YOU HAVE TO DO YOUR OWN WORK. Illini or Huskie comments on a homework cheating scandal, or something, at Mr Jefferson's University. First, the details.

Department officials said that some problem sets from textbooks used in introductory graduate economics courses have answer keys online. At least one student found answers for a course taken by all first-year students, and apparently shared the information with classmates. Though the solutions were apparently available, David Mills, chair of the economics department, said students should have “known it was off-limits,” but that they instead “used it without the professor being aware.”

Now the commentary.

To tell you the truth, the answers helped...but not nearly as much as one would think. ...and they certainly didn't impact my grade in the course ....and the time I used trying to figure out all of the steps that Greene was skipping in the solutions manual would've been better spent pestering my professor (although she was probably getting sick of seeing me since I was in her office about 10 hours a week).

I can't believe that this is that big a deal. I've seen cheating...I know what cheating is about and I know that this isn't it. No grad professor would ever make the homework worth more than 15% of your grade (if they count it at all)...and simply having the answers without a clear understanding of the material won't help you for the exam.

I agree with Chris, there must be something else going on here.But why would the department bring this to light? They're not making the students look shady...they're making their professors look lazy and dumb for

1) not creating new questions for every year...or even simply creating a stock of reused questions that aren't in the book

2) not realizing that the answers from past students have been available to first year grad students forever.

Indeed. And that nobody in a responsible position said anything the first time 15, or 20, or however many identical problem sets came in squares with the lazy professor hypothesis, or a Steve Levitt observation that the problems were too easy.

At MIT and Chicago, I feel like hardly anyone ever gets a completely right answer to anything.

Yes. And here's another bit of advice to cub economists: asking questions during office hours just might be more productive than cruising the web looking for what might be solutions to related problems ... something that's been downloaded without careful thinking about its applicability is as obvious as an improperly expanded determinant.

CARNIVAL CALL. Carnival of Education 29₍₈₎ returns to The Education Wonks.

A TAXONOMY OF ACADEMIC WEBLOGS. Included in La Profesora Abstraida's roundup of reactions to Ivan the Pusillanimous is a taxonomy of academic weblogger types that Public Brewery expands on.There are additional roundups at Blogs for Industry, Conscientious Objector, and Badgerings. Professor Althouse calls the pusillanimous out.

Man, these people are just too stupid to be trusted with appointments -- and too timorous to deserve to a university position from which to dribble out the contents of their weak little minds.

Tightly Wound has some scorn for the search committees, as well as for the operators of some of the academic weblogs. A carefuly study of the taxonomy puts this in some context.

Seems that the delicate flowers of academic hiring committees are not mentally equipped to deal with the revelatory nature of blogs. Well, okay. It does make sense that if you're spending all your online time kvetching about your ovaries or picking fights with the blogatrice across the way that maybe you shouldn't consider your blog part of your academic output. Point taken. Also, if you're spending all your time fantasizing--in writing--about how you'll get your revenge on that ass of a department head or your own unique sexual predilections--well, could you blame a university for being a little bit cautious?

There's also this.

New faculty might be autonomous! They might have--gasp--opinions! Or personal preferences! Or they might not be willing to shut up and go along like a good little peon! The horror! The nerve!

In other words, if you wanna be an academic, you'd better shut your mouth and get on the reservation, baby. No freedom of expression for you!

I know, I know, being able to hold two contradictory ideas in one's mind simultaneously is a virtue, but I'm getting a little tired of Conformity in Transgressivity accompanying Unity in Diversity all the time, which appears to be the "fit" Ivan the Pusillanimous and his colleagues are seeking.

YUM.

You Are Coffee Ice Cream

Energetic and lively, you are always on the go. You're doing a million things at once and doing them well. You tend to motivate others and raise spirits. You are most compatible with chocolate ice cream.

What Flavor Ice Cream Are You?

OLDER THAN THE AMERICAN TOP 40. This Day in Music will let you know what topped the charts the day you were born, as well as suggesting what your life's them song is. There was a British Top 40 the day I showed up, with Cara Mia by David Whitfield with Mantovani topping the charts; on the theme-setting 18th birthday, the British topper is Alice Cooper's School's Out for the Summer, and the U.S. topper is Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again, Naturally. Perhaps if I had grasped the meaning of the former ...

IN PRAISE OF SOCIAL DISTANCE. Kimberly at Number 2 Pencil comments on the rediscovery of school dress codes ... for teachers! (The Newsday link is now absorbed; Stop The Blackmail provided one from the Sun-Times and here's one from Lancaster Online.)

