SIMULATE, CALIBRATE, DEBATE.

A simple differential equation model of population and environmental decay got a lot of early play, perhaps because its normative conditions made the usual suspects comfortable with their prejudices.

The dissenting commentary is now coming to light, starting with College Insurrection.

Contrary to early reports, the research is neither funded nor endorsed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity. As is the case with all independent research, the views and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors alone. NASA does not endorse the paper or its conclusions.

A Cornell statistician notes a fundamental flaw with the simple model.

It’s based on standard predator-prey models which work like this: a population of wolves eat the locally available deer, whose population necessarily declines, perhaps to the point where some wolves starve, decreasing their population; the concomitant reduced predation allows the deer to rebound, which gives the opportunity for more hot dinners for the wolves, which begins the cycle anew.

[The model] swaps the wolves for human beings and the deer for “Nature.” Just how people prey on Nature is not too clear, especially since people are part of Nature. This difficulty is ignored. [The model] introduces a twist which allows mankind to accumulate Nature for future use, a surplus which the model calls “wealth”. This would be like the wolves discovering how to make and store venison jerky.

About that wealth: “Empirically, however, this accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels.” Some wolves are more equal than other wolves.

First, you have to get the simple model working. Then you can go on to introducing a perhaps more realistic model of wealth accumulation, in which ideas to augment the productivity of Nature occur to individuals who share the gains from trade with others.  But something as simple as the dynamics by which an entrepreneur contracts with workers to perform one of eighteen tasks involved in making a common pin cannot easily be reduced to mathematics.  We know that finer divisions of labour emerge, and we know that living standards can rise above the subsistence level for more than the elite.  A proper simulation is not going to be easy.

Particularly absent is the idea that only in a society which admits Elites can there be technological progress (what else is a writer of scientific papers but an Elite?). Consider how much food production has swelled over the last century as the discoveries made by Elites are implemented to the benefit of Commoners. Nature, in this sense, is not static as the model assumes.

There are a couple of stochastic processes rattling around in my head that I may be able to commit to paper in the near future. (Now that there is NO pressure to publish any more, I can go back to thinking, once the end of semester administrative scut-work is done.)

Commoners become Elites and vice versa. There is no real-life strict dichotomy between an Elite and Commoner. And new forms of wealth and ways of increasing Nature’s bounty are often unanticipated.

The challenge for the researcher is to incorporate these forces in a way that can't automatically be hijacked to support one world-view or another.

KEEPING THE YARDS FLUID.

It's not often that South Yard at Marquette, Iowa, on the Fox Valley O Scalers club, is this free of cars.

An extra train originating here, and drag freights Dubuque to La Crescent and La Crescent to Dubuque picked up all the cars waiting to be moved.  Those are two loads of ice for the icing platform (which does not have its own ice plant) and a coal load to be moved to the team track.  The yard operator had time to pull the coal mine, set the empty cars, and push two cuts of Shorts to West Yard.

In the background, a fresh load of lumber has been delivered to Iowa Grain Door, a building adapted by me from the Walthers feed mill kit.

It didn't hurt to have an experienced dispatcher on duty.

I should have kept a notepad with me.  The way the railroad was set up for this session, I could authorize trains to move from yard to yard, instead of station to station.  Thus, to open the session, rather than give a spoken order, I could have written out

ENG CNW 1128 RUN EXTRA MARQUETTE TO BEULAH AND RETURN NOT PROTECTING AGAINST FOLLOWING EXTRAS

Later in the session, the long Dubuque to La Crescent train had work to do requiring a run-around at Turkey River Junction, and the La Crescent to Dubuque train had finished its work at South Yard.

ENG GN 277 RUN EXTRA MARQUETTE TO DUBUQUE
AND WAIT AT SEWELL FOR TR 141 ENG 98-C

I had previously issued a meet between 141 and the first train out of Marquette, 242, at Specht's Ferry.

