ineffectiveness of the legal immigration system. (Possibly relevant anecdotal observation: the authorities sure like to mess around with my colleagues when their visas come up for renewal.) This Economist editorial looks at the proposal as a way of redeploying resources to catch the dangerous illegal immigrants, an idea that figures in a previous long post. Lawrence Henry suggests there are other considerations at work, as does David Brooks.

A Wall Street Journal editorial raises a point I wish to return to another day, namely the reward to bad behavior implicit in an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Readers might wish to consider the consequences of not granting an amnesty, while not catching and not deporting illegal immigrants.

For additional links and commentary, or by way of attribution, visit Milt's File, Dynamist, Hit and Run, Betsy's Page, The American Mind, this week's Carnival of the Capitalists, and Patterico's Pontifications.

SECOND SECTION: Econ Log has more on the role of the welfare state in inducing illegal immigration.

REVEREND AWDRY DECONSTRUCTED. Tightly Wound finds serious capitalist exploitation on the Island of Sodor. A pity it is that the Fat Controller apparently never heard of the Electro-Motive Division and the SW1200.

LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS? Marginal Revolution seeks reader suggestions on a $100 million project to "unify, motivate, and inspire" the nation. Am I being too curmudgeonly to think of bread and circuses?

BACKWARD BENDING SUPPLY CURVES? Apartment 11-D wonders if there are sufficiently many people opting out of demanding careers to constitute a counterculture? (Look for even more wage inequality, particularly in the most demanding jobs, if there is.)

LAST RUN. Where Worlds Collide covers the end of on-train mail sorting on British metals.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. Northern Illinois University enrollments are up, with the freshman slots essentially sold out, and today's student newspaper reports that the football success might have generated some of the student interest. That's the lead article. Below the fold is a story of a team member accused of trafficking in fake I.D. (The student facing charges is a veteran of my introductory economics class. You have disappointed me, my young apprentice.)

Meanwhile, the state appropriation is likely to be lean, again. Doing more with less, what else is new?

AND YET MORE ON OUTSOURCING. It's not just me having trouble grasping what Schumer and Roberts wrote. The New Republic's &c raises some objections, in a somewhat more readable style than mine, while managing to explain comparative advantage properly. Dan Drezner has managed to find some additional commentary, and provides a bit of his own, without stepping into any theoretical minefields, and Econ Log laments the lack of knowledge of general equilibrium among non-economists. (It's hard enough to communicate to economics students, and many academicians including your Superintendent can teach and do research without getting into the finer points of it.)

DISPLAY SIGNALS AND RUN AS SECOND NO. 7. It's been kind of a busy day, and the main topics continue to be immigration and trade. Please visit yesterday's posts on those topics where there are a few recent developments noted.

NO FISHING OFF THE COMPANY PIER, as viewed In the Shadow of Mt. Hollywood.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE: Darwin Awards and Dodos.

AMNESTY BY ANY OTHER NAME.

President Bush's proposal to provide legal status to illegal immigrants has inspired a number of columns and posts today, with Cal Pundit reserving judgement, Nick Gillespie at Hit and Run favorably disposed toward it, Ronald J. Watkins disappointed, Michelle Malkin angry, Joel Mowbray unaware of existing research, and Mark Krikorian making a call for further research.

Barry Chiswick of the University of Illinois at Chicago has written a summary of the effects of illegal migration on the host country. The Mowbray essay alludes to a phenomenon that makes amnesty, or some other form of regularization, sensible.

In an election year pursuit of Hispanic votes, President Bush is prepared to embark on the ill-advised path to providing some sort of amnesty to 8 million illegal aliens. Perhaps Bush thinks that enhanced scrutiny and enforcement—things the President will combine with his calls for amnesty—can screen out terrorists from those applying for amnesty. The evidence, however, tells a different story.

As it is, our immigration administrators are swamped. The current backlog of cases awaiting adjudication is over 4.5 million. In other words, we can’t even handle the caseload we have now. Throw in 8 million new people, and you have an instant recipe for an administrative fiasco.

Never mind that 8 million new cases will undoubtedly further slow the process for those who played by the rules and are trying to immigrate legally. Never mind that 8 million illegal aliens will, in all likelihood, get to step in front of those decided to follow—and respect—the law. Focusing solely on security, overwhelming an already overwhelmed system means that cracks will turn into fault lines.

