THE YEARS OF DENYING COHERENT BELIEFS WILL CATCH UP WITH HIGHER EDUCATION.

Here's Richard Vedder with specifics.

Very dramatically many universities seemingly are abandoning reasoned debate over diverse perspectives of human behavior towards promoting ideological perspectives often denigrating and condemning the very development of a great American civilization emanating from the European Renaissance and Enlightenment. Borrowing from Samuel Huntington, we are having a collegiate clash of civilizations within America, most recently exemplified by the University of North Carolina’s brouhaha over a tenure appointment for Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist who prompted the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which is to the woke what the Bible is to Christians.

There's a longer post coming on how too much "sophisticated" opinion is regressing to the medieval, as in identifying and denouncing heretics rather than engaging the controversies. The incantations include "the science" and "our democracy."

There's nothing wrong with considering the possibility that a plantation feudalism matters in an important way in the American Founding, or that residual differences in outcomes despite all sorts of official and unofficial attempts to lift people up are system failures.  It's when those new faith traditions resist inquiry that higher education fails.

Academics frightened of being accused of being racist accede to any and all demands, some outrageous, articulated by protesters and the diversity bureaucrats often in very well paid university positions despite sometimes marginal academic credentials by traditional means of assessment. “White privilege” is a term loved by the woke. But another label, “rent-seeking,” may be equally appropriate. People are assuming power and much enhanced incomes and job security in return for appearing to be progressive, woke, and believing in critical race theory and all its dubious assertions.

Perhaps when donor money goes to relocate glacial errata, that will be a wokeness too far.

There were significant racial and gender injustices in American universities, say, 50 0r 60 years ago. Efforts to ameliorate them were needed, and codified in civil rights and other legislation. Using another historical analogy, as justifiable reforms prompted the French Revolution, they eventually led to excesses, a Reign of Terror, to great damage done to a great civilization. That may be happening, albeit on a smaller scale, on many college campuses today. Some polling data suggests it might be contributing to declining college enrollments as what Richard Nixon once called “the Silent Majority” loses confidence and support for our universities.

The rot has been spreading for over thirty years, and I disagree with Professor Vedder in holding higher education harmless for some of the recent unrest.

To be sure, it may be extreme to largely blame universities for much of the increase in rioting and protests. The George Floyd murder, for example, was an outrage not involving colleges. And religious constraints on lawless behavior are waning—around 1950, Gallup told us about three-quarters of Americans had a church affiliation—today, it is less than 50 percent. All that said, public scrutiny of college campus behavior likely will be on the rise, probably for good reason.

That's what fifty years of loose talk about "social construction" and "power systems" gets you.

COME UP WITH A VALUE PROPOSITION.

I ask again, because ask again I must, "Why can't the women's [basketball] teams figure out how to pitch their entertainment to a broader audience?"  In spring, I was dismayed by the grousing about disparities in the contents of the tournament swag bag.

No doubt, dear reader, when I tune in one of the women's bracket games, I'll see players wearing warmup jackets with EQUALITY embroidered on them. That, too, is rich, here we have participants in a CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT that teams have to QUALIFY FOR endorsing something that is completely at odds with what CHAMPIONSHIP or WINNING are about.

Maybe, just maybe, the people managing women's basketball, whether at the team, conference, association, or professional level, ought come up with a better value proposition than "look how unfair this all is." That pitch has probably won over all the professional feminists and alphabet people that are there to be won over. It's unlikely to entice any new eyeballs onto the screen or into the stands.

The poobahs of college athletics did look into the womens' complaints.

The NCAA was also criticized over different quality of gifts and food, and because the COVID-19 tests administered to men's participants were daily PCR tests, considered more accurate, compared to the less-accurate daily antigen testing available to teams in the women's tournament.

"It is beyond dispute that there were significant disparities between the 2021 Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships," said the report.

Creating something resembling equality of condition, or equality of outcome, or whatever it is the association would like to do, is not going to be easy.

The NCAA should "maximize value through gender equity in marketing, promotion, and sponsorships," the report said, by marketing the women's tournament as a "stand-alone property" and using the term "March Madness" in conjunction with both the men's and women's championships. Also, the NCAA should consider holding the men's and women's Final Four in the same location, the firm concluded.

How do you simultaneously promote the tournament as a "stand-alone" event and hold it in the same city where the men are playing? Do you condition the sale of tickets to the men's games on the purchase of tickets for the women's games?  What happens when ticket holders treat those games (on the current schedule, Sunday and Tuesday of the championship weekend) as the collegiate equivalent of the sophomore games in high school?  That's long been an area of contention among people selling sporting events: the women's audience is different from that of the men's, and, at least in my neighborhood, an earlier start helps bring in the young kids.  In addition, there are limits to serving up a dose of identity politics seasoned with feminism and at least the L, G, and B parts of the transgressive alphabet.  Those fans are already in the stands, it's attracting additional revenue that ought be the chore!

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WINNING THE BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP.

The 1971 tournament Most Valuable Player reflects on the return of the title to Milwaukee.  "The Milwaukee Bucks’ against-all-odds victory in the Finals is an inspirational moment that could be just what we needed to recharge ourselves and recommit to building the country up — even against all odds — as those reactionaries and MAGA-ites tear it down."

The early 1970s were also a time of conflict and raw emotions.

What did it feel like to play basketball during all this civil unrest? It felt like we were helping to keep the lid on, to give people something to cheer for rather than just protest against. This wasn’t to minimize the righteous need for those protests — I had participated in some myself — but to remind everyone that life was a balance of joy and sorrow and that it was our job to bring some of the joy.

Organized sports, still a microcosm of civilizational emergence, for good or for ill.

MICHAEL BARONE WENT THERE.

In a recent column, he noted the common origins of several of the Manhattan Project's scientists.

Today's human resources department professionals would be triggered if they looked at the list of physicists hired to produce what President Franklin Roosevelt was told could be a uranium-based bomb "with a destructiveness vastly greater than anything now known." They would be astounded that the president, in his haste to develop such a weapon, as he put it, "before Hitler got it," authorized the hiring of scientists without any attempt to match the diversity of the American population.