Would have helped to have the pad of paper as the spoken wait order I issued gave the extra's crew a task too much like work.  The motto, as you see in the picture, is KEEP CALM AND MODEL RAILROAD.

WHEN YOU'VE LOST LEON TROTSKY.

Let us call the roll of pernicious influences on higher education, as identified by conservatives.

Identity politics, victim studies, constructivism, relativism, post-modernism.

But then comes David North, United States chairman of the Socialist Equity Party, explaining to an audience at New York's New School that pomo-babble is a tool of the bosses.

North explained the connection between these reactionary trends in historiography and the role of postmodernism and similar philosophical tendencies, which deny the existence of objective truth and reduce history to a series of competing and equally valid “narratives.” He also related the development of postmodernism and similar theories to the growth of social inequality.

The simpler explanation for rising inequality is upscale parents using the U.S. News rankings to get their spawn into universities serving similarly ambitious classmates, while the institutions that cater to everybody else stressing access-assessment-remediation-retention.

It cannot hurt the cause of reclaiming higher education, however, to have university students, no matter their sympathies for the Fourth International, recognizing that the denial of coherent beliefs leads to incoherence, and a paradigm within which only power matters is a paradigm in which professors lack an objective claim to authority.

Audience members asked questions about postmodernism and several expressed strong agreement with the exposure of its role, especially in the universities. As one explained, “A philosophy that denies objective truth serves to denigrate all learned study in favor of the preferred ‘narrative’ of the individual.”

After the meeting, [meeting organizers] interviewed a number of students and others in attendance.

Julian, a high school Spanish teacher from central Massachusetts, said North’s lecture was a “devastating” exposure of the various forms of subjectivism taught on campuses today. “The growth of subjectivist ideology as a tool used to suppress people truly concerned with justice in society is integrally linked to the growing threat of warfare across the globe,” he said. “If you go to any campus, it will be dominated by this type of thinking. It needs to be dismantled.”

He spoke about conditions in his hometown, Holyoke, in western Massachusetts, which has been ravaged by decades of de-industrialization and poverty. “I certainly see that the time is now to begin bringing these ideas to youth in my area,” he said.

Katy Lee, a first-year student at Barnard College, said she found the lecture very important. “This is important especially for someone like me who is just starting college and encountering identity politics, which is almost out of control in my classes.

Although the presentation, and Ms Lee's responses, focus on the presence of fascist influences in the new Ukrainian government, her remarks unavoidably suggest that the current intellectual fads contribute to the failure of the universities to educate.  Holyoke is collateral damage.

Today, students find themselves in an academic place dominated by identity politics. Students put a lot of faith in their professors, and they might not be bad people, but they too are products of this system that promotes this false ideology.

“How do we tear off the veil of this false education? Sometimes it seems overwhelming, but it is not an option to be overwhelmed when the consequences of not doing so are so high.”

Much as I have been arguing for years.

THAT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ASTERISK.

All too often, faculty hiring plans that pay attention to ensuring that core courses are staffed, or that strong subject specialists are in the pipeline to replace aging subject specialists, get trumped by diversity opportunities.

Marvin Thrash brought the suit after he was rejected for tenure. He had joined the public university in Ohio as an "opportunity hire" after he was a finalist, but not selected, for an open tenure-track position in paper science and engineering. He argued that his record was devalued because of bias against those hired with affirmative action.

During his first few years at Miami, Thrash was evaluated as a high-quality teacher, but one without enough of a research program. He was praised for his research efforts in his last year before the tenure review, and a departmental committee recommended him for tenure. But his chair and subsequent reviewers at the university were negative, based largely on what they said was a lack of a sufficient research program, and he was denied tenure.

Thrash claimed that his chair rejected all of the names he submitted who worked at historically black colleges, and a name submitted by another tenure candidate for an external review, from a historically black college, and that the chair said faculty members at historically black colleges couldn't be considered. The chair denied ever saying that. The 2-1 majority decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit noted that four of the six final members of the external committee were black.