Perhaps, but immigration enforcement is not costless, and resources devoted to locating and kicking out illegal immigrants are resources not available to secure the borders. It's that insight that leads to Gil Epstein and Avi Weiss's unpublished "A Theory of Immigration Amnesties." The paper argues that an amnesty, after which now regularized illegal immigrants are subject only to attention from the usual law enforcement authorities, frees up border patrol resources to prevent subsequent entry of illegal immigrants, whose presence is not desired by the host country. The argument does not follow in full, as illegal immigrants might be desired, at least in the U.S., as household servants, packing house workers, and field hands. The broad argument, however, does go through, as the issuance of work permits allows formerly illegal immigrants whose primary purpose is to work to cross the border at Customs checkpoints. Thus, there is a stronger presumption that people attempting to sneak into the country (the plot of The Teeth of the Tiger (details or compare prices) involves terrorists using such a route) are terrorists or drug runners, precisely the individuals the U.S. wants to exclude.

The remaining research problem Mr Krikorian identifies is this:

But it's the second part of the response to a tighter labor market that people just don't get. By holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth.

There is at least one article lurking in there, as I am quite willing to point out to any graduate student casting about for a dissertation topic.

SECOND SECTION: Milt's File points to John O'Sullivan, who argues,

Two specific groups do benefit substantially from immigration: namely the immigrants themselves and those who employ them at lower wages than Americans would accept. The corollary, however, is that some specific Americans lose out: namely, low-paid workers, often minority Americans, who must either lose their jobs or must accept lower wages to compete with the new arrivals.

The corollary is not necessarily true, if the rich country has sufficiently generous welfare benefits. That's the point of this research. And that an amnesty might lead to expectations of future amnesties is not necessarily bad, but that's work in progress at this writing.

THIRD SECTION: Captain's Quarters gets the Epstein and Weiss argument:

You may ask, what if they don't go home? What's the difference between that and what we have now? For one, the workers would be documented, making them a lot easier to track down, and employers would have no more incentive to hire undocumented workers as the lbor cost would be the same and the risk would be much greater. This eliminates the problems of the coyotes who are little better than slavers, taking people across the border in inhumane conditions and forcing them to live in bondage until their debts are repaid. (If you've lived in the Southwest, you know that more than once a year you read about dozens of people dying from asphyxiation in a truck or van that transported people like cattle across the border.) Documentation greatly increases our national security by making sure we have a paper trail for everyone who crosses into the US. Finally, the border patrol can then focus on true security issues rather than being overwhelmed by people who flood the borders to support our own agricultural industry.

Included among the security issues might be a greater success rate for the border patrols, as a greater proportion of the trade for the smugglers would be of individuals whose purposes were something more nefarious than earning a few bucks cleaning houses.

SELF-SELECTION UNTO THE SEVENTH GENERATION? Betsy's Page points to this Richard A. Baehr essay in The American Thinker that suggests political attitudes among the young, and thus the future political balance of power, are changing owing to the greater propensity of adults with secular humanist and leftist leanings to have abortions. As Mr. Baehr summarizes it,

Accepting of course, that children are not obligated to vote as their parents did, I believe that one of the reasons that the numbers in the two parties have moved into balance, and are now trending Republican is because one side is doing a lot better job of reproducing and creating potential new devotees than the other. Republicans in the Twenty-First Century may find themselves enjoying a victory of the cradle.

That a propensity to seek abortion might have effects elsewhere on the population does not come as a surprise. John Donohue and Steven Levitt published, in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, (v116, n2 (May 2001): 379-420), a rather controversial paper titled "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime" with an intriguing abstract:

We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly 18 years after abortion legalization. The 5 states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime.

Professor Levitt engages some of his critics in Slate, while this column asserts there are confounding factors the paper did not control for properly. (That's why we call it research, people. If we knew what we were doing, it would be manufacturing.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Most traditionalists would agree on one thing--the whole problem began with trying to fix something that wasn't broken in the first place." That's Allen Barra, and although he's writing about the Bowl Championship Series (otherwise known as "slight the MAC") it's an observation that people who would tinker with other practices of long standing might do well to remember.

THE BEST, THE BRIGHTEST, AND THE BODY. Betsy's Page picks up a story that former Minnesota Governor Ventura might become a visiting fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School. That's not necessarily a teaching position; there are case studies to help develop and technical papers that require insights from practitioners to help write. All the same, I wouldn't want to be the first year graduate student who nods off in a seminar where Mr Ventura is present.

LITERATURE REVIEW. Blogalization Conspiracy is a compendium of scholars from diverse disciplines who maintain weblogs. (Those of you who knew this long ago will please forgive a Superintendent who started out with punch cards and was an early adopter of email that involved special sending of files and a logon message that chattered out DO YOU WANT TO RECEIVE YOUR MAIL?)

EARNED LEGALIZATION. News report here. Illegal immigration and crummy job as apprenticeship, earned legalization as journeyman status? You could read about it here first!

