THE MORE THINGS CHANGE. The American Mind reports the rediscovery of some ancient verities about avoiding poverty. It is probably unfair for an Ancient Mariner to take Mr Hackbarth to task in that way, as Robert Lampman's Ends and Means of Reducing Income Poverty is long out of print, but some of us who hung out at the University of Wisconsin a long time ago were aware that a child who had a younger father, rather than an older father, who had completed high school, and both natural parents in the house was almost sure not to grow up poor. The one dimension that has almost surely changed in the past 30 years is that if the child had African origins his or her chances of growing up poor were somewhat greater, although disentangling the effects of race and marital status is not easy even with the best of computers.

TRAIN THEM UP IN THE RIGHT WAY WHEN THEY ARE YOUNG. Rockwell Automation has named Keith Nosbusch, an electrical engineering graduate from the University of Wisconsin who was co-captain of the football team and whose daughter is currently a defender on the soccer team. If memory serves, Mr. Nosbusch's first supervisor at Allen-Bradley was John Karlson. Good going, Dad.

NO DEPLETING THIS FISHERY. Academic Game has discovered Stanley Fish's special pleading (more harpooning sighted here and here) and finds ample opportunities to toss a few harpoons. Tightly Wound discovers the commentary and expands on it. Of particular interest:

This amuses me because the more academics and universities get up in arms to defend their economic and classroom practices the more they expose the prejudices which contribute quite a bit to the problems they're having--and the biggest problem appears to be their unfounded belief in their own unquestionable position as the great unwashed's intellectual superiors.

Quite.

RUNNING WITH THE HUSKIES. Siberian Huskies are high-maintenance dogs and there is an active cottage industry in taking in and finding new owners for dogs that are not compatible with owners who buy them for their conversation value. (A local chapter provides the live mascots for Northern Illinois University, and it sometimes hard to tell who is controlling whom when the dogs go around the field with some of the smaller cheerleaders running along behind.) But take the story about the dog that got off the leash and ran from Michigan into Indiana with a bit of skepticism. If it had gotten away from a handler in Houghton (home of the Michigan Tech Huskies) it might be an animal worthy of the Iditarod, or Sgt. Preston of the Yukon. On the other hand, if it had run away from Sturgis, Michigan City, Indiana is just down the road a piece.

THE THINGS YOU LEARN. I am pleased to see a number of my sources taking note of Milt Rosenberg's weblog. Those of you who live far from Chicago might not get to hear the show, which is a delightful mix of intellectual topics, some heavier than others. Tonight, three scholars with the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum speaking of many things, including commonalities between Hittite and English (!) and their work cataloging and assessing the losses from the Baghdad Historical Museum. Many of the missing objects are cylindrical seals. How do you say "I have this day set my hand and seal ..." in Hittite?

THE SECRET IS OUT. Regular readers of these pages will have noted that in University-speak, "access" is a euphemism for "enrolling unprepared students." Interested Participant has discovered that "Ohio colleges and universities are teaching basic high school courses to the students with the taxpayer picking up the cost," and that University of Cincinnati administrators take pride in doing so. Number 2 Pencil has picked up the story, and asks, correctly,

Why? Why are they being admitted to college if they're not ready? The last I checked, a college degree was not a right. Why should taxpayers, who are apparently already supporting a failing K-12 system, be forced to support a college system that doesn't value college-level work?

Why, indeed? The policy was a mistake in the 1990s, when some members of a curriculum committee I served on saw a virtue in something called "retention" as a way of keeping enrollments up and the bond interest money rolling in, and it makes no sense at all in light of jammed middle schools and rising freshman applications. And the policy, by simply taking the failures of the common schools as given, provides no incentive for the common schools to clean up their act. Perhaps if the principals of some of the common schools -- including "good" schools in prosperous neighborhoods -- discovered that their students were not being admitted to good universities -- heck, to safety valve universities -- account deficiencies in their education, the effects would be salutary. It's not as if I'm advocating executing a couple of admirals here, pour encourager les autres!

A footnote: make sure you read the comments at the Number 2 Pencil post -- you'll learn something about the graduation rate of the most prominent program at Cincinnati, and about the value system of beneficiaries of that program!

NO FREE RIDING. Daily Ablution is disappointed to find that the British TV Police (revenooers who check that people have paid their TV tax ... that commercial-free Beeb isn't free, after all) are proper and polite.

A FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD DOWN. So does a university. Invisible Adjunct reacts to Stanley Fish's special pleading (links to additional commentary here.) Key observation:

Fish utters not one word about the large-scale and systemic restructuring of the terms of academic employment -- a transformation that has to be seen as the single most significant factor in the weakening of the bargaining power of academic faculty. To repeat the point: when (as in the year 2001), only "about one-quarter of new faculty appointments were to full-time tenure track positions (i.e., half were part-time, and more than half of the remaining full-time positions were 'off' the tenure track)," we are looking at an extremely vulnerable profession: a profession that is vulnerable not only to direct attacks by Republican legislators but also to the more indirect effects of much broader and amorphous social and economic changes.

But setting up Experimental Prefigurative Communities of Transfiguration, and hosting expensive wine-and-cheese receptions for Cutting Edge Bulls... Postmodernists is so much more important, and at least within the academic echo chamber, griping about Those Mean Republicans is so much easier than acknowledging the university's breaches of the social contract and putting those breaches right.

GUTTING THE CURRICULUM. Daniel Drezner recommends an inflight magazine article! that comments on cultural literacy, using awareness of Joyce Kilmer's twee poem Trees as a marker for a generation gap in knowledge. Key paragraph:

It turns out that the year you were born may be a more important factor in what you know than the schools you attended or which side of the tracks you were born on. The generation gap is less about attitude and more about cultural points of reference, less about how long you like your hair or how short your skirts and more about whether you identify the Kennedy tragedy as something to do with the president or with his son.

Perhaps. But awareness of popular culture is, by definition, transitory, and popular culture is popular in some cases precisely because it is empty. On the other hand, awareness of a canon of received knowledge is useful for understanding many things. Take, for example, landmark opinions in the regulation of public utilities. On first reading of these, I was struck by the frequency of classical allusions in them. I know not whether such things are as common in landmark court decisions elsewhere in policy, but suspect that, as the same justices are involved in writing those opinions, similar allusions will occur there. And it is a crime to deprive youngsters of the background by which they can grasp such things. Supreme Court rulings are cumbersome enough to read even if you do know the classics.

CONFUSION TO THE FRENCH. Yet more yacht-racing tactics, this time by Captain Hornblower, who, while pursued by a heavier French ship on his weather hip, prepares to come about, then reverses tacks, using his crew to backwind the jibs. The French captain, matching the first tack to prevent his escape, buys the fake and is unable to respond properly, winding up in stays and vulnerable to having his rigging shot away.

NOTICE OF DISCONTINUANCE OF SERVICE. Blogshares has closed down. (Hat tips: Wiz Bang by way of Outside the Beltway.)

NEW MERSENNE PRIME. There's something appealing about searching for prime numbers by taking powers of 2 and subtracting 1, 2**n - 1. There's also something appealing about searching by taking prime powers of 2, although you quickly see that prime-ness does not follow, e.g. 2**2 - 1 = 3, a prime; 2**3 - 1 = 7, a prime, 2**5 - 1 = 31, a prime, 2**7 - 1 = 127, a prime, 2**11 - 1 = 2047 = 23*89, a product of two primes, and then they start to thin out. Marginal Revolution reports the discovery of the 40th such Mersenne prime, with power 20,996,011, and links to a spare computing power sharing opportunity, for people with computer time to spare and an interest in chasing primes. (There are still as many to find today as there were yesterday.)

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES NO. 63 calls at Begging to Differ this week.

ON THE DOMESTIC FRONT. (Warning: omnibus post.)

First, some unusual incidences of spouse abuse, and some commentary on the changing nature of the conversation about such things.

Second, some anticipation of wacky statements to come.

Third, some ongoing wackiness. Laura at Apartment 11-D wants everyone else to be comfortable with her prejudices:

Just as we shouldn't discriminate against homosexuals and feel that it is right to accommodate people with disabilities, society has to accommodate parents. That means changes in the workplace. And it means sacrifices from the childless.

Catch the howling non-sequitur in there? The Americans with Disabilities Act and the continuing attempts to determine positive or negative rights for homosexuals are two fronts in the Culture Wars. And there is more than one change in the workplace by which "society" can accommodate parents. I was under the impression that the old accommodation, with Dad working and Mom minding the kids, had to be changed precisely because it meant Dad was away from the kids too much and Mom was with the kids too much. Perhaps that was just another Silent Generation experiment against reality, to go with no-fault divorce and tax-supported day care. And Dr. Laura loses any sympathy for her demand that "the childless" sacrifice on behalf of her leaving work early with this:

Couples who work full time without the expense of childcare or diapers are much better off than we are. They have houses, while we live in a dumpy apartment. They take vacations and only pay for two plane seats. They have two full time salaries with benefits. Children are the leading indicator of poverty.