Roger Clegg asks the question Nobody in Polite Society dares ask. "Well, yes, it’s quite plausible that, if you are hired according to lower standards, some people will devalue your record."

These "opportunity hires" can be a good deal for a department, as Paper Science might have gotten its first choice and a second line, something that might matter in these times of tight budgets.  That the opportunity hire budget might bind other departments to make do with adjunct lines is for another day.

Poor Miami of Ohio.  Ten years ago, the university reacted to straitened circumstances by moving to the price and financial aid policies of an upscale institution.  Incentives matter, but the outcome led to some soul-searching on the part of departing president James Garland, fearing Eternal Damnation for the sin of Successfully Becoming Too Upscale.

In the dismissal of Professor Thrash's suit is another reason for the Perpetually Aggrieved to be fretful. "The majority decision also endorsed the idea that judges should not try to judge the scholarly merit of tenure candidates." That's a task for another Diversity and Equity Task Force, one that can write language to undo the Cosmic Injustice that tenure dossiers be evaluated by faculty members, knowledgeable in the aspirant's area of specialization, professing at comparable or more highly regarded departments.

WORRIED MARQUETTE WOULD WANT THEIR BASKETBALL COACH.

Instead,  Marquette hired chancellor Michael Lovell away from Wisconsin-Milwaukee to become its first president not a member of the Society of Jesus.  His career move encourages sharp thinking at Milwaukee.

A month after he was inaugurated as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's eighth chancellor, Michael Lovell warned state lawmakers that his campus was significantly underfunded compared with its peers, and an alarming number of up-and-coming faculty members were being poached by rivals.

That's long been Cold Spring Shops material.  "Whitewater and Eau Claire and Oshkosh and LaCrosse are in the same business as Milwaukee or Madison, and a state policy that reserves a slot somewhere in the state system for any graduate in the top half of any high school in the state implicitly reserves a lessened opportunity to a graduate that doesn't make the cut at Madison as long as Whitewater is getting by.  Either clean all the windows or pull the shade." Good news: they're starting the right conversation in Milwaukee.

Candidates to replace Lovell presumably will force lawmakers and the UW System to answer whether they are funding UWM as a major research university and an economic engine for the region, or a midlevel institution that operates more as a farm team, without enough money to consistently retain top talent in a competitive environment, said [Mark] Schwartz, a climatology professor.

"The one good thing that comes from this at some level is putting it in the hands of the state and (UW) System to really define what they want us to be," Schwartz said. "We want candidates to come in with a question mark about our status and our role in the future."

We've heard this song before.  Here's how it plays in Milwaukee.

Schwartz, Lovell and other faculty leaders contend UWM is structurally underfunded, with resources more in line with a research institution of 16,000 students than the current 28,000. Lovell said that in just the last decade, research has more than doubled at UWM, and enrollment has increased by 25%.

Yet the funding formula for dividing state dollars among UW System campuses was developed 25 to 30 years ago. A review of that formula by chancellors and UW System officials is expected to be completed around June.

Hand in glove with the funding issue is a sense that lawmakers and educators are not on the same page — or more accurately, not even reading the same book.

University officials are still stung that lawmakers last year held back measures to give the UW System more flexibility in pay plans, purchasing and other areas.

"If you're not going to give us resources, would you please get your thumb off us so we can try to be successful with the resources we have," Schwartz said.

That animosity is all the more striking because education is integral to developing a better business environment in the state.

High-profile UWM supporter Sheldon Lubar, whose name is attached to the business school, said a reassessment is in order — not just for UWM, but for all of higher education in Wisconsin.

"The UW System is the most important — without a rival second — the most important institution in the state, and the success of our community in Milwaukee and every community in our state is dependent on a highly educated citizenry," Lubar said. "The university is not just a punching bag and a place you can take money from without any regard to what its impact is."