OVERWHELMED BY CHOICES? Does that include being overwhelmed by analysis, and not sure where to start? Why not start with a USA Today column by Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice (details or compare prices), reviewed here. In the column, Professor Schwartz identifies four problems with expanded choices: people are more likely to regret their decisions, they may avoid acting for fear of regretting their choice, their expectations may outstrip reality, and they blame themselves for making the wrong choice. He's not the only person fretting over choices. Gregg Easterbrook has written The Progress Paradox (details or compare prices), which appears to be of a piece, and there's a review here. The subtext running through both books, at least as perceived by the reviewers, is that an abundance of choices is not good if it leaves the choosers worse off, and perhaps some choices, such as retirement plans or health insurance (or number of teams in a baseball league, or number of condiments on a hamburger?) ought to be left to experts. (Virginia Postrel smells nostalgia for the best and the brightest, or perhaps for Herbert Croly.) Perhaps the books are as good a reason as any to enter the conversation about the S factor, as a call for experts might be an assertion that nonexperts are, well, too stupid to choose properly. (That's a working hypothesis; the Schwartz column focuses more on hysteresis and buyer's remorse although it suggests people take advantage of the expertise of others. Hmmm ... don't you have to choose the experts?)

So, on to the serious economics. Econ Log's "Case for Paternalism?" post provides some useful research, based on Daniel Kahneman's Nobel lecture. The lecture comes down in defense of experts, citing some George Loewenstein research that introduces the concept of "paternalistically protected idiots." On the other hand, Edward Glaeser has looked at the problem of choices and suggested (to the satisfaction of Newmark's Door) that markets (entrepreneurs as competing experts?) might beat paternalism.

OUTSOURCING AND ADJUSTMENT COSTS. No matter how many times I post on the role of adjustment costs as distinct from the benefits from specialization and trade, there's always somebody who still doesn't get it. Winds of Change, just to start the conversation, complains, "Owners of capital can invest abroad, and can, if they are clever and lucky improve their situation. Owners of labor find themselves in increasingly direct competition with lower-cost labor abroad, or with less-skilled labor which can compete because machines and systems make their skills redundant." Perhaps the trope of bourgeois and proletarians is useful as a point of departure, but it does not follow that in life, owners of capital will redeploy their capital intelligently, or owners of labor will not acquire capital to deploy. Furthermore, to the extent that capital becomes more freely mobile, the opportunities to profitably reinvest it will be acted on and arbitraged away more rapidly. And one of the profitable opportunities might be in enhancing the productivity of less-skilled labor. (That is the secret behind Fordism, enabling people to produce automobiles without first having to develop armies of master craftsmen in sheet metal working, and it persists in enabling fast-food restaurants to employ illiterate people, provided they can correctly identify the picture of the item being purchased.)

There is an interesting Kim DuToit post (that InstaPundit picks up, albeit for other reasons) with some tips on how to use the adjustment costs to your own advantage: find a job that cannot be exported. (There is another reason to consider some of the crafts he recommends: as these pages had been noting for much of October, parents and school counselors are steering promising candidates for the skilled trades away from them out of status anxiety.)

At Max at Common Sense and Wonder is yet another suggestion for how to avoid the race to the bottom: go with the flow. For the past 170 years or so, the U.S. comparative advantage has been in producing leading-edge, technology-using, knowledge-intensive goods. I concur with Mr Jacobs in part and dissent in part with this:

So in conclusion, I think that the trend that Schumer and Roberts are seeing is nothing new, and we have nothing to worry about as long as America continues to be the intellectual and technological powerhouse it is.

Check that subordinate clause. It is going to be difficult to build an intellectual powerhouse with invented spelling and exaggerated self-esteem, or to maintain a technological powerhouse with invented mathematics and reliance on somebody else's calculator or computer programming. That is the most effective way to realize Cal Pundit's fears and tear the working class down.

SECOND SECTION: Truck and Barter has been looking at the same essay by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Hoover Institute's Paul Craig Roberts (doesn't politics make for strange bed-fellows?) that Max addressed. Mr Brancato raises some points that require further discussion. There's one easy one: would a foreign country actively pursue a policy that made Americans better off if it made itself worse off? Happens all the time: that's exactly what comes with export subsidies or weakening your currency relative to the dollar. The real fun begins when Messrs. Schumer and Roberts try their hands at the factor price equalization theorem with multiple resources and multiple products. In particular, the factor price equalization theorem cannot be used to predict the driving down of radiologist salaries to the lowest price prevailing in the world. Consider again the case of a U.S. radiologist earning $125k p.a. and a radiologist in a developing country earning $25k p.a. With resource mobility, you would expect radiologists to migrate from the developing country to the U.S. until at the margin a radiologist in the developing country would be indifferent between migrating and staying home, or a student in either country would be indifferent between doing a radiology degree or taking some other training. But ... and here's where it starts to get messy ... those different wages might also reflect differences in productivity, as Mr Brancato has pointed out? There's also a complication in working out the benefits to consumers. In the U.S., consumers see lower prices, but we don't know whether we also see a deterioration of quality, or perhaps a segmentation of the market in which some radiologists, whether in the States or elsewhere, do the routine screening and others, perhaps in some of the formerly poor countries, do the hard cases. We will see a reallocation of world resources among radiology and other activities. All we can be sure of is that in such a reallocation, resources will flow from high opportunity cost to low opportunity cost uses. (That might mean some radiologists become general practitioners, but the world would lose relatively little radiology in the transition, and consumers would obtain additional consultations for day-to-day ailments.) We're looking at the equivalent of what Paul Krugman refers to as a "Marshallian improvement" that leads to an expansion of output at lower real costs to consumers, albeit with some adjustment costs borne by rich radiologists in the U.S. and poor patients in the developing country. That's no different from moving manufacturing activity from Wilmette to Waukegan, creating a bedroom community where there once were factories, and creating factories where there once were subsistence farms.