They would have noted that Leo Szilard, who drafted the letter signed by Albert Einstein that alerted Roosevelt to uranium's potential, was born a Hungarian Jew and was educated in the Realiskola, one of Budapest's elite high schools. And that among the lead physicists at the Manhattan Project were three other Hungarian Jews from Budapest educated at a single school, the Fasori Evangelikus Gimnazium, in the years during and just after World War I -- Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Edward Teller.

Szilard even had the nerve to joke about their common origin. When asked why there was no evidence of intelligent extraterrestrials, he said, "They are already here among us -- they just call themselves Hungarians." These men were obviously a product of both nature and nurture, of hereditary mental capacity and a brilliantly stimulating education. Von Neumann, for example, could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head by age 6, while his parents had him tutored in French, English, German and Italian.

That's reasonably standard stuff, noodle around in political economy or applied mathematics or philosophy or even theology and you'll turn up a few Mitteleuropaische Jews.  There's a fairly anodyne explanation economic historians use, in that people who are forbidden to own land might become proficient at developing human capital that is portable.  Note, though, the turn Mr Barone takes.

The Manhattan Project's success owed much to Roosevelt's uncanny knack at choosing the right person for the jobs he considered important and to the clear need to hire the very best physicists available. And the prominence of the Martians, who grew within a few kilometers of each other, is one example of how the very best talent is unevenly distributed among humankind.

You can see something like that if you've been watching the Olympics over the years. As the writer Steve Sailer noted, runners of West African descent have dominated Olympic sprint events for years (a Chinese runner was the first sprinter with no such ancestry to qualify as a finalist since 1980) and runners of East African descent have dominated long-distance races for years as well. Something in the environment in which their ancestors evolved, plus rigorous training and personal discipline, accounts for their excellence.

That's also unsurprising, although his citation of Mr Sailer is. Ordinarily establishmentarian writers don't go there, as there are alt-right and pickup artist types who make blunter use of Mr Sailer's platforms including VDare and Unz Review.

Mr Barone doesn't stop there, either.

Nor is it likely that American Blacks will soon be represented proportionately to population in the right-hand tail of the IQ bell curve, given the gap between Black and non-Black people's IQ scores that has persisted despite half a century of attempts at remediation, as documented in Charles Murray's recent book, "Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America."

As Murray argued, the correct response is to judge people as individuals, not members of a race or other collective. And to appreciate that every group of people in the right-hand tail of any bell curve looks like part of America. Just like the Hungarian-born "Martians" in the Manhattan Project.

That's another reference that might set Establishment Opinion off.  Two deeper questions suggest themselves, though.  First, if some areas of intellectual or semi-intellectual inquiry are Off Limits, is that attitude likely to drive more people to world-views that they might not otherwise hold?  Second, what is the most effective way for a community dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal to encourage the emergence of applied mathematicians or philosophers of West African descent or of sprinters or distance runners of Hungarian extraction, that is where kids take an interest in those things?

NO LIMIT TO COLLEGIATE IDIOCIES.

Confound it, I'd still really rather post about shark attacks or railway preservation or the like.  Sometimes, though, the terminally stupid people who run higher education leave me with no alternative but to call attention.  You'd think, dear reader, that the recent brush with having funding and tenure protections nullified by the state legislature might have concentrated some minds in Madison.

Sorry, no.  "If ever there was a poster child for the absurdity of cancel culture, this is it."

What is it?  "Every time I think we’ve reached peak woke insanity, the idiocy, stupidity, and sheer, shocking lunacy of the left manifests itself in some other quiet corner of rationalism and reason while the rest of us are left gasping for air."

This time, it's using $50K in donated funds to move a rock deposited by a retreating glacier because of a colloquial reference to black rocks a century ago.

Chamberlin Rock, on the top of Observatory Hill, is named after Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, a geologist and former university president. Students of color on campus say the rock represents a history of discrimination. The boulder was referred to as a derogatory name for Black people in a Wisconsin State Journal story in 1925. The derogatory term was commonly used in the 1920s to describe any large dark rock. University historians have not found any other time that the term was used, but they said the Ku Klux Klan was active on campus at that time, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

But ... intersectionality be praised ... long before Black Hawk and the Sauk Nation retreated through the area, pursued by Abraham Lincoln, other tribes buried their dead near the rock.  Thus the rock had to be moved in such a way as to not disturb the burial mounds.  (I know of a few other Indian mounds near the lake, some of them in secluded locations conducive to, er, getting acquainted.  Are those now being patrolled to prevent such problematic behavior?)

It's time for the adults to take charge, isn't it?  "This was a prime opportunity for a teachable moment, in which the grown-ups running the campus tell the young people that the answer is 'No!' But apparently at UW-Madison, the children are in charge." And they're more enabled than ever. "Don’t you wish they’d just wet their pants like other two-year-olds to get us to notice them?"

Well, no, the people currently running the universities are intellectual heirs to the spineless administrators of the mid-to-late 1960s, who praised their noisy protestors as the most involved and enlightened students ever.  Here's how the university flacks spin the action.

The University of Wisconsin–Madison moved the former Chamberlin Rock, an object that had become a painful symbol of racism to generations of students, to a site off the main campus on August 6.

The rock had sat at the crest of Observatory Hill since 1925. That same year, it was referred to in a newspaper headline by a deeply offensive nickname that included a racial slur. The derogatory nickname was commonly used at the time to refer to any large, dark rock.

The Wisconsin Black Student Union, in partnership with the Native American student organization Wunk Sheek, led an effort to remove the rock from campus. UW–Madison’s main campus is on ancestral Ho-Chunk land.

Some conscience-cowboy comes across the reference sometime in the last year, and that somehow becomes a "symbol of racism to generations????" Good grief. Why not convert one of the student unions or a residence hall into a Ho-Chunk casino, and reduce congestion at the Dells?

The rock itself is what geologists call a "glacial erratic," meaning it was picked up and pushed along by a glacier, and then tumbled out as a previous round of global warming melted the polar ice cap.  Does it now rate a special description, socially constructed glacial erratic? “Students and the general public will no longer casually encounter the rock, but it will remain available to those specifically seeking it out for teaching and learning purposes.”

So much for me writing any more checks to any operating units of the University of Wisconsin.

NO. NEXT QUESTION?