But in becoming the university that serves the most Wisconsin residents -- Madison chasing out of state students who pay full freight and offering the big time sports to attract them -- Milwaukee faculty have to make tradeoffs.

"The school is not only transforming in terms of all the initiatives but it is also transforming from a commuter school to a school with real campus life," said UWM alumnus Gale E. Klappa, chairman and CEO of Wisconsin Energy Corp. "I think to continue down that road is very important for UWM."

In making that transformation, faculty and staff will do well to keep in mind that commuter-first-generation-non-traditional need not mean not-college ready.

More critical is that faculty often describe their existence as somewhat schizophrenic — the tension between elite research and basic teaching; the sense of momentum one minute, lack of support the next. The unease is compounded this time of year because it's the academic raiding season, and colleagues are getting recruited away from Milwaukee.

UWM is "just below the big time," said [Margo] Anderson, the history professor. "We hire very well from the best research universities in the country. But when people's careers take off, because our salary structure's not the best, other campuses that can pay more swoop in like vultures."

My move from Wayne State to Northern Illinois was in part an attempt to reduce the stress of having to deal successfully with editors at top journals one minute, and with students who read at the junior high level the next. Unfortunately, I wasn't as well prepared to deal with career mediocrities and political hacks.  So I started thinking in terms of "job" rather than "career."

Here's the opportunity for Milwaukee.

Whoever ultimately leads UWM also will be challenged by the school's dual mission of growing its research profile while continuing to open its doors to nontraditional and borderline students. Admitting students who are not academically prepared for college affects both remediation and graduation rates. Of this year's UWM freshman class, 53.87% required math and/or English remediation. UWM's six-year graduation rate is 40.7% — about half the rate at a private university like Marquette, which can be more selective.

"The challenge is to keep the quality of the education up there, keep the price down and make sure that the kids are prepared for what comes after school," said Zore, the retired Northwestern Mutual leader. "This isn't unique to UWM. I think UWM has a little better advantage, they basically draw from the local area. (Students) want to get an education and get on with life."

The challenge to Milwaukee might be in raising expectations of the common schools.  Winning the Horizon League tournament requires the correct mix of basketball players.  Why should producing future captains of industry in Wisconsin, or to show Chicagoans how it's done, be any different?

RUN THE FOOTBALL TEAM LIKE A BUSINESS.

The players at occasional football power Northwestern have obtained National Labor Relations Board concurrence with their request to be regarded as employees, and represented by the Steelworkers.

Writing for The Nation, Dave Zirin suggests that Northwestern's administration fears the countervailing power of unions where paying market wages to support staff is concerned, while conference and National Collegiate Athletic Association pooh-bahs fear the countervailing power of market options to the one-size-fits-all indenture athletic scholarship that binds players to a university for four years (one year in the case of some basketball programs).

The teachable moment: market forces are not always friendly to capitalists or entrenched interests.  Academics on the left ought to be alert to the potentially liberating features of neoliberal economics.

At Minding the Campus, James Piereson notes that running a business implies paying attention to hard budget constraints.

If it is upheld, the ruling threatens to obliterate the major assumptions governing college sports and could even bring about the end of big time college athletics altogether.  Given the expense and liability of maintaining athletic programs on a semi-professional basis, many institutions will fold them up altogether and proceed with on-campus athletics on a club or recreational basis.

So far, nobody has contemplated the tax considerations.  Perhaps institutions of higher education could run sports programs according to a business model, in such a way as to be able to pay their employees, in the same way that non-profit hospitals can conduct charity drives while competing in the relevant markets for neurosurgeons and radiologists.

Otherwise, raising money for the positional arms race in football becomes harder.

This is the Chessick Practice Center at Northern Illinois University, the result of a successful fund-raising campaign.  That it looks like a suitable structure for holding a continuous casting machine or a pickling line is serendipitous.  But running a spur from Union Pacific across the Lincoln Highway into a steel mill would not be cheap.