THE POLITICAL LEANINGS OF TRANSIT RIDERS? Will at Crescat Sententia passes along a throw-away quote from a review of New York subway station art that includes an erroneous and irrelevant speculation.

After years of untold subway time — spent watching, listening, reading — I would say that large, active systems of mass transit are the main difference between the red and the blue states of the 2000 electoral map (California excepted). People who travel only by private car — most of America — can too easily stick to their own kind and cling to their prejudices and misconceptions without the threat of contradictory experiences.

Mr Baude disagrees with the assertion, as does Patterico. Their posts dealt with the inconveniences of using the L or with the snobbery of the paragraph. Let me pile on by fact-checking it. Clearly the New York Times has not let Roberta Smith get out much. The map of California precincts that voted against recalling their governor looks pretty much like a map that would contain the Bay Area Rapid Transit and the Los Angeles Metro. I'm not so sure about the San Diego Trolley or the CalTrans Coaster, but the fact that the Trolley covers its operating costs just might be too red-state for the hypothesis being proposed. Second, Ms. Smith apparently has not had the contradictory experience of being cut off in traffic by someone of her "own kind," whatever that might mean.

IMAGINE THERE'S NO FAILURE. For that matter, imagine nobody gets a B. Enjoy it. Cold Spring Shops will be here when you get back.

NO FISHING OFF THE COMPANY PIER? Critical Mass offers a roundup of recent developments in the evolution of rules governing professor-student sex. Crescat Sententia offers some thoughts by Amanda, Beth, and Will, who seeks "10 Signs That Your Professor Is Sleeping With You To Assuage Mid-Life Depression and Will Dump You Shortly Afterward."

At Critical Mass, student answers to "What has your college taught you about sex?" are welcome. Submission details are provided in the post.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT from Andrew Sullivan:

When you read a piece like this one by Arthur Miller, you realize that for a certain generation, there's no chance that they will ever get their heads around the horrors of communism... He still longs for a world in which Castro might have succeeded, a world which cannot exist, and which never existed - except in the minds of aging Nation-readers. There is, I think, no chance of persuading this generation. They are lost. But eventually they will die off, and a new realism can take hold.

PARODY DEFIES PARODY. At Bryn Mawr College, "Everyone would think that it’s perfectly normal to charge different prices based on race, ethnicity, and sex," notes John at Discriminations. The administration of The College of William and Mary continues to deal badly with the fallout from its stifling of a parody bake sale. Critical Mass has extensive coverage. Some of the individuals named are making strong cases for inclusion in the academic sheepshead deck, which still has 26 cards to fill.

YES, THERE IS A MORNINGTON CRESCENT. Michael at Transport Blog has pictures. Now a question: if you're playing the international version of the game, and somebody names Randolph and Wabash, is it permissible to respond with Fifth and Greenfield?

WHY ARE ALL OF THE CHILDREN ABOVE AVERAGE? Because they might have to work out some averages without benefit of a calculator? (There's nothing that flummoxes a student quite like a professor working out a sum, or sometimes a product, IN HIS HEAD, faster than the student can work a calculator. Hee hee.)

THE PERILS OF MANIPULATING YOUR EXCHANGE RATE. A weaker currency (your money exchanges for less of someone else's money) makes your exports more attractive to someone else (who, here comes what I refer to as the "economics handstand," is able to buy more of your money and therefore more goods priced in your money). But if you're going to pursue a deliberate strategy of keeping your currency weak, you either have to create more money (can you say inflation?) or hold inventories of somebody else's money, which is under some circumstances a losing proposition, as you forfeit the opportunity to profit by trading that money.

RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. Reciprocal Switching source Doxagora has been rather busy of late, with in particular a lot of coverage of the caucus and primary scene.

NO WITHERING AWAY OF THE STATE? Henry at Crooked Timber explores ancient and modern isomorphisms between a government and an organized crime syndicate, expanding on a short post by Fabio at Marginal Revolution that placed the subject on the table. Professor Farrell's post notes that the Mob has an incentive to invent some distrust in order to prevent the evolution of competing institutions of cooperation. Today's wicked thought: doesn't e.g. a convoluted tax code accomplish the same thing for a duly constituted government?

