ANALOGIES. Aaron Rodgers :: Brett Favre as (a) Bart Starr :: Lamar McHan (b) Don Horn :: Bart Starr.

Discuss.

FORTY YEARS AGO. British Railways ended routine steam operation on 11 August 1968. Some observers questioned the decision to run a trade deficit to import oil to power diesels of uneven capabilities.

Because the country was relatively prosperous at the time of conversion, many of the steamers made their way into preservation. The North Sea oilfield took care of the oil imports, at least for the time being, although British Rail and successor operators saw the wisdom of importing SD-40 and SD-70 platforms adopted to the British loading gauge.

Waterloo Station, near the end.
David Sallery photograph.

David Sallery's site depicts steam operation in the last few places where the steamers were allocated.

THE HIGHEST GREEN.

In High Green and the Bark Peelers, author R. M. Neal intended that as a tribute to the gentlemen who were his host on Boston and Maine's 10 am nonstopper, the Kennebec Limited, which reached Portland in two hours. By 1965, Patrick McGinnis's asset strippers had ripped out most of the second track on the Portland Division and ended the passenger trains. Guilford Transportation managed to reunite the Boston and Maine with the Maine Central, and they operated a freight railroad after a fashion, although they put many an obstruction in the way of a revived passenger train service between Boston and Portland. Despite Guilford's continued non-cooperation, the service has been expanded, ridership is up (National Corridors link expired) and passenger-train advocates are making the case for more trains as well as a possible extension of the service to Freeport or to Augusta or to Bangor. (It may be a bit much to ask for all-sleeper Bar Harbor Expresses from Philadelphia by way of Worcester, at least of a government agency).

During last month's excursion east, I took a day to sample the line. Again, thanks to a long-ago excursion, collecting all the mileage did not have to be the primary objective. Where, then, to turn back? Several people told me the Portland station was somewhat removed from the commercial parts of Portland, which made a turnback prior to Portland more attractive.

SEPARATING EQUILIBRIUM. A graduate student describes the realities of the academic food chain.

Audrey Jaeger, an assistant professor of higher education at North Carolina State University and M. Kevin Eagan Jr., a graduate student at UCLA, conducted their research at four public universities in North Carolina. They found that college students who take their introductory courses from adjuncts are more likely to change majors, enroll in a different university, or drop out of school entirely.

The problem, the authors say, is not that part-timers necessarily teach poorly but that they don’t have the necessary campus ties to actively “connect” with students. Jaeger and Eagan believe that this is because part-time faculty have fewer out-of-class interactions – holding office hours and meeting with students – of the sort that create a "connection” between students and faculty.

The columnist's reaction reveals great social science potential.

The first serious problem is that Jaeger and Eagan fail to consider that adjunct professors often don’t get the same quality of student that regular faculty do. Part-time faculty, Jaeger and Eagan acknowledge, tend to teach courses at less-attractive times because regular faculty get first choice. But they don’t carry this point to its logical conclusion. Those sections are frequently filled with students who have waited until the last minute to enroll, have given relatively little thought to their courses, and don’t really want to be there. Students in my Thursday evening recitations, a time when most would rather be partying, were often ill-prepared, weak students, or absent altogether.

Therefore, through no fault of their own, the adjuncts are likely to have a higher percentage of weak students. It is unwarranted to conclude that adjuncts are necessarily responsible for the higher rate of dropping out among their students.

Omitted variables? Check. Selectivity biases? Check.

Secondly, in their study, Jaeger and Eagan did not include years of teaching experience or whether a lecturer has a Ph.D. or other advanced degree. Part-time faculty members range from doctoral dropouts to semi-retired professors who have spent entire careers in the field. The latter can be at least as good at teaching their courses as full-time professors. For example, professor Michael Sanera teaches one Introduction to American Politics course at N.C. State University each semester as an adjunct professor. Before moving to North Carolina, he spent 20 years teaching full-time, the last fourteen as a tenured professor at Northern Arizona University. Other than his not having his own office, he says that he is teaching his part-time course no differently than the way he courses during his full-time career.

Adjustment for the quality of human capital? Check.