Instead of a plant gate, though, there's a ceremonial plaza.

Donated artwork, and additional naming rights.  That works for a university, it works for a hospital, and it works for an art gallery.

But then there are the tax benefits to buying seat licenses.  Not even at occasional BCS intruding Northern Illinois can you drive to the neighborhood of Huskie Stadium on game day and park wherever you want.  Season ticket holders must make an additional "donation" to Intercollegiate Athletics in order to secure the most convenient parking spots or tailgating locations.  (If you have a blue faculty and staff permit, there are a couple of ways to beat the system, which for a cup of coffee -- this being Illinois -- I will show you.)  How long will the tax-deductibility of these mandatory contributions last, if college football and basketball become more explicitly businesses?

TSAR ALEXANDER III UPDATE

Via Insta Pundit, the latest flutters of the Double Eagle.

Andrej Illiaronov, Putin's economic adviser between 2000 and 2005 and now senior member of the Cato Institute think tank, said that "parts of Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and Finland are states where Putin claims to have ownership."

"Putin's view is that he protects what belongs to him and his predecessors," he said.

When asked if Putin wishes to return to the Russia of the last tsar, Nicholas II, Illiaronov said: "Yes, if it becomes possible."

Illiaronov admits that Finland is not Putin's primary concern at present but, if not stopped in other areas of Eastern Europe, the issue will one day arise. Russian troops are currently massing on the eastern border of Ukraine, following Russia's recent annexation of Crimea.

That's the 1913 Tsar Nicholas, commemorating the tri-centennial of the Romanoff dynasty, which Alexander III did not live to see.

Perhaps it takes rough times to bring forth a new Sibelius to write suitably stirring music for the Finns.

HIGHER EDUCATION LOWERS ITSELF.

A tenure-track professor at Chicago State comes to grips with messy reality.

Now that I've been here for a couple semesters, I have seen the general lack of facilities upkeep and maintenance. There is intermittent wi-fi, electrical outages and surges that have damaged expensive research equipment, floods from burst pipes, potholed and cracked walkways, muddy ruts and pooling water over sidewalks, and don't even get me started about the lack of childcare on campus when half of our students are women with children! I also get the feeling when attending university and departmental meetings that a lot of committee work feels like a waste of time because recommendations and decisions get reversed or altered by the time they are finalized.

The professor's error, dear reader, is in thinking his paychecks come from an institution of higher learning.

When I go back and review that list, it sounds like I'm working in a poor, developing, corrupt country - but I take the Red Line home each day and remember that we live in a vibrant, modern American city that should be providing a quality education and experience for our students who work so hard to attend. We should be an example of progress and upward mobility for the community that we serve, not an embarrassment that continues to fulfill stereotypes and further marginalizes our students.

A university that educated its oppressed and marginalized students would be a university that got rid of remediation and the therapeutic bureaucracy that enables underachievement.  It might insist that the high schools do their job properly so college faculty wouldn't have to teach junior high math.  That would be the end of the first-generation-nontraditional scam that turns many a public university into an expense-preference playground for diversity hustlers.  Not only that, successful students would no longer be constituents rendered helpless by years of Democrat policies.  Democrat ward-heeler politicians and diversity hustlers at nonselective universities owe their continued existence to the continued misery of the poor.  The only option for an individual coming to grips with the understanding that he is not working for an institution of higher education is to exit.

I was very happy to accept this position and was hoping to stay for at least a few years until I was (hopefully) granted tenure, and I have really loved teaching and interacting with our CSU students and the other faculty. However, the upper administration's actions make me very worried for the integrity of CSU, and, therefore my professional reputation. I have been starting to look for other positions already this next academic cycle, and the thought of going through that again churns my stomach.

Idealism (doing the poor a service) crashes with reality (the continued existence of the poor keeps the diversity hustlers employed).  Yes, the academic job market is scary this year.  Scarier, too, is the likelihood that other institutions of higher education are advertising for professors, yet perpetuating the same access-assessment-remediation-retention scam that culminates in a Chicago State style dropout factory.