CONGESTION INSURANCE. Knowledge Problem expands on an exchange between Mark Kleiman and Steve Verdon on the pros and cons of road pricing (either for the entire road or for restricted use lanes). The Knowledge Problem post is particularly useful at dealing with the misconception that toll roads are only for the rich, and improved transponder technologies are going to reduce the transaction costs of collecting tolls. For example, the Illinois Tollway Authority is now selling the I-Pass machinery in Wisconsin, for commuting Cheddar Curtain crossers.

HOW MANY PASSES WOULD A PACKER PICK, IF A PACKER WOULD PICK PASSES? Enough to win. Sean at The American Mind was at the game. Airport sports bars sometimes come in handy, particularly during those weather delays.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Already, ownership of fancy goods is less a mark of social status than it used to be." That's Glenn Reynolds at Tech Central Station, anticipating larger returns to service businesses (no McJobs here, move along ...)

CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up.

WOMEN GO SHOPPING, MEN GO BUYING? Marginal Revolution offers some evidence and some directions for further research.

BRING THEM UP IN THE RIGHT WAY. At Apartment 11-D, Laura's son discovers the joys of cab rides. But did he learn about the rooster?

MARKING OFF. Thanks for looking in. More posts early next week.

HIGH ACHIEVER. Student is dissatisfied with a 1410 on her College Boards, retakes them, gets the 1600. Her advice to others: "You don't have to be born a genius to do great things. You just have give your absolute all to whatever you do."

Quite so. There are lots of smart people on Skid Row.

AN END TO AGRICULTURAL DUMPING? Dan Drezner, subbing for Andrew Sullivan, notes that a World Trade Organization exemption for agricultural subsidies and tariffs expires effective today. He recommends an Economist analysis of the likely outcomes.

TODAY'S BCS WHINGE. At the beginning of the college football season now ending, Northern Illinois defeated Maryland, and Wisconsin defeated West Virginia. During the regular season, Maryland defeated West Virginia, 24-7. So, of course, Maryland played West Virginia again earlier today, this time winning 41-7, while Wisconsin played Auburn yesterday, losing the game 14-28 after an interception ended a Wisconsin drive that was headed for the go-ahead touchdown late in the game, and Northern Illinois did not play at all.

PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES. King at SCSU Scholars finds a news report from Minneapolis with a misleading headline, suggesting that the Minnesota budget woes and stingy pay increase were behind raids on Minnesota faculty, while the main article listed reasons other than salary behind those job changes. The deeper connections require further investigation. Perhaps the salaries at Minnesota public universities are not that much different from those elsewhere. But if those other reasons include resources not available in libraries, or good colleagues leaving, or no paper available for copying articles or for distributing assignments, it is as if the university is cutting salaries. It would however take too many column inches for a newspaper article to explain the idea of "compensating differential."

In a related post, Right Wing News is having some fun with the idea that absent minimum wage legislation, employers would not pay wages. Some commentators (109 comments at this writing) are not buying the idea.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "He will continue to be dead throughout 2004." That's Mark Steyn, on the future for Osama Bin Laden. Read and understand the rest.

HOW MANY PACKERS WOULD A PICKER PICK, IF A PICKER WOULD PICK PACKERS? Michele at A Small Victory picks a Super Bowl full.

MEASURING INPUTS, NOT OUTPUTS? Vodka Pundit weighs in on the merits of brand names. Although good workmanship is easier with the right tools, it is the work, and not the label on the tool, that matters. Put another way, the positional arms races that amateurs might indulge in to obtain "professional grade" tools will not make their lawns, or their dinners, or their home improvement projects any better.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT: Reason's Julian Sanchez notes a generational fault line that will have to be corrected.

FALSIFIABILITY. Dissecting Leftism provides a breakdown of potentially testable positions of moral philosophy, contrasted with positions ultimately dependent on faith or some other appeal to external authority.

ONLY THE RICH WILL USE THE TOLLWAYS. The Governor of Minnesota (motto: Four Losses and Seven Misses) proposes toll roads, and the local socialists promptly raise the above complaint. Shot in the Dark offers some clearer thinking.

SECOND SECTION: Insults Unpunished (via Outside the Beltway) sees greater acceptance of the concept of priority pricing in the District of Columbia.

HAVE YOU BEEN GOOD, THE WAY YOU SHOULD? Heh.

PIGOUVIAN COMPLEMENTS. Professor Varian (via Newmark's Door) seeks to end the positional arms race by which people overinvest in their own safety by purchasing dangerous passenger trucks. His proposal involves insurance premiums linked to gasoline purchases, which is an interesting variation on the corrective tax. Wouldn't it be simpler to modify the fuel intensity standards, to reduce the incentive not to build station wagons and larger sedans?