More telling, however, might be the enrollment-driven mentality (it matters not whether that's a business obsession with market share or an equalitarian obsession with access) that requires adjustment for the quality of the clientele.

As a TA, I noticed that weaker and more vulnerable students seldom sought out-of-class interactions me, regardless of my own availability.

Karen Palasek, a part-time professor with 24 years’ teaching experience says that current requirements at most schools where she has taught (including Peace College, N.C. State, and Campbell University) allow adjuncts to be as dedicated or lackadaisical as they choose. “It’s possible to do very little work and still fulfill your contract,” she explained.

Professor Palasek makes the effort. Whether her students do or not is not revealed.

EXCESS CAPACITY IN AIRPORTS. Earlier in the week, I had some fears for continued air service to South Bend.

But whether a cash-strapped Delta operating out of a congested Atlanta will continue to allocate expensive fuel and scarce landing slots to puddle-jumpers to Studebaker country remains to be seen.

I should have looked closer to home, where an often-lonely Rockford airport will be lonelier still.

The Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD) announced today that Southern Skyways will discontinue their Denver service. The last flight will be on Monday, August 18, 2008. All customers currently booked on Southern Skyway flights associated with RFD scheduled for departure after August 18th will receive a cancellation notice from the airline along with a full refund for any and all unused tickets booked. Every flight between today's notice, including the August 18th flight and all "Day Trips," will be flown as scheduled.

Rockford officialdom continues to deny the obvious.

RFD Board Chairman Mike Dunn said that the Airport Authority firmly believes that RFD is an economic engine and instrument towards enhancing the quality of life for Winnebago County residents. “Along the way, we collectively discovered a niche market opportunity called "Day Tripping," whereby 131 people could fly non-stop, hassle-free to highly-desired destinations such as: Niagara Falls, Mackinac Island, and NASCAR races like the Brickyard 400 for a fun filled, full day of activities, said Dunn.

“This is not the end, as some might speculate”, said [executive director Mike] O’Brien. “The airline industry is undergoing a paradigm shift and it must. Business as usual isn't an acceptable solution to $5.00 per gallon jet fuel. Instead, this is a time out - at worse - all very necessary for purposes of assessing how best to advance the RFD cause going forward,” he continued.

I must do some history, for instance, whether the property taxes on the Illinois Central and Burlington passenger stations added up to the operating deficits of the Rockford airport during the 1960s, a formula that I know is accurate for some Great Northern stations in North Dakota. The conceit that every mid-sized city must have regular air service, let alone an "international" airport, never made much sense. That the Winnipeg Limited and the Land O' Corn and the Capital 400 had to be sacrificed to that conceit might not have made any sense either.

TRANSCENDING POLITICS. It's been picked up by Paul Soglin and Charlie Sykes and Laura McKenna (is that the first time those three merit mention in the same post?)

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

In the clip, Ms Hilton offers the substantive suggestion that additional oil development in the United States, along with continued research and development in solar and wind power, will produce "energy independence." Probably not, but independence (whether from imported energy or from imported bananas, to use an old metaphor) is not the main goal. Getting the incentives right in the face of exhaustible resources is. In that vein, let me address this Ramirez cartoon from Investor's Business Daily, which was posted without elaboration at Marquette Warrior.

The cartoon is supposed to suggest that development of wind and solar power is a step backwards. So it might be, if the incentives are wrong. There are, however, incentives, quite evident in the maritime record, to make more effective use of wind power.

It is true that in the Age of Sail, becalmed ships (which would have the mizzen, mizzen-top, and spanker set before going to oars) would sometimes be towed by crews rowing the ship's boats, or by kedging, if the water is shallow enough. It's also true that the galleon evolved from the galley, lending some versimilitude to the cartoon image (although a proper galleon would have a forecastle). But the galleon is not the last word in sail technology. In commerce, the Yankee Clipper halved the crossing times (there is a famous painting of Cutty Sark, a British Yankee Clipper, overtaking an early steamship) and for fun there is nothing more thrilling than a Laser or a racing scow. There was, also, an incentive to develop other forms of propulsion for ships (even the Yankee Clipper might be subject to the doldrums or unable to evade a typhoon and the Lasers and scow sailors prudently repair to the clubroom when there's a derecho on the radar screen) which, when acted on, checked further development of sailing technology. That does not, however, rule out further improvements in sailing technology. Such improvements, unfortunately, are unlikely to be commercially feasible except at permanently higher prices for current fuels, prices at which the development of harder-to-get-to sources will be commercially feasible.