"There's an impression that teachers are dressing more and more — well, the good term for it would be 'relaxed,'" said Bill Scharffe, director of bylaws and policy services for the Michigan Association of School Boards. "Another term for it would be 'sloppy.'"

Quite so. Libertarian Commentary takes a rather harsh view of teacher objections to the policy, although he's managed to combine both of The Superintendent's explanations for the loss of respect teachers have been suffering in one paragraph.

Another reason to avoid public schools like the plague: considering how the students are allowed to dress, it is no surprise that the teachers would be stripping down as well. In private schools, dress codes for students, teachers, staff, yes, and even parents, are expected and encouraged. For the unionized teachers who claim to be "professionals" to show up to teach children wearing such garments is, of course, an admission that they are NOT professional - unless they are moonlighting in another profession entirely.

Here's the Number 2 Pencil take, making the same points a bit less bluntly.

What a stunning lack of judgment on the part of Oglesby, who has apparently taken the "everything is equally good" mantra from education schools and tried to apply it to the professional academic world. I assume she believes these sorts of statement dignify her profession; on the contrary, it suggests that she honestly doesn't see any difference between the professional demeanor of a woman covered in tattoos, baring cleavage and belly, and one wearing comfortable, modest attire.

Let alone a proper power suit.

WAITING FOR DENNIS. Tropical depressions get to keep their names; plain old low pressure centers do not. I think it still was Dennis that tossed a few rain bands into south central Wisconsin this morning; still not enough rain to alleviate the drought in northern Illinois. It's now a more severe drought than the one that was relieved on August 8, 1988, when the Almighty decided to express disapproval of the first night game at Wrigley Field.

BUT AT LEAST THEY'RE CULTURALLY COMPETENT. Charlie Sykes notes Toyota's decision to locate a factory in Ontario rather than Dixie. No, it has nothing to do with health benefits.

Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

The rot is not confined to the shop floor, according to Joanne Jacobs.

States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more.

And that's making due allowance for bureaucratese.

ANOTHER REASON TO HATE LATTE LIBERALS? Susan Lenfestey of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune pays a visit to the Upper Lakes.

Recently I drove from Mackinac Island, Michigan, to Minneapolis. Making that trip in a 15-year-old VW van, with no AC, is like spending the day in a crock pot, but it does give a person time to observe the terrain and to think about the lives of folks in the upper Midwest as we get ready to celebrate our nation's independence.

We're off to a good start. Motor vehicles are not allowed on the Island; St. Ignace or Mackinaw City are more likely starting points. At least we are spared the snarking that would ensue when the writer discovers that the Island is end-point of not one, but two, major offshore yacht races, judging by what follows.

Driving across Michigan's Upper Peninsula is like driving across Alaska, without the scenery. In the last 30 years the changes to the flinty landscape have been few, though now there are trucks everywhere hauling off freshly cut timber. Commerce that isn't based on lumber or mining never seems to take hold in the UP, and everything from farms to auto dealerships to motels sit barren and abandoned.

Would you really like to try farming in Siberian conditions, only with more lake-effect snow?

What has changed is the people and their politics. The iron-hard bodies of the scrappy farmers and miners have given way to fast-food pudge, just as their left-leaning political views, long the solid core of the Democratic Party, have given way to a George Bush go-it-alone belligerence, with trucks and T-shirts sporting sentiments having mostly to do with guns (love 'em) and gays (hate 'em) or support for our troops.

Gosh. Somebody's nostalgic for the Twin Pines cooperatives imported from Finland about the same time as the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution. Read enough of this stuff, however, and one is tempted to suggest that the chattering classes in their salons on Hennepin Avenue or the west side of Madison or the usual fever swamps of the coast ought to ask whether or not they are giving the rest of the country reason to hate them.

If you can get any local radio at all, your choices are Christian, country, hard rock or oldies, which about sums up who's still inhabiting this neck of the woods -- rock for the crystal meth crowd, country for the hefty moms in GMC minivans, oldies for, well, oldies, and Christian for just about everyone else.

When you drop down into Wisconsin everything changes, from the terrain to the light. Chalky soils give way to chocolate-colored loam, and the sun loses its hard edge. But many of the small towns here are dead too, and Wal-Marts shimmer like mirages in what just five years ago were corn and hay fields. This time of year there are also small tents all along the way selling fireworks, many of them flying the Confederate flag, an odd choice given the nature of the holiday we're about to celebrate with their wares. Of course the Confederate flag does fly below the Green Bay Packer flag.

On the outskirts of Chippewa Falls I listened to President Bush on the radio speaking of the sacrifices necessary to "do the job" in Iraq, while in the dusky soft night I could see colt-legged children dancing on tidy lawns, twirling little American flags and sparklers (both probably made in China), their decent, I'm sure, hard-working parents looking on.