HOW MANY PACKERS WOULD A PICKER PICK, IF A PICKER WOULD PICK PACKERS? King at SCSU Scholars makes the Packers a sleeper pick. They have to beat the former coach and a number of former players first.

DYING FOR YOUR PREJUDICES. Dennis Prager (via Betsy's Page) suggests it's more important that experienced rescuers not be Israeli rather than some Iranians be pulled from the rubble. In a related post, Editor: Myself (via Buzz Machine) looks at the political economy of donating to the people, bypassing the government, when that government is neither electorally accountable nor collects much in taxes from the general population. These are two distinct phenomena: for many years the United States had electoral accountability (at least for local office and for House seats) while relying primarily on tariffs to pay the national government's bills.

CLUELESS TOURISTS show up on the Tube for New Years, reports London Underground, where the mannerly thing to do on the escalator is indeed stand right, walk left.

THE IVIES IGNORE IT AT THEIR PERIL. Apartment 11-D discovers a survey of French penny-dreadfuls that might have contributed to the Revolution by casting the aristocrats in a bad light. Laura asks, "What signs of change are being ignored by major media and other elites?" I nominate talk radio, perhaps followed by web logging. My sense is that the academic establishment still wants to go on with business as usual, despite the easy access people enjoy to dissenting perspectives, and one of these days an administrator's sniff of "Neanderthal" will not suffice to deflect criticism.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Intellectually, multiculturalism is indefensible." Read the rest. (Via Common Sense and Wonder.)

SECOND SECTION: See also Power Line, who takes the opportunity in linking to the article to ask why Aztec slaveholders are somehow worthy of special regard, while Founder slaveholders must be taken off their pedestals (using the latest academic fad.)

SEEKING AGING HIPPIES? Power Line nails it:

Many of our readers are too young to remember the 60's. Well, we were there, and suffice it to say, this country will go back to 1969 over our cold, dead bodies (to paraphrase the Rifleman and, before him, Phil Gramm). If the election comes down to a contest between those who are stuck in the late 60's and those who have moved on, Dean is in deep, deep trouble.

Quite so. Here's Governor Dean: "We felt the possibilities were unlimited then. We were making such enormous progress. It resonates with a lot of people my age. People my age really felt that way." Let's review the history, which The Fourth Turning captures in microcosm in July of that year: the moon landing offered one view of progress and possibilities, Woodstock another, and Senator Kennedy's car crash a third. (The Beatles may have been preparing to go their separate ways then, also a metaphor for the times.) It is difficult to view much of what followed after July of 1969, particularly in culture, education, and politics, as an improvement on what came before.

EDUCATION FOLLIES: Young Americans for Freedom find them throughout the P-20 enterprise. (Via Porphyrogenitus.)

CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS calls at The American Mind, where Sean scored some playoff tickets and then compiled the entries.

BACKING IN, NONETHELESS. Packers will host a playoff game after Arizona steals one from Minnesota (it's a strange world we live in, with the St. Louis Cardinals in Greater Phoenix, and a northern team playing badly on real grass.) A Milwaukee radio station put together a montage of the last play of the Arizona game, which was being relayed off television by the Green Bay broadcast team. You hear the Minnesota announcer yelling NOOOO!! and the Green Bay announcer yelling YESSSS!!!

Now to the playoffs, and perhaps a puzzle for the theologians: is Irving Favre better connected in Heaven than Harry Caray?

NO BACKING IN. As halftime approaches, the Seahawks gave up two quick touchdowns to the Niners, then rallied to tie the game. The announcers are currently speculating about "strength of victory" considerations that might be even more convoluted than Florida vote-counting algorithms, should the Seahawks and the two North Division teams finish with identical records.

WORKING ON THE RAILROAD

The Restore 3713 project is a joint effort of the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valley Railway Historical Society and the Steamtown National Park to restore to running order The Constitution, a heavy express passenger locomotive of the Boston and Maine Railroad. There's a model of it in progress in my basement, which is supposed to look something like this when it's finished:

(engineer's side)

(fireman's side)

Although there's a lot to be done on it yet, the model does not require the kind of heavy labor the prototype does to get it into running order.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

It is equally possible not to educate oneself at any of those places. I should know: when Harvard turned me down I beat my breast and rent my garments. I then proceeded not to educate myself at my safety school, Carleton College, which served the purpose admirably, just as Harvard would have.

That's God of the Machine on the positional arms race dimension of college attendance, not limited to the big name schools. (Hat tip: Newmark's Door.)

DZENCUJA. Ralph Peters suggests Poland is again being neglected by the U.S. government, despite being an older ally than France.