If a Vaccine Resistant Covid Strain Develops, Will Dr. Fauci Pay Any Price?  The gnome from Brooklyn takes a lot of stick from Militant Normals.  I note the question above, as it's from Dean Baker, who is more like an old-school Keynesian with socialist tendencies.  "The idea that millions of people will needlessly die because our political leaders did not want to jeopardize the profits of the pharmaceutical industry is too horrible to be aired in places like the New York Times, Washington Post, and National Public Radio."  He apologizes for engaging in "clickbait."  The nuance follows.

I’m not out to get Dr. Fauci, who deserves some sort of Nobel Prize for trying to give straight information to the public, even as Donald Trump was doing everything he could to minimize the pandemic. But there is an important issue of both, our current failings in vaccinating the world, and a system that almost always allows those at the top to escape responsibility for their failures.

To him, though, it's Big Pharma being able to make money off Operation Warp Speed that is the disgrace, rather than the destruction wrought by the continuing stifling of ordinary life with no payoff in slowing the contagion.

In the meantime, we will be seeing a whole new round of infections and deaths, as well as trillions of dollars of lost economic output. And, just to be clear, these trillions in lost output is not just an issue of stacks of dollar bills in a vault, this translates into people going without food, medical care, shelter and other basic needs. Rich countries have the resources to largely protect their populations from most of the economic impact of the pandemic; developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America do not.

The so-called public health experts could back off and let us take precautions as we see fit, and that would make possible the production of that food, medical care, and shelter. But I digress.  I'll let Mr Baker have the final word, as he is recommending that some of Our Intellectual Betters be turfed out.  "Top public health officials, and indeed the whole public health profession, are largely immune from this sort of accountability for infinitely bigger mess-ups."

MARKING OFF.

The Karlson Brothers Circus completed a productive week at the Head of the Lakes.

Summer is not yet over, and the corona tyrants have not yet instituted another round of house arrests.

See you down the road.

LET'S HEAR IT FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL KIDS.

The dog days of summer are not yet over, and the lemonade stand opportunities should still be there.

Not, apparently, in Everett, Washington.

There are very few people who haven’t driven by a lemonade stand in this country and thought about how cute it was to see enterprising young folks earning some pocket change by serving up some delicious cold, sweet lemon-flavored beverages to their neighbors on a hot summer day. There is simply nothing wrong with kids being allowed to do this provided they have adult supervision (and plenty of supplies on hand!).

What’s especially infuriating in many of these situations is that there are usually more pressing issues the city should be dealing with instead of targeting children for doing something so harmless.

All of this brings me to the latest instance of a child being punished for committing the sin of opening up a lemonade stand. According to local residents in one Everett, Washington community, a neighbor reported a stand being run at a nearby park by a 7-year-old girl to the city’s parks and recreation department. Not long after that, a park ranger showed up and politely informed the girl’s grandmother that the stand had to go.

I'm going to cut Everett a little slack, in that setting up a lemonade stand in a city park might cause friction with the lessee of a concession stand on park property, or otherwise be a traffic hazard.  It's the more conventional table near the driveway of one's house that appeals.  But until recently, that was forbidden (unsurprisingly) in Illinois and (somewhat surprisingly) in New Hampshire.  Here are the circumstances leading to a modicum of commercial freedom for 'tweens in Illinois.

In 2017, then 9-year-old Hayli Martenez opened a lemonade stand in her front yard in a low-income neighborhood of Kankakee, Illinois. She charged 50 cents per cup. All of the profit went to her college fund.

"As we kept doing it, I got to see everybody smile when they tasted my lemonade," Hayli told Illinois Policy. "It was just … wow. They were lining up to get my lemonade."

But in July of 2019, Hayli received notice from state and city health officials that she would have to shut down the stand or be fined. She ended up switching the stand to donation-only, but the incident received state-wide attention.

Now, roughly two years later, the state has passed "Hayli's Law" to protect her business and those of other entrepreneurial kids around the state.

"Who would have thought you would need a lemonade law?" said Hayli's mom Iva. "But it wasn't about the lemonade. It was about being able to take what you have and make it work for you. We turned lemons into lemonade."

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law," the Illinois law reads, "the Department of Public Health, the health department of a unit of local government, or a public health district may not regulate the sale of lemonade or nonalcoholic drinks or mixed beverages by a person under the age of 16."

Well, yeah, but is that a loophole to get around child labor laws, or pure food regulations? I'm being sarcastic, but I know the ways of Our Progressive Betters.

The necessity of these "Lemonade Laws" is a byproduct of hastily passed licensure requirements and regulations that don't take into account the full consequences of their enforcement. Oftentimes, irregular enforcement of these requirements can be used to shut down businesses arbitrarily deemed to be "undesirable."

Hopefully, these small steps for lemonade stands will draw attention to the overly broad licensing requirements that defy both common sense and the entrepreneurial spirit of America.

Occupational licensing, or the Centers for Disease Control: neither recently covering themselves with glory, are they?

SCHADENFREUDELICIOUS!

I really, really, shouldn't pay any attention to the Olympics, or to Victory Girl Toni Williams scorning the women's footie squad.  "Women’s Soccer Team Loses; Patriots Cheer."  That's what happens when sports competitors inject themselves into the culture wars in such a way as to antagonize potential fans.  "So, you lost to Sweden and to Canada. Boo freaking hoo. I am cheering. Not that I care, but remember that time the boys FC Dallas under 15 boys beat the women’s soccer team. Yes, that was you too."

That might not be the fairest story to tell, soccer being a sport popular with American eight year old girls, and adolescent and older males throughout the third world, some of whose families might have sought a better life in Dallas.  But yeah, deplorable-shaming potential fans is stupid.  That might include Power Line's Paul Mirengoff.

I’ll never root against the U.S. or take pleasure from Americans losing. However, I’ll shed no tears over the U.S. women falling short at the Olympics.

This is one of the most obnoxious, arrogant, and whiny sports teams I’ve observed in more than sixty years of fandom. And, although there’s likely some diversity in the political views of team members, the face of the squad, Megan Rapinoe, is an abrasive far-leftist — and a world class narcissist.

The Olympics may be the end of the line, or close to it, for Rapinoe and other team veterans. Their accomplishments are impressive, even taking into account the relatively small number of nations that take women’s soccer seriously enough to provide worthy competition.

I’m hoping that the next generation of U.S. women’s team members will be less entitled and a bit more humble than the generation that soon will be moving on.