Um, this is somebody who lives in New York City, making a classic argumentum ad misericordiam. Further, it is somebody who still has failed to read and understand the Say Aggregation Principle. Furthermore, it is a bit disingenuous to demand further changes in working life, when it is precisely the end of the old sex roles that made it possible for two-income power couples to outbid one income, or income-and-a-half couples for the good houses and the good cars. (Although, as there is a large premium for good houses in good school districts, there must be some bidding by power couples WITH CHILDREN going on in such neighborhoods.)

Harry at Crooked Timber has chimed in with some observations of his own, which are worth a look, but ought to be read in light of two realities that are difficult to change. First, high achievers might be childless by choice (and quite willing to pick up some of the slack the early-leaving moms and dads create, for an eminently sensible price: the promotions and the prestige.) In that light there might not have to be any additional sacrifices. Second, women have babies, which makes de-sexing the division of labor in child rearing a bit more cumbersome in practice than in principle.

MEDIA CONCENTRATION? If that new Democratic National Committee liberal radio network gets going, will its commentators have to keep still about the fact that a rich financier made possible the purchase of the first five stations, all in large cities? Byron York sees an option value in buying the radio stations, independent of the opportunity to run programs of the owners' choices, and Charlie Sykes sees a little market saturation problem facing the owners.

FOOTBALL IS NOW A RADICAL CAUSE. King at SCSU Scholars sees no causal link between affirmative action bake sales and poor performance on the gridiron. Today's Best of the Web does some additional research not at all supportive of the claim.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

I put together a small box of school supplies, stuffed animals, small toy cars and special items I thought each would like, with a couple of new toothbrushes and toothpaste to top it off.

That's a report from Chief Wiggles, grateful for what readers have sent, asking for more. As Dean at Dean's World notes, "Get involved, people. Especially if you ever said you support our troops, or said you want the best for the Iraqi people."

PELTZMAN EFFECTS. Stephen Moore is unimpressed with claims that higher speed limits lead to more traffic deaths. Key observation: "The study found that deaths on rural highways had risen by 35 percent because of the new law." Rural highways are not equivalent to interstate highways, where the higher speed limits are more common. (Illinois only allows 65 on rural Interstates -- a law honored more in the breach than in the observance -- and Wisconsin permits 65 on some divided limited-access highways, which I refer to as the Cheddarbahns.) Rural highways are less likely to be safe for a number of reasons: two lanes, people taking risks in the passing zones, stop signs at blind intersections thanks to the tall corn, which makes defensive driving techniques in anticipation of inattentive cross-traffic more difficult, farm equipment headed to or from the field, and development bringing greater traffic volumes.

Curiously, some of the plains states have taken measures in the interest of safety that might raise the accident rates. A few years ago, I noticed railway-style gates that can be used to block access to interstate highways in Minnesota, a practice that Wisconsin has adapted through Kenosha and Racine counties. These gates have the effects of diverting traffic from the interstates to the rural roads, putting the people with get-home-itis on the more dangerous roads.

INCOMPLETE SPECIALIZATION. Dean at Dean's World expresses surprise that the ongoing economic recovery includes an expansion in manufacturing, with spot shortages (or upward price pressure) in some manufactured goods. No big surprise, really. Mr Esmay is conflating two effects, a shifting production possibility frontier (with the higher opportunity cost of manufactured goods in the United States being reflected in a reallocation of resources out of manufacturing and into knowledge-intensive goods not ordinarily classified as manufacturing; the comments to his post about the adjustment cost effects on older workers are worth a closer look) and a general economic expansion that might involve producing more of both manufactured goods and knowledge-intensive goods as the economy moves closer to its production possibility frontier.

BUCKLE AND SWASH. Two new Hornblower movies coming up, and Blogger Rabbit points to an Atlantic Monthly retrospective on pirates and privateers. (I'm not sure under admiralty law what a commerce raider for rebellious states not recognized by any government is, perhaps privateer gives the Secessionists too much status.) In the stack of pleasure reading are some pirate books. Perhaps a review will be in order in the new year.