And this writer concludes by suggesting that the President is engaging in skewed and wishful thinking. Egad. Easier to suggest that the masses suffer from false consciousness than to understand how those parents manage to keep their decency.

OLD SCHOOL TIES. Katie at Constrained Vision has a link to an exchange on teacher pay between two Wisconsin labor economists, both of whom finished their dissertations about the same time I finished mine. One is currently chairman at Missouri-Columbia, the other president of the Economic Policy Institute. There has been a bit of evolution in both of their thinking over the past 25 years.

THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES. A pseudonomyous but prissy professor of humanities somewhere in the midwest suggests that the academic weblog might be a career-killer. This comment at Dan Drezner's pretty well sums up the impression the post gives.

Increasingly, academia comes across as a stereotypical small town ruled by Mr and Mrs Pecksniff and their friends. Why would anyone want to spend time there?

Who needs a Mr and Mrs Pecksniff, tribbles are born pregnant and don't have to recruit, right? University Diaries has a similar reaction.

Sadder yet is the academic stereotype of timid conventionality that the tone as well as the anonymity of this piece reflect.

Public Brewery has the literature review, if you will. Jeff at Quid nomen illius? uses the column as antidote to cognitive dissonance.

For my part, you know who I am and you know I will call out the poseurs, the pusillanimous, and the political hacks as it suits me.

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU SAY D'OH! Hybrid vehicles threaten commuters' trip in the fast lane.

Instead of crawling out of bed at 4 a.m. to beat the morning rush, Frank Murphy sleeps late these days. He says he owes it all to his hybrid car _ and a law that has some of his fellow commuters upset. Drivers of the environmentally friendly cars are allowed to cruise solo in Virginia's car pool lanes, slicing Murphy's daily two-hour commute in half. And since buying a hybrid 18 months ago, Murphy is leaving his home as much as three hours later.

"The quality of life has gone up tremendously," he said.

But Murphy's joy is a source of irritation for his co-worker, Kristine Johnson, who does not own a hybrid. To travel in the car pool lane, she lingers at a commuter lot until two strangers agree to ride with her.

The inconvenience pays off less than it used to: Johnson complains that hybrids are making car pool lanes as congested as regular lanes.

"It's not fair," Johnson said. "In the afternoon it's all hybrids around me. I used to be able to go home in 30 minutes. Now it takes 45."

I suppose this is why I'm still paid. No matter how many times I mention that incentives matter, somebody still misses it.

Brian D. Taylor, director of UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies, argues against linking hybrids with car pool lanes, which he says exist for an unrelated purpose: taking cars off the road.

"It would be sort of like saying you should allow nurses and school teachers to exceed the speed limit because they contribute positive things to society," Taylor said.

Joe Waldman, general manager of northern Virginia's Landmark Honda, said officials should not be so quick to blame crowded car pool lanes on hybrids. He noted that solo drivers in regular vehicles continue to violate the rules, despite stepped-up enforcement and a new state law doubling some fines to as much as $1,000 for a fourth offense.

But Virginia Department of Transportation spokeswoman Joan Morris said, "Even if we got rid of all the violators tomorrow, we'd still have a capacity problem."

In order: there's a reason ambulances, fire trucks, and the Ghost Busters have lights and sirens. Absent some kind of perfect enforcement, carpool lane cheats will be there even at much higher fines. The capacity problem? Do we want to revisit the use of the Highway Trust Fund as an accounting fiddle to reduce the federal deficit?

TITANIC LANDS PASSENGERS IN NEW YORK. Word. Go to Ellis Island custom list microfilm P75-3983 and look toward the end of the roll.

Alas, the ancestors whose entry records I'm seeking were not passengers. But having a lot of this stuff indexed on-line helps.

BADGER FOOTBALL. Red jerseys and all. (Via It Comes in Pints, fudge yeah!)

THE ONION'S GUIDE TO FEMINIST THEORY. Housewife Charged in Sex-For-Security Scam.

During the arrest, Akron police officials entered the Crandall household and seized more than 150 items Mrs. Crandall had received from her husband over the last 19 years, including a four-speed adjustable food processor, 12 pairs of earrings, a matching sofa and loveseat, a box of two-ply kitchen garbage bags, and a portable radio.

In exchange for these items, Agee said, Crandall's husband received sex an estimated 950 times—most frequently in the master bedroom, but also in the downstairs den three times, and once on the floor of the sewing room.