There might be people who see in that "obnoxious" or "entitled" behavior a manifestation of authenticity. Sister Toldjah is having none of it.  Ultimately, it's about the value proposition.  "In other words, generate the necessary revenue that would justify getting paid on par with the guys and then we can revisit the 'equal pay' issue again to see if Rapinoe, who make hundreds of thousands if not millions in endorsement deals alone, has any further questions."  Find the way to bring in new fans without seeming to sell out the true believers, and see what happens.

WHERE ARE THE CUSTOMER'S YACHTS?

That's the ironically intended title of a book from the American High expressing some, shall we say, skepticism about Wall Street's efforts to promote a peoples' capitalism: "Because if advice worked, there would be more yachts belong to the customers."

On the other hand, consider what's happened at the Head of the Lakes.  The harbor facilities of Duluth and Superior were once quintessentially Rust Belt: coal, and before the pipelines, petroleum products in, iron ore (lots of iron ore) and grain out.  Only the Port of New York and New Jersey used to move more tonnage in a year, and more than a little of that might have been food or manufactured products for export that made use of that ore or grain.

A recent visit, though, got me thinking about the sort of privilege hoarding and upward concentration of wealth I keep hearing about.  It would make sense of a sort for the people of Duluth and Superior to preserve a lake freighter or two for the benefit of tourists.

William A. Irvin was the flagship of the United States Steel fleet until the late 1960s.  It never paid to rebuild this boat as a self-unloader.

Look across the slip, though, where one of the warehouse complexes once stood, and behold a yacht basin.

Something about this isn't adding up: with all that upward concentration of wealth, what's the value proposition in converting a Great Lakes harbor that ices over earlier and unfreezes later than almost anywhere this side of Port Baikal into a series of yacht basins?

That's another look over Irwin's rail, showing lake-faring sailboats, with some of the converted industrial buildings behind.  All over the Duluth harbor are former warehouses converted to lofts or hotels, and on the Superior side, where the bigger grain terminals once were, there's a massive yacht basin as well.  Should be impossible given all that upward hoarding of wealth, shouldn't it?

Actually, no.  The information technology capitalists might have been able to capture a lot of value a nickel at a time.  The people paying the prices for the use of Amazon or Apple or Microsoft or Google products or services might have placed a subjective valuation of more than what they paid for those items on those items.  Enough so, in some cases, to be able to spring for a yacht?

Three sailboats at play.  There might be a few powerboats out there as well.  It doesn't take as many iron boats to move the taconite any more, as the iron boats are bigger, and steel recycling has advanced so as to be able to produce a broader range of products.  It's not just for garbage cans and reinforcing bar any more.

But the iron boats go, as the mariners all know, with the Gales of November to come.

Mesabi Miner, perhaps my favorite iron boat name.  I'm not sure who the successor operator of Interlake Steel currently is.  It's still quite the show for the tourists thronging the Canal Park area of Duluth.  (Outdoor eateries!  Carriage rides!  Microbreweries!  Short walk to the Duluth Trading store!)

Who knows, might even be a few owners of the customers' yachts among those spectators.

Laker traffic isn't what it used to be: after Mesabi Miner's arrival at eight p.m., a saltie was due around eleven.

A BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT TO THE MILWAUKEE BUCKS?

Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg spent some of his childhood in Wisconsin.

In 2013, the Bucks finally found the man who would replace [Kareem] Abdul-Jabbar, a Greek citizen of Nigerian descent named Giannis Antetokounmpo. He was 18 years old and while his talent was recognized, he was not invited to hang out in the green room with the other top prospects of that year. When his name was called, he came up on stage from the stands at Barclays Center, a face in the crowd. Over the following eight seasons, he transformed himself from a skinny refugee kid into the most imposing and relentless basketball player on the planet, earning the nickname “The Greek Freak.” On Tuesday evening, Antetokounmpo led the Bucks to their first championship in 50 years, scoring 50 points in a 105-98 clincher against the Phoenix Suns. For his part, Antetokounmpo is a thoroughly likable young man with a big smile and a spectacular game, and his teammates are equally talented and amiable. And after a 50-year wait, my childhood team had finally returned to the summit.

It's not, though, that you get nice things when you're from Milwaukee. "But still, but still, I want to believe the Bucks have accomplished something noble and that my years of fandom are now being rewarded. My head says it’s a lie, but my heart says something else."

That's fine.  Enjoy it, and the harmonic convergence of a Brewer team playing well and a Packer team that might make one more run at the Lombardi Trophy.

THE SOUNDS OF FREEDOM.

It probably defeats the purpose of having a stealthy drone to make it sound like a B-17 or a formation of Mustangs.  All of those are available at the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual gathering in Oshkosh, which does, as well, feature experimental aircraft, including the planes people built themselves, and then flew to the show.  National Review's L. R. Abel went there, and liked what he saw.

From the Kitty Hawk trials to the X-15 supersonic experiments, we’ve been strapping ourselves to increasingly volatile and ingenious air-based machines for over a century. Nowhere can you observe this altitudinous affection more than at this week’s Experimental Aircraft Association’s (EAA) AirVenture event in Oshkosh, Wis., which routinely brings over 600,000 visitors to the shores of Lake Winnebago. Walking the grounds here, I was struck by just how proud we are of our heritage in flight, the uniqueness of the American piloting community, and the freedom we enjoy of going wheels-up.

Does anyone else see echoes of the X-15 program in those private space flight projects taking place today?  And yes, the serious builders go to the workshops, and the budget-minded among them prowl the extensive swap meet area.  The guts of the show, though, are ... those Warbirds.

The first stop one should make at the EAA is Warbird Alley. Here in tidy rows are warplanes from World War I to the present day. Japanese, British, American, and Russki aircraft sit alongside one another as P-51 Mustangs swoop overhead. The opportunity to fly in a B-17 bomber or C-47 paratrooper transport is available to the general public for a nominal fee. Sit in the bleachers, and servicemen from multiple eras will regale you with tales of action they saw while standing in front of the types of planes they fought in. As one wanders the grounds, one of the many volunteers will occasionally hold you back as a Spitfire taxis past 20 feet away. The care and dedication provided these craft are a testament to those who maintain them, revealing a pride in what the craft represent and their impact on the world.

He argues that if aircraft didn't exist, Americans would have to invent them. Oh, wait ...