WORKING ON THE RAILROAD.

Hand-spiking turnout assemblies to cross-ties is slow going.  Gluing three foot sections of prefabricated flex-track goes faster.

There is substantial progress on ten days ago.

I'm also learning about ways to adapt helicopter model controllers to model trains.  If that project works out, I don't have to bother with route selection at frogs, or with reversing sections.  Might even dispense with the time-sharing problems that arise on layouts with multiple command control throttles in use at the same time.

UPSCALE OBNOXIOUS MUST SELL.

Nailed to Newmark's Door is the Index of Obnoxious Luxury Car Ads.

At Number Ten, "Nothing says 'I'm sorry for shtupping the au pair' like buying your spouse a Lexus with a bow on it."

Advantage, Cold Spring Shops, eight Christmases ago. "Don't know whether I want him mulling 'will she forgive me for boinking the nanny?' or 'this should keep her pacified if she finds out.'"

Not that BMW or Acura or Cadillac or Mercedes-Benz think of the carriage trade as refined, either.

HIGHER EDUCATION LOWERS ITSELF.

I can fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.  Here's Voluntary Xchange.  "I’m only half way through a career in an industry that’s being deconstructed out from under me." Perhaps the administrator is using the infelicitous "K-16" locution to suggest that the high schools, well, prepare their graduates for college work.  Yes, and there will be a Cinderella in this year's final four.

THE LEGISLATURE DOES NOT ADEQUATELY FUND THE EXISTING UNIVERSITIES.

Yet it occurs to two legislators to establish another Big Ten university in Illinois.

They say it will keep tuition low and retain home-grown talent in Illinois.

According to a press release, state Sens. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine) and Michael Connelly (R-Naperville) say the idea developed after learning more and more suburban students leave Illinois to attend other, high-priced Big Ten institutions out-of-state.

The measure, Senate Bill 3526, would create a study commission to explore the possibility of establishing an existing Illinois public university as another Big Ten university. The bill passed the Senate Higher Education Committee on March 19. It is expected to be called for a Senate vote soon.

Sen. Murphy says since Illinois is the fifth largest state in the country, that creates a competitive admission process at the state's only flagship university.

"We should make it easier for these students to stay in Illinois, not look for greener pastures across state lines," Sen. Murphy said.Sen. Connelly notes other surrounding, smaller states have multiple Big Ten schools, such as Michigan and Indiana.

We've been following the competition of the Midwestern state universities for out-of-state students that pay full freight for years, noting a few Urbana hopefuls that got away, while north of the Cheddar Curtain, Madison's quest for out-of-state students chases high-potential Wisconsin residents elsewhere (including to Illinois?) or has Milwaukee enrolling more in-state students than Madison, unfortunately bringing in their train the collegiate party culture rather than a quest for intellectual challenges.

In Illinois, Senators Murphy and Connelly hope to perform the upgrade on the cheap.

Requires the Board of Higher Education to establish a Big Ten Feasibility Study Commission to deliberate and determine the feasibility of having another public university in this State become a part of the Big Ten Conference and how this might be accomplished, while remaining revenue neutral to this State. Sets forth the membership of the Commission, and provides that members shall serve without compensation and without reimbursement for their expenses.

(The full text of SB 3526 is, mercifully, short.)

I imagine the fantasies that are forming in the minds of our athletics administrators.

Northern Illinois University photograph.

And yes, I've long endorsed efforts by our senior administrators to raise the university's academic profile.

But then, there's that revenue neutrality.  Eight years ago, or, within the time frame of this cross-border competition for high-achieving students that will pay full freight, conditions at Urbana were so tight that faculty who could get better offers elsewhere were doing so.  Not much has changed since then.  The legislature's decision to deal with university pension liabilities by simply abolishing a number of benefits after July 1 of this year, rather than phasing the benefits out over time, has simply induced large numbers of senior faculty and staff to take their pensions.  More than a few of those people might have been willing to work for a few more years.