Other technologies also have the potential for evolution. I'll probably have more to say about railroad electrification in the near future, but since we're focusing on retro technologies, consider this advanced technology steam locomotive (which was a serious proposal during one of the earlier periods of expensive oil).

ENOUGH TO STOP THE CUBS. Tornado alerts are not unknown in Chicago.

Yowza ... we had massive thunderstorms here last night, with the tornado sirens going for the first time I've ever heard them in Chicago. We actually grabbed the cat and the laptops and the firebox with the valuables and headed for the basement, where we poured pitchers of water and waited. Thankfully it all came to naught and was over quickly; within half an hour we were back upstairs watching the Weather Channel.

To the west, it looked like a replay of last month's derecho, this time with radar echoes that suggested a tornado heading east along the Milwaukee Road's Illinois Division from Stillman Valley to Elgin. Today's commentary from the university meteorologist included links to archived radar animations from Davenport and Romeoville (these are animated .gif files that load slowly -- open the links in new windows) and this observation.

Notice the "comma head" self-developing low pressure over northern DeKalb county with the system as it passed through our area. I'm still surprised there wasn't a confirmed tornado along route 72 or just south of there here in the county...

The forecast discussion included recognition of the hazards of long-term predictions.

The 16 day model forecasts (I know, take this with a grain of salt) at least show a jet stream pattern NOT conducive to any major heat through the third week of August, and that takes out what is climatologically the warmest part of the year. With only several 90 degree highs under our belt so far, and with 21 days of 90 degree highs or higher for the year being average, it's becoming safe to say that our somewhat above average summer temperature forecast will go down in flames.

Set aside the mixed metaphor (daytime highs in the 70s send the forecast "down in flames") and contemplate the difficulties of separating climate change signal from seasonal weather noise.

TEN PERCENT OF AN ELEPHANT OUTWEIGHS THIRTEEN PERCENT OF A COLLIE. That comparison is not terribly useful. On the other hand, a ten percent return on a $400 billion venture, while it looks big, would be reason to shift resources to a venture that offered a thirteen percent return on a $9 billion venture. Somehow, though, $40 billion in oil-company profits causes editorialists to lose their perspective. Vermont Tiger's Art Woolf calls the editorialists out.

WAS THIS WAR NECESSARY? Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941 places the reader in London (once), Berlin (thrice), Tokyo (twice), Rome (once), Washington, D.C. (twice), and Moscow (once) to provide readers with some understanding of how, given the British Empire's decision to go to war over Poland, a replay of The Great War turned into a global war of annihilation, particularly of Slavs and Jews. Book Review N^o. 30 is more on-train production. Professor Kershaw suggests that some of the decisions were optional while others were foreordained. Stalin's unwillingness to consider any evidence of hostile German intentions from the suspension of Sea Lion to the occupation of Minsk is clearly the former; Roosevelt's tilt toward Britain comes close to the latter. I wonder, after having read the book, whether the Germans really grasped what they were getting into. Although Britain's decision to fight on, alone, was a closely argued thing, the ability of an insular naval power to stalemate a putatively superior superior power (to a chess player, that is stalemate, an outcome different from a draw due to exhaustion of forces) is formidable, and the Royal Navy did take out the French and Italian fleets and counter the German surface ships. They did not quite have the counter to the German submarines, which provides reason for the U.S. to "lend a garden hose" to the neighbour with the burning house.