Americans have a unique relationship with aviation for reasons practical and dispositional. Ours is a vast nation with a topography ill-suited for ground transport, while aircraft allow us to skip over the Rockies, Appalachians, and grizzly-infused Alaskan wilderness with minimal effort. The Midwest does not need the plane for its ability to circumvent treacherous terrain, but to apply pesticides and weedkiller on the swaths of farmland, providing the nation’s food with chemical protection efficiently.

We attach national pride to airborne events as well. Every schoolchild knows the accomplishments of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. We celebrate the American World War II fighter pilots rebuffing the Zeros in the East and the Messerschmitts in the West while our B-17s bombed the enemy into submission, and rightfully so. Most of all is when we looked to the stars and landed on the moon, besting the USSR and making the case for freedom over tyranny. This culture of exploration and air superiority continues today in the launch of spacecraft from our shores, most recently by private-sector pioneers. The world comes to us when it wants to push the limits of human progress, and that is no accident.

Not sure about that "every schoolchild" or whether Mr Lindbergh is the next to be de-pedestaled for his 1930s attitudes. But this is supposed to be today's good cheer post. And the crop-dusters were at work in the neighborhood a few days ago.

If you go, you probably won't run across many robe-and-sandals metrofexuals. (Or if you know somebody like that who could benefit from some education, show him through the swap meet area.)

Europeans and American progressives will occasionally mutter into their facial hair about our lack of “public transport” like trains and buses, not realizing just how vast this country is. Chicago to D.C. is two hours by air, eight times longer by rail. New York to Los Angeles is several hours by plane, a journey that would otherwise take a week. These longer air routes are often less expensive than public ground transport is or could be, particularly if one were to go the bus-and-hotel route. It commends the American spirit that we are constantly improving upon long-range solutions rather than remaining complacent with anachronistic technologies.

But if you go (next year, this year's event is done) please understand that "no beer until after five" means "after five p.m., Central time."

DONALD TRUMP WENT THERE.

I'm not sure how an election-audit rally in Arizona becomes a sally in the culture wars, but there it is.  "Trump says if he was coaching women’s sports, he would only recruit trans athletes, then speculates on Lebron James transitioning and playing women’s basketball."

That might be why it's wise for political figures to act presidential.  The fact-checkers had to get on the case, e.g. "James identifies as male and has never publicly expressed a desire to undergo gender confirmation surgery."  Yes, he's quite capable of winning titles in his own skin, and I suspect it likely that mediocre male basketball players are going to cross simply to have a better shot at a letter or a title.  Not that I haven't had been there myself, if on a smaller platform.  "I have, however, long entertained a wicked thought that someday, somewhere, there is a basketball coach who will end the dominance of Connecticut, or perhaps Stanford or Notre Dame, by recruiting a few male-to-female crossers who can really crash the boards."

I fear, as well, that the former president is losing his chops as an entertainment promoter.  Yes, a coach going after the crossers would shake up the women's basketball world, but would anybody care? "Supporting women’s basketball is a political act against sexism, racism and homophobia. Anyone who believes otherwise is not paying attention."

That has the effect of diminishing the fan base.  There is real play value in the game, but the players and the promoters have to offer a value proposition to people who might want to, oh, have a good time, rather than be exposed to more woke scolding.  Woke scolding, though, is second nature.  Consider how Mrs Megan Rapinoe twists herself into pretzels to explain the U.S. team being in the gym for the anthems.

Sue Bird sees no contradiction with the U.S. team staying on the court during the national anthem at the Olympics.

It’s a change for the four-time Olympic gold medalist and her WNBA teammates. During the WNBA season players usually leave the court to raise awareness for social justice before the anthem is played at games.

“You are wearing USA jerseys and it does change the conversation a little bit and what you’re representing,” Bird told The Associated Press after practice on Saturday. “With that, I don’t feel like a hypocrite in any way. Everyone knows where we stand. I don’t think it contradicts anything since we’re actually doing the work.”

Logistically it would also be difficult for the U.S. to not be on the court for the playing of the anthem. Unlike WNBA games when it’s played about 10 minutes before tipoff, at the Olympics it’s done right before the start of games.

I know just enough about the presence of the absence to be dangerous, which doesn't prevent me from being skeptical that one raises awareness by not being around.  Not antagonizing spectators, perhaps I can see.  Not that it's persuading Phil Mushnick.

At least for now they have declared, through captain Sue Bird, that they will cut us all a break to appear as if they’re minimally willing to gather on the court to represent the United States on a world stage during the anthem (even if standing while looking down, away from the American flag), in defiance of their conviction that America is unworthy of them.

For that, we should be grateful. After all, most of us have never walked in their slave-wage-made, swoosh-conspicuous Nikes and clothing ensembles, products of Red China, which incarcerates those who advocate democracy, including free speech and the right to protest, at the risk of disappearing.

It’s tough for me to identify with their woke activism, given that I didn’t have the opportunity to play ball in exchange for a free college education. Heck, for 10 years I had to pay off my college loan in monthly mailings to make good on my educational debt. Money once earned, well spent.

I doubt that team members endorsing retroactive forgiveness of student loans will change his mind.

WHAT IS FOOD FREEDOM?

Confound it, I'd really rather post about shark attacks.  These days, though, the political economy of home gardening has become a referendum issue in Maine.

Maine voters are set to decide this fall whether to enshrine a "right to food" in the state's constitution, the Portland Press-Herald reported this week. If passed, the state would become the first to guarantee such a right.

The proposed constitutional amendment, sponsored by Sen. Craig Hickman (D–Winthrop), an organic farmer, will ask voters if they "favor amending the Constitution of Maine to declare that all individuals have a natural, inherent[,] and unalienable right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health[,] and well-being[.]"

There's more at stake than the possibility of urban chicken coops. That "unalienable" might mean becoming a subcontractor for a strain of Aroostook County seed potatoes would be against the law.

After all, Sen. Hickman, the amendment's sponsor, is an organic farmer who—by definition—does not utilize GMO seeds on his farm. In that context, it's difficult to see how the seed language is anything but an attempt to target GMO seed makers and to evict their crops from Maine entirely.

That's on top of the contested meaning of "right to consume."  Is that another entitlement?  Provided by whom?  Or is that a "keep your legalities away from my chicken coop?'

LIVING AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS.

If "American greatness" is silly ideas about who should pay for the water mains, count me out.

To understand how government-funded infrastructure can actually result in less regulation and a lower cost of living, consider the case of water services. Government policymakers have two directions they can take. They can fund the construction of water supply and distribution infrastructure, or they can allow the private sector to take control of water supply and distribution. The typical reaction from conservatives and libertarians is predictable: Let the private sector do it. But it’s worth exploring the consequences of actually doing that.

If water is a commodity, there really ought be no difference.  See if you can spot the errors, dear reader.

The reality of water supply in any arid part of the United States—and that would include the entire southwest from Texas to California—is that amortization of construction costs constitutes 70 to 80 percent of the cost of delivered water, whether to farmers or households. Whether the construction price tag is for new storage reservoirs or desalination plants, or even upgraded wastewater treatment plants to enable water reuse, this financial reality applies.

When evaluating the cost of infrastructure proposals, the question of socializing the construction cost or privatizing it has tremendous relevance to the end users. If government funds pay for 50 percent of the construction costs of water projects, or more, that translates directly into permanently lower costs to the future consumers of that water. What happens if 100 percent of these costs are privatized instead?

Apparently it's taxpayers elsewhere who are paying for this construction costs, or else perhaps the water utilities are going to neglect the upkeep.

The result of privatizing the cost of water infrastructure investment is that there will be less investment and less construction. Investors will not touch a water project if they can’t sell the water at a profit, and if consumers can’t afford the water, there will be no sales. Therefore two consequences apply.

First, the state will ration water. The state will accomplish this with smart meters that monitor every drop of household or agricultural water consumption. The state will mandate the sale of internet enabled water conserving appliances that in every qualitative sense are burdens on the users. Low flow shower heads that make it impossible to rinse shampoo out of long hair. Faucets that automatically turn off every 10 seconds. Washing machines that damage clothes, take an inordinately long time to complete a cycle, and don’t do a very good job of cleaning. Government micromanagement of water consumption is an inevitable consequence of privatizing water infrastructure.

The other consequence of privatizing water infrastructure, perhaps even more ironic, is that there will be an equal if not greater cost to the taxpayer. Because water rationing and higher water rates will accompany an unsubsidized, downscaled water system, the government would step in and offer financial assistance to low-income households to pay their water bills and to purchase water-conserving appliances. With tens of millions of households ultimately receiving what will be permanent subsidies to their water consumption, the tax impact of privatization vs. government-funded water infrastructure is likely to be a wash.

Water is a scarce resource, whether it is being piped from mountain reservoirs into desert regions, or being drawn from Lake Superior (No salt. Free of sharks.) One can ration it by price, or one can ration it by politics.  The sewer socialists of years ago understood this.  If one rations the water by price, people can decide for themselves whether to install low-flow shower heads or to flood irrigate their lawns.  But the price of a unit of water ought be invariant as to ownership of the water works, as long as there's price discovery at work.  The author gets some of this point, then he gets into dangerous waters.

This is a crucial point for libertarians and conservatives to ponder before they reflexively condemn government funding of legitimate public infrastructure. Critical questions that have to be asked go beyond the basic question of whether the private sector will do a more efficient job. That’s almost a meaningless question anyway, since the same civil engineering firms will be contracted to perform most of these projects anyway; just in one case the payers include the government and in the other case the payers will only be private investors.

Instead, the crucial questions to ask include the following: Will privatizing these infrastructure projects lead to higher prices that will result in the government stepping in to ration and subsidize consumption? And if so, can our focus instead be on advocating for government spending on infrastructure that will create abundant and affordable supplies of water—or energy or transportation assets—so everyone can afford to pay for these essential services without subsidies, and so there will not be a necessity for the government to step in and micromanage our access to them?

There is no such thing as government spending that creates abundance.  In practice, the federal government with great fanfare appropriates money for infrastructure spending, then local politicians show up with great fanfare to start the subsidized construction.  Generally, nobody is impolite enough to ask whether the local municipality can cover the maintenance, whether it is of that bridge or that drainage ditch or those water mains.  Hard cheese, for instance, if Ferndale, Michigan would like a walkable shopping district near Woodward Avenue:

Ferndale does not have the resources to cover those expenses on its own. [Mayor Melanie] Piana applied for a $3.9 million federal Transportation Alternatives Program grant and is waiting to see if her city will be awarded the funds. Even if they get it, she will have to contribute $1.2 million in local funds, about the amount the city spends on street maintenance for the whole municipality every year.

That's not simply a Ferndale problem: "What cities are actually struggling with isn’t money for expansion but money for maintaining what they already have."  And that's the way the infrastructure crumbles.

By accepting this infrastructure investment, you are promising that you will keep it in good operating condition and fix or even replace it as needed. That is the covenant you have with your people, the residents of your community.

In accomplishing this, you can’t print your own money. You can’t deficit spend without consequence. There is no theory of economics that imagines local governments being able to operate like the sovereign federal government. Local governments are much more like a family or a business in their need to balance their budget, live within their means, and make tough choices about allocating resources.

To keep the commitment to your neighbors on this new infrastructure, your city will rely on taxing the wealth of those in your community. That might involve property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, user fees, or other revenue streams you can generate locally. This is where local wealth creation comes into the equation.

No wealth creation, no money for maintenance. No return on investment, no money for replacement. Insufficient financial productivity on these infrastructure investments will make them a financial millstone around the community’s neck, the terrible obligation made by a prior generation that is robbing you of resources today while you raise taxes, cut services, and are slowly ground into a cycle of decline.

Thus, it makes more sense to treat the roads and waterworks as productive assets, and to price them accordingly. But unbundling production policies from incomes policies is hard, which is why you get the muddle that Edward Ring concludes with. "When infrastructure investment is turned over to the private sector, the ultimate result can be more taxes and more regulations. They just come in the form of disbursed entitlements and subsidies to pay all the low-income households that cannot, without government assistance, afford to purchase rationed, scarce water and energy, or pay to use the toll roads."

MARKING OFF.

A proper circus has a train, and elephants.  That's also true of a proper miniature circus. Find yourself a miniature circus and go to it. 

 The Karlson Brothers Circus is going back on the road.

See you down the road.

YOU DON'T GET NICE THINGS WHEN YOU'RE FROM MILWAUKEE.

A lot of things can change in fifty years, or a century.

People forget that Milwaukee was poised to be a global super-city at the turn of the 20th century. Milwaukee City Hall was the tallest secular building in the world, and the city had growth and population density that rivaled New York, London and Paris.

It didn’t pan out – seems like it never does for Milwaukee. People forgot about the city that “Feeds and Supplies the World.” Factories closed. Racial discrimination reared its ugly head. The rust belt decay took hold. Affluent folks fled to the suburbs and took their wealth with them, and Milwaukee became a scapegoat for the rest of the state to look down upon.

From time to time, Cold Spring Shops has referred to that industrial collapse.

Fifty years ago, the Bucks won a championship, just before Milwaukee Hamilton's class of 1971 graduated.  Buck rooting interest among the people you see in this photograph varied from a little to a lot, both then, and now.

Some still live in the city, some in the suburbs, a few out of state.  None of us celebrated that first Buck championship by diving into the Milwaukee River, although it was a warm evening that April 30.  "Those kids diving off the bridge into the Milwaukee River – they would have come out with chemical burns if they had tried that in 1971."  Apparently the fishing near the North Avenue bridge has come back too.

A few other errors of that earlier era have been corrected.

I saw 100,000 deliriously giddy people packed into a “Deer District” that sits on top of a scar.

When I moved to Milwaukee nine years ago, that’s what it was – a scar, both metaphorical and physical.

This scar was a reminder of a time when some privileged someones decided to rip out one of the Midwest’s most vibrant African American neighborhoods so they could build a freeway, so that some white folks could get to their homes in the suburbs five minutes more quickly.

And then decades later, when they tore down that ill-conceived Park East Freeway, 24 acres of blighted gravel pit just sat there like a knife through Milwaukee’s heart. When I moved to Milwaukee, I figured that ugly scar would be with us forever.

Misconceived urban expressways as "urban renewal" weren't just a Milwaukee thing; and I'm still skeptical about hoping for sports and entertainment facilities to keep a city vibrant. That Milwaukee loft and office space is cheaper than its counterpart in Chicago, and that more frequent Amtrak service to and from Chicago as well as enhanced telecommunications might make the value proposition for Milwaukee as a place for urban professionals of all ancestries to live and work more favorable.

Now, it would be ridiculous and reductionist to say this NBA title marks a turning point for the city of Milwaukee.

This city still grapples with a legacy of racial discrimination that won’t just go away. It’s still the scapegoat of a state legislature that sees Milwaukee as its perennial punching bag. And a humming decade of businesses reinvesting in Milwaukee has suddenly been slammed into neutral amid the uncertainty of the pandemic.

But last night, Milwaukee finally got to have something nice. And it may not be a panacea, but it reminded us why we keep showing up, and why we keep doing the work.

In Downtown Milwaukee, I saw a vibrant city firing on all cylinders and living up to its full potential. I saw white guys who wear MAGA hats hugging Black guys who wear Black Lives Matter shirts. I saw just a little bit of pride creeping out from under that Midwest veneer of humility.

No, we’re not LA or New York or Miami. We never will be. We don’t want to be.

We’re authentic and awkward and doofy and full of passion. We’re Milwaukee.

Not the northernmost suburb of Chicago, either, even though there's some intriguing baseball involving the Brewers and the White Sox coming up.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The Milwaukee Bucks might have won a world championship, but the idiocy around the world goes on all the same.

1.  When Ronald Reagan referred to Communism as a "Mickey Mouse system," that wasn't kind to the mouse.  "Real Communism has never been tried before, but it certainly has been attempted in all sorts of flavors and every single one of them sucked."

2.  The "crisis" crisis.  "To keep audiences frightened around the clock, journalists seek out Cassandras with their own incentives for fearmongering: politicians, bureaucrats, activists, academics, and assorted experts who gain publicity, prestige, funding, and power during a crisis."

3.  Defund the "Arts." "I expect I’m speaking on behalf of a lot of people when I say that our entire public life increasingly feels like a bad performance put on for someone else—a tiny subset of unrepresentative, outspoken activists, fellow travelers with outsized voices and their semi-senile patrons oblivious to the grotesque character of these dog and pony shows."

4.  What is the essence of a female-to-male crosser? "Although scientists have long repudiated race essentialism, critical race theorists frame American history as a 500-year, one-dimensional struggle of races pitted endlessly against each other, with people of color as victims and whites as oppressors."

5.  "Free men are not supposed to ask for permission."

6.  Barstool Populism for the win.  "There is nothing progressive about looking in the rearview mirror for solutions to many of the issues we face today."

7.  Undermine them with mockery!  "The stunt has been a mortifying self-own for Democrats, who have tut-tutted and scolded us like neurotic nancies all pandemic while privately doing as they please."

8.  Squandering the institutional memory.  "Like all universities in this moment in time, Howard relies significantly upon a faculty of full-time, non-tenure-track professors."  Nikole Hannah-Jones gets tenure, neither Toni Morrison nor Roberta Flack did.

9.  Americans have disregarded the personal moral decency of our politicians to our own risk.

10.  [National Public Radio] sucks and is unlistenable, so people are going elsewhere.  It's also sleep-inducing in the drive time hours.

11.  Trade-tested betterments rock.  "Just as dental care, car ownership, and airplane travel were once the sole province of the wealthy, so too is space tourism—for now, but probably not forever."

12.  The Left baits with free stuff, but delivers misery.

13.  The American people aren't stupid.  "You can’t escape violence. You must pay more for basic consumer products. Your kids can’t escape leftist indoctrination and they must wear a mask while they listen to it. And you can’t even get a good shower. That’s the Democratic dystopia in a nutshell. Running against the Democratic dystopia should be an easy campaign for the GOP. Vote them all out."  More: "Normal people do not care about what the ‘woke’ Left wants because it’s usually insane, like being pro-crime. And if Democrats want to continue to cater to these privileged white, college-educated liberals who would rather insult instead of persuading people with whom they disagree—enjoy being a permanent minority. "

14.  Is this a work truck? "The electric F-150 will carry its own nuanced wrinkle, signaling 'truck guy, but not Trump guy.'"  Shorter signal: doofus.

15.  Implementing policy is hard.  "It can't be decided based on facts; it comes down to values."

16.  Had enough yet?  "Americans can put up with an Olympic athlete who hates America, because she wins games anyway." Just turn them off.

17.  Stuck between cultists and totalitarians.  "Deluded Republicans and Smug Democrats Offer Little Hope for People Who Want To Be Left Alone."

18.  If you want human rights in Cuba, the communists have to go.

19.  Tax incidence analysis is hard.  "From the 2018 analysis, the top 10% of earners paid 71.4% of all federal income taxes."  Also, "Can any Democrat other than Bernie Sanders accurately define 'fair share'?"

20.  Any weather you don’t like is “climate change,” and “climate change” exists for the sole purpose of giving government more power over our lives.

21.  A hideous spectacle unbecoming of a self-governing republic.

22.  Somebody could use a second course on "mutually beneficial trades."  "Wall Street’s goal is to get wealthier—no matter the impact on our economy, environment, transportation system or workforce."

23.  Losing the athletic arms race? "For every minute of awestruck television coverage of football or basketball, another 10,000 talentless clods waste another million hours practicing for an imaginary professional future they will never come close to realizing."  If you land on your feet writing for National Review, that's one thing, but when the newsies of Rockford cover high school sports to excess, that might be a waste.

24.  The tragic vision comes to The Nation.  "Anthony Fauci may be remembered, in the end, as a warning more than an exemplar: an adventurous bureaucrat in the field of scientific research who became a hero in his own eyes. The trouble begins when such a person asks for our implicit trust in return for his good intentions."

25.  Amen.  "Maybe the problem isn’t that no one on the left still loves America — millions still do. It’s that if you show it, you’re considered right-wing."

REDISCOVERING THE MERCHANDISE DESPATCH SERVICE.

Europe looks to rail to move parcels and small-volume freight.  Read on, and discover that the light rail and tram operators are getting in on the act.  Let's start in Karlsruhe.

Albtal-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft photograph by Michael Krauth retrieved from Trains.

Here's the prospectus.

Tram-train operator Albtal-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft (AVG) is planning trials of a freight-carrying streetcar, using a converted tram-train vehicle, to move goods and packets between town centers and the city center, reducing road congestion and pollution.

Freight-carrying streetcars would use the existing extensive Karlsruhe city tram system and the tram-train network to move small batches of freight to hubs in city centers, from which the goods could then be further delivered in a “climate friendly” way, such as by means of electric bikes.

Once upon a time, there were purpose-built streetcars doing this work.

Fox River Trolley Museum, August 2018.

As I noted at the time, "Imagine sorting the letters while the car is making its way through the streets of Chicago, or dropping off a letter as the car passes by to be delivered to grandmother across town the same day."  The Germans are considering a little more flexibility.  "A demonstrator streetcar or tram-train is planned by 2022 that can be used for passenger transport in peak hours and mixed passenger/goods operation during off-peak periods, removing the need to add specialized freight-carrying trams."

Does that sound, dear reader, like a combination car?

When passenger loads are heavy at the Illinois Railway Museum, these trunks provide overflow seating capacity in North Shore Line combination car 251.

The next step might be to create a strictly-for-parcels multiple unit car, which you could tack onto a passenger train. That's how South Shore did it, when you absolutely, positively had to get it there overnight.

South Shore baggage trailer 503 at Michigan City, 19 April 1963
Photograph courtesy Mike Condren.

In its original incarnation, that was a powered postal-baggage-parlor combination car on the Indiana Rail Road.  The shop crews at Michigan City did a pretty good job of concealing all those details.

The Europeans, however, are in the act of converting entire multiple-unit formations into parcels trains.

Andrew Garrett photograph retrieved from Trains.

The British, previously, rolled out fixed formation postal electric multiple unit trains.

Keith Fender photograph retrieved from Trains.

My one complaint is these are fixed-formation trains.  The concept, though, is the same as that of the interurbans, a century ago.  Consider this North Shore Line Merchandise Despatch box motor, in preservation at the Illinois Railway Museum.

The museum will sometimes roll out a train of these for special occasions.  I have not seen them run such a train with The Milwaukee Electric's merchandise despatch car in the formation, although such did happen years ago, and there aren't enough operable despatch cars off other interurbans, yet, to re-enact the through service laid on by Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana interurbans of years ago.  As the museum line does not extend far enough to compete with FedEx or Amazon, your donations are what would make such a train happen.

BUCKS IN SIX.

That summer play value for Cold Spring Shops turned out well.  Just go, read the story, give special props to doing things "the hard way."  We know, we know.

Fifty years ago, the Milwaukee Bucks swept the Baltimore Bullets on April 30, Amtrak began running most of the intercity passenger trains on May 1, and the senior class at Milwaukee Hamilton was preparing for a mid-June graduation.  That storyline of the Bucks being back in a position to win a title has been on our minds.  It's worth recalling that in 1971, the three-point basket was an American Basketball Association (remember the red-white-and-blue basketball?) gimmick, meaning that Oscar Robertson or Jon McGlocklin or Bob Dandridge could only rack up two points per BANGO!

Today, we'll only accentuate the positive.  National news reports tie another night of yobbishness along Water Street to the title game.  "It's the latest in what has turned into a string of violent incidents in the Water Street and downtown area."

Recall, though, that less than a year ago, the Bucks were prepared to forfeit a playoff game to call attention to an arrest gone wrong in Racine, and for yesterday's game, they wore their "statement" primarily black uniforms, something the league adopted to call attention to conditions in the neighborhoods from where many of the stars came.  That's more complexity than I wish to engage today.  Let's just note a couple of anecdotes about tournament most valuable player Giannis Antetokounmpo.  Read this article in full, dear reader, then meditate on this.  "He also was asked about what it means to him to represent the continent of Africa, as both of his parents are from Nigeria. He said he hoped his accomplishments could serve as a symbol to others of what is possible for anyone, no matter who you are or where you come from."  Then read this story about where he went for a victory snack.  "Before he turned the camera on a Chick-fil-A worker, he asked if he could film her and noted there was an audience of 150,000 watching in real time. That's our MVP!"

Yes, there's more Sprecher in the cooler, and some almanacs refer to this full moon as the Buck Moon.  "The Buck Moon gets its name from the antlers of male deer, or bucks, which are in 'full-growth mode' at that time. Bucks shed and then regrow their antlers each year. The cycle leads to larger antlers year after year."

Perhaps basketball's schedule will get back toward something more traditional, like the playoffs done by sometime in June. But another Buck championship in something less than fifty years is desirable.