Yes, Illinois can keep more native students in its state universities by raising the academic profile of its state universities.  On the cheap, though?  Doubtful.

PIGOU NO GO?

At The Washington Examiner, Philip Klein proposes to abolish the mortgage interest deduction, arguing from what seems like a sound first principle. "The purpose of taxes is to raise money to finance government services, not to manipulate human behavior or economic activity." Here's where understanding a little economics is useful.  Attractive though it might be to invoke a philosophical principle, such as "humans are not gerbils running a maze for rewards," or "simpler is better," a tax, like any other price, functions to allocate resources.  Thus taxes can be changed in such a way as to allocate resources with the least loss of efficiency, or not.

SOMETIMES THE ENEMIES ARE ON THE LEFT.

Amy Goodman identifies The Least Transparent President in History.

In 2008, when campaigning, Barack Obama was often touted as a constitutional-law professor. As such, we can assume he studied writings of one of that document’s authors, James Madison, the fourth president of the U.S., considered the “Father of the Bill of Rights.” Madison wrote, in 1822, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.” With Edward Snowden’s revelations of massive NSA spying and surveillance, and the administration’s abysmal record on transparency, President Obama has tragically moved well beyond farce.

Such perspectives are de rigueur at Pajamas Media sites, or National Review. It's instructive to observe the discontent among self-styled progressives.

WORKING ON THE RAILROAD.

Another week, more progress.

Looking south into the main staging area.  Closest turnouts came prefabricated, with wood ties.  In the distance, turnout assemblies, with wood ties cut and counted, awaiting staining and installation.

DOUBLE THE FREQUENCY, TRIPLE THE RIDERSHIP.

Travel and Trains takes up the cause of additional passenger trains on The Water Level Route.  The Midwest High Speed Rail Association submits a detailed wish list, complete with a suggested timetable that among other things, deals with the inconveniences suffered by residents of Erie, Pennsylvania, just a little too far from the major airports to have air service, and smack in the middle of the night on the Lake Shore's schedule, if the Lake Shore is ever on schedule.  There's a lot of optimism in the proposed schedule, including improved tracks to permit 90 mph running, and station platforms on both sides of the track, which will end the nightly tangle the existing Amtrak service contributes to, as two trains in each direction must be on the north track at Sandusky and on the south track at Lorain, because that's where the sole passenger platforms are.  It doesn't help timekeeping, or the dispatcher's equanimity, that the intermodal trains and automobile shipments are also heavy that time of night.

The revised schedule, though, continues to treat the service west of Buffalo entirely as offered by through trains.

Had Penn Central implemented the same sort of corridor concept from Buffalo to Cleveland and Toledo that it was implementing east of Buffalo, residents of Erie might already have more trains. As it is, people in Mendota, Illinois, Lynchburg, Virginia, or Sturtevant, Wisconsin, enjoy more frequency and connectivity than do residents of Erie, or, for that matter, Cleveland.

Hub-and-spoke air networks have eroded passenger resistance to changing planes.  Cross-platform transfers to dependably scheduled trains are easier.  Many British stations have food service and news stands at trackside, to cater to the through traveller changing trains at Reading or Crewe or Birmingham.  A feeder network of Pittsburgh - Youngstown - Cleveland and Cleveland - Columbus - Cincinnati day trains has potential, although the political resistance to Passenger Rail in Ohio is likely to be stiff.

WORK-LIFE BALANCE IS FOR MEN, TOO.

Republican Senate hopeful Dave Oberweis took a trip to Florida just before the March 18 primary, the better to maintain domestic tranquility.

Oberweis said that one of the problems that ended his first marriage to Elaine Pearson was that she thought he worked too much. He said he didn't want to make that mistake again.