The book suggests that international conflict might have been a consequence of faulty economics. Professor Kershaw focuses on the ability of dictators to commit their countries to bad courses of action, something that Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin and Tojo did repeatedly, but their actions were inspired by a desire to catch up with the richer countries. The British Commonwealth and the United States were rich, and the international institutions of the day appeared to be set up in such a way as to keep them that way (a vulgar Marxist would substitute "were" for that "appeared to be" but post-minor-post-Ricardians have their obscurity for a reason) and thus Germany and Italy and Japan had to act on their particular manifest destiny in such a way as to secure sufficient resources to become first-rank powers themselves. Professor Kershaw notes, briefly, that Japan did in fact achieve such a position only after having been militarily defeated, nuked, and occupied. Perhaps politicians, and their court intellectuals, ought have a better understanding of the ways by which people (and the nations they live in, as a side-effect) become wealthy. There are some instructive maps here that illustrate the diffusion of prosperity: whether that is the result of colonisation or of proper rules of trading remains a live research question.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge).

THE VALUE OF ARTICULATION. Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews discovers the credits-don't-transfer scam, building on the work of Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Nancy Rodriguez.

"Universities are just expert in playing this game that says, 'Well, sure, you completed English composition, but you didn't take my class,' and sort of cheating students out of transfer credits by insisting that they retake essentially the same classes," said Kay McClenney, a professor at the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

By contrast, the Illinois Articulation Initiative becomes a point of pride for the Northern Illinois University Alumni Association, with a lengthy article on the method and the success stories in the spring alumni magazine.

NIU offers a large number of scholarships, several of which are awarded exclusively to transfer students. For information on NIU scholarships, visit www.scholarships.niu.edu.

The sidebar also invites alumni to create scholarship opportunities.

GET THE INCENTIVES RIGHT. The editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel see gains from trade in selling Lake Michigan water.

Growth in southeastern Wisconsin comes from a variety of sources and, in general, is good for the region, especially if it provides family-supporting jobs. Trying to stop that growth would put a severe drag on the region's economy. Waukesha County is not the enemy. The same applies to Washington, Ozaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Walworth counties.

The communities of southeastern Wisconsin can grow together, as the Milwaukee 7 economic development group has ably argued.

None of this means that Milwaukee shouldn't expect some reciprocity, such as support from the suburbs for more mass transit and even rail transit. Getting workers to jobs is as critical an issue as clean water.

The revised Great Lakes compact has been approved by inter alia the Wisconsin and Illinois legislatures and Congress and Parliament are at work on it. Milwaukee and New Berlin have reached one such sale agreement. Political Environment notes early reactions to the deal.

THERE GOES THE NEIGBORHOOD. A Milwaukee man neglects a $50 fine for illegally parking an unregistered van in his own driveway and the city forecloses on his house.

"They're trying to take my house away for a parking violation," [Peter] Tubic said. "I know it was my own fault for letting it drag on, I've been under mental duress. I haven't been able to handle this."

Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice and law professor at Marquette University, called the case a human tragedy and an example of how people can fall through the cracks in the system.

"It seems like a drastic remedy," Geske said of the city's foreclosure. "But on the other hand the city has to enforce its zoning laws. I don't fault the city for that.

"It's a shame someone didn't intervene to help him. . . . It would be nice if someone who worked for government would take the time and say 'let's look at this and see if we're doing the right thing.' . . . It would be nice if they would remember the human factor here."

Tubic first got the fine for parking his Ford E150 with no license plates in the driveway of the home, which belonged to his parents at the time . The radiator had broken and Tubic couldn't get his plates renewed unless the van passed an emissions test. He didn't have the money to make the repair and had more pressing worries, he said.

Mr Tubic committed this non-moving violation somewhere on West Verona Court. The article doesn't say which block of Verona Court, which is one of the piecewise-continuous streets between the half-mile roads (Oklahoma Avenue and Morgan Avenue in this case) the city built to introduce some variety into what would otherwise be the traditional urban grid pattern. The design is one in which the city might be more alert to moving violations, for instance, if an aggressive adolescent driver on the southwest side used Verona to check the performance of a Barracuda made an error in judgement, my sister would have had unexpected company in her room.

I've found no Wisconsin reaction to this story yet, although Misha gives Milwaukee officials their daily ration. Given the quagmire that much of Milwaukee has become, the use of law enforcement resources to clean up a short section of a side street strikes me as suboptimal.

BARRIERS TO MOVEMENT. Last month, I noted, "Higher transportation costs have the same effect as tariffs." The self-styled newspaper of record just figured it out.

Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.

Trade-offs everywhere. On the one hand, more costly transportation means more local production, which the article would have readers believe would restore the "broadly shared prosperity" of the 1950s. On the other hand, more costly transportation means only local consumption, which is a hard constraint on consumers.

[A] study, published in May by the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” the report concluded, and as a result “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.”

Higher energy prices are incentives to use less energy, and that is likely to check the ambitions of some of the newly industrialized countries.

The spike in shipping costs comes at a moment when concern about the environmental impact of globalization is also growing. Many companies have in recent years shifted production from countries with greater energy efficiency and more rigorous standards on carbon emissions, especially in Europe, to those that are more lax, like China and India.

But if the international community fulfills its pledge to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change, even China and India would have to reduce the growth of their emissions, and the relative costs of production in countries that use energy inefficiently could grow.

It's also likely to redefine "upscale".

What may be coming to an end are price-driven oddities like chicken and fish crossing the ocean from the Western Hemisphere to be filleted and packaged in Asia not to be consumed there, but to be shipped back across the Pacific again. “Because of low costs, people were profligate,” said Nayan Chanda, author of “Bound Together,” a history of globalization.

The industries most likely to be affected by the sharp rise in transportation costs are those producing heavy or bulky goods that are particularly expensive to ship relative to their sale price. Steel is an example. China’s steel exports to the United States are now tumbling by more than 20 percent on a year-over-year basis, their worst performance in a decade, while American steel production has been rising after years of decline. Motors and machinery of all types, car parts, industrial presses, refrigerators, television sets and other home appliances could also be affected.

That is, if the knowledge to produce these things hasn't all been pensioned off. Then there's food.

Higher shipping rates could eventually transform some items now found in the typical middle-class pantry into luxuries and further promote the so-called local food movement popular in many American and European cities.

“This is not just about steel, but also maple syrup and avocados and blueberries at the grocery store,” shipped from places like Chile and South Africa, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets and co-author of its recent study on transport costs and globalization. “Avocado salad in Minneapolis in January is just not going to work in this new world, because flying it in is going to make it cost as much as a rib eye.”

Next, some relative price movements. If storage is expensive relative to local labor or to transportation, business logistics take a very different form than they do if storage is relatively cheap.

In addition, the sharp increase in transportation costs has implications for the “just-in-time” system pioneered in Japan and later adopted the world over. It is a highly profitable business strategy aimed at reducing warehousing and inventory costs by arranging for raw materials and other supplies to arrive only when needed, and not before.

Jeffrey E. Garten, the author of “World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy” and a former dean of the Yale School of Management, said that companies “cannot take a risk that the just-in-time system won’t function, because the whole global trading system is based on that notion.” As a result, he said, “they are going to have to have redundancies in the supply chain, like more warehousing and multiple sources of supply and even production.”

Ultimately, the results will leave everybody poorer.

“Despite everything, the American economy is still the biggest Rottweiler on the block,” said Jagdish N. Bhagwati, the author of “In Defense of Globalization” and a professor of economics at Columbia. “But if it’s expensive to get products from there to here, it’s also expensive to get them from here to there.”

We make economics majors sweat out isoquant maps and reciprocity conditions of dual cost functions precisely so that they understand how inescapable Professor Bhagwati's logic is.

OLIVE SHORTAGE IN TUONELA. Serve it up cold.

Al-Qaida confirmed Sunday the death of a top commander accused of training the suicide bombers who killed 17 American sailors on the USS Cole eight years ago.

Abu Khabab al-Masri, who had a $5 million bounty on his head from the United States, is believed to have been killed in an airstrike apparently launched by the U.S. in Pakistan last week.

An al-Qaida statement posted on the Internet said al-Masri and three other top figures were killed and warned of vengeance for their deaths.

Good intelligence and policing has to be backed up by good shooting. Well done.

TOO TACKY FOR WORDS. One hopes the girls (not women, definitely not ladies) who organize used-boyfriend parties will be happy with their cats.