NO GRINCH STEALS THIS CHRISTMAS. Dan Drezner comments on the latest footloose industry -- this time, candy cane manufacturing. The news coverage is particularly interesting, as the last word goes to Jack Roney, director of economics at the American Sugar Alliance, who asserts, "We would welcome the opportunity to compete globally if there were a level playing field. Sugar is dumped on the world market." Leave for the moment the fundamental concept that trading is inherently a quest for a playing field tilted in your favor (why else call it comparative advantage?), is the use of marginal agricultural land on the high plains of eastern Colorado to produce beet sugar that qualifies for export subsidies not dumping?

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS and Carnival of the Vanities was all through Winds of Change's house.

BEND OVER, HERE IT COMES AGAIN: "I'm a practical guy, I am not an egghead," [current Illinois Board of Higher Education chairman James] Kaplan said. "I can't sit and do these ephemeral things." That's his perception of research. Here comes another push for "productivity," which probably means a sacrifice of "quality" as fewer professors attempt to teach more students in larger classes. Dan Drezner has correctly summarized the conceptual errors, either in reporting or in the chairman's thinking, and Bill Sjostrom correctly predicts the likely outcome of the study.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

But America's long-term problem isn't too few jobs. It's the widening income gap between personal-service workers and symbolic analysts. The long-term solution is to help spur upward mobility by getting more Americans a good education, including access to college. Unfortunately, just the opposite is occurring. There will be plenty of good jobs to go around. But too few of our citizens are being prepared for them. Rather than fret about "losing jobs" to others, we ought to be fretting about the growing number of our young people who are losing their footing in the emerging economy.

That's former Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich, in a paid Wall Street Journal column that Insults Unpunished helpfully quoted at length while providing useful commentary. The Reich essay provides some information that eludes Paul Krugman, in a lament about more rigid social stratification that neglects the failure of the schools to develop human capital as a contributing factor. Dan Drezner has been following commentary on the Krugman article and provides numerous links, as well as an active comments section.

PIE SLICERS OR PIE ARRANGERS. Joanne Jacobs finds a Neal Boortz column critical of an elementary school activity dealing with the "distribution" of wealth and power. King at SCSU Scholars offers some properly caustic comments about the lesson, and links to a somewhat more challenging lesson dealing with specialization and trade. This second lesson has directions that resemble those in some model train construction kits I have seen, which probably reduces its usefulness to teachers, but perhaps there is something similar in the Economics America materials.

I have to wonder, after looking at the "economic justice" lesson, whether a student would get into trouble for singing the closing lines of Good King Wenceslas or for asking from whence came the shovels or whether the people wearing mittens were supposed to represent primates who had not yet evolved their opposable thumbs.

SECOND SECTION: Community Research and Action Plan. Priceless.

PRUDHOE BAY, IRAQ? Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith proposes a Mesopotamian Permanent Fund for Iraqi oil revenues. Well worth a look.

MARKING OFF. Thanks for stopping by. More posts after Christmas.

A CORRECTION: No case for Mohammed Atta in Baghdad.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Today's Ebenezer Scrooge would be barking orders 24/7 to Bob Cratchit on his BlackBerry. I once worked for a billionaire who insisted, even if I was vacationing in the Caribbean, on having the phone number of every place I'd be. More often than not, he interrupted my plans by calling and demanding some "mission critical" task.

That's Catherine Dickens, the third great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, on the relevance of A Christmas Carol. Regular readers will recall that these pages have for some time asserted the economic losses and unnecessary social tensions inherent in the treadmill model of business behavior. Ms. Dickens cites examples of some people who have opted off. That's one possibility. We will know that the end of the treadmill is coming when Nextel's manic commercials become grist for comedy routines.

WHAT DOES THE CHEMLAWN MAN DO OVER WINTER? Strings the Christmas lights, according to Virginia Postrel. Does that create more winners? We're back to Wilmette and Waukegan again, this time in the outsourcing of the Christmas lights.

Ms Postrel notes a cohort effect in the use of light-stringing services: older people view them as frivolous. Heck, older people might view the house-lighting tradition as frivolous. I recall a Mad parody of religion, in which one house with a simple lighted cross (or perhaps the word PEACE) was between two gaudy-by-1960s standards with the Santas, reindeer, Magi, illuminated trees and whatnot, and one spectator remarked to another, "I guess they're not very religious." A couple of five-bulb Advent candles served my parents well enough in those days.

TURNINGS, OVERBLOWN? John Quiggin at Crooked Timber is not pleased with the effort to define generations, particularly with the choice of cohort boundaries. Eric Felten (via Milt's File) argues that misplaced confidence in generational habits can be a losing proposition.

SKIPPING GRADES? No long-term harm, but these comments suggest it isn't easy for the skippee at the time of the skipping. Highered Intelligence and King at SCSU Scholars trade fours.

PUTTING SOME NAMES ON THOSE FACE CARDS. The National Association of Scholars Forum has supplied two administrators who deserve a place in the card deck of notorious administrators.

Brooklyn College's Provost Roberta Matthews, who has made "plays well with others" tenurable, and who has politicized the senior thesis (now renamed "capstone," I suppose if we can accept "light rail vehicle" in place of interurban, anything goes) has made a case for Queen of Hearts. (Any allusions you wish to infer to Lewis Carroll are probably correct.)

President Timothy Sullivan of the College of William and Mary, who could not believe that a serious person would favor an affirmative-action bake sale, has made a case for nine of clubs.

(Why nine of clubs?) Because I'm the Superintendent.

SAUERBRATEN LITE? Some things are better left alone, notes Dennis Getto, in a survey of the changing format of Milwaukee German cuisine.

PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES?

The cartoon ran in Friday's morning paper, to the displeasure of radio host Jeff Wagner. That afternoon, Prime Minister Blair and President Bush announced the agreement by Libya to cooperate with the international organizations in ending some weapons programs.

An offer Colonel Qadafi couldn't refuse? Daniel Drezner, Insta Pundit, The American Mind, and Oliver Willis weigh in.

HORIZONTAL EQUITY. Highered Intelligence discovers the lengths school districts will go to to ensure that students receiving taxpayer-paid lunches will not be embarrassed by the experience.

THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN AND THEIR FLYING MACHINES. The students at MIT came up with a proper tribute to the centennial of powered flight, and didn't the physical plant people show the proper aplomb? (Via Kieran at Crooked Timber.) Pitts Pilot at Blaster's Blog (who has trouble writing about the experience flying a Pitts Special -- not surprising as that is a serious performance aircraft, archaic appearance notwithstanding) discovers that a private-enterprise test plane has exceeded Mach I, an honor previously limited to the Concorde and to various military aircraft. Perhaps the next fifty years of rocket flight will be as productive as the first fifty years of aviation?

SECOND SECTION: Transport Blog covers the supersonic test flight.

THIRD SECTION: Via Hit and Run, the New Scientist coverage of the test flight. Don't you just love that Vari-Eze-inspired (first-stage?) carrier plane?

SCALE-IT-DOWN REGARDLESS? Where Worlds Collide has further information about Iain Rice's new book on mainline modelling, expanding on my earlier comments. Modellers of all scales might want to bear in mind that, even in the smallest scales, what passes as a "broad" curve would likely have a 30 mph (50 km/h) speed restriction on it in the prototype. (Thus, even the biggest of North American basements is really too small for very fine modelling of a mainline, unless it's the Chicago Rapid Transit you're doing, where a 24" minimum radius is correct in O Scale ... but then you'd have trouble fitting Marshall Field's into your basement, to say nothing of the Board of Trade.) Still sounds like the book is worth a look.

Time permitting, I might be able to work on a project that will feature big O Scale steam power in a space no larger than a ping-pong table. Why? To demonstrate my big power at shows. How? Model an engine terminal. (I know, it's an old dodge, but how often will you see a Pennsy 6-4-4-6 coming on shed and a GWR King going off shed, followed by a B&M 2-8-4?)

EFFICIENCY NOT THE ONLY GOAL. Econ Log asks whether markets ought be defended on grounds of open-ness, rather than of efficiency, or of prosperity. Good question, and any answer suggests old-style professors working from different disciplines might not yet be obsolete.

While you're visiting Marginal Revolution, here is some background for the Econ Log discussion.

STAND RIGHT, WALK LEFT. Perhaps it's reversed in the Tube. No matter the location, however, there will be clueless newbies impeding the flow of commuters out of the station. That's a regular gripe in the letters to the Chicago commuter newsletter (a waste of effort, in my view, as it is the occasional riders who haven't figured out that the regular riders take the last possible train, and those occasional riders probably don't read the newsletter, which is out of stock shortly after publication). I wonder, though, is the phenomenon more common at tourist destinations. In Washington, DC, disembarking passengers at L'Enfant Plaza or Pentagon have the drill down, but at Archives or Union Station, the rogue escalator user is common, and probably a visitor.

PROM FOR GEEKS. Yup, it's time for the Modern Language Association convention, and Invisible Adjunct rounds up the "Self-Consciously Provocative" paper titles. Funnily, the Allied Social Science Association convention will be in San Diego, the week following the literary types, and it will probably peg the geek meter. Look for lots of tan trenchcoats.

DISPLAY SIGNALS AND RUN AS SECOND NO. 16. Updates to some of yesterday's posts, and a belated Happy Beethoven's Birthday to all.

FRANCHISE OR OWN? Newmark's Door notes a virtual substitute for sitting down to lunch at the Chicago common room. Yesterday's topic: vertical relationships among restaurant chains.