“This is something that I have been reluctant to discuss,” he said. “It's very personal. … I was married to my first wife for 35 years, have five kids, and as far as I was concerned, it was a very happy marriage, I was very pleased, and I was stunned about — I don't know — 10-11 years ago when one day she left. My children were equally stunned. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat for months. I lost 60 pounds. It was by far the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my life, and I don't want to repeat it.

“Julie and I have been married now about six and a half years, almost seven years, and if I made a mistake — my first wife indicated that one of the things that concerned her was that I worked too much, that I got focused on something and poured all of my time and energy into it and there wasn't enough for her.”

There's something incomplete in his story.  No warning signs in those 35 years?  Or were the emoluments of living the life of a corporate spouse inadequate compensation when what would normally be the beginning of a comfortable retirement turned into the beginnings of a second act, as a political spouse?

It's encouraging, though, to consider even older people questioning the Industrial Age dispensation in which it was permissible for fathers to be absent as long as the big paychecks kept coming in.  Perhaps younger people of both sexes will be more aggressive in seeking a different bundle of labor and leisure from prospective employers.  Or perhaps mechanization will offer a way out of the forty hour work week trap.

As far as the primary went, Mr Oberweis will represent the Pachs against Senator Durbin.

COUNTRIES HAVE PERMANENT INTERESTS.

Taiwan is working on a fleet of missile corvettes capable of attacking aircraft carriers.  Via Media notes that the western Pacific is filling with ships.  Although China continues to view Taiwan as a renegade province, and the People's Liberation Army Navy will soon have an aircraft carrier, Japan also have a large destroyer with a flight deck, and a history of occupying Taiwan.

Getty Images photograph.

And people have long memories.

MAKE TIME TO THINK.

Higher education used to be an environment in which scholars would work long hours on problems that interested only about six other people, because that's what they wanted to do, because that's what they got respect for doing, and because there wasn't a lot of administrative scut-work cutting into thinking time.

I say used to be deliberately, because I've seen the administrative abuses and usurpations metastasize over the past thirty years, and have been passively fighting back by ignoring them whenever possible for the past ten.

The good news is, the push-back is beginning.  Let's start with "In Search of Lost Time," by Philip Nel in Inside Higher Education.  I borrowed one of his closing lines for the title of the post.

Professor Nel notes first that it's habit to work hard.  There's nothing that concentrates the mind quite like an unfinished research project, and if it's a project properly chosen and properly specified, the time spent on that task is rewarding time.  The problem arises, though, when the academy begins to punish cooperative colleagues for being cooperative.  "When we’re just starting out, we learn to say 'yes' to everything." The novice has to learn to say no to committee assignments and interdisciplinary task forces.  A proper department will protect probationary faculty from such morale-sucks, although those become ways in which the tenured faculty are subject to hold-up.  And, in the absence of much merit money, let alone keeping up with the cost of living, the hold-ups proliferate, as do the requests for favors that might be currency in trading on one's reputation.

YOU GOT A VOT VERE?

North Shore Line Memories includes the tale of a crew at Pettibone Yard that made too aggressive a shove, winding up with a boxcar past the end of track and up a tree.

The yardmaster called master mechanic Henry Cordell to have two men sent over to assist in retrieving the car.  The post title quotes a question Mr Cordell asked.

What would Mr Cordell have made of a motor car up an escalator?

Chicago Tribune picture courtesy Milka Overton

Today's incident may raise questions about crews on short rest.

The [motorman] has been employed with CTA for about a year, Kelly said. She “works a lot of overtime,” [union president Robert] Kelly said, but she had been off for about 17 hours before starting her overnight shift, which began at 8 p.m. on Sunday.

“So she had an ample amount of time to be off that day,” Kelly said. “I do know she works a lot, as a lot of our members do.”

In the case of the errant boxcar, the North Shore Line crew was able to roll the boxcar back onto the rails, using the grooves the wheels had cut in the ground and the tree on the way up.  This errant multiple unit car will be disassembled, then removed.