I've never attended a used-date party, where women [c.q.] bring an ex-boyfriend to swap. At these parties, reassurance is the name of the game: The men are all eligible, and each is vouched for by at least one woman [c.q.] in attendance. Essentially, one woman's [c.q.] trash is another woman's [c.q.] treasure.

Bleah. Gentlemen, find a better strategy.

AVOID THE STRAIN. The unpleasantness that is Chicago O'Hare (Midway Airport, although listed in the same class, merits no other discussion) leads a Chicago Tribune reporter to consider other options.

Three days a week, things get hectic at Rockford's airport. A whopping three commercial passenger flights depart. But those flights go to Las Vegas, Denver and one of two Florida cities—popular enough destinations to keep the gates busy at Chicago Rockford International—yes, international—Airport. Or as busy as one baggage carousel, two escalators and one ATM can get. Just 70 miles from O'Hare International, Rockford's airport has seen its fortunes rise during the last five years by trying to be everything its hulking big brother is not. Parking, mere feet from the terminal, is free. Hot dogs cost $1. And the long lines, gruff attitudes and O'Hare's terminally stale smell? None of it.

We're not quite in the "Major Strasser's been shot! Round up the usual suspects" mode but if you're not off to a tourist destination or holding a transit visa for Lisbon, you might want to consider other options.

Reasonable flights also can be found at South Bend Regional Airport, which is accessible from downtown Chicago by the South Shore railroad, but rates aren't so cheap as to make the trek worthwhile for anyone west of, say, Gary.

I don't follow the "rates aren't so cheap" argument? Train fare? Is the author treating driving time (and the wear and tear on car and driver) as a freebie? The South Bend airport is pleasant enough, and management respects the tradition that an observation deck isn't de facto for terrorist intelligence-gathering. But whether a cash-strapped Delta operating out of a congested Atlanta will continue to allocate expensive fuel and scarce landing slots to puddle-jumpers to Studebaker country remains to be seen. That brings the reporter to the case for Milwaukee, which regular readers already know.

Similar to Midway in size and feel, Mitchell offers a manageable experience, with one main terminal—clean, carpeted and comfortable—that has three concourses, inexplicably named C, D and E (the absence of A and B is an old mystery but probably rooted in an expansion that never happened, airport officials say).

The terminal houses several impressive shopping opportunities, which, depending on your taste, may or may not include the $30 foam cheese wedge hats favored by Green Bay Packers fans. There is a Brooks Brothers for the business crowd, a PGA shop for the polo shirt crowd and a Harley-Davidson store for the wings and/or flames crowd.

Best is Renaissance Book Shop, a part of the airport landscape for nearly 30 years. With stained wood floors and shelves, it looks like a real book store, not an airport gift shop and certainly not one of those soulless chains.

Look around and you'll find all sorts of unlikely airport bounty: a $900 set of complete O. Henry works, a $200 first edition of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and, for $60, a rare hard-bound version of J.D. Salinger's "Nine Stories." Don't worry, there is also plenty of the standard romantic and detective trash-fluff.

That last paragraph says more about the reporter than it does about the bookstore, which is splendid. (I have purchased more than one on-train read on mental health excursions to Lake, er, Milwaukee Airport.) The reporter also doesn't quite get the train.

And that is what most makes Milwaukee a viable option to Chicagoans: Amtrak. A train leaving Chicago's Union Station seven times daily (except Sunday) costs $22 each way and will get you almost to the airport's door (if leaving from Glenview, the cost is $20). A short, free shuttle ride finishes the job.

How that leads the reporter to conclude "As for Milwaukee, people who live in Chicago and don't want to drive might need an astounding price difference (at least $150) to bother with the hassle of a train ride" escapes me. Nominal Hiawatha performance is 55 minutes Glenview-Airport, 75 minutes Chicago-Airport, and a trolley service of beverages and bag snacks is available on some trains. The problem, however, is that Midwest has been reducing its services and Northwest is a major carrier out of Milwaukee, meaning changes at Detroit or the Cities. Proper passenger trains on the Michigan Central and Milwaukee Road have the potential to put paid to that service.

IT GOES ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD. When debt-settlement companies advertise something that sounds too good to be true, often it is. With compound interest.

