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

Loadings were rather heavy in both directions.

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

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


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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The hogs are happy.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

There are additional security features on the new note.


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those who do not remember the past ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


A plaque in the courtyard describes what happened here.

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Sycamore Historical Society photo republished in the DeKalb Chronicle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The competitive interests of the states differ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


Next: a session of drilling and tapping.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE THINGS YOU LEARN.

Four Block World for March 3.

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

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

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

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

The public interest is adequately served by existing carriers.

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

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

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

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

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

NIU officials say their research shows those numbers are inflated.

I'll never lack for work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One indicator:

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

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

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

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

The columnist suggests only Mr Favre could pass the torch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This columnist suggests the apprentice is ready for Urlacher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin handled Penn State as roughly.

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

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

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

WE. WANT. MORE.

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed not.

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

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

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

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

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel photo by Jeffrey Phelps.

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

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

Fair winds.

THE WORK GOES ON. Northern collaborates with Northwestern.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They observe,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


Dobrii vyetcher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUR WORST CRITICS PREFER TO STAY.

They elaborate.

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

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

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


Two Illinois icons make an appearance.


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


I thought this display was particularly well-done.



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