In addition to physical evidence, Akron police have collected considerable eyewitness testimony. More than 250 Akron residents have come forward to report seeing Helen and Russell Crandall together, and several said they witnessed Mr. Crandall flagrantly purchasing items for his wife.

"Sure, they'd come in here," said Ray Greene of Greene's House and Home. "I think the last time they got one of those box fans with the three settings."

Perhaps the most damaging testimony has come from Mr. Crandall himself, who on Tuesday told police that while the couple was dating in 1977, Mrs. Crandall—then known as Helen Steuben—demanded that he buy her a ring worth over $1,000 before he could have sex with her. The first sexual liaison took place some six months later at Bob's Honeymooner Hotel during an all-expenses-paid trip to Niagara Falls.

It was also in 1977, Mr. Crandall said, that his wife quit her job at Shippee Shoes in downtown Akron.

"Clearly," Summit County prosecutor Andrew Dravecky said, "after quitting her job, the accused began receiving money under the table from some other source: How else could she have afforded to not work? It's now pretty apparent that at that point she began supporting herself by providing a certain service to Mr. Crandall."

No doubt there are Overly Earnest People, some of whom might hold tenure in cultural studies and related fields, who will find nothing funny in the story or in my circulating it. Deal with it.

EXCESSIVE CONFIDENCE? Hurricane Dennis is enroute to the Florida Keys. A radio news report from Cape Canaveral indicates that Discovery will stay on its launch pad for the anticipated July 13 launch rather than be returned to its hangar. Lots of second-guessing potential here.

INSUFFICIENTLY COSMOPOLITAN.

You Are 78% American

You're as American as red meat and shooting ranges. Tough and independent, you think big. You love everything about the US, wrong or right. And anyone who criticizes your home better not do it in front of you!

How American Are You?

Via Shot in the Dark.

FRAMING THE HYPOTHESIS CORRECTLY? David at Liberty and Power notes the difficulty of using the absence of terrorist attacks as evidence for the success of a campaign as well as the presence of a terrorist attack as a continued cassus belli. The same logic problem apparently arises with opponents of war.

When will the pro-war side construct a set of arguments that can be tested by Karl Popper's falsifiability principle? In other words, when will they tell us how their position can be refuted? We are waiting.

Hmmm, did the assembly of U.S., Canadian, Commonwealth, Free French and Free Polish troops and materiel along the Channel coast provoke the buzz-bombs and flying gas mains? In that conflict, a relatively straightforward test was present: the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, obtained without distinction between the leaders and the led. In the instant conflict, the objective is to identify the leaders and the true believers without benefit of state organizations to reform or destroy, or of identifiable armed forces to render powerless.

There is a somewhat more subtle problem with hypothesis testing to keep in mind, the cases of false positives (evidence points to a terror organization or a weapons program that turns out not to be there) and false negatives (no evidence of a terror organization or a bioweapon that turns out to be used.) Any use of the falsifiability principle ought to include consideration of the loss function and its power against false positives and false negatives (these do not have to be symmetric, all of our practice with t-tests to the contrary.)

SECOND SECTION: Herewith Lexington at Chicago's loss function.

Neither America nor Britain are going to be defeated by these means. The terrorists lack the means to destroy the core of our power. And any attempt to appease the terrorists or placate them will be taken, correctly, as weakness and will only lead to further demands and further violence. They cannot be negotiated with, since their goals are effectively infinite -- the establishment of a regime like the Taliban, imposed on the entire world. So, by whatever twisted course, ongoing violent confrontation, and the ultimate defeat of Islamic terrorism, is going to be the long-term outcome. A lot of people are going to die first. Even so, fear nothing. How we live is what matters, and when we die is, by and large, out of our hands. What we make of this country and this time we live in and what we hand on to those who come after are what matters. Our generation has had the task imposed on it of fighting and destroying these terrorists. It will be hard, and it will be ugly, but we will do what needs to be done.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY. Arnold Kling has been thinking about Live 8.

Remember that unlike the Folk Song Army of Tom Lehrer's song, you have no monopoly on good intentions. A morality play in which those who care crusade against those who are square makes for great theater. However, it is not a realistic basis for economic policy.

Read the whole thing.

Mr Lehrer's introduction to his song is worth repeating.

It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee-house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on. The nicest thing about a protest song is that it makes you feel so good.

Bill at Atlantic Blog has also been distinguishing substantive from symbolic efforts to improve conditions in Africa.

AFTERMATH. Going Underground reports on the Underground resuming service on lines not affected by yesterday's bombings. The special congestion fee for automobiles driven into the City has been waived. Live from the Third Rail looks at the recovery time for subways that have been disrupted. For reference, the Chicago subways were closed for about three weeks following the 1992 floods.