Once consumers sign with a debt settlement company they are usually advised to stop paying bills and instead save cash or put it in an escrow fund. In return, the firm promises to negotiate settlement payments to reduce or wipe out the debt over time. The contract Julie Fitzpatrick signed, for example, claimed she would be "debt free" in three years.

The flaw with the concept is that once consumers stop paying their bills, interest rates on their credit cards go up and so do penalties, consumer advocates and law enforcement officials say. Also, consumers' credit ratings are likely to suffer, and creditors' lawsuits can tack on payments and court costs.

The article notes that the debt-settlement companies and credit counselors would like to have some regulation. Greater financial savvy on the part of the people who become their clients would also help. (Note, with the coming of the school year, the shameless plug for Financial Fitness in the schools.)

THE HABITS OF EFFECTIVE PEOPLE. A professor offers suggestions to an elementary school principal.

What should students learn in elementary school to help them succeed later in high school and in college? It was a good question and I'm still thinking about it. I said writing skills. The students who come to college able to write effortlessly have a huge advantage. But now I'm thinking on a different line. Perhaps a good work ethic, good study skills, and ambition are the most important skills that determine success later in school and in life. I'm not sure how a school could teach those qualities though.

The bull session begins to address the "how".

THE LAST CLANG OF THE RAIL. Ronald Reagan correctly called the Soviet Union an evil empire. Alexander Solzhenitsyn documented the evil. Do svidanya.

SECOND SECTION. University Diaries quotes Mr Solzhenitsyn's speeches.

THIRD SECTION. Marginal Revolution, with economics.

DISARMAMENT PACT? I've long maintained that the positional arms race to get into the hundred universities claiming to be among the top 40 is a flight from access-assessment-remediation-retention. I've also long maintained that the prestige hierarchy is over-rated, with motivated professors and motivated students being able to interact well and stretch their brains no matter where they are. Now comes Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons, which reinforces the point in an indirect way. Yes, the book has been out for a long time, and this Book Review N^o. 29 may be so 2004. I brought a few things to read on the train, and yes, I read them all. Because so many people are familiar with the plot, the review will be relatively brief. Gifted and principled girl from poor and religious family gets scholarship to highly-rated private university chock full of trustafarians, obsessed with excellence in (too many to be prototypic) sports, gets overwhelmed with how very different the lives of the rich and dissolute are from her own. Bad stuff happens. There's a quip about Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony (seventieth degree of latitude and last degree of platitude) that summarizes more than a few of the Amazon consumer reviews, and perhaps those gripes are on point. It is possible for a professor to do his work without learning much about the behavior of his charges, whether that behavior is dissolute or not, and I can therefore not call Mr Wolfe out for overgeneralizing from a small sample. Longitudes and platitudes, or perhaps caricature? If true, perhaps the ability of the rich to buy position for their offspring is restricted by their offsprings' dissolution.

There are, however, deeper questions that the book provokes. Why, despite the efforts of administrators, abetted by the Radical Students and with the passive acceptance of the Careerists or the Apathetic or some of the Nontraditionals, to exorcise the Greek Demons, does the Greek system persist and thrive? Perhaps there is something evolutionarily stable about the scamming and status-seeking and fake politeness (the levels of Sarc instruct and amuse) that provide the book's plot twists. Perhaps there is something else, possibly augmenting human capital in finance, insurance, real estate, or sales, that the sometimes superficial and sometimes destructive party scene provides. (That scene is not for university only.) And why, despite the understanding of Everyone In Authority that the athletic programs are money sinks that all too often reflect badly on the universities, do they persist? Possible dissertation topics or future posts a-plenty, without 500 pages of development?

The Spring 2008 Academic Questions included a Carol Iannone interview of Mr Wolfe. Charlotte Simmons came up. Mr Wolfe described his ending as the "most tragic" of three he was considering. His forgone alternatives were Charlotte "totally ruined" or instigating a "moral rearmament movement." I disagree with his characterization. She's dating a basketball player, although he has to "win her affections." It's March. Whether he has the opportunity to go pro remains to be determined. The Basketball Annies are still about. She's a second-semester freshman. The ambiguity is perfect.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge).